Patience

Regardless of whether patience is a virtue, I have never had much of it.  I recently spent three weeks away from my family, and in that time resolved to improve my patience, among other things, for my own good and for those around me.  I'm so naturally impatient even when I thing I'm being easygoing people sense it and try to diffuse it by saying, "Sir, I'll be with you in a moment."  Two common triggers of impatience are grocery stores and driving.  If any of the following makes you think of yourself, you may want to work on this as well. 

1) Grocery stores - Profiling people in checkout lines and the cashier to gauge which will be the fastest; having a near heart attack when the lady in front of you fumbles through her purse, pulls out a wad of coupons, or uses a checkbook; mortification when you see other lines moving faster than yours.
Advice for checkout lines is to distract yourself:  read People magazine, compare candy bar prices, do calculations in your head, count, breath deeply, people watch.  Basically anything but watch the cashier or customer before you.  Before you know it you'll be choosing paper or plastic.

2) Driving -  Speeding up when a light turns yellow, passing on the right, making a turn that is out of the way just to avoid stopping, profiling drivers by the make and model of their vehicle, knowing all the traffic light patterns in your city, etc.
Overcoming impatience is tricky because of the safety issues.  Talking on the phone, texting, and looking for the right song on the radio are all potentially dangerous remedies to boredom, or in my case impatience.  I've found two techniques to be effective.  One is deep breathing.  Impatience can impair judgement  and performance by causing your muscles to tense and breath to shorten.  Taking in a long, deep breath will reduce some of the mental and physical tension you are creating.  Second is giving a wide berth to cars around you.  This entails not getting near the car in front of you at any time, and yielding the front runners position to a car moving in the same direction in an adjacent lane.  Often the "idiot"  I've cursed at is actually a safer, more efficient, and saner drive than me who will always move through traffic more quickly.

I wish you the best with improving your patience!