The following is a transcript of today’s Facebook Live:
Hello, I am Gloria Grace Rand, coming to you late because I realized that the first time I did my video this morning I had my microphone muted. So lesson to self – always check the microphone first before you go live. So anyway I’m here today to share with you today’s daily word from unity, which is a really good word today. it’s helping me to practice what I preach so guess what today’s word is – it is patience. And the affirmation is I am patient and kind.
Okay here’s the reading.
Daily Word: Patience
I commit to being patient in all my interactions. If tempted to respond to someone irritably, I take a moment to become calm. I may take a deep breath and pause, remembering I am one with God. From this place of oneness, I find the patience to respond with love.
I also commit to being patient with myself, not succumbing to feelings of frustration or self-judgment. I remember I need just as much kindness and understanding as everyone else. I react to disappointments with patience and let any negative feelings go.
I remind myself that we are all doing the best we can in the moment. We are all deserving of patience and kindness.
And then there’s the reading, of course, a scripture reading this is from I guess it’s a letter from Paul to the Colossians 1:11: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience.
Wow yeah I really liked what I said the last time. But the Universe likes to teach us lessons sometimes, so I have to learn to react to disappointments with patience and let any negative feelings go. So this is a perfect example of that I could have gotten really, really bummed and that all of my lovely talk about patience today just went up in thin air, because I deleted it I you know there’s no sense in having having my lips moving and nothing coming out that doesn’t work very well. Yes, I could put you know now I can’t put captions on Facebook anyone or even Instagram, for that matter, so yeah wouldn’t do you any good. So I have to practice patience.
Let me see if I can remember what all I said, so it is important to remember patience with ourselves, because sometimes we can be impatient, especially when things happen that are disappointing or that normally that you could be tempted to feel frustration about.
And one of the things that has helped me with being able to be more patient, because a long time ago, I was not, not patient and frankly I could see myself really being so annoyed having to redo this video today. But, thankfully, I took up the practice, not only a practice in patience, but also practicing meditation and meditation has truly been a way that has helped me to be more patient, not only with myself but with other people. And an example of that is when I was helping my sister when she was going through cancer treatments. And if you have ever been a caregiver for someone who is ill or recovering from an injury, you know, sometimes when another person is not feeling well or they’re in pain they’re, they have little patience with other people and with themselves, because when you’re not feeling yourself when you’re not feeling, well, it really is it’s much more challenging to be patient.
And so, because I had a meditation practice, I’d already been meditating for several years, probably about seven years before my sister got sick, I had that good foundation already, and then I continued to meditate while I would stay with her, because she lived out in Arizona at the time I was in Florida, and so I would go spend some time with her when she would go through chemo treatments.
And every morning I made sure that I got my meditation in because that helped me to be patient because she needed me to be a support for her, she needed me to be patient. And so that I could fix her meals, make sure she was getting her medications and keeping track of everything and just even managing rather day to day things with feeding her cat or getting bills paid, things like that, being able to help her with that. And I’m so grateful to meditation practice I had, because it really did help me to be that person to be that support person to be patient, especially when she could be irritable and and like I said, you know it’s natural. And I remember, even when I was a kid my mom had a lot of health problems she had arthritis really bad and it and it her hands were in pain, a lot of times it it made her grumpy yeah and I don’t think I was as patient back then, well, for one thing, you know as a kid and then teenager and you know you’ve got your own stuff to deal with and sometimes you can be resentful of having to deal with so. Learning to be patient learning to do to practice patience has been a skill that I’ve learned and I’m still learning.
Because it is a practice, like everything else that we have to continue to practice it because there are still times when something happens to annoy me case in point today. Along with patience, learn to laugh. I have definitely learned to laugh about things like this because it’s sure better than crying.
It really is so I learned to laugh at my mistakes and to say Oh well, you know it’s Okay, because here’s the thing, I’m human and so are you. We are spiritual beings but we are also human beings and we’re going to make mistakes and that’s Okay, but that’s where we have to learn to be patient with ourselves and, of course, to be patient with other people, because there are lots of people who can sometimes push your buttons.
When my daughter was younger, she used to push my buttons. Oh, my goodness, but I have learned, now that when something like that happens, many times it’s not necessarily even what that person says, or what that person has done, that is truly irritating. A lot of times, why we get irritated or at least I found this in my case is that it’s bringing up an emotion that is actually related to something that happened to me in the past and it’s just, it’s triggering that response.
And I had to learn and that’s where it says here, you know to learn to take a moment to become calm when something like this happens and to take a deep breath and pause and so that then we can find the patience to respond with love and then later, spend some time in self-reflection and say, “Hm… why did this upset me so much? Was it really that person what they said or what they did or was this something else going on? Is there something that is really reflective of something that happened in my past?” And a lot of times it is. And what happens is that because it was a way that I’ve reacted in the past, it becomes ingrained. And it sort of… you know we these neurons in our brain get wired in a certain way, and when you respond in a certain way it gets wired in that way so that then when something does happen similar, you have that automatic resume is to learn how to interrupt that pattern and that’s we’re taking a breath and pausing and remembering, I am one with God, as it says here. That gives us a chance to interrupt that pattern and say wait Okay, this is really how I want to respond?
And when we choose differently, then we’re going to start wiring new neurons and new neural pathways in our brain, and so we don’t have to continually operate in default, in operating on that old pattern that old tape that old Program, that was installed, maybe when you were a kid or when you were a teenager whenever. You can, you can re-record. You know, like on the old vcr tapes you could record and put a new program on top of it a erase that old one.
And then you can start a new or just you know re record a new file, you know you save a new word document you’ve got a new version of it now and we don’t have to keep operating the way we used to.
breathing breathing breathing breathing I mean even now i’m still a little you know wound up, I can feel it from having to, having to do this again. So I have to sort of consciously remind myself to breathe and just it’s Okay, and so, if you have to do that a couple times during the day, it’s all right, it’s certainly all right.
There’s nothing wrong with breathing, and so what keeps us going and you know it’s the breath of life.
So I encourage you today to remind yourself again that we’re all doing the best we can, in the moment and we all deserve patience and kindness. so be kind to yourself, even if you mess up, even if you lose your temper. And just say Okay, you know what yep I… that didn’t work out the way I intended, I will try to do better. No, I will not try, there is no try as Yoda said, there is only do I will do better, I will intend, you can intend to do better, the next time and remember to take a breath and pause.
