Impatience is not just about speed. It is resistance to reality.
I heard a Buddhist teacher say this once, and I notice again and again how uncomfortable it is. We think impatience means we want things to go faster. But underneath is something simpler and more stubborn: impatience is directed against everything we want to be different from what it really is.
Last Friday we gave a LOF webinar on resistance, with twenty inspiringly curious facilitators. At one point we worked with a fist. Just a closed hand. As a metaphor for resistance.
First we practiced with a very recognizable reflex: pry open, work on it, make sure he changes. The effect was palpably counterproductive.
A fist does not open because you try to pull it open. He can only relax a little if someone supports him, without an agenda, and stays with him. Forcing is impatience. Staying with it is the anti-dote.
One of the participants said it out loud: where she went to practice staying with it, she felt her own impatience. And that is so recognizable. And beautiful when you notice it.
As facilitators, we can talk endlessly about resistance. The participant who does not participate. The conversation that is avoided. The group that circles around the same point for the fourth time without naming it. The silence that lasts too long and feels like dropping out.
What we notice less is our own resistance, which sits quietly in the facilitator's chair, disguised as professionalism. That little cramping when someone takes the conversation in a direction we hadn't planned. The tendency to push the group back again. That is not process guidance. That's impatience, dressed as the so-called Zen facilitator (speaking for myself).
Because as soon as you start fighting with what is there, you have stopped facilitating it. And if there is one thing that reinforces resistance, it is the resistance to it.
The group in front of you is the group you have. The silence is real information. My own impatience, my own resistance to it: that is where the work is. If I can stay with my own resistance, I can do the same with the other person.
So the question I've been holding lately is not: how do I deal with resistance in the group? But: where am I the one who resists?
What is your experience in meeting resistance? What works for you ?