Self‐Patience: A Generative Theoretical Approach

ABSTRACT Pursuing a goal often requires sustained effort and commitment, sometimes for longer than one hoped or expected. When people face delays in achieving their goals, they may become impatient—and when they believe they are the cause of those delays, they may feel impatient with themselves. In this paper, we present a novel theoretical approach to understanding such moments of self‐impatience, adapted from the process model of patience . This approach positions self‐impatience as an emotional response to self‐caused delays that are unreasonable or inappropriate. To be patient with oneself, then, means to successfully regulate the feeling or consequences of self‐impatience. We outline our theoretical model of self‐patience, the process model of self‐patience , highlighting where it overlaps with and deviates from the original model. We then close with suggestions for future research that derive from our theoretical proposals.