For the past 6 months, I’ve been free to do whatever I wanted to do. It’s a long story, but basically I had to quit a job I loved and am currently doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I’ve always had this dream of what I could get done if I didn’t have to spend hours at work. I would often think of all that I could accomplish if I could just spend hours a day focusing on personal goals. But guess how many personal goals I’ve accomplished in the last 6 months? None. Sure, I’ve been dabbing here and there but I’ve done nothing concrete.

At the start of this new year, I saw that it was time to stop and analyze the way I’ve been living. You know what I found? That I had lost my tolerance for annoying, hard work. When I was spending hours in an office, I still had the energy to work on personal goals during my commute. Because I was used to working. But when I stopped doing daily work, I lost my tolerance for the menial, the annoying, the hard and the detailed work that is necessary for success.

2018 is the year to build up tolerance.

Tolerance is the key to success. Successful people have a much higher tolerance for always being “on”, for pushing past discomfort and doing what needs to be done, and for doing hard, HARD work. The ones that get ahead tolerate an immense amount of discomfort, so much that it no longer becomes uncomfortable.

If you’ve noticed that you haven’t been doing what you should be doing, it’s probably because you need to build your tolerance.

Let me tell you this right now: You will not get to where you need to be without first passing through a threshold of discomfort. Once you get to the other side, where hard work is completely tolerable, that is where real life begins.

Here are the 4 steps to building your tolerance

1. Find what it is you can’t tolerate

Besides losing my tolerance for work, exposing myself on social media is extremely uncomfortable for me. I don’t mind posting details of my daily life, but it feels extremely uncomfortable to be this “self-help person” on social media — which happens to be a goal of mine — to do this full-time. But I keep thinking of other people’s reactions. Although I know, logically, that people won’t care that much. It’s a discomfort I need to pass through. This is a goal for 2018. To pass through this discomfort and tolerate talking about self-help in real life.

What about you? What is that you cannot tolerate? Is it the work? It is the people? Is it waking up early? Is it a physical discomfort?

The first step is to take a step back and truly think about what is so uncomfortable you’ve been putting it off.

Once you identify it, it’s easier to move past it.

2. Understand that it is hard for EVERYONE

Stop believing the fairy tale stories about success.

I want to write about this in a separate post but one thing that used to cause me such mental stress are those success stories written as if the person had some supernatural ability to get stuff done. Guess, what? No one does.

Hard work is hard for everyone. Everyone has the things they find uncomfortable and must work to tolerate. EVERYONE. Bill Gates does, Tim Cook does, Jim Rohn did. You do.

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY. If it were easy, everyone would do it. It’s supposed to be hard.

3. Understand that it’s just a matter of tolerance, not ability or intelligence

I spent a lot of time beating myself up for being so lazy. For not getting more done. Once I understood that it was just a matter of building my tolerance for that particular activity, the task became so much more attainable in my mind. I stopped beating myself up and started working on building my tolerance.

The enemy is not your abilities and it is not your intelligence. Stop beating yourself up!

The enemy is your low tolerance. Work towards defeating that enemy and nothing is impossible for you.

4. Build it quickly and massively

The past 3 steps dealt with identifying and understanding your tolerance. It’s important to go through those steps first because it will make this last part “easier” to do. Again, it won’t be EASY but it will be easier.

As the old saying goes: The only way out is through.

The best way to build your tolerance level is to do an exaggerated amount of that thing for as long as you can. Pick ONE thing at a time, and do that thing every day for 2 weeks. For me, I will write every day for 2 weeks. Maybe it will be a Medium post, maybe it will be the book that I’ve been writing in my mind for a while now. But at the end of 2 weeks, guess what is going to feel tolerable? WRITING.

In the beginning of 2017, I wanted to work out in the morning. For 2 weeks, I woke up at 5:30 to work out. Guess what became, GASP, even enjoyable after those 2 weeks? Working out in the morning. I don’t currently work out in the morning but if I had to, I know how I could pick it back up. Don’t get me wrong, the first few days are HELL. Which is why it is so important not to give yourself a day’s break for 2 weeks. If you keep breaking and coming back to the activity, it will take much longer for you to tolerate it.

Make it as uncomfortable as possible for 2 weeks. Film every day. Write every day. Workout every day. Wake up at 5 every day. Work for hours every day. Whatever it is. Do it every day for 2 weeks and then tell me what happens!

This is how you build your tolerance. Understand that getting things done is a matter of building TOLERANCE. It's not that you're a lazy idiot. You just need to build tolerance.

I will spend 2018 focusing on this — building my tolerance for the things that are uncomfortable for me. I can’t wait to see where it will lead.

Tell me below: What is it you need to tolerate more? And how did you move past the discomfort?

Why tolerating discomfort is the key to success — And how to build that tolerance

Rebeca Gurgel

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