Tolerating Annoyances
Life’s too short and you have too much else going on to tolerate the many annoyances that sap your attention and drain your energy.
Life coach Debbie Call describes such “tolerations” as:
…things that we put up with that drain us of energy. Like an often-used drawer that sticks, or a light bulb that goes out that you haven’t replaced, or a needy friend who sucks you dry. Tolerations can relate to things or relationships, both personal and professional. Some tolerations can be eliminated immediately, through action, or by throwing money at it. Others take much longer to work through, like a boss who puts you down, or a child who is difficult to be around.
Now, if you’ve decided to put up with an annoyance — like driving a long way to a job you really like, or letting your kids have their noisy friends over so that they’re close at hand — well, those are decisions with some costs attached. But not tolerations.
A toleration is when you hear that little voice in your head saying, “Grrrrrrr! I have simply got to get that fixed/attended to” (or whatever action you need to take to eliminate the nagging, irritating, infuriating annoyance).
A great way to fight back against the infuriating and depleting affect of such draining tolerances is to list them.
List as many as you can. Once you start, you might find it very easy to write down 50, a hundred, maybe more — from the most innocuous to significant in various areas of your life: work, family, technology, relationships with loved ones or friends or colleagues, your living quarters, your transportation, your clothing, on and on and on. Everything is fair game.
Then, categorize and prioritize your list. Try putting everything on your list of tolerations into one of these four categories:
- Eliminate. Do what it takes to rid yourself of the source of your recurring frustration. Take your suckless vacuum cleaner in for repair. Or buy a new one. Cancel your subscription to the magazines that make you feel guilty when you can’t read them. Reserve an hour on Saturday morning to spray lubricant into all the squeaky hinges that are making you batty.
- Delegate. Get someone else to take care of something that’s irritating you. Risk a few tense moments with your spouse or off-spring to reassign some household chore you just can no longer bring yourself to doing. Consider a trade in duties. Sometimes just making a change in equivalent chores is enough to get you out of your rut. Or hire somebody to do your least favorite chore, even if you have to sacrifice something you like in order to do that.
We go out to eat less often since hiring a lawn service, but I feel that I’ve gained so much by not “wasting” hours and hours mowing the lawn. (And I do understand that some people, like my next door neighbor Jerry, just love to putter for hours and hours on their lawns. I’m not one of them. To each his own.
The lesson: Whatever you want to eliminate or delegate in your life is a very personal value judgement and you shouldn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable in admitting to yourself or someone close to you what presses your hot buttons.)
- Tolerate for now. Sometimes we just need to make peace with an annoyance. There is a timing to everything; and sometimes that is tied to funds or your inability to eliminate something that bugs you because it requires too great a sacrifice. Every prize has its price. And you can’t always be prepared to pay it at this time. BUT, the good news is, even if you have to live with the annoyance a bit longer, just knowing that you’ve decided to do that will make your stress level go down because you’ve moved this particular source of annoyance from a toleration to a choice.
- Reshape your view of the situation. I used to be very frustrated with having my business in my home spread out on three floors: Office on one; files on another; shipping supplies on still another. But then I recast my view of the situation. It wasn’t a case of “being spread all over the darned place.” Instead, going between the floors was an “opportunity to get up and get a little exercise in the course of the day.” That slight shift in my point of view made a huge difference in eliminating my frustration, and once I became more comfortable with getting up and out of my office chair, I started doing it more often.
And I dropped a pants size. I didn’t need any fancy gym equipment to get the effect of going up and down steps; I could do that right where I was for no extra charge! And once I got out of the chair more often, it was easier to go outside for a breath of fresh air. And then to take a walk around the block, which helps me to clear my head and recharge my batteries. Another positive unexpected consequence as a bonus to nothing more than a shift in perspective about an otherwise annoying situation. The reality was, the situation was exactly the same as it was when it bugged me so, but my view of it made its effect entirely different.
If you’re breathing, you’re going to encounter plenty of annoyances in this world. But you can take action to both reduce their number and their impact on your quality of life. Don’t wait another moment longer. Start listing — and eliminating or minimizing — the tolerations in your life.
Right now!
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