I was the grateful recipient of her coaching brilliance well over a decade ago during the perfect storm of career and life transition. The half-life of her wisdom has lasted that long. My evidence? I still know enough to periodically obliterate "tolerations." I'm currently in one of those periods.
Tolerations? Those things, usually (but not always) little stuff, we tolerate. It's the 3-way bulb that has been blown out to 1-way forever. It's the slight water damage under window sill that requires repainting. It's the bag of clothes for Goodwill that lives in the car's trunk. In my case, the Roman Catholic church has finally made it onto that list.You get the picture. This is the stuff that we tolerate. We'll get around to doing/fixing/dealing with it someday. Meanwhile, energy gets sucked right out of us every time we wander by and think, "Arrrggggh, must deal with that...someday."
I've been back from Seattle for a week, my head cold is 90% cleared out, I'm energized by what I learned from being with #pnwchsocm participants, and I'm moving forward by cleaning up tolerations. Big and small tolerations I've obliterated or planning to restructure this week:
- Plastic hangers that have limited the efficient use of my clothes closet. Solution: flat velvet hangers (in pink! on sale!); plastic hangers going to the thrift store.
- Twitter accounts by individuals who do nothing but broadcast their own content and never engage in conversation. Solution: unfollow and, in some instance, block.
- Sunlight through the one living room window that still streams it in because I ran out of smoke-colored glare reduction film. Solution: get more film and finish the job.
- Books I never got around to reading and never will. Solution: send to Amazon sell-back for credit when possible; schlep the rest to The Book Thing.
- Pillows that are hurting my neck. Solution: new pillows!
- Paper documents that are obsolete and stored in plastic bins that have taken over an entire closet. Solution: Scan what I need what I don't; find URLs for online stuff I printed out and dump it into Evernote.
- Reading about retro craziness from the Magisterium that I'm allowing to get between me and God. Solution: ignore; focus on God; pray, "Come, Holy Spirit."
