healing impatience with the help of donald trump

“Oh my GOD, would you hurry up?!”

This thought spun in my head. Our zoom call was starting 45 minutes late and my friend still wasn’t ready. They had finally logged on, but were fixing dinner, texting someone else, getting distracted by their dog. Luckily, I had listened to Sarah Blondin all weekend, so was feeling pretty chill. Sort of.

I really wanted to have this conversation. But I could sense a snarky comment brewing in my feisty mind. How could I keep from getting triggered? I knew boundaries were being crossed, but wasn’t confident I could reestablish them without pushing my friend away. This is what my inner battle sounded like:

Mr. Self-Righteous: “Speak up, you weeny! Why do you let them do this to you?”

Mr. Rogers of the Inner Sweater Club: “No, be patient. They’ve had a long day. Chill out.”

Mr. Indignant: “They’re taking advantage of you. It’s always like this. When will you grow up and be seen?”

Mr. Everything’s Spiritual: “Hey, why can’t you enjoy this sacred, unrepeatable moment with your dear friend who you’ve found in life to drive you nutzo because that’s the path to growth your soul needs in order to become whole?!”

Mr. Reality Check: “Would you all HUSH UP. Smile into the camera. Drink your Kava tea. Check your email. Just. Wait.”

Does this sound familiar? What to do…what do to?

Impatience and the 5 Doorways of Mindfulness

I’ve developed an idea called the 5 Doorways of Mindfulness. Each of the five doorways is available in each moment. You can enter any of the doorways to unhook from compulsive self-talk.

The 5 Doorways are: physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, actions, and beliefs.

You can use the 5 Doorways of Mindfulness to do a simple inventory of your experience in any moment. This helps detach from what’s going, get a broader perspective, and foster self-compassion. Each of the 5 Doorways can also be used to nudge yourself toward a more beneficial mental pattern. 

Soon, I’ll post a guided meditation here so you can experience how it works.

Along with the 5 Doorways, I’ve been exploring how mindfulness can heal the wounds of our exploitive dominant culture. That brings me back to feeling impatient toward my friend. Impatience is yet another type of self-exploitation rooted in a cultural norm of urgency. The 5 Doorways of Mindfulness can be used to shift from urgency and impatience to compassion and understanding. 

To illustrate this, I will now swing for the fences. Below we'll use the 5 Doorways to heal impatience with the help of Donald Trump. 

I realize some readers may resist fostering compassion for Donald Trump. I invite you to approach this as an act of subversive healing. Exploitive dominant culture does not thrive when compassion is present.

We’ll use the picture at right to guide us. 

Physical sensations

Through simple observations and a little imagination, we can deduce physical sensations Donald Trump may be experiencing. Start by mimicking his facial expression. Make your eyes tense, tighten your jaw, and scowl. Imagine a sense of weight pulling at your jowls. Now consider that he’s 75 years old and purportedly weighed 244 pounds while in office. Imagine the sluggish achiness of hauling the equivalent of a giant Panda on a body that’s over 7 ½ decades old. Finally, note Donald’s stiffly starched shirt and ever-present tie, and imagine having a constricting sensation around your neck.

Taken together, we now have a glimpse into the physical experience of being Donald Trump.

Emotions

Our physical sensations are directly tied to our emotions. Once again, mimic Donald’s facial expressions while imagining being sluggish, achy, and constricted. What emotions do you feel? When I did this, I tapped into feeling angry, disgusted, and prickly.

Thoughts

Physical sensations and emotions set the stage for thoughts. What types of thoughts do you have when you’re sluggish, achy, constricted, angry, disgusted, and prickly? 

Usually not happy ones! 

It’s easy to imagine that Donald’s physical sensations and emotions lead to defensive, aggressive, and frustrated thoughts. Admittedly, it’s hard to guess the exact content of someone else’s thoughts in any given moment.

Actions

Have you ever been sluggish, achy, constricted, angry, disgusted, prickly, defensive, aggressive, and frustrated? 

I have. 

Here’s how I acted. I put up a vigilant boundary between myself and others, vacillating between withdrawal and being hostile. Basically, I took action to isolate myself because I experienced myself as being under seige. I can imagine Donald acting that way too.

Beliefs

What do you believe about yourself when you are sluggish, achy, constricted, angry, disgusted, prickly, defensive, aggressive, frustrated, and isolated? 

I believe I am vulnerable and unsafe. I might even question my basic self-worth.

Transforming impatience into self-compassion

When I recall times in life when I have believed myself to be vulnerable and unsafe, and questioned my basic self-worth, it brings up tremendous grief. I don’t agree with most of Donald’s choices, but seeing him this way helps me feel compassion for him. Witnessing another person’s brokenness opens a tender place inside.

Now I think back to feeling impatient toward my friend on our zoom call. I see that I have some things in common with Donald Trump. That gives rise to compassion for myself and my friend. I feel remorse that I’m still learning how to be loving. 

It also occurs to me that impatience is likely experienced by people all around the world. I feel a sense of connection and unity in knowing we all suffer through impatience.

Finally, it gives me hope. I know we can choose to not experience impatience. Each of the 5 Doorways of Mindfulness is a chance to shift toward a different internal experience. Here are some ways we can create this shift:

• Find sensations in the body that are neutral or positive, instead of focus on the most uncomfortable ones;

• Foster emotions like compassion (through exercises like the one described above);

• Choose to think thoughts focused on gratitude to shift away from the fretting “monkey mind”;

• Take actions that counter the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves.

Learning to do this is a practice that leads to greater wellbeing. It shifts our inner experience away from the self-exploitation of our cultural norms toward self-compassion. And it can drastically shift how we relate to people we regard as “other,” whether it be our friends on zoom or Donald Trump.