Stop Tolerating

The cookies can make a frustrating problem easier to tolerate. They don’t fix the problem.

I was talking with a friend about an online funnel that wasn’t working, and we laughed about how much less tolerable it would be without cookies. Building a funnel can mean trying something, watching it fail, changing it, and watching it fail again.

You can work through the frustration and fix the funnel. Or you can eat, drink, scroll, and distract yourself until the frustration feels more bearable.

That is what buffering can do. It makes something tolerable without changing it. And if you keep using it, you may never address the part of your life that you actually want to change.

Buffering takes more than the time spent doing it

You might think you don’t spend much time overeating or drinking. But the action itself is only part of the distraction.

When I was overeating, I thought about what I would eat or not eat. I negotiated with myself. I ate what I had said I wouldn’t eat. Then I dealt with the weight gain and all my thinking about that.

The cycle consumed time and mental energy. It was almost a second life.

As long as I was focused on food, weight, and the drama I created around them, I didn’t have to address other parts of my life. I could avoid emotions I wasn’t processing and thoughts I needed to examine.

The broken promises, frustration, and self-criticism became another distraction from what I wasn’t creating.

What became clear when I stopped drinking

For several years, I drank more than I wanted to. Drinking made parts of my life that were unacceptable to me feel tolerable.

When I stopped, those parts became much harder to ignore. I used the time and energy I had spent drinking to change my life.

I’m talking about understanding my desire for alcohol, processing the urges, and being willing to feel my emotions. I’m not talking about using willpower to resist drinking while creating another cycle of struggle.

On the other side of the buffer, I could see my life more clearly. I was living below what I wanted to create and contribute. Drinking had helped me tolerate that.

Once I stopped, I didn’t want to tolerate it anymore. I wanted to process the emotion and go after my dreams.

The joy I get from creating, connecting, and contributing is beyond the pleasure I got from drinking. That came from changing my life, rather than continuing to escape it.

Let yourself hear what you really want

This work isn’t about beating yourself up, overworking, or pushing yourself harder. It’s about recognizing your true desire.

Buffering can drown out that desire. You answer the call for something more with food, alcohol, or another distraction instead of with your life.

Ask what you would feel if you stopped buffering, and why. Is there a relationship you aren’t working on? A business you want to build? A book you want to write? A job you want to change?

What is the buffer helping you tolerate?

You may want something different from the people around you. That can feel frightening because your brain wants you to belong. Buffering can make it easier to silence the part of you that wants to stand out.

But silencing that part doesn’t help you discover what you have to offer.

Notice the life you are distracting yourself from

Look at the things you haven’t been addressing. Your desk, car, office, or kitchen may be disorganized. You can organize them, or you can distract yourself from how the disorder feels.

When you stop distracting yourself, the mess becomes harder to tolerate. You are more likely to do something about it.

The same is true of indecision. Going back and forth wears you out and creates decision debt. Making the decision may feel scary, so you scroll or eat instead.

Buffering lets you postpone the decision. It doesn’t create the result that deciding and acting could create.

Consider your relationships, too. Are you using alcohol to make time with certain people enjoyable? When I stopped drinking, some of my friendships changed. We had been drinking together in ways that weren’t serving us.

Pay attention to how you are showing up for your time, calendar, self-care, mind, and emotions. Buffering compromises your ability to respond because you are ignoring what needs your attention.

Feeling terrible at first doesn’t mean the buffer was the answer

When you remove buffering, the things it helped you tolerate are still there. They can come to the surface all at once.

You may think life was better when you were buffering. It felt easier to escape a little and not deal with everything.

But the feelings coming up are part of what you were escaping. Feeling them gives you the opportunity to understand them and change what you want to change.

Be willing to walk through that emotion. Learn to process it rather than taking the discomfort as evidence that you should go back to drowning it out.

On the other side is the chance to create your life instead of constantly reacting to it and using a buffer to solve the feeling.

A bigger life still includes negative emotion

Giving up buffering doesn’t mean I never feel disappointed or need to coach myself.

I receive messages from people whose lives have changed through this work. I also receive criticism from people who think I’m doing it wrong. Both are part of what I’ve signed up for.

I’m willing to feel the emotions and work on my thinking so I can keep contributing. I don’t need to buffer against every uncomfortable response.

The more I do that, the more I learn and the more I can teach. The work keeps revealing new places where I might still people-please, soften what I want, or distract myself.

Life is still 50-50. What changes is your ability to handle it and create within it.

Ask what needs to change

For a moment, put the buffering and its effects aside. Stop obsessing about the food, alcohol, or distraction, and look directly at your life.

What would make it better than what you’re doing to escape it?

Where aren’t you telling the truth? Where are you people-pleasing? What are you tolerating instead of addressing? What do you genuinely want to create?

You don’t have to settle for making an unwanted life more bearable. Be willing to feel what is there, take responsibility for what you can change, and start creating the life you want to live.