 Hello and welcome to day 69 of the Mindfulness Challenge. Thank you for being patient. Hello and welcome to the Mindfulness Challenge day 69. I'm in my garden again tonight. It is just coming up to 7 o'clock here in the UK. It's been a lovely warm summer's day. I'm going to talk about patience. The irony of it was, I've been so busy today in doing things that the video just got pushed back a little bit. And I thought to myself, you know, what shall I do? What shall I talk about? And then it came into mind that we should talk about patience. Patience is a virtue, is one of the famous sayings in the world and how many of us become impatient, not only with others, but also with ourselves. We get impatient because we're not progressing quick enough or we get impatient because we can't do something or we're getting impatient for a number of reasons. And the amount of times, you know, I've gone right, I'm stopping, I'm leaving it, I'm going to sleep on it, I'm going to get up in the morning and have another go, is, you know, is phenomenal really. And what happens when you come back the next day? It just seems very easy to be able to pop whatever you're doing into place. So sometimes patience becomes frustration and frustration then amplifies patience and it's just this real circle of getting yourself wound up in a state that really you shouldn't be in. And what about patience with others? You know, what about when, you know, you're meant to be going somewhere or doing something with somebody and they don't turn up or they're late or, you know, something doesn't happen and all of these things. We really do wind ourselves up so then, you know, we might be waiting to go somewhere and somebody's late and you wind yourself up so much that actually it could spoil the moment and the mindful time or wherever you're going. You know, some of the things you're doing in and around the house, you know, or even your spiritual development. Your spiritual development can be tarnished by your lack of patience because I want it all and I want it now. It's a bit of singing for you. But yeah, that's what we want. We want it all, we want it now. And I think, you know, before the coronavirus struck, you know, everything was instant, wasn't it? Everyone wanted instant gratification on Facebook. Everyone wants instant coffee. Everyone wants instant binging of Netflix. Can you imagine saying to somebody now you can only watch a programme once a week? People are not doing that. I'll wait until the end and then I'll watch it all in one go because we're losing patience and losing patience with ourselves. So how can we cultivate, how can we use and work with mindfulness to cultivate patience? How can we do that? Well, a lot of it is quite easy because all you're going to do is because patience and, you know, the tension that builds within it is an emotion. And those emotions we can harness and we can work on, you know, because when we do feel ourselves becoming frustrated or impatient, we can just disassociate ourselves from the emotion that's coming in and the feeling that's coming in and actually understand the situation. Does it matter really if somebody is five minutes late? I don't think so, do you? Is that somebody being five minutes late going to make a great deal of what's happening? Is the fact that you can't do something once or twice maybe just put it down and just come back to it another time? And it's all of those things really that can manifest into these, this thing of why is it always me? And I've done something before in one of the courses where I talk about, you know, when something happens and you go, oh, that's rubbish, man, boy, bang! And then something goes flying and something else goes flying and before you know it you've caused yourself a sandstorm and I see it's always me, I told you it's always me whereas if your reaction was different in the first place things can be different. So we're going to do a mindful meditation for patients. Stay with me, be patient. I'm going to put a picture up. I'm now going to just ask you to get comfortable and take in three very deep breaths. And as you do, I just want you to feel that there's always yourself in the chair just checking in with yourself, noticing your breath, just being in that moment, breath by breath, moment by moment, allowing yourself to truly relax, become calm, and at this late stage of the day just feel a lot of those thoughts and tensions as you're breathing, just drift away. And I just want you to bring your attention to your jawline, your jaw. How does it feel? Feel tense? Could you just let it drop? And when you let it drop, do you feel or sense anything? Do you feel tension go? Do you feel the sound change? How do you feel? We very often store tension in our jaw. We become agitated or when we get patient clench our jaw muscles. Just let it loosen. Bring your tension to your shoulders. Your shoulders in another area where we bear frustration. Just allow them every breath just to drop that little bit more for you to become very comfortable in this chair. Now why don't you bring your attention to the calves on the back of your leg and your legs and just become aware of them? You know, are they tense? Are they achy? Are they? And just sit with them. Just breathe through your calves. And you sit here just breathing and bringing awareness to yourself. You'll start to hear the beautiful birds that are around me that now sing louder than ever after nearly three months of less pollution. Birds don't become impatient. They're free. Free as a bird. That's what I want you to feel. I want you to feel as free as a bird. We take a deep breath in now. I just want you to bring to your awareness. Bring it to your front so you can see it. Something that really frustrates you. Something you've lost patience with recently. It could be somebody. It could be a situation. It could be your own personal patience. Whatever it is, just bring it to mind. As you bring it to mind, I don't want you to put any attention to it or attach yourself to it. I just want you to see it. In fact, I don't want you to look at it as if you are a third party as if you're just observing it. And by doing so, you can look at it objectively. Breathe. And just be patient with your impatience. And as you breathe and you feel your patience and understanding that it is not the end of the world that we have time on our hands. We have life. We have breath from moment to moment. And as you look at this and bring awareness to something that's caused you this levels of impatience, I just want you to hold it with loving kindness and bring in the fact that you have this compassion and patience for this situation or for this person or even for yourself. And as you breathe, you just see this situation or shadow of impatience just slowly just being wrapped around by patience and disappearing. And as it does, you feel this lovely warm sense inside that actually there is another way. And that all you have to do when you feel yourself becoming frustrated or impatience is actually just observe yourself like you've just done. Take a deep breath in and wrap that situation around with compassion, empathy, love and patience. Just leave you with that thought. And just say to yourself, I am becoming more patient. I understand that impatience and frustration doesn't serve my higher good. Compassion, empathy and uncertainty are fine. I can live with it. I understand it. And it's only me who's setting the rate of progress. Nobody else. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. Breathing in and breathing out. When you're ready, I just want to wiggle your fingers and come back into the room. So I hope that was a nice meditation for you. Something that you can use to cultivate and conjure. It's a good word. It's a conjure. Patience. It's important because it can really affect you. Frustration and impatience can be an anchor that can take you down. And for instance, you know about my knee. I'm having to wait for a very long time. Now it's three months now really. I've been in complete agony. But I have to show patience because I know there's a bigger picture. There are other people who are in a much worse state than me and the coronavirus has done what it's done. And I have to show patience and I have to show compassion and empathy and love for all those people who need those beds more than me. Although at the moment I could probably sit here and wallow in my own self-pity and kill myself with frustration because I haven't had my operation. But I don't. I feel it rising, I breathe it out and understand that it'll pass. I'll be okay. Remove on. Day 69 of the coronavirus challenge. Good night Julian, I love you. Good night Julian, I love you. Thank you for joining me. I hope you enjoyed a different view of my garden. And tomorrow's a really sunny day. 26 degrees Celsius which in Fahrenheit money is 52 and at 35 is 87. That's hot hot for us. So we'll have a lovely day. Be love and give love. And I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you for joining me. One day 69 of the coronavirus. One day 70 tomorrow. 30 to go. Have a lovely day, bye.