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	Overcome Your Tolerance For Tolerations

	by Connie Johnson

What, you may ask, are TOLERATIONS and why would you want to overcome them? Isn’t tolerance a virtue? Well, yes and no. I am a card carrying member of Teaching Tolerance, but I believe there is such a thing as UNHEALTHY tolerance.

WHAT ARE TOLERATIONS?

“Tolerations” in this sense are the things you put up with day in and day out that do not ENHANCE your life or environment. Rather, they accumulate a bit at a time, like grease in the kitchen, taking the shine off life. Tolerating daily INCONVENIENCES and habitual time wasters interferes with your quality of life; maneuvering around these annoyances uses a lot of physical, mental and emotional energy.

AN EXAMPLE

Here is an example of a small toleration and its RIPPLE effect: The salt and pepper shakers next to the stove are empty, so you take the big containers out of the cupboard to refill them. As you are about to refill them, you notice that the bottoms on the shakers are loose, and may not hold. Rather than refilling and taking your chances on a mess, or throwing the shakers out and replacing them, you postpone making a decision and leave them all on the very small counter by the stove. You now have too much stuff by the stove, so you move your food preparation to the other counter, but that means moving your mail to the table and so it goes. After a few days of this, you haven’t quite figured out WHY you have that “bull in a china shop” feeling, but you aren’t COMFORTABLE.

BREAKING FREE

Overcoming tolerance for tolerations is another way of saying live CONSCIOUSLY. Raise your awareness to a new level so you lower your tolerance for the things that dull your senses and get in your way. Often, it takes hitting a wall of FRUSTRATION to catch our attention and make us realize something has to change.

IT BEGINS WITH RECOGNITION

How do you get rid of the tolerations in your life? Start by SEEING them –- tolerations flourish because we have stopped being aware. Here are some tips for recognizing them:

go AWAY for a few days -- coming home from a weekend away is a great time to spot the stuff that has drifted and accumulated around the house
take PICTURES, starting as you approach and enter your home -- pay special attention to your entrance, kitchen and bedroom
invite someone over -- house GUESTS are especially effective tools for highlighting the things you have put up with that do not add beauty, joy or satisfaction to your life
jot down how you SPENT your day –- are there times that draw a blank, when time passed but you weren’t engaged in anything meaningful to you?

ROOTING OUT THE CAUSES

Once you have raised your awareness, the fun begins: you get to play detective. Your assignment is to uncover how and why these tolerations ACCUMULATED. The frequent culprits are:

objects don’t have HOMES
homes that don’t make sense for how the objects are USED
not enough space and its partner, too much STUFF
CHOICES you have made with your time
DECISIONS in limbo
inertia

Most often, it is a combination of factors rather than any one thing.

MOVING FORWARD

Recognizing the situation and identifying the sources get you part of the way to living more consciously, but there is more. Your final step is to ACT on this information:

DESCRIBE what life with less toleration would look like and feel like -- put up pictures that capture the look or ambiance you want to achieve
make LISTS of decisions that need to be made, things that need new homes -- checking things off a list is a powerful motivator for many people
enlist the HELP of your house mates or office mates -– use the buddy system
do ONE thing –- at the risk of oversimplifying, the phenomenon of inertia is that “a body at rest will stay at rest and a body in motion will stay in motion”

FINDING BALANCE

Tolerance in the best sense of the word is about creating HARMONY in the world at large. Lower your tolerance for things that DETRACT from your sense of comfort or accomplishment, and you will create more harmony in your own corner of the world as well.

Connie Johnson is a professional organizer in San Francisco. The focus of her business, Routine Matters, is helping families and small businesses develop routines that will create time in their lives so they can do the things that matter.

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