Is TOLERATING January a Healthy Thing to Do?

Frequently in this blog, I talk about how humans often tolerate relatively miserable situations. We stay at bad jobs or in dysfunctional relationships because tolerating is far easier than rocking the boat and putting ourselves out into the world to risk pain and rejection. Admittedly, I’m fairly judgmental of this tolerating idea. Life is short. Why tolerate miserable situations? And yet, dear reader, every year I sit in Chicago, tolerating one January after another. Am I a hypocrite?

For those of you who don’t know what January in Chicago is like, it sucks. It’s freezing cold with very limited daylight hours, and those daylight hours are typically cloud covered miserable shades of grey. And that’s the upside of January in Chicago. We often get snow or ice storms, and then those melt into another grey shade of gloom. Yes, Chicago is one of the best cities in the world, but not really in January.

Yet I stay here, year after year. Sometimes I’m able to do a vacation or a business trip in January and that really does help. Otherwise, I tolerate it. Toleration, however, is a vast improvement in how I used to face January in Chicago. I used to dread it, talked about dreading it for months, and then complained about it for the whole month of January. As if all of that dread and complaining changed anything but the moods of the people around me. I’d get angry when there was an ice storm or below zero days. As if my anger could change a darn thing about the situation.

How to Know When Tolerance Is the Right Choice

So a few years ago, I decided it was time to let go of the dread and the anger and to actually accept January in Chicago. I tried to pretend that I really liked it. You know, “Snow is pretty and snowshoeing is fun.” Or, “It makes me appreciate the summer so much more.” And other similar nonsense. It was spiritual bypassing at best and lying at worst. January in Chicago is to be tolerated is my new mantra. I won’t be miserable about it, but I’m also not going to be excited by it either.

Choosing to tolerate negative situations with grace can be a form of positive acceptance of the things we cannot change. #acceptance #tolerance #misery #happiness Click To Tweet

Toleration feels like a healthy choice to me. It recognizes what is, doesn’t lead me to try to control something that I can’t, and leads me to feeling the feelings and accepting them without judgment. I tolerate January in Chicago and I’m good with that. I’m not miserable and I’m also not fully joyful, and that seems to be healthiest version of facing January in Chicago. It’s now April. I’m happy it’s April because I’m not dreading January. I’m confident that when it comes around again in 2024, I’ll tolerate it and be just fine doing so.

Sometimes choosing toleration is the best we can do in the moment. Because we’ve chosen it versus reacting to it, we own it. It feels fine and not fantastic to choose tolerance, and that’s OK. What other areas in life might choosing tolerance be the way to go?

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC