Sales lagging? Coaching suffering? Ever find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning? It’s not just due to exhaustion, the economy, working remotely, you and your team’s sales and coaching acumen, or how much you physically weigh. There is a ton of hidden overhead in your life you’re unnecessarily putting up with that’s causing stress, distractions, and costing you time, money, sales, and energy. And the irony is, you’re choosing to do so. Here’s a little-known secret to winning more sales, creating a champion team, and living your best life.

LEADERSHIP ACADEMY IS NOW LIVE!

Many professionals confess that, although their career is moving forward, their time is consumed with or dragged down by unwanted situations, problems, or behaviors. Not overwhelming individually, they have a way of building up until they affect productivity, cause stress, and waste time and energy.

Compound that with the majority of the workforce is now remote, many of the tolerations that you may have flown under your radar are now in front of your line of vision.

Although you have a handle on your business and career, there may be some hidden expenses that cost you more than just money.

What is a TOLERATION?

A toleration is anything in your life that you put up with that drags you down, causes stress, prevents you from living your best life and achieving your goals, or wastes your time, money, energy, fulfillment, and ultimately erodes who you are and the quality of your life.

Here are just a handful of things you may be tolerating.

1. An incompetent staff
2. Poorly defined goals and strategies
3. A lack of a clear personal vision
4. A toxic attitude (yours or others)
5. Unrealistic deadlines or expectations
6. Mediocre to weak performance
7. People who aren’t accountable for their actions and results
8. Poorly (if at all) defined processes. (Sales, interviewing, onboarding, coaching, training, cross-department collaboration, working remotely, and so on.)
9. Being bullied into submission by customers, staff, manager, significant other, etc.
10. Self-sabotaging thinking
11. Lackluster results
12. A terrible manager
13. A messy home
14. An unhealthy or unproductive, healthy work area/home office
15. Procrastination
16. Disorganization
17. Allowing people to cross your personal boundaries
18. A needed repair (car, crack in the wall, messy garage, getting rid of the hoarding mentality)
19. Weak relationships
20. Poor or unacceptable treatment by others
21. An unfulfilling job or undesirable customers
22. Poor internet service

So, if you ever find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, consider each toleration weighs one thousand pounds.

Now, do the math. Think of the number of tolerations you’re carrying on your shoulders.  That weight becomes a daily burden that you’re carrying around with you each day.

The Greater Cost to You – Your Quality of Life

To demonstrate the cost of living with these tolerations, imagine a cup. Now, this cup represents your life. In this cup, you want to fill all of the things you want to be present in your life, such as:

• A rewarding, enjoyable career
• A healthy lifestyle – physically, mentally, spiritually
• Rewarding relationships
• Financial stability
• Peace of mind
• Enjoyable home-life
• Happiness
• Beautiful home and location
• Honoring your core values, priorities and things that bring you joy
• Being fully self-expressed
• Taking a stand for yourself to ensure your personal fulfillment and ultimately greater success in every area of your life

Here’s the problem. Every toleration you allow into your life without taking any action to eliminate them is a hole in the cup of your life. So, as you work harder to fill your cup with what you want most, those things you’re trying to bring into your life continue to leak out of your cup, causing more upsets, and wasted time, preventing you from filling the cup with what you want in your life.

Ultimately, tolerations erode your integrity, your life, and make it difficult to honor your values and priorities.

Create a Toleration-Free Zone

So, why do we tolerate these things?

”I was apprehensive and didn’t know how to confront and eliminate certain issues,” remembers Sean, the owner of a  pharmaceutical company. ”I simply accepted there were always going to be problems when running a business, especially with personnel. I realize now that by putting up with certain things, such as poor productivity and toxic behavior, I was actually training people that this was okay.”

Oddly enough, tolerating imperfections can yield a perceived result and desired outcome. Putting up with unwanted situations creates resistance. Similar to striking a match, the friction of two opposing forces generates heat, providing us with energy.

It’s human nature to get our energy from any available source, even one that causes suffering or difficulties.

To add to this conundrum, tolerating certain things also justifies a negative attitude and performance. When we tolerate an overbooked schedule or a bad day, it justifies our right to complain, to stress, to underachieve, to stay busy, to come home with a bad attitude, or to be ”helpless victims.”

This energy charge keeps us busy; often too busy to make necessary changes or decisions. Although putting up with certain things may seem to produce results, they’re more costly than we realize. ‘

‘I was more apt to tolerate things because it made me feel useful, even though I was letting something happen that I’d rather do without,” Sean claimed. “When I understood how these irritations affected me and the cost of each one, I noticed the consequences on my home life, business, and work environment. Now I confront unwanted situations immediately without feeling guilty. I’m not angry as often because I don’t let incidents fester to the point of eruption. And that also includes anything I see around my home or office that either needs to be fixed, improved, or created in order to increase production and build on our personal successes.”

Make The Choice

Accepting these tolerations is actually a choice you make that prevents you from enjoying your career and life the way you envisioned.

Having addressed his tolerances, Shawn reported, ”I make better decisions for myself, which translates into better decisions for the company, my family and myself.”

As you raise your standards, set stronger boundaries, and improve your quality of life, you tolerate less. You become unwilling to deal with a person or situation that you know will cost more in frustration and time than the resulting profit or additional sales.

”It’s allowed me to become a better leader and a model for my co-workers and others as to what’s possible for them,” Shawn claims. ”At some point, you just have to trust that your instincts know what’s best for you.”

When you stop putting up with the things that hold you back, you begin to notice that your life and career become easier and more fulfilling.

5 Steps to Eliminating the Things that Hold You Back from Greatness

Since we need all the energy, happiness, and satisfaction we can get, here are the five steps to take in order for you to start the process of eliminating these tolerations from your life:

1. List what May Be Dragging you Down. Think about EVERYTHING that’s negatively impacting your business, career, environment, and home. It could be a lack of self-care or exercise, eating poorly, recognizing the things that need to be cleaned, repaired improved at home, work or even your car, your finances, a messy home, any personal health issues that you’ve been putting off addressing, and any toxic or damaged relationships that either need to be repaired or removed from your life. Think BIG!

2. Analyze Your Tolerance. Determine why you put up with certain people, behaviors, and situations. How does tolerating these things actually work for you? You’re getting something; some benefit from each thing you tolerate so, what’s the energy source your tapping into to justify your life, situation, or behavior?

3. Handle the Small Irritants First. Begin by eliminating the least complicated problems, such as a disorganized office, a messy home, taking better care of yourself, or fix something that you’ve been putting off. You might be surprised at the change in your attitude and productivity when addressing and eliminating each toleration. You’ll actually begin to feel lighter, which certainly makes it easier to get out of bed every day.

4. Establish a Zero-Tolerance Policy. Each irritation is going to have some adverse effect until it’s either eliminated or you find another way to respond. Create a system to prevent these situations from happening again. For example, set stronger guidelines for the people in your life, informing them what behavior you will not accept. This can be done in a calm and non-threatening, yet firm manner.

5. Examine Your More Complex Tolerations. Determine what would need to change to remove this toleration from your life. For example, too much stress, an inadequate salary or training need to perform your job effectively, unsatisfying career, relationships, or mediocre performance. Look at those things which make your job more difficult and start strategizing on how to reduce or eliminate them.

While we can’t ELIMINATE certain people from our life, we can learn how to RESPOND to them in a healthier way that serves us best and protects us from other people’s toxicity.  And that’s the great news. This is in your power of choice.

Each relationship-based can be addressed through conversation and/or action. It’s okay if you don’t have an immediate solution. This is a new process. Just begin to ask yourself, “How can I begin to eliminate the toxic, messy or costly things from my life that I’m putting up with or learn to respond to them in a healthier way that doesn’t impact my life, happiness, well-being or personal power?”

Note: Resolve these situations completely by addressing the source. Otherwise you’ll soon find yourself handling the same annoyance in another form. You will know you have eliminated these irritations permanently when they no longer negatively impact your life or manifest as a thought, reminder, or feeling.

Once you begin removing these drains from your life, you’ll stop wasting time trying to manage situations that shouldn’t exist in your life to being with! Investing time to eliminate these trigger points of contention will add greater value to your company and cut out the most costly overhead in your business and career.