I often hear clients say, “Well I guess I just have to put up with it.” This could be in reference to a situation at work or at home. The details do not really matter.

Putting up with anything doesn’t sound like fun to me. It’s definitely not on my road to happiness.

I would like to ask that you think about your difficult situations and decide if you want to tolerate them or accept them. Tolerance and acceptance are two distinctly different things. Let’s look at two definitions from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

Tolerate
1 : to endure or resist the action of (as a drug or food) without serious side effects or discomfort 

2 a : to allow to be or to be done without prohibition, hindrance, or contradiction b : to put up with

Accept
1 a : to receive willingly b : to be able or designed to take or hold (something applied or added)
2 : to give admittance or approval to
3 a : to endure without protest or reaction b : to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable c : to recognize as true : believe

Acceptance leads us to peace. Tolerance is holding back a fight.

Can you feel the difference in the energy between tolerating and accepting?

In my pursuit of happiness, I would rather seek peace through acceptance. Enduring and resisting sound difficult, and they eventually cave in under their own weight.

We can only tolerate something for so long before we can’t take it any more. We have a limit on our patience and willingness to endure.

When we accept something, we have no limit to our patience. I choose to recognize a situation as reality, and I allow it into my life, warts and all. Acceptance is easier than tolerance.

What are you tolerating in your life that you could consider accepting?

Here are some situations I struggled to tolerate and eventually found peace through acceptance.

1. a passive-aggressive boss
2. my limited ability to understand physics
3. differing expectations of household cleanliness
4. cellulite

Here are 5 steps to find peace through acceptance.

1. Recognize your struggle.

2. In your body, feel “tolerance” and your physical resistance to it.

3. In your body, feel “acceptance” and the freedom in it.

4. Ask yourself if you are ready to release the resistance and find acceptance.

5. Accept reality for what it is. End the struggle.

Sometimes releasing the struggle is more complicated than this. There are some situations where we deeply believe that there is something “not fair” or “wrong” with reality.

Releasing a difficult struggle like this can take time and patience. My preferred method to find acceptance in difficult situations is The Work by Byron Katie. The Work has helped me find so much peace in my life.

There are many other releasing techniques available, such as Self-Coaching 101 by Brooke Castillo, The Sedona Method, and Psych-K.

What are your thoughts on tolerance and acceptance?

This is the final post in a series of three that explore the idea of loving your job.
- The first post suggested that you can love your job.
- The second post offered some ideas on how to be happy in your current job.
- This post will provide tips on how to find a career that you truly love.

I believe that the purpose of life is to be as happy as possible.

For me, if happiness is the purpose of life, then I choose to not spend my energy doing something that drains me.

1. You have to figure it out.

There is no magic career fairy that will bless you with a new career idea. I used to think that I would one day be struck with inspiration and know exactly what I needed to do to have a job I loved. However, my current career only made itself known to me after lots of hard work and introspection.

Research Some Options. (Check out my Books page for some suggestions). Google whatever thoughts come to mind when you think about having a career you love. Interview people who have interesting jobs.

Dream big. This isn’t the time to limit yourself to practical solutions. Practicality possibly got you where you are now. Remember that dreaming doesn’t mean you have to take action. Dreaming is just imagining possibilities. Have fun with it.

Ask yourself: What did I want to be, before anyone told me what I should be when I grew up?

2. Try out some new things in your spare time.

One of the greatest ways to explore new career ideas is to try them out.

Volunteer. Do you like working with children? Volunteer at the library, or at a school. Interested in going into medicine? Volunteer at the hospital, for Meals on Wheels, or with Hospice.

Do more of what you enjoy. Think about what you enjoy doing. Do you like to hike or paint or garden? Find other people who like to do those things, too. Engaging in activities you enjoy will spark some inspiration and ideas for what direction to take your career.

Enjoy yourself now. This is a minimum requirement. The search for a new career should be fun, and it’s hard to find a career that makes you happy if you aren’t happy first. Be happy now.

3. Hire a coach.

What can I say? As a coach, I’m biased and think that coaches are a great way to find a new career. I’ve helped clients find a new path and discover their passions. I had a coach help me along the way to my new career, too.

Coaches can help you find your blind spots, the places where you’re limiting your possibilities. Coaches can help you dream bigger and explore new ideas. Using a coach to find a new career will also help you be confident in your move.

You can find a job that makes you happy. Making changes in your career will mean that your life does not look exactly as it does today. Your life will change when you change your career. If your career change is for the purpose of greater happiness, isn’t it worth it?

What have you done or can you do to find a new career?

This is the second in a series of three posts that explore the idea of loving your job.
- The first post suggested that you can love your job.
- This post will offer some ideas on how to be happy in your current job.
- The third post will provide tips on how to find a career that you truly love.
 
I believe that the purpose of life is to be as happy as possible.

For me, if happiness is the purpose of life, then I choose to not spend my energy doing something that drains me.

Here are three ideas on being happy in your current job.

1. Change your mindset.

What’s bothering you about your current job? Do you have a bad boss? By allowing your boss to make you miserable, you are giving your boss power over your happiness. Don’t give away your right to happiness.

Try these tips to change your mindset.

Ask Why? First, given the example above, ask yourself why your boss is making you unhappy. Keep asking why until you get some really clear answers. (Hint: It usually takes about five why’s to get to something juicy.)

Recognize your own reaction. Next, recognize that your unhappiness is caused by your reaction to what your boss is doing, because you think that your boss doing something wrong. You can’t change your boss. (I sure have tried!)

Change your point of view. Lastly, change how you look at the situation. One way I have changed my reaction to difficult boss situations was to think, “They don’t know any better.” And I leave it at that. Trying to change a boss is nearly impossible. Changing your mindset is quite possible.

2. Add some fun into your day.

What can you do to make work a bit more tolerable?

I recently met a woman who told me that she got away with adding hot pink to her work. It was marginally acceptable at work, but she was able to do it and it made her happier.

In my previous job, I liked to go out for lunch or coffee with friends or go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon on a rough day.

Try these tips to add some fun into your day:

Spice it up. What’s marginally acceptable (like hot pink) that would be a fun way to make your work more interesting?

Add in a little play. What little playful thing can you add into your day to make it a bit more fun? I talked about play in my August 16 newsletter. (Didn’t get it? Email me for a copy and subscribe in the box in the upper left of this page so you can get the next one, due out September 1.)

Take a break. Five minutes or 15 minutes or your whole lunch hour can be a great way to take a break and have fun. Hang out with people you enjoy--not your grouchy cube mate. Keep good company, even if it’s just you!

3. Hire a coach.

Coaches are great at helping clients find happiness in their current life, even if the clients dream of something bigger and better. Finding happiness today before creating a new life for tomorrow always makes transitions stronger and longer-lasting.

You can be happier in your current job. Actually, I highly recommend to clients to find peace in their current job before moving somewhere new. Until we find peace in the chaos, we’re likely to encounter the same problem in a future job.

What have you done to be happier in your job? What could you do to be happier?

I love talking with clients about having a career doing something they love. They get excited, their energy goes up, they smile, and they feel good. They light up. They can’t imagine their life any other way.

Then they say, “But I could never really do that.” The energy and the excitement and the smile quickly fade. They sound forlorn, depressed, and tired.

We love to dream about the possibilities, and then we scare ourselves off with practicalities.

Here are my questions to you:

Why do you stay in a job you don’t love?

Why do you spend your life doing things that make you feel depressed and tired?

This is the first in a series of three posts that explore the idea that you can love your job.
- This post will suggest that you can love your job.
- The second post will offer some ideas on how to be happy in your current job.
- The third post will provide tips on how to find a career that you truly love.

There are lists of excuses people make about not being able to have a career they love. It could be money, time, effort, health insurance, whatever. There’s a lot of great excuses. I used them, too!

For me, excuses are just the roadblocks I put up that stop me from being happy.

I believe that the purpose of life is to be as happy as possible. If happiness is the purpose of life, I choose to not spend my energy doing something that drains me.

Maybe you believe that the purpose in life is to have as much money as possible. That’s okay, but then this blog isn’t for you :-)

Are you happy with your career? Do you want to be happy?

There are two ways to solve this problem:
1. learn to be happy in your current job, and
2. find a job that makes you happy.

It is possible to love your job, if that's what you want. If you want to stay stuck somewhere because you like your excuses, that's your choice.

Stay tuned for my upcoming posts (8/24/09 and 8/27/09) on how to make this happen.

Do you love your job? Share your thoughts here.

I am working on my first downloadable coaching product, and I’m learning so many great lessons along the way. Last week I learned that it’s better for everyone when I put my well-being ahead of everything else. Maybe you think this sounds selfish, but I learned that everyone benefits when we take care of ourselves first.

The product I’m working on is a collaborative project with my coaching friend Alison Horner. We’re creating a companion guide to Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live. It’s an audio and workbook set which covers each chapter in the book. Ali and I have been putting a good effort into it and having fun along the way. We both found this book useful for setting our lives on our “right” path and are excited to share it with our clients.

We were making audio recordings one morning recently, and after forty-five minutes, I was toast. I felt flustered and was ready to take a break. We had planned to work for another hour that day, but I didn’t have it in me. I was honest with Ali and said that I needed a break. I knew that we scheduled more time to work that day, but I feared that the quality would suffer if I kept at it. So we quit, and I worked on easier tasks that afternoon.

The next week, after Ali and I put more time into a recording, she said she needed a break. So we quit, and we both worked on other things for the rest of the day. No hard feelings either time.

By being honest about how we were feeling, we honored ourselves, each other, and our product. If we had pushed through despite our feelings, we would have felt drained and the quality of our product would have suffered. No one would have benefited from this.

Often I find it easy to just push through one more thing, ignoring how I feel and focusing on achieving a sense of completion. In the end, everyone suffers with that method. I suffer for pushing myself hard, and others suffer by dealing with an outcome that is less than perfect and was created with some negative energy.

Do you have a tendency to push yourself too hard? Can you call it quits a little sooner, and put yourself first?

Sometimes “what would make me happy right now” is one of the hardest questions for me to answer.

I was having a bit of an “off" day not too long ago, and when I was done working for the day, I wanted to do something to correct my unease. Paul was gone for the night and I had not made any plans.

I wandered around the house just waiting for some inspiration. I’m not sure how I thought that would help, but it’s a habit I started in childhood--roam around (mope, maybe?) until something strikes me.

Then, it was as if I said to myself, “Enough is enough. We’re going for a walk.” We meaning me.

I pulled on my shoes and went outside.

When I set out on my walk, I assessed my uneasiness. I felt uninspired about several things I had on my plate. I set an intention for my walk: to release the uneasiness.

Within ten minutes of walking, the inspiration started flowing. I hadn't even been looking for inspiration. I just wanted to release the uneasiness. I had several writing ideas, a plan for the next step on a project, and a feeling of freedom about my wide-open weekend.

My original plan was to walk for a half-hour, but when I reached the point where I would turn to come home, I wanted to keep going. The inspiration was flowing, and the walk was apparently exactly what I needed.

The cool breeze that comes through my area in the summer was strong this night. It felt cleansing, like it was blowing off the uneasiness of my day and making room for the ideas to flow.

As I continued walking, ideas continued to come without much effort. After about 45 minutes, I wanted to slow down my brain. The ideas flowed nicely, and I know that if I over-think them, they lose their juice. The final mile of my walk was more meditative and relaxing. I felt much better.

I came home having shed my uneasiness and having found some inspiration. I learned my lesson:

Ask the question, “What would make me happy right now?” Then do it.

The key here is to seek something that will truly make you happy. Alcohol and chocolate don’t count. They may make it easier for you to pretend that you’re happy or they may numb the pain, but they will not truly make you happy. When I say happy, I mean genuinely happy. Or just shoot for content, if you’re having a really bad day and happy feels like a stretch.

Consider these ideas:
- go for a walk
- take a bath
- relax in a hammock
- curl up in a comfortable chair and read a book
- paint, draw, or express yourself creatively
- play some music
- turn up your favorite song and dance
- play with your pet or with your children

What was amazing about focusing on being happy was that the problems that were making me feel off were solved with little effort. I found more solutions on that one-hour walk than I would have sitting in front of my computer all day.

The key is to play, walk, or be creative without trying to solve your problems.

I walked to clear my head and my heart and the by-product was inspiration. This also happens when I take a bath. When I take a bath to relax, and the ideas come to me like a flood. It’s because I’m focusing on relaxing, or playing, or creating; I’m not focusing on fixing. If I take a bath to think through a problem, I only feel more frustrated.

Do you have a problem you're trying to solve that you can let rest while you have some fun instead?

I had a great realization the other day, thanks to one of my coaching friends.

There will always be too much to do.

This may sound like a funny realization, but it completely changed my perspective.

I was fretting about my to-do list, which was growing faster than I was tackling it. I also had plenty of things I wanted to do that I was too afraid to write down, fearful of making my list even longer. I was feeling quite overwhelmed!

For some reason, I thought that when I left my corporate job to coach full-time, I would have excess time on my hands. In addition to coaching, I was going to read the books that were piling up on my shelf, spend more time working in the yard, clean the garage, put together the photo album from two summers ago, among a dozen other things. After a few weeks of not working my 8-5 job, I had barely dented this list.

As I was talking through this with my coaching friend, I began to recall all of the times I thought, “When [insert future goal here], then I’ll have more time.”

"When I graduate from college, I’ll have lots of time because I won’t be in class and working all day and having homework to do at night."

"When summer’s here, I can tackle all of those outdoor projects that have been accumulating over the winter."

"When I finally finish reading and completing the exercises in that business development book, then I can take a breath of fresh air and spend more time painting."

"When I get all of the cleaning and laundry done, then I can go play outside."

After I finished sharing the list of my “I will have more time when” experiences with this coach, I had to just laugh out loud. I am never going to tackle everything on my to-do list!

“So, what do I do?” you ask.

Take a few items off the list and commit to not doing them.

Here’s what I took off of my list:
- putting together the photo album from the sabbatical Paul and I took during the summer of 2007
- cleaning the garage
- figuring out how to make the back yard look decent

Realizing that there is always too much to do means you can decide to not do things. They're never going to all get done anyway. So do something fun instead!

I stopped thinking about the to-do list for the rest of the day, and I painted. I felt calm and relaxed.
 
The day after, when I sat down to work, I felt focused. I no longer felt like I had a looming to-do list. As a result, I accomplished a lot in one day. It amazed me that small things that I had been procrastinating practically did themselves! I felt like Superwoman. And at the end of the work day, Paul and I headed out with friends for a bike ride, and I felt fantastic.
 
What can you take off your to-do list?

What fun thing do you want to do instead? Do it!

Numbers often control my life. The other day I learned that occasionally ignoring them can lead to feeling happier.

I enjoy road cycling and mountain biking in the summer. My husband and I headed out for a ride recently, and I noticed that my cyclocomputer (the speedometer and odometer for the bike) was not working properly. I have a new one ready to be put on the bike, but it takes more time than I wanted to put into it at the moment. I took the broken cyclocomputer off my bike and set out with Paul to ride.

Usually when the two of us ride, he rides and front and I draft behind him. [If you’re not a cyclist, drafting is when one rides close to the person in front of them, so they experience reduced wind resistance, making it easier to ride.] For some reason, I set out on this ride in front of Paul this day.

Within the first mile, I must have looked down a half-dozen times to where the cyclocomputer display usually sits. My habit of looking at the display became quite evident when there was nothing to look at!

We had a route in mind when we set out, but the weather in the direction we were headed looked dark and rainy. We decided to play the ride by ear and make a decision about which direction to go at each intersection. We ended up following one of our usual routes, just in reverse.

After five miles, I felt rhythmic in my riding. I felt strong and confident, and I was having fun.

Paul shouted out encouragement at one point, not quite half way through our ride. “Doing great, babe!” I thought, “I am? Cool!” After all, his cyclocomputer was still working, so he knows how fast I’m going, and Paul likes to ride faster than I can usually go.

With his words fresh in my mind, I stopped worrying if I was going too slowly. I enjoyed the new view on our old route. It always amazes me that a riding route can look so new by just following it in the opposite direction. I saw the farms in a different light, as the sun was slowly setting over their fields. I saw the central Oregon Cascades as we headed east on a road where we usually ride west. It was gorgeous!

I continued to ride at a pace that made me feel strong and challenged. I felt comfortable and confident, which is not always the case when we’re out on a ride.

With just seven miles left, I started to feel my legs fatigue. I almost gave up my captain’s position to draft behind Paul, but decided to stick it out in front. I made it this far, why not keep it up?

As we cruised towards home, I felt strong, happy, and a little tired. I felt alive. I love when exercise does that!

We pulled up the driveway, and I dismounted my bike. I queried Paul for our average speed. He told me, and I was shocked. “That slow?!” For a moment I was disappointed, then I decided to let it go. Who cares? I pulled the whole way, and I had fun. I enjoyed the whole ride because I didn’t know what my speed was. If I had known my pace, I would have been beating myself up for going so slowly.

So this is what I learned:

When I look at the numbers, I judge, evaluate, criticize, and focus on how good or bad I’m doing.

When I have no numbers to watch, I enjoy the ride and feel strong and confident.

I have a feeling this idea can be applied in many areas across life.

Where could you stop checking the numbers and start having more fun?

I recently left my full-time corporate job to follow my heart and join the ranks of the self-employed, turning my coaching practice into a full-time venture. During my final weeks in the office, I remembered how important it is to truly connect with other people.

As word got around that I was leaving the company, many coworkers asked about my future plans. What was I going to do? Was I leaving town?

We discussed things like pursuing our dreams, being in jobs where we can make a difference in the world, families, and finding purpose and meaning in life.

As my final weeks went by, people came by my desk or stopped me in the hallway to tell me that they appreciated me, that they enjoyed working with me, and how I positively impacted them when we were working together. I’ve never been good at accepting compliments, but I decided it was time to learn to say “thank you” to their kind words. My coworkers taught me that I made a difference in their lives, and I wanted to acknowledge what they were saying.

On my final day, two people shared some memorable sentiments with me.

One man said, “I’ve always appreciated that when you walk by people in the hallway you smile and say ‘hello.’” I thought to myself, "Of course I try to smile and say hello. Doesn’t everyone?" I guess not.

The second person, someone with whom I worked closely nine years ago, said this: “You know what I’ve always liked about you, Jenny? You ask about things that matter. You would say to me, ‘How’s your family?’ You wanted to know about the important things.” The man who told me that is just about the nicest person I know on this planet. I do not know one person who has ever said a negative thing about him. He is a truly amazing individual. To hear those words from him was very meaningful to me.

The typical employee departure from this company has been marked with a mass email saying "good-bye" to everyone the employee knew during their tenure. For me, sending a mass email felt forced and inauthentic. I wanted to let people know that I valued working with them and that I enjoyed my time with them over the previous 10 years. I decided to hand-write personalized notes to the 60 people who most positively impacted me over my previous ten years. I told them how they affected me. Here are some of the things I told them:

“I appreciated your patience with me when I was new to my job.”

“You always have such a positive attitude, and you are so great to work with.”

“I am so grateful for all of the support you gave me when I first moved into management. It was as if you had endless time to listen to my woes and offer me advice.”

“I had fun working with you when that project was just starting. I learned so much from you.”

“I am glad that I got to know you over the last several months. Thank you for telling me about your family.” 

Why did I wait until I was leaving to thank these people for the great times we had working together? I could have done more of this over the past 10 years. I did not necessarily need to give them hand written notes every day, but kind words about why I was grateful to know them could have been shared more regularly.

We all have it in us to live a life where we connect to others. This is something that everyone can do with just a simple conversation about what is important to us in life.

Can you bring more meaningful and authentic connections with others into your everyday life?

Here are a few ideas on creating and enhancing connections. I thank my coworkers for teaching me this.

1. Smile. Over the years, many people have told me that I smile a lot. Honestly, I didn’t think I smiled much! Apparently I smile enough that it was noticed at work. Try it out some time, either at work or at the grocery store. Who cares if the person you’re smiling at doesn’t smile back?!

2. Tell others that you appreciate them and why. It felt great to have my coworkers say such wonderful things about how I affected them. I returned the sentiments. It was such a feel-good exchange that I plan to do it more!

3. Listen when others talk about what is important in their lives. I know I can be so quick to think about the next thing that I forget to stop and really listen to other people. When I pay attention and listen, I feel connected to the other person, and the connection feels authentic and meaningful.

4. Share with others what is important to you in your life. Talk about your family, your pets, your hobbies, and how you spent the weekend. I always feel most connected to people who tell me about their lives. Connecting with others is what makes life worthwhile, and it’s a two-way street. Share yourself with others--they want to know about you. Ask about them in return.

5. Repeat daily. If I had just smiled one day, or asked one person about their family, I bet I wouldn’t be writing this post. Something prompted me to do these things regularly, and by showing up at work interested in other people, my coworkers took notice.

My challenge is to now take my own advice into the rest of my life. I love to smile at people I know and ask them questions about what matters to them in their lives. Now that I no longer work in a building with 80 other people, it is time for me to start bringing my curiosity about other people with me into the rest of the world, such as the grocery store, the library, and the local coffee shop.

How can you create more meaningful and authentic connections with others in your life?