Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears. — Barbara Johnson

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

Author: Barbara Johnson

Insight: We've all had that moment—when someone says something that lands wrong, or a project stalls, or you get cut off in traffic—and something hot rises up in your chest. You feel the urge to snap, to push back hard, to strip those gears and burn out all at once. Patience isn't about being calm or meek. It's about recognizing that moment and choosing not to explode into it. The motor metaphor is useful because it reminds us that the energy and urgency we feel is real. You're not pretending it doesn't exist. You're just managing it—letting it run without engaging it fully, the way an engine idles before shifting gears. That's actually harder than calm. It's restraint with awareness, not the absence of feeling. What makes this relevant today is how fast everything moves. We're trained to react immediately, to escalate our response to match the intensity of the provocation. But most of the things that make us want to strip our gears—a critical email, a frustrating conversation, a disappointing outcome—actually improve when we let them settle for a moment. Patience isn't weakness. It's knowing when to hold the power instead of spending it all at once.