Putting Up with Lemon

How Self-sabotage Comes from Tolerating What Doesn’t Serve You Well

We tolerated a defective, inexpensive appliance for a year before finally buying a new one: self-sabotaging ourselves every single day, sometimes twice a day, and wasting energy from being annoyed every day.

Self-sabotage | Life Lessons | Mental Health | Self-Improvement |

We Named Our Coffee Pot “Lemon”

I was asked once by a wise teacher, “What do you tolerate?” Then she said, “Get rid of it.”

Eric and I once tolerated something we should have gotten rid of but instead waited a year before throwing the thing out.

One day, I bought a new coffee pot, aka “Lemon.” Right out of the box, Lemon leaked every single time you poured water from the carafe into the chamber.

Then after brewing, Lemon refused to pour coffee directly into a coffee mug. It chose to pour coffee on the counter top or the floor or a shoe, occasionally on a cat underfoot. Finally it agreed to pour coffee in the kitchen sink when its owners remembered to move to the sink with carafe and coffee mug before pouring.

At least once a week, without advance warning, Lemon felt too tired to brew a full pot of coffee and would stop at 4 cups. Then Lemon couldn’t make up its mind over how it wanted to be turned off so as not to cook coffee all morning. Sometimes it preferred its switch. Other times it preferred to be unplugged from the wall.

We Googled Lemon’s reviews. Warm fuzzies: we weren’t alone. Lemon had many bad reviews. BUT we continued to tolerate Lemon. Month after month, we tolerated Lemon!

Good-bye Lemon

It took us a year to liberate ourselves from Lemon before we put Lemon in the trash and got a new coffee pot. (Obviously too late to return Lemon to the store and get our money back.)

I’m still wondering why we tolerated Lemon for an entire year? Astounded that we didn’t return Lemon that first day when we realized Lemon had serious issues.

What Do You Tolerate?

In the meantime, what are you tolerating? What are your lemons? How are you self-sabotaging yourself. Resistance to writing? Refusal to repurpose your stories and blog posts so starting over again and again with something new?

Are you still using a glitchy and out of date computer that costs more to repair than replace? Still buying refilled ink cartridges for your printer to save money even though refilled cartridges often leak all over the place? A keyboard on which too many of the keys have worn off while you kid yourself you’re a touch typist?

Maybe you’re tolerating people who bring you down? Business plans that don’t serve you? Team members who don’t follow through? Unnecessarily complex software that you still haven’t mastered? Your own resistance? Resistance to marketing? Resistance to selling?

What are you tolerating in yourself? Ignoring the importance of a positive mindset? Neglecting healing that will help with the mindset? Refusing to get help because you’re convinced you can go it alone even though so far that hasn’t worked?

And the biggest toleration and self-sabotage of all: Your own self-doubt and self-worth.

Moral of the story: Stop tolerating Lemons today . Don’t wait till tomorrow or next week. And certainly don’t wait a year.

First published at OverwhelmToAction.com. Edited for Medium.

Because I’m an adoption coach for women, my writing, as one might assume, focuses on adoption. In addition, I offer words of wisdom for adult ADHDers. (Not only do I suffer from ADHD, but so do many adopted folks.)

You’ll find me at LivingWithAdoption.com. For a list of common adoption challenges, grab my free Adoption Checklist for Women: 25 Life Issues.

No surprise that focus does not come to me easily! In addition to adoption and ADHD, I also write random stories from my life, what I’ve observed, what’s in the news, anything that tickles my fancy.

Watch for my eBook: “The Laundromat Dog.” Coming soon.

For a Black Lives Matter from a white perspective, see my stories For White Folks from an Old Gray-Haired White Woman with Arthritis. And Teaching Kindergarten at an all-Black school.

You might also like musings on Staying at Home because of COVID 19: The Good, The Bad, and the Not So Ugly.