— interview with Lauren Cohen, an executive and relationship coach
by Michael Toebe
September 11, 2020
Impatience is a difficult task to solve and the reason why is emotion. When they are not understood well and we allow the wrong ones to rule in place of the healthy ones, we have shortcomings or pronounced weaknesses.
“Stress and anxiety are part of what gets in the way of people being patient,” says Lauren Cohen, an executive, performance and relationship coach.
This doesn’t have to be a problematic and forever-type problem as it is possible to learn to make emotions work for us and not against us.
“Most people’s brains can be retrained and rewired to teach persistence and cultivate patience,” Cohen says. She says there is way that this can be best and most reliably accomplished.
“To train your brain so you think differently and therefore act differently takes practice and time. If you can build some mental muscle your brain can actually change physically so you think differently,” Cohen says.
She says this not theory. It’s practical. The first step to learn, adopt and implement is to “stop believing the ‘lies,’” those narratives and stories that we create and tell ourselves that serve some psychological purpose yet do little good for the outcomes that would best serve us, especially in the long term.
“Your brain may tell you that you can’t continue a task, finish a work project or even do yet one more push-up. Pause and take an extra step. Stop believing the ‘lies’ your brain is telling you and challenge yourself,” Cohen says.
This can be done, she says, with simple responsible communication. She offers examples of how this can be done to teach, educate and program our brain. Speaking with confidence and boldness is important.
“Take the extra step of telling yourself that ‘Yes I can do more. Yes, I can finish. Yes, I can figure this out and break things down into small steps,” Cohen says.
By doing this, especially regularly, something powerful and helpful can begin to happen in our biology to help us overcome habits that have held us back.
“You will start to rewire patterns in your brain and this forced pause will also make you feel better. By consistently breaking overwhelming situations down into small steps you will reduce anger and frustration,” Cohen says. “Your energy and thinking will shift into how to solve for things instead of wasting that energy non productively on feeling overwhelmed.”
This approach, she says, can “retrain your brain to feel more in control.”
The second step Cohen recommends is “create your own mantra and motto.”
This personalized treatment is important because of our individuality. Once we learn our triggers and what motivates or demotivates us we can tailor the internal communication we have to program our minds to drive the behavior we want and move away from what we don’t want.
“Come up with a phrase that resonates with you. The moment you feel frustrated or that you want to give up, think about your mantra. Speak it out loud and sing it if you want to. I recommend doing it once with intent and then repeating it a few more times. But then really think about what you said and try to internalize it by visualizing,” Cohen says.
What’s vital is coming up with language that is yours, that sounds like you, not someone else, to your brain and will activate the inspiration for patience, confidence, stamina and persistence. You’re seeking inspiration and a reliable trigger. Cohen suggests examples to consider that might connect with someone’s psychology. “Just do it,” or “I will improve myself” or “I can conquer anything and will have a good day.”
Being committed to a mindset of small, steady improvement and wiring our mind to understand that the improvement we seek or need is possible, will lead to us learning the “how.” Often, this requires stress management.
“We can learn to manage stress and anxiety better and force ourselves to reframe our mindset before we get overly frustrated, angry or impatient, Cohen says. From there, it’s about making the task less intimidating or undesirable to work through.
“We can also break up tasks into smaller tasks to help manage a situation. We can also learn to understand how great it feels to stay focused and achieve goals,” she says. “We need to do a better job of convincing ourselves that even when certain tasks can feel frustrating and difficult we should not give up and persistence pays off.” It’s possible to increase patience by realizing that unlearning certain thought patterns and the behavior connected to them is mostly what it takes to create progress. “It can be surprising to learn sometimes that getting out of our own way helps us achieve goals and react differently,” Cohen says. “And we might be surprised that we feel less angry, less hopeless and less frustrated when we take control of a situation and face problems head on rather than avoiding them.”
Michael Toebe authors and publishes the weekly Red Diamonds Newsletter, Red Diamonds Features and Red Diamonds Essays (all on Medium) and hosts the Red Diamonds Podcast. He is a specialist for reputation, professional relationships communication and wiser crisis management. You can connect or contact him on LinkedIn.