What are your tolerations costing you?

A few years ago, I used to regularly meet with four friends who all had small businesses. We would meet on an evening every fortnight to workshop our business challenges. It was such a great supportive place to have different eyes and experiences from different industries come up with creative ways of thinking about something we make have been stuck on.

In one of those sessions, a friend shared that a coach she once had got her to clear her Tolerations List as a regular practice. It’s something I do often now, especially when I want to free up some stagnation or make space in my head and energy and life.

So, what’s a tolerations? Here’s one part of the definition:

Toleration
1. The act of tolerating; the allowance of that which is not wholly approved.

There’s two layers here, one is clearing a list of things you’ve been meaning to do and they still take up space in your head… and there’s also the layer of things that are not ‘wholly approved’.

Firstly, the way I use my Tolerations List is to literally write out the things that I’ve been wanting or needing to get done. Usually small things… but things that eat up some of my available brain bandwidth every time I see the thing I haven’t done yet or come up against the price of not having done the thing.

For example, when I use a weekly planner I always start with a list for that week of Tolerations that are on my hit list. Things like, drop off the winter coat to the dry cleaner that I’ve been meaning to do for 3 months, repairing some boots I’m not wearing because they need that repair, clean out a box from storage, find a book that’s been on my mind, complete the research to find a new vet/dentist/doctor etc… or sometimes they’re more business focused; change email service providers, research better fees for a credit card processor, sort out all my software integrations, update something on the website, create that mini course etc.

Seemingly, these are not big serious, roadblocks in my life… but, they kind of are speedbumps in my flow. They take up space every time I see the boots in the cupboard and think ‘oh they need repair’… same for every other thing on that list.

Plus, I’m sure there’s some brain research or a pod by Huberman on the compound effect of getting some small tasks done, kicking some goals to get pumped and ready for some larger ones.

The other part to this… is the ‘not wholly approved’.

So, what do we do with the things we are tolerating in our lives but actually cannot change, either immediately or perhaps at all?

The only way forward is to come into approval of what is… continuing to hold the thing that we can’t change in disapproval is expensive energetically.

That’s the bigger piece here.

What are you tolerating that you can’t change?
What does it feel like to come into approval, even a little bit?
What resistance or stories come up when you move towards approval?
What work do you have to do so that the thing/person doesn’t need to change?

Oof. That’s some bug grown-up shit right there.

#PowerToTheChooser