There are differences between accepting and Tolerating. Many people choose to tolerate a circumstance instead of accepting it. Many people will claim they are tolerant of other people or circumstances. Which right off the bat doesn’t sound all that great. We are simply tolerating, over-accepting, that the circumstance is happening and that it has no power over you.
The differences between accepting and tolerating are the differences that will keep you playing small or finding the goal you are after. Are you simply tolerating failure, or are you accepting that you failed and you are going to get it figured out and overcome that obstacle? So let’s look at the differences between tolerating or accepting.
Tolerating
Society loves to preach to us that we need to tolerate those things that we don’t accept. Yet we actually have a choice. that is overlooked. Many people will point out that if you are not tolerant, you are intolerant, and this points to the big problem with tolerance. You are either tolerating something you do not agree with or you are simply intolerant. Tolerance robs you of your agency. You are either with us or you are against everyone. Very narrow field of view when there are so many. differing views people can have. The problem is that you can have a choice, and I will explain more below.
Yet what I actually want to look at is that tolerating a circumstance in your life doesn’t help you in any way. If you are tolerating an action in your family that you don’t like, that action will keep happening. Societally speaking, we saw this very thing back in 2020 when we were tolerating the Wuhan Flu shutdown. We tolerated the inconsistencies that were forced upon us. You had to wear a mask while in a restaurant unless you were sitting down and eating. You had to have this plexiglass wall between you and the cashier because you definitely didn’t have germs on your hands as you were handling the object now being scanned. You had to stay indoors and shelter in place while the elites would go out and get their hair cut and eat at expensive restaurants. We tolerated this, or you were just simply intolerant.
Things that didn’t make any sense and actually flew in the face of logic, like blindly trusting the experts, allowed for the lockdowns to be 2 years of flattening the curve instead of the 2 weeks.
Now look into your life. What are you simply tolerating? How does that tolerance feel? Most people usually feel full of frustration and resentment. That isn’t because they are being intolerant, it is because they are tolerating what they don’t like. In other words, it is a shut up and let me do what I want. Here is why tolerating a circumstance in your life isn’t going to win you any brownie points from your wife.
You aren’t allowing the topic
The biggest difference is that allowing something gives you the power to decide what you want and don’t want in your life. Tolerating something is where, even if you don’t like what is happening,g it will keep happening. Say you are tolerating your wife’s reckless spending habits. You are simply stepping aside and letting her spend any and all the money, even though she is complaining that you never have enough money set aside. You are not allowing her mishandling of the finances, but you tolerating her actions, which allows her to keep going.
You still have unclean thoughts about the topic
Many times, since you are tolerating a circumstance, you are still having thoughts that increase your sense of resistance. This is why tolerating does not feel good. You still have emotions crop up, based on the fact that you haven’t cleaned up your thoughts about the circumstance at hand.
There is still resistance
When you feel an uncomfortable emotion and you are not intentional with your thoughts. You will often find yourself looking for ways to distract yourself from that thought and change the feeling of that emotion. If you are resentful about being passed over in a promotion and you have not accepted it, but you’re just tolerating your time you’re going to do actions that will distract you from not feeling your best.
You’re gonna have actions like drinking over eating some form of escapism. If you’re wanting to have a better relationship with your wife, but she seems distant. You may turn to porn video games again over eating overworking or things along those lines your resisting the experience of the emotion.
Yes the emotion may not feel great, but to experience that emotion is better than resisting the emotion. Resisting is where we have so many other problems arise in our relationships. So accepting what the circumstance is allows for you to stop resisting, but while you are just tolerating the circumstance, you’re going to more likely be resisting the emotions that you feel.
You are ignoring the problem
Because you’re resisting the emotions, you’re actually ignoring what the real problem is. You’re avoiding the work that you need to do on yourself. You’re avoiding the work that you need to do in your relationships.
When you’re tolerating people, you’re ignoring the problems at hand. While if your choosing to accept or not accept a circumstance, then you have the ability to alter that path.
How are you going to fix a problem if you’re ignoring it? If you’re trying to fix your relationship approaching it as it’s broken beyond Repair it’s not gonna fix the problem.
You are simply enduring the circumstance
No, it may be nice to feel like you’re being a martyr for cause because you’re tolerating something unpleasant, but enduring a circumstance because you just want to tolerate the now is not going to make you any better or the circumstance any better either.
Enduring, the problem is what’s gotten you into the roommate syndrome that you’re in right now. You didn’t choose to face the problems when they were needing to be faced, and so trouble upon trouble upon thoughts upon emotions have piled upon each other and then swept under the rug that eventually the relationship has just become Two people living in the same house. It has sniffed out a lot of the flame of the passion that you used to have. You have to face the problem. You have to fix the problem to be able to repair the relationship so you can be back on the path of having the relationship you want.
Tolerating is still knowing there is a problem, just pretending that it doesn’t bother you
Ignoring the problem, doesn’t make the issue go away. Neither does running from a problem or acting like it doesn’t bother you. Tolerating does all of those and so you’re not going to fix the problem at hand while you’re simply tolerating whatever it is.
Tolerating keeps you in victim mode
The biggest problem with tolerance is that it keeps you in victim mode. The problem keeps creeping up, and as the problem creeps up, you have the same thoughts than the same feelings as before, and so you’re repeatedly being victimized and having your power robbed from you by an inanimate Circumstance.
That robbing of power is you being in the victim mode. You have to change how you’re looking at the circumstance to stop being a victim of it. 
Accepting
Accepting is quite different from tolerating
Your thoughts have been cleaned up. You don’t have any negative thoughts around the topic at hand.
You allow the topic because it has no power over you
You have full knowledge of the problem, but you have chosen not to give it power over you.
You have faced the problem head-on and come to a satisfactory resolution
You are approaching the problem with the thought that the problem at hand isn’t about you.
You keep your power
