You rush through the store to grab a few things and hurry to the shortest line to checkout…which ends up being the slowest line to checkout.

You’re late for your date and Main Street is busy so you take the backroads…and find yourself behind the slowest driver ever.

Your contractor has just informed you that your kitchen cabinets won’t be installed on time because of a delay in productions…again.

You know? Sometimes it’s so hard to just hold your breath and go with the flow. We want things when we want things, after all! We’ve got things all planned out and calculated to perfection and our schedules have been arranged and people are waiting and orders have been made….It’s much easier to be “patient” when things just go as planned. Right?

But what about when they don’t?

Patience is the ability to put our plans on hold for a time. When we find our plans are being stirred up, it’s hard to simply put them on hold and we often find ourselves being the opposite of “patient“. We become “impatient”.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf once said:

“Patience means active waiting and enduring.
It means staying with something and doing all that we can—
working, hoping, and exercising faith;
bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed.

“Impatience, on the other hand, is a symptom of selfishness.
It is a trait of the self-absorbed.
It arises from the all-too-prevalent condition called ‘center of the universe’ syndrome,
which leads people to believe that the world revolves around them
and that all others are just supporting cast
in the grand theater of mortality in which only they have the starring role.”
(Continue in Patience, General Conference, April 2010)

Ugh. That sounds horrible. Pretty sure no one wants to be diagnosed with “center of the universe” syndrome. What a hard illness to recover from!

So how do we learn to be more patient? We’re glad you asked!

Here are three episodes that will help you to develop a little more patience in your everyday life. Just click on the image below to begin watching on your Our Turtle House app!