You are what you tolerate

How small compromises slowly rewrite your life if you don't pay attention

I once heard my spiritual teacher say, “The company you keep is stronger than your will.”

And that sentence rearranged something in me. Because for a long time, I thought discipline was about grit. About trying harder. About clawing my way through generational curses, bad habits, old patterns, and cycles I swore I was done with.

But the truth is…. willpower gets tired.

Your environment doesn’t.

The people we surround ourselves with are subtly shaping us long before we realize it. Their values. Their language. Their humor. Their upbringing. Their coping mechanisms. Their vices. Their faith. Their behaviors.

What we normalize becomes what we tolerate.

What we tolerate becomes what we participate in. Before we know it becomes a part of our everyday life.

And it’s not just people.

This extends to the content we consume.

I’ve been fasting social media for the past 48 hours and right away, I noticed how much mental space being on Instagram and Facebook took.

Also I noticed relief. A long exhale. A settling in me. Mental spaciousness because my brain wasn’t busy anticipating what my next shared story will be (I post very little nowadays but even then it takes up more space than I ever realized)

The conversations we have. The podcasts we listen to while driving or doing the laundry or working out. The music playing in the background. The shows we binge on when we’re feeling depleted yet looking for a quick dopamine hit. The accounts we scroll. The headlines that punch us real hard and make us want to click even though it were up to us, we would never bother to search for it. The narratives we rehearse because it’s what the world shows us over and over again.

We aren’t just sitting on the sidelines consuming content.

It’s the content that consumes us.

It’s interesting.. actually quite sneaky. Because it’s easy to feel like we’re only neutral observers right? Especially if you’re not clicking anything and you’re just scrolling through - it can’t hurt. But the reality is, we aren’t just observers, we are absorbers.

We absorb the contents we view through our eyes and listen through our ears like a sponge.

We become what we consistently take in.

I’ve watched this play out in my own life in subtle ways.

There were seasons where I wondered why I felt more restless, more unsettled, more disconnected from God. I know He’s there so why did it feel like He was so far away?

But when I took an honest look at what I was feeding my mind, the answer became more clear.

Not everything was “bad.” But not everything was building me either. And that’s where discernment comes in.

If you wanted to make a fresh caprese salad and you opened the fridge to see that both your tomatoes and your basil were rotten, would you eat it?

Would you feed your body expired, rotten food?

So why is it that we don’t think twice when it comes to feeding our minds rotten content that leaves us feeling disempowered and/or unhappy with ourselves.

This is where discernment comes in. Maturing requires that we recognize the slow ways “the company we keep” is eroding us .. slowly but surely.

These things, whether people or content, don’t scream danger. They don’t trigger your brain to run because it thinks a tiger is chasing it. But it does dull your spirit.

I thrifted a white crop that says “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23. And when I wear it, I love what it reminds me to do. Scripture tells us to guard our hearts because our hearts are easily formable. It’s impressionable. Our heart, eyes, ears, are all gates .. entrypoints. What we take in through those entrypoints, eventually live rent free in our being.

The brain is made to absorb information and rewire itself around whatever you consistently give it. It will learn what you teach it. It will learn patterns based on how you train it until you learn to break it. If it teach the brain fear, it will become anxious. If you teach it by comparison, it will become jealous. If you teach it anger, it will become reactive.

On the other hand, if you teach it how to focus on one thing at a time, it will become more present. If you teach it how to think positively, it will look for the bright side of things.

This is why it’s not enough to let your mind go on autopilot mode.

Because if you don’t choose what shapes you, something or someone or many someones will.

And most times, it won’t be aligned with who God is calling you to become.

I’ve learned that not everyone is meant to come with you into every season.

Not every conversation deserves your energy. Not every joke requires your laughter. Not every opinion requires your agreement. Not every opinion deserves a seat in your mind. And that doesn’t make you self-righteous, selfish, or judgy.

It makes you responsible.

Because small compromises, compound and living in a state of peace doesn’t come to striver harder. It comes from choosing wiser.

Making wiser decisions.And sometimes, this means we make the wrong ones first to deal with the consequences enough to know it’s not what we want for ourselves.

Choosing environments that support who you’re becoming not we are outgrowing. Choosing friendships that sharpen you. Choosing content that feeds your spirit not just distracts you.

Ask yourself if it’s helping you become more whole?

Because who you become in your future is already being determined by what you’re allowing today.

And you get to choose wisely.

Guard your eyes, your ears and your heart. Not of fear but out of love.

You become what you tolerate.

It’s about being honest.

The life you want isn’t built in dramatic moments. It’s built in what you are willing to tolerate on a random Tuesday night when no one is watching.

And the hardest part isn’t learning what to armor yourself against … it’s admitting what you’ve already let in.

What’s something you’ve been tolerating that you’re ready to outgrow?🍵

Warmly,