“Start paying attention to what you pay attention to.”
I heard this quote a couple of months ago, and it’s really stuck with me.
Essentially, it means our thoughts and emotions are shaped by what we give our attention to.
So what does that have to do with tolerations? Tolerations are things that you are putting up with and allowing to hang around. When this happens they start to drain your energy, irritate you, and add distractions that prevent you from focusing on your goals, and other aspects of life. After noticing these tolerations, you can start to feel heavy and like your treasure got plundered. (I talk about ADHD buried treasure in my last post “ADHD & Developing a Positive Mindset”).
These types of tolerations might include things like:
- environments (ex: disorganized rooms, messy workspace, dirty car)
- behaviors (ex: procrastination, dishonesty, nagging)
- problems (ex: leaky faucet, check engine light, dead light bulb)
- situations (ex: financial, social, professional)
- people (ex: favor thief, gossipers, smelly)
- stress (ex: other tolerations, work, relationships, obligations)
- piles (ex: dirty laundry, delivery boxes, donation pile, abandoned hobbies)
Find Those Pesky Things
Once you identify tolerations it gives you the power of choice. Naming, or labeling them gives you the chance to stop beating yourself up and thinking it’s just the way things will always be. You’ll then have a choice, to keep it or eliminate it. When this happens you are able to figure out why you even dealt with the toleration in the first place, and be able to explore ways to eliminating it for good (Or at least for a little while until a new pile appears in the corner). When this starts to happen you’ll start to notice your energy levels rising.
Let’s Make Some Positive Energy
Sometimes tolerations can take time to eliminate, and when you first start to identify them it can start to become discouraging or overwhelming if the list keeps growing. But as you steadily make these tolerations walk the plank over the course of several weeks or months you’ll start to become a “Tolerations Keep Out” zone. This can and will probably take some time but as you keep crossing them off your list you’ll start getting a lot of your positive energy back as we get better and faster at responding to tolerations appearing.
When you start to to take care of some of these tolerations, pay attention to your energy. Notice what happens each time you cross one off your list.
Critical Mass Toleration
This is something that if you took care of once and for all, it would knock off several other tolerations from your list. This will eliminate a lot of positive energy road blocks all at once. Some of these are pretty big tasks, but worth trying to tackle if possible.
Positive Energy Mindset
Once you learn to identify your current tolerations and eliminate them, it will be good to start looking for potential ones and try to take care of them before they become tolerations. This is a good mind set to start trying to work from. Reviewing your listed tolerations and new ones that are appearing will help to identify a possible common denominator and maybe cut back on them appearing as often or not at all. This is what keeps positive mindsets and a peaceful life after finding the source.
When starting to identify your own tolerations ask yourself these questions.
How do I recognize what to delegate or eliminate?
How will I remember to watch for and eliminate them, and be on the look out for ways to prevent them from ever happening?
If you made it this far, thank you for reading and feel free to share any tolerations you’re comfortable with that you have been dealing with and eliminated.
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