Does this hobby *really* teach us patience?

This hobby hasn't taught me patience, it is something I knew long before I ever discovered BJDs from spending a lot of time with young children. However, I don't believe anyone or anything can teach you patience, I feel that is something you have to commit to learning yourself from yourself. It's a type of control over your own feelings. I consider it like telling someone to stop crying; doing so won't change how they're feeling at the moment and most likely won't make them stop, they have to be able to do that themselves by controlling that part of their minds. Although I am sure some things can be used as a tool towards that goal if you put the meaning behind it yourself and put some devotion into it.

 

I think it just enforces patience. If you don't have patience, this hobby really isn't for you in the first place. For one you have to wait weeks upon weeks upon weeks for your doll to be made and sent to you. And then if you're going to do their face ups, you can't just slap it on then you're done--art takes time and concentration. And then restringing the dolls has to be done correctly, so if you can't patiently take care of your doll, then you'd be better off finding another hobby. Honestly, if you don't have patience starting out, you wouldn't last very long with the hobby. There's a LOT of things that you need to do in order to care for these dolls.

 

For me, bjds teach a great deal in the patiences area but you do need to have a good or great deal of patience for bjds and in life to being with!! Especially for your first bjd!!! I am still waiting for my first bjd Sha from dream of doll to come! They had a holiday come up; so, I have to wait longer now. Those type of events can pop up when waiting for your bjd; also, you have to wait for clothes, shoes, and all their other items to come as well! Bjds are all about patience; so, it is a requirement! I am so excited to get Sha and I know he will be here soon. I just have to wait.

 

If anything, I learned that with enough money and some luck, you can avoid having to be 'patient'...

 

If anything it's taught me how to distract myself from my waiting LOL!~

 

You can learn from the hobby whatever you believe it can teach you.
I don't believe it has improved my patience but it has actually broadened the range of my creativity!

 

I think by the time you're old enough to afford a hobby like BJDs you've probably already learned patience as a child.(or not)

 

I think this hobby spanks the impatient with the wait times, at least to some extent. It was the worst for me with my first dolls, which I ordered at the same time, and shipped together. (Sorta. They shipped together... but didn't get delivered together. Cue panic spaz attack.)

I don't think the hobby teaches patience so much as it demands it; if it teaches anything, it's more that it will show you how well you deal with waiting. If someone learns from that, it's definitely going to help them immensely in their experience of the hobby, which could be much more anxiety-ridden if they don't learn from it.

 

I agree with surreality - it doesn't make you patient, but it does force you to have to wait! I started out buying in stores so I had instant gratification. I am an extremely impatient person by nature, so the first doll I had to wait for kinda killed me. It took several dolls - and a reallllly long wait for Mystic eyes - to get me to where I don't freak out over incoming dolls. I can now put my one layaway lad out of my mind because it doesn't matter if they take a couple of months to get him made. I won't have him paid off for two more months anyways!

So maybe it has taught me some patience.

 

Enforced patience is patience notwithstanding. ^^ I swear mightily at my computer for taking too long to load a webpage-- yet I'll happily wait 6 months for Gumdrops eyes. Go figure! If you don't have an innate capacity for patience, you'll get one (or you'll get another hobby).

 

Hmm well it's interesting, I've always said that waiting for my
Soom dolls taught me to have tremendous patience but my
Mother pointed out that even as a child I was more patient than
most, but I agree that it's something you have to teach yourself
if you have trouble with it...it certainly won't just come to you in
this hobby. There seems to be a lot of people, who, even though
they KNOW typical wait times for LE/MDs, STILL get impatient &
whiny/rude when waiting past a certain time frame
This is my outlook: the doll will ship when it ships, complaining to
the company often gets you a lesser quality doll and just looks bad
customer-wise (yes there are times you may need to ask about
the shipping of your doll...that's a given) As long as the company is
still in business you will get your doll, so don't stress yourself out
over it. I've waited 8 months for a doll (including layaway time) &
there are others who have and are waiting longer
I used to spend time in certain LE waiting rooms but there always
came a point when people starting to get mad...and I mean MAD,
that this LE was shipping before their LE...as if creating drama was
in the end going to get the dolls shipped any quicker!

In short No, the hobby doesn't teach us patience, but it does give us
the opportunity to learn it if we allow it to

 

I agree with a few others. I do not believe this hobby teaches us patience, but we are forced to be patient. I know that if there were any , I would go to a BJD store in my area in a heart beat. However I think we all have so much love for this hobby we are willing to wait it out. I think that those who are not patient already will have a very hard time with this hobby since, for the most part, you must wait a least a few weeks for a doll to arrive. I believe that after a while though, the waiting gets easier.

I definitely agree with surreality. This hobby shows you how well you are with dealing with patience and wait times. It helps you to understand what you must do to be less anxious and how to focus on other things.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure it's taught me patience! Before I got into this hobby, the thought of waiting a month or more for something just seemed ridiculous. Infact, I found it really hard to even wait it out until my birthday, Christmas or any other special event. XD
Nowadays though, nothing seems to bother me as much as it used to. It's a little over two weeks until my birthday and I haven't been overly excited / far too impatient at all so far. Also, I was originally getting a doll for my birthday but, as it's not arriving until afterwards, Mum asked if I could wait until Christmas instead. There would have been a time where there was absolutely no way I could have waited even a second longer but I was completely fine with it!
I dunno if it's because I'm "growing up" and it's just a maturity thing or if it's solely down to being in this hobby but it's certainly a useful trait to have! xD

 

As someone who didn't work until after college, I got most of my big gifts through birthday and holidays, so I already had patience. Also I waited over three years for a video I liked the sounds of, waiting for it to release.
Like most people have said, I don't think having to wait teaches you patience, so much as gives you the opportunity to learn patience. It's up to you if you want to keep freaking out over wait times, winding yourself up over a wait you can't do anything about. Or, it's up to you if you want to serenely keep track of the arrival date, while resting assured that the doll will come, but in the meantime, you have plenty of time to work on other things, like new clothes for the incoming doll.

 

It requires a lot of patience, so even if someone isn't normally the patient type (I'm patient about some things, less so with others) they have to be or leave the hobby. There's saving up, wait times, the patience it takes to learn and master new skills, the patience for dealing with other people if you're participating in a lot of transactions or offering commissionable services. There are so many areas where patience is key. Even if you cut down wait times by buying in stock items from a dealer or second hand, there will always be something else that won't come easy. I don't know if it teaches patience or not, but only those willing to exercise a good dose of it are going to find the hobby a good fit for them.

 

I don't know if this hobby teaches patience. I suppose you could say I'm a patient person, in that I don't get frustrated by things taking a long time, but I also feel like this hobby has encouraged my rambunctious anticipation of things that may still be far in the future. A few years ago, before I joined this hobby, I wouldn't have been checking the status of my order weekly "just in case," never mind obsessively refreshing the tracking page once something finally is in the mail. There is an up side to being much more engaged in the process - around the time I got into the hobby I made an unrelated purchase online, then forgot about it for weeks. Finally, it turned out that either it had gotten lost along the way or I had missed the attempted delivery slip and it had been returned to sender after 2 weeks waiting at the post office (fortunately the company kindly sent another). Now such a thing would never happen - I know pretty well the range of time it should take for an item to reach me by various shipping methods from various locations, allowing me to contact a seller within a few days if an item seems potentially lost - but the trade-off is that I spend a tonne of time squeeing over the things that are e..v..e..n..t..u..a..l..l..y coming and saying "omg I can't wait! except I have to wait! for weeks & weeks!" much more than I would have before I joined the hobby. So...if that's patience, then yes, I've got it. But if patience means waiting quietly, then no, the doll hobby has taught me the opposite.

 

My husband will tell you one of my favorite sayings to our children is "Patience is a virtue, it does not happen to be one of mine." I think maybe there are different types of patience. I can wait for something, such as saving money towards a doll or some other desired item, or await for the arrival of said item. I may be eager for the arrival of said item after it is ordered but I can wait. I know getting worked up over it will not make the time pass any faster and it is far better to engross myself in other pursuits than to dwell on how long it is taking for my precious dolly to arrive. I can sit for hours and work away at untangling knots in tiny threads of yarn without getting frustrated and I love solving riddles. That is the sort of patience I have. However patience for other living things, not so much. That Buddha like calm you see from grade school teachers and mothers of many small children that allows them listen to repetitive whines for juice boxes and one more push on the swing and incessant bickering over who hit who first? Apparently I was born without that. I know my limitations and I try to work within them.

 

I well... I am a rather impatient person. Every doll I owned so far was a rather impulsive buy, but from each doll, I learned something. My first resin doll was made of cheap resin, so I learned that you get what you pay for. As I stayed in this hobby, I started to learn more and more about saving and budgeting my money to keep the hobby alive. So I believe it has taught me patience, budgeting, how to find the right deals, how to haggle, how to sell... actually, this hobby really has taught me more than patience when you come to think of it.

 

Practice makes perfect.