Spiritual Sisters

What's Draining You?
Margaret Tiveron

Tolerations are things like the messy car, the missing button or the burnt-out light bulb. They may seem inconsequential, but they do have a cost. Every time we encounter them, they sap some of our energy, leaving us drained and frustrated. We end up feeling like the rat on the treadmill, working hard but never really getting where we want to go.

Like tiny cracks and pinholes in our personal cup of success, tolerations slowly drain away our focus and peace of mind. Each trickle out of the cup is imperceptible on its own but taken together, these drains leave the cup half-full and in need of topping up at the end of each day. This results in a lot of energy wasted, consciously and subconsciously, focusing on the cracks rather than on building a bigger, better, more desirable cup.

Each of us is probably tolerating at least a hundred things. Some of the obvious ones, like the missing button and the messy car, may cause us to cringe every time we encounter them. Others may be so entrenched in our lives that we don't even recognize them as tolerations. They've become compromises we just resign ourselves to accepting: poor treatment by a co-worker, the noisy neighbourhood or the career that doesn't suit us anymore.

You owe it to yourself to free your life of energy-sapping tolerations! Take the time to eliminate some of the obvious and simple-to-address energy drains in your life. You will unleash a rush of good, positive energy that will spur you on to continue to patch up the energy drains in your success cup, so that you will have the energy and enthusiasm to attract more of what you want.

Action Plan

1.. Create a list of the things you are tolerating at work, at home and in your relationships. You may list ten things or you may think of hundreds. It doesn't matter - just begin a list and keep adding to the list as new things occur to you.
2.. Make a commitment to work on the tolerations. Some, like a missing button, will be relatively easy to correct. Others, like an unsuitable career, will take some time. Notice that as you start to eliminate some tolerations you will feel freer and better able to face the more difficult challenges.
3.. Continually be aware of tolerations that enter your space, then work to eliminate them before they become entrenched as new tolerations.
4.. Commit to becoming toleration-free.

The Present Is Perfect

Remember those New Year's resolutions you made a few months ago? So many of us set goals and make resolutions that focus on changing in our future. We sign up at the gym, register for a class or take some other action to ensure that things will be better in the future than they are right now.

But, is it possible that the present is perfect as it is? We may be a few pounds overweight or wish we had another job, and taking action to address these concerns is certainly beneficial. However, by always focusing on tomorrow, we miss out on the beauty of today.

We have all heard the saying: yesterday is gone and tomorrow is only a vision. Today is all we have. It's the only time in which to learn and grow - and live! When we accept and embrace where we are today, we invoke the universal Law of Attraction, which ensures that we draw better things to ourselves in the future.

Embracing the present doesn't mean tolerating the extra pounds or the mediocre job. It means accepting the situation and then shifting our perspective to see that it does make a positive contribution. Embracing the present means taking good care of our body as it is, and exchanging a loathsome workout schedule for a way to exercise that delights and entices us. Embracing the present means giving up complaining about work conditions and focusing on the parts of our job that we do enjoy while looking for a new position that better reflects our talents and interests.

What can you do to make the present perfect? It's the little things that make a difference. It's the walk in the park to see if the crocuses are sprouting yet. It's reaching out to a coworker you've always wanted to know better. It's having a bedtime chat with your child.

Action Plan:

1.. A powerful exercise for perfecting today is to look at yesterday and identify the things that were not perfect. What situations or actions were less-than-perfect? List at least ten things. Now take some time to make yesterday perfect. Notice that you're correcting some things that have been bothering you for a long time. Do you see how this contributes to making today perfect?
2.. See the positive in things that are clearly not perfect. For example, your job may not be all you'd like it to be, but perhaps you enjoy the people and the short commute. What isn't perfect in your life? Come up with five things. How can you shift your perspective to see the positive in each of them?
3.. Look ahead to tomorrow and make it perfect. What do you have planned? What can you do today to ensure that everything goes well tomorrow? List five things and take the actions to make tomorrow perfect.
4.. Repeat these steps regularly to create a present that really is perfect! By focusing on perfecting today, we not only create a more enjoyable present but we set up a situation for attracting more of what we want into our life in the future.