What I Tolerate Is What I Teach

The conversation starts before I've even finished my coffee. A casual dismissal of something I said yesterday. Not hostile: just that particular tone that treats my words like background noise. The familiar weight settles in my chest, that old reflex already reaching for the excuse: they're stressed, they didn't mean it that way, maybe I was unclear.

But something stops the automatic softening this time.

The Body Knows First

My shoulders register the "no" before my mind catches up. Not dramatic: just a quiet tightening that says this doesn't work anymore. The tolerance I've been calling patience suddenly feels different. Less generous. More like permission I never meant to give.

What I tolerate is what I teach. The phrase surfaces from somewhere deep, carrying a weight I hadn't felt before. Every time I smooth over the rough edge, adjust around the dismissal, find a way to make their tone acceptable: I'm not keeping peace. I'm providing instruction.

The realization sits heavy but clean. Like finally acknowledging something that's been true for a while.

The Silent Curriculum

I think about all the small permissions I've granted without realizing it. The interruptions I've absorbed. The explanations I've accepted for behavior that leaves me feeling smaller. The standards I've bent, one degree at a time, until I couldn't remember what straight looked like.

None of it was violent. Most of it came wrapped in reasonable explanations, stress, misunderstandings, different communication styles. But underneath all the accommodation, something else was happening. A quiet education in what I would accept. What version of myself I was willing to trade for easier days.

The tolerance felt like kindness at the time. Now it feels like complicity.

The Moment of Non-Participation

When the second dismissive comment comes, I don't explain it away. I don't soften it or find the generous interpretation. I simply don't participate in making it acceptable.

No confrontation. No announcement. Just the absence of my usual adaptation. The silence where my excuse would normally live.

It's a tiny rebellion that no one else even notices. But my body registers the difference immediately. The way breathing gets easier when you stop holding something you didn't realize was heavy.

Standards as Behavior

I used to think having standards meant knowing what I wanted. But tolerance teaches me that standards live in what I refuse, not what I request. They exist in the moments I don't bend, the explanations I don't provide, the peace I don't keep at my own expense.

The word "boundary" feels too formal for what's happening. This is more like... recognition. Seeing that every time I tolerate something that diminishes me, I'm not avoiding conflict: I'm choosing who I am in that moment.

The version of me that survived by adapting is suddenly visible in a way that feels both tender and uncomfortable. All those years of reading rooms, adjusting energy, finding ways to make difficult people easier to be around. It wasn't wrong. But it wasn't neutral either.

The Teaching Moment

What becomes clear is that tolerance isn't passive. It's not the absence of action: it's a very specific kind of instruction. When I absorb the dismissal, soften the sharp edge, find a way to work around someone else's inability to see me clearly, I'm teaching them exactly what they can expect from me.

And I'm teaching myself what I'm worth.

The conversation continues around me, and I notice how different it feels to not rescue the moment from its own awkwardness. To let the dismissive tone land where it belongs instead of catching it, transforming it, handing it back as something easier.

The discomfort isn't mine to fix anymore.

What Changes Without Announcement

Nobody notices that I've stopped participating in making their behavior acceptable. The change is internal, behavioral, almost private. But the quality of my attention shifts. Instead of looking for ways to accommodate, I start noticing what actually needs accommodation.

The difference between legitimate stress and learned expectation becomes clearer. The gap between what someone says they value and what they actually practice starts showing up in relief. My tolerance had been filling those gaps, making the contradictions livable.

When I stop filling them, the contradictions become visible to more than just me.

If I stop tolerating what diminishes me... who exactly will I disappoint first: others, or the version of me that survived by adapting?

✨Be yourself 2 Be a star✨