Patience – Journal Prompts
Refill your emotional cup before another busy week with these weekly journal prompts. Receive each journal prompt in your email by subscribing here. Find the entire collection of prompts we’ve already shared here.
You can take just 10 – 30 minutes on these prompts. Read through and respond to what strikes you, or simply take the journal topic and go in your own direction – this is about what you need.
We want to be more patient and yell less.
We want to be more patient and enjoy the moment.
We want to be more patient and see the ‘big picture.’
And we get very impatient with ourselves when we fail at these endeavors.
When I started considering patience in my life I realized that while I think of being patient with my kids and others, I seem to have zero patience when it comes to my own growth. I can be terribly hard on myself when I make a mistake, and then, patience be damned, I decide to fix it all right NOW.
I’m learning to give myself a little grace and to be more patient about how long it takes me to learn something new, develop a new habit or make any other significant change.
It all seems to go with letting go of perfect – when I can let go of the need to be perfect, I can be more patient with myself and my family as we grow.
Patience Journal Prompts
- Name one thing you hare having a hard time being patient about right now.
- We wish for more patience – what does that mean? An ability to feel content waiting? Less stress when things don’t go your way? What does being patient mean to you?
- Tell a story about a time you’ve been rewarded by being patient with someone you love.
- Make two lists: 1. Regularly occurring situations which I need to be more patient about 2. Situations about which it’s time to stop being patient and start making a change
- Are you ever impatient because you are trying to control too many people, events or situations in your life? What can you let go of in order to be more patient?
A note to subscribers – During the summer I am re-sending a few prompts such as this one, sometimes with one or two new questions as a way to let us explore them again and give myself a bit of a summer break too.
64 Positive Things to Say to Kids
Subscribe to Download your FREE printable of 64 Positive Things to Say to Kids
Love these!
I recently shared my thoughts on patience on my blog here:
https://www.abidingingraceblog.com/2014/06/hurry-up-and-give-me-patience.html
For me, patience is both an attitude and an action. Sometimes I don’t have the right attitude – and sometimes I don’t have the right action (or reaction). I have found three things to help while I “wait for patience”:
Lift High – Worship God.
Labor – Do the job I am supposed to do.
Learn – Always be learning about God and myself.
Patience, for me, means being still, being able to listen past the storyteller in my brain for clarity. It is a difficult thing to expand beyond presumptions; to remain present to witness the truth when my eyes start to glaze and I get lost behind them in my thoughts.
Patience also means accepting something different than I expected. Being the primary homemaker of the family, I have ‘vision’ for the house and its quirks. My husband has other plans that aren’t exactly efficient. Convincing him the might be a better solution is next to impossible. So instead of wasting the precious little time we spend together fighting, I close my opinionated mouth, submit, and do it his way. If it works, I successfully practiced humility. If it doesn’t work, I bring up my approach. No “I told you so” necessary. Just trial and error.
Thank you so much for this – I love your description of listening past the story teller. Isn’t that the truth?! And yes, it requires a LOT of patience. Thank you for giving me that way of thinking about it.
My problem is that I stay very patient and empathic for literally days (with my toddler and, currently, with my husband and some issues he is having), and then I snap. Really snap. I scream at my toddler at the top of my voice (feeling very ashamed here!) and usually make an unfair generalisation (eg: “why don’t you EVER shut up?!”) using language I don’t like (not swearing but things like “shut up”). Then I feel so guilty and anxious that I’m damaging my little boy through doing this.
I think that writing the 2 lists you suggested may help me. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, ideas and strategies. ?
I love all your emails u send out, they seem to always have a little something I am fighting at the moment. This one in particular is something I battle with daily. I catch myself often losing my patients, and I feel so awful after how I react. Needless to say the words “I’m sorry” are said a lot. I just need to learn to catch myself before I react. I guess a little patients for myself is in need of this one.
Always tricky practicing that patience with yourself isn’t it? I want to be prefect. now. LOL!
Good luck and thanks so much for letting me know these are helpful to you.
I’ve only recently subscribed to your FYC prompts and are finding them really useful to get me to stop and think. I love the questions you’ve posed, as it’s been great to think about things from a different perspective and/or reinforce existing angles. Please keep them coming and I look forward to trying your new ideas.
Thanks Amy, I started them at a time when I was feeling like I never took the time to pause and reflect any more since becoming a mom. Writing them helps me slow down and often gives my week a little focus.
I actually quite like the idea of a download…I tend to read and action printed files quicker than emailed ones!
Thanks Lisa – I will keep pondering and fiddling with it. I love the idea of eventually being able to offer an eBook with journal prompts that would be able to be downloaded and printed.
I have a terrible problem with the Third point. Trying to control too many things. Didn’t really think about it until I seen it written.
Yeah, that’s one that came up for me while pondering this prompt. I wind up getting impatient when I am feeling uncertain and out of control. I believe the impatience comes from being in that ‘inbetween’ place and wanting to get it over with ASAP and know what’s going on.
I downloaded the prompt but it came out super tiny for me to print, so I just read it. Love your ideas!
Hmmm, ok – yeah I’m going to have to work on the printing idea, maybe I can pull together a few so people could print out a sheet and wind up with three or four prompts on it – a month end wrap up of them or something…