(Principles are basic truths that, when applied, cause success to come to you easier and quicker.)

 

Humans tolerate. Animals don’t. The difference? Thinking things should be different than they are.

A badger, dealing with a new-fallen tree across the normal path back to her den, simply goes around, over, or under it. She doesn’t stop, fret, worry, ponder, suffer, or in any way ‘make the tree wrong.’ In fact, she gives it no thought whatsoever – the tree simply Is. She deals with it and continues toward her objective, toward what she wants.

We, on the other hand, probably due to our ‘higher’ thinking, find many of the things along our path to be off, upsetting, wrong, awful, or bad. But then we do nothing about them. We tolerate them. They, as nouns, become tolerations.

A toleration has three attributes. It is, 1) not the way you want something to be, 2) irritating to you, and 3) about which you are doing … nothing. You are tolerating that which bothers you.

The reason this is important is because each toleration costs you. Not only when you become once again conscious of it, that cost is obvious, but also when you are not thinking of it at all! Lying there in the back of your mind it awaits the opportunity to surface, to say, “Are we ready to handle me now? Ready to stop the upset? Ready to quit being bothered?” This internal, unconscious spinning is the greatest cost of a toleration.

The good news is that each toleration you resolve frees up a bit of energy you can use more productively. Like, maybe, locating and resolving another toleration? Yes, the process feeds itself and you are the winner.

 

Coaching Point: What are you (still!) tolerating?

 

Copyright 2016 Steve Straus. All rights reserved.