When you’re up and running to achieve a particular goal or outcome, you need motivation, focus and stamina. All three require lots of energy. Anything that ”zaps” that energy needs to be addressed and handled. One of the first things I do with my clients, even before we set any goals, is help them find out what they are tolerating in their lives – business, personal, environments and relationships – and how they can eliminate or at least reduce the stress these tolerations cause. A toleration is simply something you are putting up with. You don’t have it in your life by choice and the action of tolerating is what zaps your energy. “Tolerations” is a term that was coined by Thomas Leonard, the founder of CoachU Inc. Tolerations aren’t necessarily the big problems in life, they can be quite small and seemingly trivial. But big or small, they have one feature in common – they drain your energy, weigh you down and take the focus away from your goals. Big tolerations can be things like the lack of quality of your office space or equipment, or the unacceptable behaviours of people around you. Small toler-ations are those niggly little annoyances that continually drive you mad. I’ll give you an example of a little toleration I have. The passenger side-door lock of my car is jammed and will not open from the outside. Every time I go to open the passenger side to put something in the car or let someone in, I get stopped in my tracks, curse and mumble, and have to go around to the driver’s side to get into the car. So for a few moments my focus on what I am doing or where I was going is lost and my energy zapped by my frustration at this toleration. It’s going to be fixed the next time the car goes in for service, but meanwhile it’s something I’m reluctantly putting up with. Do you have any little tolerations like this? Take a look around and see what you are tolerating. Make a list of five things in each of the various areas of your life and keep adding as you think of more.
I once did this in my home office and came up with the fact I was tolerating:
- Glare on the computer
- Desk too small
- Office space situated in living area
- Files in a mes
- Nowhere comfortable to sit when I was on long conference calls
Those tolerations were really zapping my energy and my ability to operate at my best. When you are handling tolerations, look for the big one, which will automatically clean up a lot of the little ones in the same area. In my case I moved my office out of the living room into a separate dedicated office space. I immediately had room for a bigger desk and an armchair and there was a position for the computer that had no glare. My living room was once again a work-free space to come home to. And all this inspired me to handle the messy files! It’s no coincidence that once I eliminated my major work tolerations, my productivity and income increased significantly! Be aware that sometimes putting up with tolerations is a way of procras-tinating and making excuses for not being able to move forward. Back to your tolerations lists. Can you commit to eliminating those little annoyances that zap your energy and find ways to handle the big ones? If you are tolerating the way someone is towards or around you, are you willing to ask them to change or put them out of your life? The main thing to remember is that tolerations are about choice. Imagine what your life would be like if you chose to put up with nothing – at home, in the office, in your relationship, around your car or even your own behaviour. A big ask, I know, but even getting rid of l0 tolerations in your life, say one a week, will make an amazing difference to how you operate and how easily you achieve your goals.
