What Are You Tolerating That You Don’t Want To?

How would your stress, energy level and happiness be affected, if you stopped tolerating?

To tolerate means allowing things that you don’t like to continue. It includes those things that irritate you, drain your energy, and weigh you down. They produce negative emotions, and they may show up in both your business and personal lives.

Based upon my work with CEO’s and other C-Suite Executives, here are some common examples of things they often tolerate:

• Unproductive employee behavior ranging from upward delegation to poor performance to insubordination.
• Lack of accountability. Including excuses for missing commitments, whining, and ignoring deadlines.
• Unsatisfying relationships. Avoiding tough conversations about what they need from a personal relationship.
• Financial. Becoming complacent with lackluster personal or business financial results.
• Saying “yes” to too many requests. Success brings visibility. Others ask for their assistance, and they reflexively say “yes”, resulting in over commitment.
• Lack of attention to personal health. Not exercising enough or eating an unhealthy diet.

There are three ways to stop tolerating:

1. Decide to change your own behavior and bad habits.
2. Make and enforce boundaries with others. If you are tolerating a behavior in others, you can only ask them to change. If they agree to your requested change, that’s great- and it’s uncommon!

If they don’t change, then create, communicate, and enforce your personal boundaries. Boundaries are the limits that you set with other people. They indicate what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable for you, and how you will respond if they are violated.

3. Accept it. Toleration and acceptance are not the same. To accept means that you are at peace with the person or circumstance. It’s a positive emotion that embraces and welcomes differences.

Now, it’s your turn. Use the worksheet below to list all the things you’re tolerating in your business and personal lives. Rank them according to which ones you are ready to stop. Be specific. Beside each one, write down the action you want to take (click here to download a pdf version of this worksheet:

Kathy Caprino, a success coach, “brave-up expert”, and writer for Forbes, Huffington Post, LinkedIn and other platforms, summarized what I think is the root cause of toleration:

“It turns out there is one core factor undermining our happiness and success. My research revealed this: Thousands upon thousands of people are simply not brave enough yet to honor their true selves.”

Maybe bravery is not only looking death in the eye, but finding enough courage to stop tolerating. When you do, you will free up your time and energy to focus on what you really need and want.