Just Behind the Door

Have you ever thought about your threshold of tolerance? Are you satisfied with it or does it inhibit you as a person? Do you become upset over inconsequential things in life? Think of someone you know who just seems to be able to cope with one life change after another and keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny. What causes these people to have higher thresholds of tolerance? What do they know that we don’t know?

We can easily recognize when a situation develops that causes us to reach a point in which we say to ourselves – this is too much! Once we reach this point we find ways to reduce the negative energy and stress about the circumstance by using our own unique coping mechanisms such as anger, emotional outbursts, withdrawal, depression, excessive drinking, talking, eating, exercising – the list of possible coping behaviors are too numerous to list. The problem is that many times these coping mechanisms simply make our situation worse as they become habitual and the cycle continues.

Our thresholds were created based on the unconscious beliefs we learned early in life. We adopt our own unique coping mechanism due to our family background and experiences. Many times fears, beliefs and limitations are modeled and transferred from generation to generation simply because ‘this is the way it was done’ in our early environment. Often we don’t take the time to evaluate the lack of logic behind them. Sadly, lower thresholds of tolerance can hold us back from growing, doing and becoming all that we would like to be.

When we step back and observe our own behavior we may see areas that we would like to change. It takes conscious effort to make a change. Make no mistake this can be hard work but I would ask you to consider if you are worth the effort. I think you are worth it and more! Knowing that any change, in itself, can cause us discomfort we need to work at it, one step at a time and not give up. If we rush back to our place of ‘safety’ what we feel as safe is frequently little more than another limiting factor in our lives.

The good news is that we can change and expand our threshold of tolerance if we so desire. It takes work to examine our life and accept the fact that in certain areas we are not as …. (fill in the blank) as we would like to be. Once we recognize something about ourselves that we would like to change the challenge to do something about it is simply that – a challenge – that can be met and overcome if we truly want it badly enough.

When we begin to live life more consciously by honestly evaluating our various responses to new or difficult situations we short circuit the automatic response mechanisms developed from our past. We find, at first, that new vistas may not be as comfortable as we would like but as we continue to force ourselves out of our comfort zones we open up new, exciting territories for living. We become more not less.

It takes honesty, courage and desire to heighten our threshold of tolerance but it’s so worth the effort!

Have a great few days!