I’ve written many times about tolerations on this blog but not for many years. I was talking to a coaching client about this on the weekend and was reminded once again of how these creep into our lives so easily.
They are tiny annoyances
They are not glaringly obvious but annoy you just a little bit every time you see them or think about them. So not “I really want to repaint this ceiling” but “we need to knock another nail in the wall to hang that print”. The first is a whole day job while the second will take 5 – 10 minutes.
They drain your energy.
Every time you see that thing, you might feel guilty (I really should change that lightbulb/ clear off that end table/ take that donation bag to the library) because it’s a whole list of shoulds in your head.
Every time you see or think about the toleration, it saps your energy just a little bit. It’s the exact opposite of that frisson you feel when something sparks joy.
They usually don’t take a lot of time to fix
This is often why we don’t put them on our to-do lists as a task because it’s so small. Put it on the list.
Why don’t you keep a list of tolerations and either take an hour, go around your house and fix, change, move, put away what you can, or arrange for a handyman if you need someone else to do it for you (hanging photo frames, fixing a chair, etc.).
A power hour would be a great time to attend to these things.
Your tolerations will be different to mine because we are all different people with different personalities.
If something doesn’t bother you, go well, but I do know that we are all being drained of a little energy in a myriad of ways if we don’t attend to things.
What can we do about them?
- Grab your bullet journal or a notepad.
- Make a list of tolerations. It will help you to walk from room to room to make this list.
- Depending on how comprehensive your list, see if you can do them all yourself or otherwise hire a handyman (I have a regular handyman if anyone is local and needs a recommendation. He also reminds me of things like “it’s time to clear out the gutters” that I can honestly say never even occur to me)
- Bonus – schedule a regular slot every two weeks that works for you (maybe Saturday 11 am) and name it Power Hour.
[…] do it now instead of having to bend a bit lower on a daily basis? That’s a great example of tolerations I spoke about last […]