What are you tolerating right now?
TL;DR
What’s one thing in your life that you are tolerating right now, and can you envision what’s possible if you were free of it?
In the coaching room I often will ask my clients this really key question:
“What are you tolerating right now?”
Invariably this engenders a conversation around something that has been low level irritating (leaky sink faucet), OR something higher level and super overwhelming to face (a job that's sucking your soul), OR someone in your life who is annoying or difficult (fill in the blank with a family member, friend or colleague of choice).
My next question has two parts:
“What’s the cost of continuing to tolerate this?”
(I don’t just mean financial cost, although that may be a real consideration. I also want you to consider the emotional cost - ie. how it’s impacting your mental health, stress levels, and/or the physical cost on your body or your daily living, your schedule or time with loved ones.)
“What would it feel like to no longer have to tolerate this?”
(You have to really imagine being free of this irritation, overwhelming issue, or this relationship that is perhaps no longer serving you, and then ask, how would it actually feel to be free of it?)
I sometimes share in this space about moments when I turn the coaching question back on myself. Well, here I go…
For the last half decade I have been tolerating internal business systems that were cumbersome and inefficient, to put it kindly.
Because I was overwhelmed by the idea of upgrading my systems, I ended up continuing to work with these systems for years even though they were burdening me and my team and slowing down our workflow.
Let’s be clear: I have a lot of strengths, but being tech savvy is NOT one of them. So when my IT guy starts talking in tech-speak, my brain starts a-buzzing.
Relate much??
We all have things we tolerate because either we don’t understand them or we are intimidated / overwhelmed by the process of taking them on.
While I'm sharing...deferring maintenance on our old car until the axle literally fell out while I was driving on a Connecticut back road demonstrates beautifully the consequences of not taking action something I was tolerating. (I thank my lucky stars I wasn't on the highway!) #thishappenedtomelastweek #wearebuyinganewcar
Here’s a list of just a few of the many tolerations that have been shared with me in the coaching room:
That stack of papers piled up on your desk
The closet that’s become a dumping ground
Hole in the screen porch door
Wobbly leg of desk chair
A babysitter you don’t really like
Your mom always calling you at the wrong time of day
Debilitating back pain that you haven’t seen a doctor about
Kids eczema
That infamous rainbow wheel on your computer…and the list goes on and on and on…
And so solving these FEELS insurmountable and we stay in this vicious cycle of tolerating something / someone that isn’t working and not facing it until we have no other choice.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes:
"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."
Damn you, James Clear! I couldn’t agree more.
And, in my case, I was forced to address the system inefficiencies because my software company would no longer support the old version my website was built on.
While I was still overwhelmed, I pulled up my big girl pants and began to envision what was possible if I used this moment as a catalyst to fix some underlying internal systems issues in my company.
I faced the thing I was tolerating head on.
(In Capes Coaching-speak, I ate a MASSIVE systems frog )
The moral of my story?
It wasn’t easy or comfortable, and no doubt there will still be bumps along the way, but having the courage to take a hard look at how to improve my own work flows as a business owner and coach has helped me and my team to come out the other side of this systems upgrade stronger and set up for future success.
I want to emphasize, this required a huge effort on behalf of my team (thank you Brandon, Elaine and Liza!!!). We are talking months of prep and work and more hours I didn’t know I would need to devote to solving issues I could barely understand. But I hung in there, trusted my people, and did the hard work of sitting in the discomfort and trusting it would be worth it.
And it was. (curious? see details below my picture)
I am super proud to report that for the first time in over a decade of my business, I feel a new sense of freedom, truly. I am unburdened from the old administrative inefficiencies, and I’m finding myself standing in a newfound sense of possibility for what’s to come as we get ready to celebrate 20 years of Capes Coaching next month (more on that soooooooon !)
And so, I send you off with this inquiry…
What’s one thing in your life that you are tolerating right now? And what are you ready to do about it?
You got this!