Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up and immediately you dread having to get out of bed? Before your feet touch the floor a list of things you really don’t want to tackle start floating through your mind. Or, you recall a recent interaction that didn't sit well with you and you feel those feelings all over again. Your mood is heavy, but you’re determined to make it a good day. So, you start the coffee, turn on the shower and focus on positive things. You pick up some steam and before you know it, you’re on with your day until… …it's mid-morning and you’re already excited for your lunch break. Even though you’re trying to remain positive, your nerves are on edge and you could use the time away. You have lunch and are able to breathe a little easier while plotting how you’ll make it through the rest of the afternoon. But your energy never fully returns and you pull yourself through each meeting or task as if you are hiking up a mountain. Before the end of the workday, you’ve given up on being productive and you move on to the typical distractions: Facebook, videos, the news, etc. If you’ve been seeing too many of these days lately, don’t lose hope! There is a solution. But like most remedies, it will take a little work to see actual results. Your energy is consumed by the things you tolerate Your energy is impacted by more than just your diet, sleep, exercise and aging. It is also impacted by how closely you live according to your values and the life you want to be living. If you are putting up with or avoiding something in your life that goes against your values or the life you want to live, you use a lot of your energy to be "okay" with it. The things you tolerate weigh you down, and it takes a substantial amount of energy to put up with things that annoy you. It also takes energy to avoid addressing nit-picky problems you wish would just go away on their own. Often times this looks like saying “yes” when you really want to say “no.” Spending time with negative people, listening to gossip, being taken for granted, or putting up with people who are unreliable - these are all things that you may be tolerating. Tolerating can also look like avoiding a noise that your car is making or when the check engine light goes on. It could be a bodily pain that needs to be checked out or an appliance that doesn’t work as well as it used to. You might be avoiding your finances, your health or your relationships, even though they need your attention. The danger of letting things go Imagine you are holding a beach ball under water. If it’s deflated, this is no problem. You could hold it under the water all day with hardly any energy or effort being used. Now imagine that for each thing you are tolerating you blow one puff of air into the beach ball. Again, no problem if you’re only tolerating a few things. However, chances are you are tolerating more than a few things. Chances are you may be tolerating a hundred or hundreds of little things without even being consciously aware of it. What makes the things we tolerate so insidious is that, when you look at each one individually, it’s not that big of a deal. So, you dismiss it and it remains. You do this to countless things throughout the day and the busier you perceive your life to be the more tolerations build up because you tell yourself it’s not that big of a deal or you’ll deal with it later. Slowly, over time, that beach ball gets bigger and bigger. And it starts taking an enormous amount of energy to get through the day holding it underwater and pretending it isn’t there. Until one day, something comes along that demands energy you have been giving to the beach ball. It could be the figurative straw that broke the camel's back or it could be something big. Suddenly, you don't have enough energy to keep that beach ball underwater and it shoots out of the water and you lose it! You don’t have the energy to tolerate those things anymore and you wonder why you’ve put up with t