Ep. 178: How Patience Changes Everything

Learning patience isn’t about pretending things are easy—it’s about pausing, shifting your perspective, and responding differently in hard moments. In this episode, I’m sharing exciting news about my upcoming book, The Sprinkle Effect for Family Caregivers, plus the first new sprinkle: Patience 💛

If caregiving, stress, or everyday life leaves you feeling reactive and overwhelmed, this episode is for you.

A Free Resource For You

If this spoke to you, I have two free resources that can help you take one small step.

One is called Self Care for the Caregiver, and the other is The 5 Minute Caregiver Reset.

Transcript

Welcome And Big Book News

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, and welcome to the Maybe I Can Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for joining me today. So I have exciting news to share, and I think by saying it out loud, it is going to become real. But let me share with you. If you're a regular listener or you follow me, that I've written a couple of books, and The Sprinkle Effect is a book that has 17 different sprinkles, small things, qualities that you sprinkle into your life to create change. And I've created the sprinkle effect method, see it, sprinkle it shifted. I did an episode on that last week, and we'll talk a little more about that today as the episode goes on.

A Life Of Family Caregiving

SPEAKER_00 0:54

But the news is that I am in the process of writing another book called The Family Caregivers Sprinkle Effect, or maybe the Sprinkle Effect for Family Caregivers. I'm not up to the title yet, but let's go with the sprinkle effect for family caregivers. And just a little bit of background, if you're new to me or this podcast, I have been a family caregiver for over 40 years, maybe 45 years. It started when I was 17, and I became my father's caregiver for the next 30 years. And then my husband suffered from a variety of both physical and mental illness, eventually got a terminal cancer diagnosis, and I was his caregiver for years. And of course, as the proud mom of two boys, I'm their caregiver. But my oldest son has struggled throughout his life. He was diagnosed at two on the autism spectrum, added ADHD, depression, anxiety, and a litany of other diagnoses. And that takes caregiving for a child to honestly a totally different level. And so, since this has been my life, I've got a heck of a lot of experience. As we all know, as we get older and we have so many experiences, experience brings wisdom. And so I want to share my wisdom with all of you, but I feel compelled to specifically make an offshoot of the sprinkle effect for family caregivers. Okay. So with that said, I am adding a dozen more sprinkles. Now, the book is specifically for family caregivers, but quite honestly, these sprinkles that we're going to talk about apply to all of us. So please, if you're not a family caregiver, don't just close me out, hit pause, whatever you're going to do, because, like I said, this applies to all of us, whether we're caregiving or not. All of these sprinkles do. And so my goal is that over the next 12 episodes, each episode, I'm going to share a sprinkle with you and my thoughts and what it means, and give you some example, some examples of applying the sprinkle effect method to different situations. And

First Sprinkle Patience For Real Life

SPEAKER_00 3:40

so today is our first sprinkle, and that is a sprinkle of patience. And I have got to tell you, we're going to talk about why we're impatient and what that does to us and what we can do about it.

My Dad’s Calls And My Regret

SPEAKER_00 4:08

And I wanted to first talk about my father. So my father had a stroke a couple days before he turned 46. He was partially paralyzed on the left side of his body. He could speak, never really had much issue with his speech, lost use of his left arm. But there was something about his mind that was definitely different. It wasn't like he was out of it, but I don't know. I guess his world became small, right? And his world became his knee. And I think now in hindsight, thinking about it, he could walk for many years with a four-prong cane. At the end of his life, he couldn't. But he couldn't use his left arm. And just the act of getting dressed and buttoning your shirt or pulling up your pants with one hand, like all the things that we take for granted, he couldn't do. And so he was constantly obsessing over how he wanted things arranged, like in his apartment. He lived at various places throughout the 30 years. But basically, he lived in independent living facilities. He was able to take care of himself until the last three years of his life when he was in a nursing home. But he was able to take care of himself, just not cook meals. So he would go down for meals. And so he had a certain way. He wanted something in a certain spot in his apartment, on his night table, on the table that was next to his recliner, in the living room area. And he really turned into kind of OCD. Now, this we're talking, he had the stroke in 1981. He passed away in 2011. Cell phones weren't a thing. The internet was a thing, but he didn't know anything about that. There was no caller ID. And there was no voicemail. You had a, oh my gosh, an answering machine. All right. I'm telling you this because if my father was calling me, I had no way to know that it was him because there was no caller ID. There were no cell phones. I was either answering my office phone or my home phone. And what would happen was my father would call me multiple and multiple times a day. He would have a thought, oh, I think I need to have my knife sharpened. He had this special knife that you could use to like rock back and forth, and that's how you would cut since he couldn't cut because he didn't have two hands to use. I need my knife sharpened. I need you to buy me milk when you come next time. I need another shirt. I can't turn on the TV. Something's wrong with it. Or I need to pay this bill. Like all the things that were going through his mind, instead of making a list and telling me all at one time, which I told them to do many, many times, but he never did. Every time he had a thought, he called me throughout my day. And I had no patience for this. And I'm telling you, I was me. Because by the second or third phone call, when I was trying to go through my day and accomplish whatever I was doing, working or something at home, the phone didn't stop ringing. But I answered it because I never knew was it him? Was it someone else? What if it's him? And there truly is something wrong. It's like the boy who cried wolf. And his timing always just seemed to be amazing. I would always be in the middle of something, and that phone would ring. And for him, it was urgent. For me, it was annoying. And somehow, our levels of urgency were very different. And of course, looking back, boy, I have such regret. What wound up happening was fast-forwarding, like I said, he was in a nursing home. You don't need to know the specifics of what was going on, but we eventually were told, let's say he has a limited time to live. When I heard that, everything changed. When I knew that he had a limited time left, the interruptions felt different. I had a lot more patience. And it was hard to imagine, but I knew that I would miss what I was looking at as these annoying moments. The situation didn't shave. But my perspective did. And it made me realize how much patience is really connected to our perspective. Let's

Why Impatience Isn’t The Moment

SPEAKER_00 9:41

face it, what is patience? I'll tell you what it's not. It's not pretending that things are easy or never getting annoyed or being perfect. It's really learning to pause, to respond instead of react, and try and remember the bigger picture. Easier said than done, and I know that. Most impatience is really not about the moment itself, it's about stress in regard to other areas or things that are happening in your life. It's about rushing through everything. It's about the pressure to either perform or hit a deadline. It's all about expectations and living internally ahead of where you currently are, right? Because that's what makes it impatient. You haven't caught up to where you should be. And what are things that were usually make us impatient? Traffic, right? I gotta say, that's a big one for me. But now, depending on where I'm going, I am able to shift my perspective. Technology, oh my god, that's hard. Now we expect the technology to be instantaneous. And when it's not, we're annoyed. Or when it's not working the way that it should, we're annoyed.

The Drive-Thru Line Perspective Reset

SPEAKER_00 11:19

We get impatient when we're waiting and waiting. When there's a long line, and this actually happened this last week, I was in Florida visiting my mom. And if you don't know, I am a Diet Coke fiend. It's really one of the habits I think about quitting, but haven't yet. But I particularly love McDonald's Diet Coke. And every morning I drive through McDonald's every morning and get one. It actually started when I quit smoking when I was 27. And I still have that habit. Anyway, everyone in my life knows this about me. And so when I was in Florida with my mom, we were driving, we were going somewhere, shopping, or something. It wasn't like we were meeting anyone. It wasn't like we had to be somewhere by a certain time. And of course, I said to my mother, we gotta go to McDonald's. I gotta get my diet coat. So we go to McDonald's, and there's a line. And I can see that my mother, I could see her face get all taut and her body get tensed. And she said, I don't understand. Where the hell are all these people? We were how come this line is taking so long? Why are all these people on this line? And I said to her, I don't care. We literally had nowhere to be. We have no appointment, no emergency, nothing urgent. Why are you getting yourself so worked up? Just stay on the line, we're chatting. Who cares? And she told me that she is aware of this, that she does do this, and she told me that she tries to tell herself to stop, but this is her default, and there's nothing that you can do or that she can do about it. And I think so many of us believe that. And even if it is her default, 84 years, this is her default. One, I love the fact that she was already aware of it, and she was trying to see it, meaning be aware that she was being impatient, and then sprinkle it by thinking, what do I need right now? And really, what she needed was a sprinkle of perspective to say, who cares? I have nowhere to go. And then eventually shift it so that she no longer is impatient and she no longer finds the long line annoying. But it takes work because for so many of us, this is just how we are wired through life because we're always running and we're always stressed and we always need to get to the next thing. And when something interrupts us or what we view as an interruption, we get annoyed and impatient. So, really, it has nothing to do with the particular situation, but everything to do with the piece of life that is happening inside of us. All

See It Sprinkle It Shift It

SPEAKER_00 14:47

right, so let's just talk about how we would apply the sprinkle effect to this moment. And I'll reiterate if you didn't listen to last week, the sprinkle effect method is very simple. It's see it, sprinkle it, shift it. See it, meaning notice the moment, what is happening right now. Then you sprinkle it by asking yourself, what do I need? What kind of sprinkle do I need now? And then you shift it by making one small adjustment. Patience is not something you magically become. It's really is something you have to practice in those moments. So let's apply this method to some of these stories that I told you. Let's start with my father's phone calls. The see it is I'm irritated in those moments where my father called. I am irritated. I'm annoyed because he's interrupting me. Okay, now I'm aware of it. Now I gotta sprinkle it. What do I need? I really need patience, right? I need a sprinkle of patience and also a sprinkle of perspective. And then to shift it, I can soften my tone with him. I can pause before reacting. And in my mind, I can remind myself, one day I may miss this. I gotta say, I don't miss my father's phone calls in that way. But do I miss hearing his voice? Do I miss knowing he's there? Or do I look back and say, Man, why was I so impatient and downright mean to him? It kills me. The shift was not an changing my father, because one, we can't change someone else, right? We can only change how we react to a situation, and that's what this method and all the sprinkles are about. It was a lesson that I learned. You get annoyed, but why do you have to be like if only you were different? That's not happening. So you gotta accept that and figure out what you can do. Because, like I said to my mother, who's suffering here? Are the other people in the drive-thru line suffering? No, you're suffering. You are doing this to yourself. So when we were in that drive-thru line, the see it part is that I'm getting agitated, meaning my mother, even though there really is no real problem. What didn't she mean? She really needed a sprinkle of calm. And how do you do that? How do you shift it? You take at least one small action. She could take some deep breaths, stop fighting the moment, and remind herself, we literally have nowhere to be. Let's just look at a few more examples. Okay, in the old days, let's say when my kids were younger, I couldn't stand when they really weren't listening to me, and I had to repeat myself. And I would get annoyed and very impatient with them because I was trying to explain, and either they weren't listening or they were half listening. And here I was having to repeat myself over and over. So if I apply the method, the see it is, I have to notice I'm irritated because I have to explain this again. What do I need? I need to sprinkle this with some patience. And how am I gonna shift it? I got to respond slower instead of sharper. So, meaning maybe I need to respond differently when they ask me to repeat something, right? Instead of flying off the handle. Here's a good one.

Waiting On Health Results Without Spiraling

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And actually, this, yeah, this is a not just a caregiver thing, but in my mind, when I think of this example, it does make me think about being a caregiver, especially when my husband was sick. When my husband was diagnosed with MDS, and in his case it was terminal blood cancer, but we were always going for blood work to see he had chemo. He couldn't cure him, but it was hopefully going to extend his life. And then either before or after the chemo, he, I think maybe before, just to make sure he could handle it, he would have blood work. And there were certain markers that we were looking for. He was originally diagnosed by oh my goodness, a bone marrow biopsy. We had to wait two weeks. I think we can all relate to some kind of health-related story where you're on edge waiting and waiting for the result. So applying the method, see it. Well, what is happening? I want the answer right now. I feel like I can, I'm gonna jump out of my skin if I have to wait one more minute. But I'm gonna sprinkle this because I can't really do anything about this, right? So my sprinkle is I need a sprinkle of patience, right? And how can I shift it? I've got to focus on the next step instead of the final outcome. Because we know that in that waiting period, your mind plays a lot of tricks on you, and you create all these scenarios, and you're living through things in your mind that might not ever come to be. What a waste of energy, emotion, time, all of the things. Recently,

Presence Beats Productivity At The End

SPEAKER_00 20:52

I was listening to a podcast, and they were talking about something that I actually always talk about because this was something that kind of started my whole transformation. So they were talking about imagine if you were in your 80s looking back on your life. Most people would not wish that they rushed more, that you answered one more email, got through that McDonald's line faster, or checked off one more task on their to-do list, right? Picture it right now. You're in your 80s, your 90s, close to the end of your life. Would you be thinking about those things? Come on, of course not. What would you be wishing for? You would have wished that you were more present with your kids, your spouse, your parents, your friends, that you enjoyed and savored those ordinary moments. Because now looking back, I would give anything to be back in my father's apartment with him telling me to move it over here. No, move it two inches over there. And just being there with him. Same thing with my husband. Even in that ordinary, I'm thinking about those weekends when the kids were 10, 12 years old, and we were running from one activity to the next, and we had to get food shopping in and go to the cleaners and do the laundry. And it just it was a lot. But man, I would do anything. Oh my god, I'm gonna cry. I would do anything to be there again. That podcast really stayed with me because my big aha moment was that I did not want to be that person who got to the end of their lives looking back with regret. Now, for me, it was a little bit different than this. It was regret for things I coulda, shoulda, woulda, never tried, never took a chance, never stepped out of my comfort zone, never explored the what-ifs. This is the same kind of concept, but a little bit different. Because this is really pointing out how all these things in our lives that we think are so important. Look, I know you have to work, I do too, we gotta make money, but sometimes that sucks the life out of us. Working, to-do list, it's a part of life. But if we're doing that and not being able to show up and fully enjoy our loved ones and those ordinary moments, then what's the point of the whole thing? This is our only life. This is your one and only life, and only you decide how you show up. Patience and presence, they are very connected because when we're inpatient, we're mentally somewhere else, right? We're not present. We're thinking to ourselves, oh my gosh, I can't believe this line is so long. I have this to do, I gotta get there on time. We're already at the next task, the next stop, the next thing. But patience pulls us back into the moment we're actually living. The phone calls didn't suddenly become less convenient when I found out that my father didn't have a lot of time to live. I just realized that those phone calls were now becoming finite. The moments we rush through are often the moments that we later miss.

Your One-Pause Patience Challenge

SPEAKER_00 25:03

So this week, I want you to catch one moment where impatience shows up. You're gonna apply the method. One, see it, notice it, stop and notice what is happening. And then sprinkle it. Name what you need. Probably a sprinkle of patience. And then shift it. Pause, take a breath, skip a beep before reacting. Right? You're gonna respond, not react. You don't need to become a patient person overnight. I know I have not, but we all need to just practice. Practice one pause. I would give anything to hear some of those phone calls again, to live those lives again, with Gary, my husband, my kids at that age. And that doesn't mean that at the time those moments weren't frustrating, because they were. It means that perspective really changes everything. Don't rush through those moments you may one day wish you could have back. Okay, make it a great week. Sprinkle

How To Reach Me And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 26:29

in a boatload of patience and let me know how you do. DM me on Instagram, Debbie.r.wiss, send me an email, Debbie at DebbieRwiss.com, and make it a great week. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you all next week.