What you’re Willing to Tolerate is Shaping your Life - boundaries over burnout

For a long time, many of us believe that life is testing us on how much we can handle. How much we can juggle. How much we can carry. How much we can endure without breaking. Especially as women, mothers, partners, and ambitious humans, we often wear “being strong” like a badge of honor. But that’s rarely the real test. The real question life keeps asking; quietly, repeatedly: is this: What are you finally willing to stop tolerating?

The tests don’t arrive loudly

Life’s tests don’t usually show up as dramatic moments where everything falls apart. They arrive subtly, disguised as normal, familiar situations. In motherhood, it can look like constantly putting yourself last. Running the household, carrying the mental load, anticipating everyone’s needs, while telling yourself “this is just how it is”. You may love your children deeply, yet feel depleted, touched out, or resentful, not because you’re failing, but because you’re tolerating a system where your needs are basically invisible.

In marriage or partnership, it can show up as staying quiet to keep the peace. Not voicing what you truly need because it feels easier than risking conflict. Lowering your expectations around support, presence, or emotional safety and calling it “compromise,” when deep down it feels like self-abandonment.

At work or in entrepreneurship, it often looks like accepting “good enough.” Overgiving, undercharging, staying in roles or collaborations that drain you because they feel stable. Convincing yourself you should be grateful, even when your body and intuition are clearly telling you something isn’t aligned anymore.

And in friendships, it can appear as constantly being the understanding one. The listener. The one who makes excuses for others’ behavior while quietly shrinking your own truth. Staying connected out of history, not alignment.

These moments aren’t failures. They’re decision points.

Why we keep tolerating what no longer fits

Most people don’t stay stuck because they don’t know better. They stay because familiar discomfort feels safer than unfamiliar growth. Tolerating misalignment can feel responsible. Mature. Practical. It avoids difficult conversations. It prevents disappointment. It keeps relationships intact.. well, at least on the surface. But over time, something important happens:

What you tolerate becomes your baseline. And your baseline shapes everything:
Your confidence.
Your energy.
Your health.
Your self-respect.

Slowly, quietly, you start living a life that looks fine on the outside but feels heavy on the inside.

Growth is asking for boundaries, not burnout

If something feels heavy, draining, or constantly misaligned, that is not a sign that you need to try harder. It’s a sign that your nervous system, your intuition, and your inner wisdom are asking for a different choice.

Real growth does not come from:
Working harder
Explaining yourself better
Doing more to earn rest or love
Pushing until you collapse

It comes from boundaries.

From saying, “This no longer works for me.”
From choosing alignment over approval.
From allowing discomfort without abandoning yourself.

This applies everywhere:
In how you parent.
In how you love.
In how you work.
In who you allow access to your energy.

You don’t need one big, brave moment

One of the biggest myths about change is that it requires one dramatic decision. It doesn’t. Transformation is built through repetition. Small choices, made consistently: Choosing rest instead of pushing. Speaking up instead of staying silent. Asking for help instead of doing it all alone. Walking away from what no longer aligns, even if it once did. This is how trust is rebuilt. This is how confidence grows. This is how safety is created within yourself. You don’t need to do it perfectly. You don’t need to get it right immediately. You simply need to keep choosing differently. Because over time, this will become your new identity. Identity becomes confidence. Confidence becomes clarity. And clarity builds a life you no longer have to escape from.

A gentle Question to sit with

Ask yourself today, without judgment: What am I still tolerating that the version of me I’m becoming wouldn’t accept anymore?

I wish you all the awareness to begin. And from awareness, choice becomes possible.

With love,
Louisa