The other day while I was creepin’ on a friend’s Facebook pictures, I found a photo of her little girl half-asleep in bed. No, scratch that. The baby was fully asleep; she was, however, only half in bed. Part of her held on to the flat surface of the mattress while gravity pulled at her lower half, threatening to suck her in to the vortex that had already claimed her blankets, stuffed animals, and boom box.

It reminded me how each one of us has the capacity to accept those things that ain’t right. And 99% of time, that’s what we should do: let go of the little things that don’t matter in the end. But what happens when we accept things that we shouldn’t accept, when we find ourselves tolerating the intolerable?

I’m guessing the little darling in this picture started with her entire body on the bed. Maybe she had a blanket or two, perhaps a stuffed animal to hold. But over time, she started to slide off. The comforts of her bed had left long ago. Now she’s hanging on by a thread. And since she’s still asleep, she doesn’t even know her fate: to end up on the floor, far from where she started.

While we as humans can learn to “suck it up” and get used to a host of less-than ideal circumstances, there’s no reason to sleep half on/half off the bed when we don’t need to. If that’s what you want to do, you can pull up a slab of floor each night while pretending that’s where you wish to be.

If you think you have a vortex in your life that is sucking you in, why not talk to a trusted adviser, someone with nothing to gain or lose personally by being honest with you? It’s hard to catch yourself mid-slide. You might wake up on the floor and convince yourself that’s what you meant to do. You have friends who want to help you reach your personal best. You may be only one small practice of humility away from having your eyes open.

Don’t wake up on the floor unless you mean to.