English Listening Practice - Patience

Conversation

Okay, let’s talk about patience. So, first of all, I need to mention that I’m not the most patient person in the world. This is an area in which I need to improve a lot. I am willing to admit that, because I’m not the most patient person. And I really want to improve in this area. I look at my wife, for example… she’s more patient than I am… and I try to learn from her because there are times when we’re both dealing with the same situation, and she is patient and calm, and I’m more agitated. The word “agitated” means that you are bothered and anxious for some reason. So, I might be agitated, and yet she’s perfectly fine, and we’re dealing with the same issue. So, I can see that other people have more patience than me sometimes, and I really want to improve in this regard. I need to improve. And I try to do so every day. So, I’m not talking from the perspective of someone who has tons and tons of patience. I’m talking as someone who needs to improve in this area. So, what are some different situations in which we need to be patient? The first one that comes to mind is when we’re sitting in traffic. By the way, we use that phrase “sitting in traffic” when we talk about being in your car, and you’re in traffic, it’s moving very slowly, or sometimes it’s not moving at all. We say that you’re sitting in traffic. So, this is the first situation that comes to mind when I think of patience, because it’s a very common occurrence. And for me, it’s one of the most frustrating situations. I hate being in traffic. It’s one of the worst things. I’m sure a lot of you agree with me about this. So, if we’re not patient, then traffic can really bother us. It can really annoy us. And sometimes, it can ruin your day, because you allow your mood to be negatively affected by the fact that you have to wait in traffic.So, this is something that we want to avoid, because we can’t control traffic. It’s completely outside of our control. And if we get bothered by traffic, this doesn’t help us, right? We can’t do anything to change the situation, to make the traffic suddenly go away. We have no control over that. So, I don’t think it’s worth it to lose our patience, to lose our cool and get really angry when we’re stuck in traffic. There’s no benefit to that. By the way, when we say that you “lose your cool,” this means that you lose your patience and you snap, you get mad, you get really frustrated, right? So, we don’t want to lose our cool just because traffic is bad. So, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, because I’m guilty of this. Sometimes, when I’m stuck in traffic, I get frustrated, and I let it affect my mood, but I definitely shouldn’t do this. So, that’s one that I need to work on. Another situation in which we need patience is when we’re dealing with a difficult person. We’ve all been there. We all know how this is. By the way, when I say that “we’ve all been there,” what I’m saying is we’ve all been in this situation. So, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had to deal with a difficult person in some situation or another. And sometimes, we can lose our cool, and we can allow this situation or this person to frustrate us to the point where we act differently. We don’t do what we should do. Or maybe we talk in a way that isn’t the best. So, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes we have to deal with difficult people. And it’s important to not let them bring us down to the level where we’re getting really mad for no good reason. Right? Sometimes, we get angry at another person for a legitimate reason, obviously. I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about being angry with a person because they’ve done some horrible thing. They’ve committed some wicked crime or something like that. That’s not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to situations where a person is just hard to deal with, and you need to be patient with them. So, that can happen in the workplace. That can happen just in public, at stores, with employees at certain companies, in a lot of situations. So, dealing with these people requires patience. And it’s good to act patiently in these situations, because sometimes we are the difficult people. Sometimes I am the difficult person or you are the difficult person, and other people have to deal with us. So, I think that we should be patient with people, because sometimes, we need people to be patient with us. So, it goes both ways. And another situation in which we need to be patient is listening to people. You might not think of this as a situation that requires patience, but it does, because people talk, and we should try to listen. And sometimes, people talk a lot, or their story that they’re telling takes a long time, and you can get bored, or you can start to get distracted, or you can stop listening, for example. And we sometimes lose patience when we have to listen to other people talk. Because everybody loves to talk about what they want to talk about. People like to be the ones to share things and talk about things, but not everybody likes to listen. And that’s a more important skill, is being able to listen when other people talk to you. And that’s something that we should all try to improve on and make sure that we’re patient, and we are listening to people, and we are genuinely caring about what other people are saying. And if you do this, if you demonstrate patience in this situation, you’re going to have better relationships. People are going to like you more. You’re going to have fewer arguments, maybe. The other person is going to feel more cared about, for example, and you’ll have better communication overall. So, I think that we should all practice with just being able to shut our mouths and listen to other people speak, and not just immediately try to talk and interrupt and say what we want to say. We should let the other person finish before we start giving our opinion about something, for example. So, that’s another situation. Another time when we need to be patient is when we’re learning a language. This is very relevant to all of you, and to me, because I’m a language learner. Learning a language takes a long time. I constantly get questions from people asking about their language learning process. And usually, they express frustration that they aren’t improving fast, or they feel stuck, or they feel like their progress is not what they want it to be. They feel like they have a problem. They ask me questions, and they frame the question kind of like saying that there’s something wrong with them. “Why aren’t I improving how I should be?” “I have a problem with this.” “What’s wrong with me?” “What should I be doing differently?” I constantly get questions like this. And these are legitimate questions. I’m not saying that these aren’t good questions. However, what I want to say is the vast majority of the time when people ask me this question, it’s not like these people are studying in the complete… wrong way, and they’re wasting their time, and they need to completely change everything about their language learning routine. It’s not that. Usually, they are just advancing slowly, and they don’t realize it. And they don’t realize how long it takes to learn a language. Okay? Let me give you an example of my language learning process. I’ve been speaking Spanish for over a decade… not a year, or a couple of years, not five years, not eight years. No. I’ve been speaking Spanish for over 10 years, over a decade now. Okay? My wife is a Spanish speaker. She only speaks to me in Spanish. Okay? I lived in Mexico for six years. My whole life was in Spanish for six years. And yet, today, over 10 years later, I’m still in the process of learning Spanish… not actively. I don’t actively study Spanish. However, I’m constantly learning new things, new words. There are things that I don’t understand. There are things that I misunderstand, there are things that I need people to repeat, because I didn’t get it. And I make mistakes all the time. All of this is what I deal with, and I’ve been speaking Spanish for over a decade. I’ve lived in the country for many years. My wife only speaks in Spanish to me. And yet, I’m still improving. I still make mistakes. I still have an accent. I still don’t sound anything like a native speaker, etc. So, just know that learning a language takes a really long time, in terms of getting to a very high level. Of course, you can reach an intermediate level in a pretty short period of time if you dedicate a lot of hours to it. And you can even reach an advanced level in a relatively short period of time, depending on your motivation, and how many hours you’re dedicating to it. However, when your goal is to become really good at a language, that is inevitably going to take a long time. When I say that something is “inevitable,” what I’m saying is that it’s unavoidable. So, there’s no way to avoid this. If you want to reach a really high level in English, then that’s going to take a really long time. Okay? That’s just how it is. We need to be patient. And similarly, another situation in which we need to have patience is when we are trying to achieve a goal. Learning a language is one goal. That’s one example. But when we want to achieve any goal, we need patience. If you want to lose weight, that’s not going to happen tomorrow, right? You can’t just expect that to happen in 24 hours. You need to stick with it for a certain period of time before you actually see these results. By the way, the phrase “stick with it” just means that you continue doing something. So, you need to stick with it and be patient, and eventually, you’ll see results, but not overnight. The word “overnight” refers to from one day to the next. You’re not going to see results in just one day. You need to have a little more patience than that. Or if your goal is to learn some new skill… maybe you want to learn a programming language, or something like that, that’s not going to happen overnight. You need patience. You need to accept that this is going to take some time. And eventually, you’ll reach your goal, right, if you stick with it. But patience is necessary when we set goals, and we want to achieve these goals.And another situation that requires a lot of patience is when we’re going through government processes. This is probably the worst one. For me, this is the thing that is the most frustrating and tests my patients the most. When I am going through a government process, and the government takes a long time to do the process and respond to me, or to do what they need to do, this can be really frustrating. I need to have more patience when it comes to this, because this is inevitable. We all deal with these processes. We all live in countries that have governments that are not efficient, and not very well- run, and are not the best institutions with the best customer service, and all of that. All of us are in this situation, regardless of which country you live in. So, we need to have patience and know that these processes are going to take a while, and we can’t do that much to influence this. So, when my wife was going through the immigration process to live in the US, this took a long time. This took multiple years. So, this was something that required a lot of patience, and at times, it felt like it was never going to end, but of course, it did. And we got through the process. And everything is okay now. But during that period, it was hard to have patience sometimes. And that was something that really taught me to just wait and to not allow things that I can’t control to negatively impact my life… and my daily life and my… my mood. I needed to kind of not focus on this process, and just live my life, be patient, and wait. So, that was a big one. And one more situation that I wanted to mention… probably the most important one, the most important situation in which we need patience… is when you are parenting, when you have kids. When you have kids, your level of patience is tested in a way unlike anything else. So, you’re dealing with small people, humans that have not learned to act properly, behave well, communicate effectively. They don’t know this yet. They don’t have these skills, especially at young ages. So, if you don’t have patience, this is going to be very hard for you. You’re going to deal with a lot of situations in which you are annoyed or irritated or you feel desperate, because you know how something needs to be, but your kid doesn’t. They don’t know this, or they do the opposite, or they do a lot of things that can possibly irritate us and affect our mood. And they can cause us to lose our cool sometimes. And we need to be careful with this, and we need to exercise patience, and to really understand that kids need instruction and discipline, and they need time. They need time to learn these things and to learn how to behave properly, learn how to communicate, learn how to express their feelings in a good and normal way. They need time before they can do all of this effectively. So, we can’t expect them to just be born with these skills. That’s simply not reality. And as a parent, patience is necessary, you need to understand that these processes take a long time. These kids will need a long time before they really learn all these lessons and they can do things the way that you can do them as an adult. So, for me, that’s probably the most important situation in which patience is definitely required. So, those were some different situations, but there are plenty of others. I hope this episode was interesting for you. And hopefully, it got you thinking a little bit about your patience levels. And maybe it can inspire all of us to be a little more patient. And if you like this podcast, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with anyone you know who’s learning English. That really helps me out. And please give it a five-star rating and write a review. Alright, thank you for listening to this episode, and I’ll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.

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