You 2.0: The Practice of Patience
1/19/20261 hr 41 min
Patience can sometimes feel like a lost art, particularly in a culture that prizes competition and the idea of "failing fast." But psychologist Sarah Schnitker says patience is a vital skill for success in both our personal and professional lives. We talk with Sarah about the difference between patience and passivity, and how to train ourselves to be more patient. Then, in our latest installment of "Your Questions Answered," Jennifer Tosti-Kharas responds to listeners' questions about how to find a calling, and how to set one aside if it's no longer serving you well.
In this episode, you'll learn:
*Why our brains dislike uncertainty so much, and how this can lead to impatience and hasty decisions.
*The three different types of patience that researchers have identified — and how each one can affect your life.
*How to strengthen your own ability to practice patience.
*The relationship between purpose and patience.
*How impatience affects our mental and physical health.
Episode illustration by Gustopo Galang for Unsplash+
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsShankar Vedantam· Host0:00
[gentle music] Hidden Brain visited 16 cities with our Perceptions Tour in 2025, and we're excited to visit even more communities across the US this year. We'll have more announcements about tour stops in the months to come. For now, I want to make sure you know about two live shows that are coming up soon. I'll be in Philadelphia at the Miller Theatre on March 21st, and at the Town Hall in New York City on March 25th. For tickets to either show, go to hiddenbrain.org/tour. That's hiddenbrain.org/tour. I hope to see you there. Okay, here's today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In a famous Chinese parable, a man, frustrated with all of his failures, exiles himself to the woods. [gentle music] There, he meets a hermit, with whom he shares his frustrations. "Give me one good reason not to quit," the man tells the hermit. The hermit points to a tall patch of foliage. "You see this bamboo?" He asks. "I nurtured it for a year, and it did not grow as much as an inch." But the hermit did not give up. The second year, he waters and nurtures the plot again. Nothing. A third year goes by. Again, nothing.