Patience Exercise of the Week: Pick your Battles

Fittingly enough, I got this patience exercise from "Power to Change," some sort of Christian website. It seems God is pretty gung-ho about the whole patience= acceptance= love thing. I'll take a leaf out of his Book, then. Here's the excerpt:

"Allow others to fail you. Like cats petted backwards, impatient people tend to attack others when things aren’t done right. But Proverbs 19:11 advises: “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”

Realize people are like jigsaw puzzles – sometimes they don’t fit together perfectly. We tend to be leaders, doers, cheerleaders or watchers. Through the strengths and weaknesses of each personality type, we develop patience.
Pick your battles. Major on the majors, like relationships. Dora liked a tidy house but her roommates didn’t share her standards. “God knew I needed to learn flexibility,” she admits. “I got something better than a neat home. I learned how to really care for people.”"

This feels especially important to me in reflecting on my actions over the last week. It is with incredible shame that I admit I've been an ogre to live with. I've felt ungrateful, which makes me feel guilty, so much so that I can't figure out how to be patient, compassionate, or even crack a smile. When I get this way I have a hard time looking my family in the eye because I think they'll somehow see right into the dark interior of my confidence-less thoughts. I've been snotty, irritable and aloof.

Rather than apologize, I'm going to practice patience. To me, this excerpt means choosing what I want to get aggressive about. Do I need to snap at my sisters for leaving their dishes around, or my Mom because she didn't warn me that she'd be making popcorn? No.

More importantly, it means picking my battles with myself. The reason I war externally is because I feel insufficient, anxious and any other myriad of emotions internally. If I better choose what thoughts I want to command my energies, I will create a more positive external environment.

I commit now to consistently NOT choosing this battle: trying to exercise more and eat less because I "didn't get enough of a workout." That's been a pretty consistent battle over the past few days that really just doesn't serve me. Damnit.

Wish me luck.