Welcome to Practically Happy, the podcast that helps you apply the science of well-being to your everyday life. I’m your host, Miranda Anderson, a master of applied positive psychology here to help you access some strategies for lasting happiness and fulfillment. Each week, we’ll dive deep into the latest research and insights from the world of positive psychology, but this isn’t just another academic lecture.

Practically Happy is about getting practical. I will share how you might apply these findings to your everyday life so you can experience real and tangible improvements in your happiness. As a wife and mom of three, I understand the challenges of juggling a busy family life while striving for personal well-being.

That’s why I’ll also be sharing my own stories and experiences along the way. Because let’s face it, life can get messy. Through it all we can find and create intentional moments of joy. So, whether you’re looking for ways to boost your mood, improve your relationships, or simply add more enjoyment to your daily routines, Practically Happy is your guide to a practical, happy life.

Hey, welcome back to Practically Happy, episode number 285. Today’s episode is a word swap. I’ve shared a couple of these episodes over the last season or two, and I find them to be fun. easy to remember and practical. The way that we use our words matters, the way that we talk to other people, the way that we talk to ourselves.

Words carry a lot of power and weight in our lives. And these simple word swaps are an invitation to think about the way that you’re living and the thoughts that you have that are contributing to emotions and behaviors and activities in a new way.

Segment: Pause for a Poem

Before I dive into this word swap today, I want to share a pause for a poem from one of my new favorite poetry collections, Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan.

I haven’t prayed in years. But if I did start, I would never say the word please, because if you’re praying then that’s implied. And I would never say the word dear, because that is too formal. Like a thank you card to your grandmother, that your mother made you write after you got the ugly ornament that won Christmas when you were ten, and you still have it because throwing it away now somehow feels like cheating.

I would never swear in a prayer because that seems risky. And if you are praying, you generally aren’t feeling ballsy. You are all out of balls, and that is why you’re praying. I’d never write down a prayer either because written prayers are like flags, in that you can’t burn them or rip them up, so you can bury them, and then are secretly disappointed when nothing grows out of the ground.

I think if I started praying, I’d put bees inside that prayer so it buzzed in my mouth and fell off my tongue and into the air thick and swarming, a hot cloud that could sting and sweat and stab like honey. I’d put a matchbox in my prayer. So, I could make a fire, and if God didn’t hear the prayer, at least he’d see the smoke.

So good, right? If you are new to poetry, or you love poetry, and you haven’t yet checked out this book, Instructions for Traveling West, poems by Joy Sullivan, I’ll link it again in the show notes. I talked about it a couple weeks ago during my episode about poetry as a practice. It’s beautiful. I’m about 30 percent through it. I’m going poem by poem and just, spending some time with each one. And I just keep discovering more and more that I love. So big fan. Enjoy it.

Word Swap: Patience for Presence

Today’s word swap came about because I was sitting down doing some work, doing some journaling, doing some reflection in the morning a week or two ago. I was recognizing a pattern of thought in my own head about the, when this next thing happens, then, the domino effect, the if then, as soon as, and finding myself lacking patience, feeling discomfort in the waiting for the right answer.

This thing or that thing that I’ve been hoping for or expecting to happen to come to pass waiting, and waiting is a natural part of life. Of course, we’re not, we have been deconditioned from waiting because of the speed of technology, this sort of immediate gratification, culture and society, the speed at which things happen these days, click a button and, the package shows up the next day or two days later your front porch you can order food and have it delivered to you within 15 minutes.

There are so many things that we just expect things to happen and what that has done is trained us to expect that is normal, that the pace of life is super speed. For things that are not then super speed or that are without our control, we can get uncomfortable in the waiting. And the traditional way that we would talk about managing waiting is with a virtue or a value called patience.

Patience

I’ve done an episode about patience before, and I’ve also written a chapter in my book about patience. I want to tell you a little bit about my previous thoughts about patience, get you up to speed on where I was coming from, and then how I want to make this word swap. When I was writing My book, More Than Enough, one of the chapters is called The Power of Patience, it’s Chapter 6, and I shared the entire chapter as a podcast episode in the second season, so Episode 104 of this show is just the audiobook version of that chapter, Power of Patience.

In that, I share a couple different ideas about patience. Remember, my book is a recounting of the experience that my family had in 2016, deciding at the beginning of the year that we were going to not buy any non-consumable goods for 12 months. We were going to live with what we had. We were going to try to be more creative and invest more in experiences and relationships than in belongings.

We ended up halfway through that year, deciding to make a move for my husband to go in house in Virginia. And in that transition decided to also downsize our living space. So, during that year, we not only didn’t buy any non-consumable goods, but we also downsized our living space. Our square footage and got rid of over half of our physical belongings, a real experiment in minimalism.

And one of the questions that I kept getting from people as we experienced this process and this, challenge. And we thought of it as an experiment. It was fun and interesting. And I was curious and open about it more than I was. It’s rigid about it. And what we discovered was that having patience, like practicing patience by saying, I don’t need that right now.

It’s okay to wait.

It’s okay to wait. It’s okay to put it on the back burner for later and maybe I’ll come back around to it and maybe I won’t. I also taught my kids very, young that patience meant waiting happily without asking questions and they would repeat that feedback sometimes I’d say.

We need to be patient right now. Do you remember what patience means? They would say patience is waiting happily without asking questions. Now, that’s a very simplistic view of patience. From a parent’s standpoint, benefited me a lot for my kids to have this sort of idea of patience as happiness.

Being okay right now and not worrying so much about what’s coming up or when it’s happening, when we’re going to get there, when we’re going to get that toy, what’s, all the things that are in the future. Patience really pertains to the idea of future, right? That, there are things that we want to happen or that we’re expecting that are coming later, and we are ready for them now.

And so, patience bridges the gap between where we are now and where we want to be. During our yearlong minimalism experiment, we really practiced the value of patience by saying, it’s I could do this thing right now. I could buy this thing right now, and I’m not going to, I’m going to wait because I’ve made this commitment to this challenge.

And what we were really saying every time we said, I’m okay to wait was the beginning part of that phrase. I’m okay. I’m okay now. That’s what that feels like. Patience is not only future focused, but I think can be helpful present focused. In season 5 of the show, just last year I shared an episode that had been originally recorded as a bonus episode for my now defunct Patreon group.

Episode number 218 talks about deep patience, or presence. Which is, as I am thinking about this and looking back through these episodes and thoughts, such a good steppingstone for where I am today, I related the idea of patience to stillness and meditation and knowing that we’re okay, that We don’t have to always be looking forward for something else, something bigger, something better, something different.

We can do that. We do naturally do that, look for development, be in motion, be forward facing. So many of us that is, an addiction to be always thinking about what’s coming next in Planning and proactive way it can be really helpful to do that and brings a lot of success I help women in my one on one coaching practice create goals and plan for the future and what do they want to do and how are we going to get there what sometimes happens though is.

For the things that are out of our control or that we simply need to pace we can get impatient and so when we’re always looking for something that’s just beyond our reach or you know on the horizon and not here in our lives. That can get exhausting. So, what I propose today, as like the third step in this talking about patients, a couple years ago, talking about it a year ago, today I want to propose the actual interchange of patience, the word patience for presence.

For example, I’m running out of patience, or I don’t feel very patient today could also be exchanged or swapped for the phrase or the sentence. I don’t feel very present today. The phrase, I’m not a very patient person. I know there’s a lot of people who identify as patient or not patient.

What happens when we switch patience for presence is that we have something right now that we can work on, that we can do to switch our perspective. Patience, for whatever reason, feels like a skill that is nebulous. There’s not a lot of ways, how do you practice being patient?

Patience is something that you want to have, and we feel like we run out of it a lot and it’s this nebulous formless cloud Presence feels to me like it has a little bit more of a clear definition Not only that, but there are some very simple research backed ways to find presence in the moment.

Grounding practices, where we pay attention to our sense, our senses, our five senses, and go through them. What is the chair that I’m sitting in feel like? What do I smell right now? Opening our eyes and noticing details. Touching something. There are even little stickers I’ve noticed on Instagram being sold.

That are for people who get distracted or anxious that are rough. I think they have some sort of texture, and you can put them on the back of your phone, or you can put them on your computer, your laptop so that when you’re feeling distracted, you’re feeling anxious or you’re thinking ahead.

You’re not feeling very patient. You’re not very present. You can touch that and notice it and pay attention to it and it brings you back into the moment, it brings you into the present. Let me give you a quick definition of patience and then I will follow up with a definition of presence and some ways that we can develop presence in our everyday lives.

Defining Patience

First, patience. Patience is defined as the ability to tolerate delay, difficulty, or annoyance without becoming agitated or upset. It involves the capacity to endure challenging situations. wait for desired outcomes and respond to adversity with calmness and perseverance. Some key aspects of patience are:

First, a tolerance of delay. This is that idea of waiting for something without feeling frustrated or anxious. That can be short term waits, like standing in line or being in traffic, or long-term waiting, like working towards a goal. A long range goals.

The second quality of patience is endurance of difficulties. Patience means maintaining a composed and positive attitude in the face of hardship or setbacks. It’s closely related to perseverance and a steady effort to overcome challenges.

Number three, calmness under pressure. Patience involves being calm and composed when dealing with stress, pressure, or provocation. This is closely related to my You know, simple definition for my kids of waiting happily without asking questions. This is the ability to manage your emotions and reactions in difficult situations.

Four, self-control. Patience requires self-discipline and the ability to delay gratification. That is probably one of the trickiest parts for a lot of people because of just the fast-paced society that we live in. I think across cultures, our ability to delay gratification varies widely, because of cultural norms and expectations.

The fifth characteristic I want to talk about is interpersonal context of empathy and understanding patients allows you the space to empathize and understand better other people, allowing them time and space to move forward. Do the things they need to do without rushing or pressuring them. Having the capacity to hold space for other people and not expect them to be on your timeline is an aspect of patience.

And finally, acceptance. Patience includes accepting that some things are beyond our control and being willing to wait for the right time or the right outcome without being distressed.

Patience is sometimes talked about as a virtue. I think people use that phrase a lot. Patience is a virtue. It is strongly associated with positive outcomes like better mental health, more connected relationships, greater success in long term goals. It’s something that can be developed and strengthened through and here’s where we loop into the word swap for today: Mindfulness practices and conscience efforts to remain calm and composed in the face of delay or difficulty. The way that you practice patience is through developing presence.

Define Presence

So let now me share the definition of presence. Presence is the state of being fully active and engaged in the current moment without distraction or judgment.

It involves a heightened awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the surrounding environment. Some key aspects of presence are mindfulness, which is the practice of maintaining, moment by moment, awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Mindfulness is really in the zeitgeist right now.

There’s a lot of talk of mindfulness. People, I think, used to talk more about meditation. Now, we talk a lot about mindfulness. They’re very similar. They’re interconnected. Mindfulness seems to be a little bit more in vogue than meditation, although they You know, meditation is a practice of mindfulness, there are other ways to be mindful as well.

Mindfulness is simply bringing your attention and awareness to what you’re doing in the moment where you are and giving that a non-judgmental awareness and consciousness.

Number two, exactly where I’m going, non-judgmental awareness. Being present means observing the experiences and sensations that you’re having without evaluating them as good or bad. Just being non-judgmental about where you are and what’s happening and finding this kind of neutral place of acceptance.

Number three is focused attention. This is a key aspect of presence is that your attention is in the current activity or interaction. It’s not, you’re not, washing dishes thinking about the thing that you must do tomorrow, or thinking about how you wish you had that different car, or thinking about how you just applied for this job, and you wonder when they’re going to get back to you.

Focusing your attention mindfully washing dishes would be paying attention to the smell of the delicious soap and the warmth of the water and the shine of the dishes and admiring those, cute plates that you bought that you’re so happy that you still have noticing them again and again.

That’s what focused attention looks like.

And four is related to that connection to the here and now is an aspect of presence that emphasizes experiencing life in the present moment, not being preoccupied neither with the future nor with the past.

Number five is engagement, being actively engaged and involved in whatever is happening, whether it’s a conversation, a work task, a leisure activity, a hobby.

As you are engaged, you’re able to fully experience something. I’ve noticed in my coaching practice; I’m making a clear intentional effort to be listening with presence in a way that I’m fully absorbed in understanding and listening and paying attention to my coaching clients. This may seem obvious, but.

I found that it’s easy to listen to someone tell you a story and not actually be paying attention to what they’re saying. And you like can listen enough to get the gist of it and have a response. But actively tuning in and engaging and, thinking about and putting together the pieces of what someone’s saying as they’re saying it is a deeply satisfying listening experience.

Also leads of course to. Better ability to connect and relate.

Finally, flow. Flow and presence are really interrelated. Presence is a key component of the flow state. I’ve talked about flow recently in a podcast episode. Flow is this balance of challenge and skill where you can just lose yourself in what you’re doing, and you lose yourself in the moment. You don’t lose yourself.

In the future or the past, you lose yourself engaged in what you’re doing and being fully there. Now, just like patience, presence can be cultivated through specific practices.

And in fact, if you remember just a couple minutes ago when I was talking about patience, one of the best ways to build your patience or build your tolerance of waiting is through practicing the cultivation of presence, mindfulness, meditation, breathing exercises, mindful movement activities like yoga or tai chi, all reduce stress, improve emotional regulation, enhance relationships and well-being, and build your patience.

Mindfulness in Two Parts: Self-regulation and Curiosity

In the field of positive psychology, there has emerged a two-part definition of mindfulness. The two prongs are the self-regulation of attention with the use of curiosity, openness, and acceptance. So, the two major components of mindfulness are which brings about presence are self-regulation and curiosity.

When we are being mindful, we’re taking control of what we focus on, which is self-regulation. And then we attend to the present moment, or sensation, with an open and accepting attitude that embodies curiosity. In the book Mindfulness and Character Strengths by Ryan Neimic, he says,

“Mindfulness ultimately is about shifting in the way we relate to ourselves. It’s about seeing and experiencing ourselves in a different way. While cognitive behavioral therapy has made strides in helping individual find ways to think differently by changing the content of the thoughts, challenging negative patterns in our thoughts, thinking differently about our emotions, and using our thinking to enact behavior changes, mindfulness does something different. Mindfulness helps us not to change our thoughts, but to relate to thoughts and ourselves in a different way, in a way that is balanced and non-judgmental, curious, and accepting.”

It’s impossible to be mindful all the time. Our brains are good at filing away our present moment into kind of the background and the known, especially if we’re in a routine of our life.

If we do the same types of things regularly, we’re, going to work and waking up the kids and going to school and, making meals and, listening to a podcast and driving and you’ve had that moment when you get home pull into the driveway after being somewhere and you realize that you don’t know how you got home like you weren’t paying attention.

Through muscle memory and through awareness of your surroundings, just general awareness how to get home safely, but you weren’t paying close attention. You weren’t mindfully driving. Sometimes it’s a little scary when you’re like, oh, whoa, I am glad a deer didn’t run out in front of the car because I might not have had the reaction time that I needed because I was just getting there.

And we’re not consciously choosing to not pay attention fully, we go on autopilot because then our brain can reserve all, a lot of energy for when it must make a big decision, when it must pay attention to something, when it has to discover something new. Our brain’s great ability to go on to autopilot, is very helpful for us.

It allows us to be creative and to think of other things and to not be totally, exhausted by the process. By the first, couple hours of our day because a lot of it we do automatically what happens when we do most of our life on autopilot and we never check back in with the presence is a complete inability to manage our thoughts and thereby manage our emotions and experiences.

Pay Attention

So, I’m not suggesting that we should be present or mindful all the time. I think that’s impossible, even for people who. That’s their entire goal, like Zen Buddhist monks who spend their whole life finding presence and mindfulness. For the average person living a wonderful normal life, there can be moments that invite us into mindfulness.

And therefore, I wanted to propose this word swap, because I think so many of Not feeling very patient. We know that feeling of I’m not feeling very patient. And I think the word patience probably comes into our mind or into our language more often than the word presence. But if we can make that switch, we immediately are given some tools of how to.

Accept the moment. How to get back into it right now.

Sponsor: GreenChef

I’m going to take a quick minute for today’s podcast sponsor, and then I want to share a couple personal examples of using this word swap.

Today’s show is sponsored by Green Chef. If you’ve been listening for any length of time, you know I’m a huge fan of the HelloFresh family of meal planning kits. Green Chef is owned by HelloFresh. And I love the way that our family can mix and match depending on what our needs are each month or each kind of season of our lives.

I’m currently a huge fan of the Green Chef, particularly the Mediterranean forward meals. I’m loving them. Green Chef is unique in the way The meal kit space because of its clean eating. It’s the only CCOF certified organic meal kit company with recipes that feature organic fruits and vegetables and organic cage-free eggs.

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You’re saving time in the kitchen because the premium ingredients are prepped for you and premeasured. So, you just open the box and you’ve got everything that you need along with this incredible recipe card with pictures to show you the steps you’re You know, out of the box, ready to go, prepping, cooking, and making this fresh, delicious, clean food.

I’ve recommended this to a couple of my coaching clients who really like to cook, but they don’t feel like they know how very well. And, as adults, they’re feeling like, I want to figure out this cooking thing. Green Chef is a great opportunity for both you as an adult, or if you have kids that are, in their tweens or teens and interested in learning to cook.

It’s such a great on ramp to cooking. You’re learning basics of chopping, and sauces, and mixing, and roasting, and all the pictures are available. Everything’s prepped and ready for you to go. I’m an absolute huge fan. I’ve got three little chefs at my house. They all love making these Green Chef meals for me, so it’s a win.

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Practical Examples: plants

I want to share a couple specific practical examples of using this word swap in real time.

The first one that I can think of that I. Probably started me on the pathway of just going down this idea, anyway, was with my garden and landscaping. I am really, finally, after a couple years of living in this house, I’ve felt like I’ve been able to invest a little bit of time and energy, some sweat equity, into starting to turn our little, tiny plot of city land into a place that I love to be.

And it’s a very different yard than the yard that we moved from a couple years ago. So, I’ve had to take some time to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to get there. Anyone who’s done much gardening knows that gardening is a process. When you plant things, especially if you plant things small or from seed, they, perennials, take a long time to grow.

You’ll see like a landscape at your neighbor’s house or at a home tour or online on Pinterest that is just filled in and lush and gorgeous and everything’s connected and flowing and looks amazing together. And you realize that garden has been growing for 5 or 6 years. When you first plant.

When you first install things, unless you have a ton of money to invest in fully mature plants, you are putting things in the ground with the space for them to grow and develop over time, over years’ worth of time. You can see probably, immediately why this situation gives me a little bit of need for Patience or presence when I, I’m seeing my little, tiny peony plants pop up.

I planted just the bulbs for the peonies. So, I could have gone and bought a little bit bigger plants and, still not totally broken the bank. But even then, peonies take a couple years before they bloom fully. bloom in your yard. And once they get going, once they’re established, they are amazing here in Richmond.

They, peonies grow beautifully with time. So, I’m watching these little, tiny things grow and like first curious that they’re even going to come up and then they start coming up and they have a couple little leaves and a couple more. The tallest peony plant right now, I put them in the ground in the beginning of March.

It’s been almost two full months and the tallest one is about two 10 inches tall, probably has 20 leaves. Not going to have flowers this year. Just getting started. And I remind myself, like when I remind myself, I just need to be patient. This is a long-term project. This is a couple of years.

That leaves me feeling like still very aware of the time and the distance between where I am now and where I’m going. Patience feels who, this long railroad and I’m like, okay, I’m on the train. I’m just having to be on the train and I, it’s going slow and that’s okay. When I swap patients, like I need to be patient with my garden too.

I need to be present with my garden. That shifts for me from looking ahead to where we’re going to staying right here, right now and noticing. What’s interesting and beautiful? Having the self-control to keep my thoughts in the moment, and my awareness in the moment, and then having the curiosity to say, what is cool about my garden now?

Not immediately jumping to what it’s going to look like in 3 years, or 4 years, or 5 years. That is fine to have that long term plan. But that doesn’t help me enjoy the garden now, presence helps me enjoy the garden now. So, when I swap, I need to have more patience with my garden process to, I want to be present in my garden today.

That brings a different energy, a really different perspective, and my thoughts immediately start to change, not from, oh, how do I wait with, with resilience and without being disappointed and frustrated, to what is cool about right now? What is okay right now? What’s happening in the garden right now?

Presence invites change. an openness to the current moment and an acceptance of the current moment that doesn’t feel as easy to get to when I use the word patience. In addition to that, that’s one example, gardening generally. And I’m gardening almost every day right now because of the season.

And so, every day when I think, oh, the, one day this is going to look a certain way, that reminds me that like forward focus and the patience, that kind of bridge of patience, reminds me presence, and I can bring it back into the moment right now and enjoy what’s happening right now.

Professional Development

Another example is with a few things happening in my life professionally, where I Have had some ideas of things that I’d like to do with my career, and some of it is dependent on me and things that I can do, and some of it is outside of my control dependent on other folks, partners, people that I’m, engaging in conversation with.

And I’ve felt tempted to be frustrated in the delay, in the wait, the waiting for, what I think would be great when it happens, if it happens, what that looks like in the future. And so, any circumstance where you might be feeling some of those same things of as soon as this happens or I just want this to hurry up, I need to get through to the good part.

There’s that Instagram song meme that we all used for a little while there. That’s like skip to the good part. Skipping to the good part is not presence. The lack of patience that we may have in that feeling is also a lack of presence and we don’t have to build more patience. We need to be more present.

Presence is something that we can do now. It’s bringing our awareness back into the moment, recognizing what the circumstance is right now, running through some scenarios of why, we can’t change right this second, whatever it is that we’re hoping will be different later, we can’t change it right now.

So then remember self-discipline of that, regulation, bringing yourself back into the moment, and then Curiosity. Okay, what else? Do I know about this moment? What else is happening right now? What are things that I’m liking right now about my life? Maybe not that circumstance. It’s okay to not like something Presence doesn’t mean that you are just like all the sudden Robotic about this is what’s happening right now, and I don’t have any feelings about its openness and non-judgment grounding in the moment, paying attention to what’s around you right now, even just that simple act of opening to what is happening right now.

What are things when we bring awareness to our moment, we have so much ability to notice good things around us that we might not otherwise notice that we might miss. In our flurry of projection onto the future or trying to race to get ahead or simply waiting with disappointment or drudgery, replace patience, your need for patience, your desire for patience, your inability to be patient with presence.

It’s been effective for me, both in my mind, in my work, in my, the way that I’m thinking through things. I’m curious if it is for you too. Take the next week and think about any time that you would be trying to be more patient. Swap that for being more present. Remember, presence is going to embody self-regulation and curiosity.

And see what happens. Get curious about that. I can’t wait to hear how it goes for you and I hope that you have a wonderful week until I chat with you next time. Bye.