Wait, what?! 🙀

Why waiting is stressing you out, without you even realising.

Recently I dropped one of my kids off with their friends at a huge fairground with some of the scariest rides I’d ever seen. It reminded me of a trip we’d had to the Gold Coast where we’d experienced the highs of heart-in-the-mouth rollercoasters, and the lows of queuing for hours during the day.

Waiting can be the worst part of the day for a lot of people at a place like that, standing around doing nothing when you should be on breathtaking rides having the time of your life. You’ve already waited to get in, and now you have to wait for the ride. And is that someone pushing in at the front with their mates? How rude!  

For others, waiting is a completely different experience. It’s time where the anticipation builds as the time nears where they’re going to be strapped into a little box and hurled into the air at breakneck speeds. The excitement gets more intense as they get closer to the front of the line, and it all adds to the adrenaline fuelled fun when they finally get their turn.

Some people will hate the waiting so much that it’ll ruin the entire day.

The thing with waiting is that it’s a really good opportunity to practice acceptance.

Whether or not you like being in the queue is irrelevant. You’re in the queue. Whether you ‘should’ be on the ride by now is a judgement call your mind makes. You may think you should be on the ride, but the reality is you’re not. This difference (between what your mind says should be happening, and what is actually happening), causes you stress. You may not be able to choose the situation, or even the thoughts you have about it, but you can choose how you respond to it. Whether you get angry, frustrated or just accept that it’s not how you’d like it to be, is more in your control than your mind often lets you think it is. These are good opportunities to practice the skills of not getting stressed by situations outside your control, and accepting what is happening around you.

Noticing these thoughts is the first big step. Then letting them go, and accepting that although the situation isn’t what you’d hoped for, that it’s ok. (There’s more on the science of acceptance here).

Waiting is what happens between this moment and some future moment. Maybe you’re frustrated because you’re sitting in traffic, and it feels like you’re wasting your time. Again, this ‘waste’ is another judgement call that your mind makes, and is completely subjective. What if your objective for that waiting time is just to not get frustrated? Or to practice noticing your thoughts? 

That said, there’s nothing wrong with using that time to think about an important problem at work you need to solve. Just as long as you do it consciously and don’t let your mind wander off into stress inducing rabbit holes of things you can’t do anything about.

Waiting can feel like time is being wasted, but that’s just your mind making a judgement call on whether or not you should be doing something else.  How you choose to spend that ‘waiting’ time, and what you do with those thoughts during that time is more in your control than you may realise. 

Next time you find yourself waiting for something, try it out. See if you can notice how you are feeling, or observe any thoughts coming into your head that may be creating stress, anxiety or frustration. Maybe use that waiting time to learn how to accept the situation, even if you think something else should be happening. Because it’s not.

And that’s ok.