Keep working on your low discomfort tolerance. Impatience is self-defeating. Life takes time. Stay with a goal and you will achieve it or come real close which will have ample rewards. The goals we generally fail at are the ones we quit on. Make your mantra “It is difficult and uncomfortable to sustain effort but not unbearable. It is worth doing and I am committed to staying with the effort.”
Keep working on deepening unconditional self-acceptance. It is an invaluable possession. Only you can give it to you. Make your mantra “I cannot be rated as a person, only what I do in the context of my goals. My efforts may fail but I am not a failure, inadequate person, or less worthwhile as a person in comparison to the person who succeeds at the very same goal.”
I think of discomfort tolerance and unconditional self-acceptance as the dynamic duo of success. If you are unable to sustain effort through uncomfortable times and if you are unable to accept yourself even though you could very well fail it is unlikely you will succeed at more challenging personal goals. Albert Ellis, the originator of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy was the individual to have had the greatest impact on modern psychotherapy surpassing even the influence of Sigmund Freud. For those of us who know him well, it was very clear his secret to success included both enormously high discomfort tolerance and very deep unconditional self-acceptance. He persisted in developing a new and efficient form of therapy starting in the mid 1950’s despite enormous criticism from his professional peers. He toiled from dawn to dusk six days a week refining the theory and practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, the pioneering form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It is estimated that by the end of his career, which spanned the period from 1950-2010, a conservative estimate of the number of face to face hours of therapy he had conducted was more than 180,000 hours. It is hard to imagine any psychotherapist who conducted a greater number of psychotherapy sessions. Albert had passion for his work, the art and science of helping people stubbornly refuse to be miserable about anything, and possessed enormous ability to tolerate discomfort until he prevailed. Perhaps you too would profit from modeling Ellis as you pursue your personal goals. To do this, use the philosophy and therapeutic strategies of REBT to cultivate both enormously high discomfort tolerance and self-acceptance that is unconditional, yes unconditional!