You’ll never change what you tolerate.

Late appraisals, laborious word processing and copy/paste fatigue. As a commercial fee appraiser, why do you tolerate these headaches?

As a bank appraisal manager, are you tolerating unhappy appraisers that dislike your AMC, lack of transparency for lending and no reporting for your C-Suite?

What walls are created from your tolerance?

3 ways to get over your wall

  1. Desire
  2. Focus
  3. Discipline

Desire: write down the things you want for you and your team. Identify what’s in your way or causes problems. It may be the lack of implemented software to automate your processes.

Focus: what’s your behavior? Are you self-sabotaging your productivity by avoidance behavior like scrolling Facebook or LinkedIn during the workday?

Discipline: once you’ve decided what you want and you’re focused on your goals, create the habit for long term success.

Happiness is an inside job

To be clear, I’m not talking about manifestation/the secret/law of attraction where the universe rewards you because of your good vibes. Rather, I’m talking about behavioral change that can stick 1,000x better than empty New Year’s resolution-type promises.

Ask yourself, what new level of discipline habit structure do I need to implement? Are you one of those people that keep setting goals and miss your targets because you didn’t give up anything? Did you sacrifice anything? Do you think that the person you’re today will magically produce new goals and achievements? That’s not the way it works.

To remove the walls of annoyance that block your productivity, these three concepts will get you over the barrier.

Put in the work

  1. You have to make your old high the new low. Once you hit a milestone, it’s time to have a new stretch goal. No longer tolerate substandard performance from yourself and your team.
  2. Be specific on the meaning and the why you want to achieve these goals. You have to make it personal and be as specific as possible. Why is this going to be such an important thing for you to achieve?
  3. Break down the goal into the specific projects and execute against it. That’s your new level of standard.

You’re the greatest project you’ll ever work on

The beauty is, once you start doing the three steps of desire, focus and discipline, it gets easier. After a while, it becomes the de facto default and will be your new norm. Taking a stand is cathartic both personally and professionally. You’ll see productivity exponentially improve, and the lack of walls in your life will increase happiness.

Does this support the culture I’m trying to create? If the answer is yes, then congratulations! If it’s no, then consider climbing over the wall.

We repeat what we don’t repair. What you put up with you end up with. We can all learn by trying not to fix our problems but fix our thinking.

Climb your wall, whatever that may be.

What’re you tolerating?