"One of Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe's favorite teachings is directed to helping people overcome impatience. He suggests that we commit to being patient for only thirty minutes each day, and he tells us to choose the thirty minutes that are the greatest challenge. Let's say, for example, that you come home from work every day to find your children screaming and crying. Your spouse, who is exhausted from taking care of the family all day long, has long ago lost patience and is screaming right back at them. So what do you do? Too typically, you start screaming too, adding your own fuel to the fire.

"Rabbi Wolbe suggests that once you realize this pattern, you charge yourself to observe patience for the first half hour after you walk in the door. When you come home the next evening, you must be committed to entering the scene calmly and quietly. (You might try wearing a rubber band on your hand to remind youself to do this!) You will say a few kind words to your harried spouse, 'then pick up the first child, hold him and hug him, sing to him a little, and carry him slowly to his bed. Put him into his bed, still singing gently to him. In five minutes he will already be dozing off.

" 'Then you take the next child, and so on, until with your patience you have turned that half hour that you used to get angry all the time into the half hour when the house returns to quietude. Over time you will see how much more you can accomplish with patience than with anger.' "

"After working with that half hour for a month, you can move to another half hour at some other time of day. And so, over a year, you will have learned patience throughout the day.

" 'After a year,' Rabbi Wolbe says, 'you will be so used to being patient in every situation that you will realize internally how much better patience is than anger. With so much experience with patience . . . you will respond patiently to whatever happens to you.' "