Patience is a virtue! Unfortunately, some people lack that virtue. Personally, I have a limited amount of patience. Like most people, I don’t like to be judged unfairly and I hate it when people depend on me to do things that they can do themselves, especially when I’m busy. Generally I’m a nice girl, but I’m not perfect. Sometimes I become easily annoyed and irritated. Now this may sound irrelevant to you, but generally speaking, I think many of you know what I’m talking about.

I may not have patience but I do have self-control. These attributes sound very similar, but they’re not. Someone who is patient can tolerate things WITHOUT getting angry or upset. However, someone who has self-control can control their impulses – meaning they can be angry or upset but they’re able to refrain from acting on it.

I think that if you have a limited amount of patience or none at all it’s at least important to have self-control. If you don’t, you may do things that you will regret, and/or make the situation worse. For instance, you may lose your patience with a professor because they graded you unfairly on an exam, or with a co-worker because they’re always telling you what to do. If you lose your patience and can’t control your impulses and you start yelling at them or get physical, you’re  not going to solve anything and it will definitely make the situation worse. On the other hand, if you use self-control and calmly speak to the person you’re irritated with, you’ll likely have a much better result.

The moral of the story is… “If you don’t have patience, at least have self-control”. You’ll definitely need these skills in school, at work, and in life in general. Patience is a virtue, but to me, self-control is too.

-Erica