Your level of self-respect starts improving the moment you stop treating bad behaviour as something you just have to put up with, because you don’t. Let’s discuss how to change that for the sake of your mental wellbeing. So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!

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Episode Overview:

Your self-respect gets harder to protect when you keep accepting less than you deserve… and every time you let bad behaviour slide, or stay in a destructive situation, you end up reinforcing for yourself that your worth matters less than keeping the peace or not challenging things. 

In this episode of the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, I’m talking about why tolerating bad behaviour can slowly become your normal along with how what you accept from other people, situations, and even yourself shapes what happens next. If you’ve ever wondered why you struggle with standing up for yourself, or worried that setting boundaries with people will make you seem difficult, this episode will help you look at the problem differently. I’ll explain why self-respect and boundaries are closely connected, how repeatedly letting things slide can train both other people and yourself to expect less, and why changing that doesn’t mean suddenly becoming cold or aggressive. You’ll learn how to spot the moments where old patterns take over, audit the situations you may have normalised, deal with pushback, and set clearer standards before you need them. I also cover boundaries without guilt and how to be assertive, with practical ways to start respecting yourself more consistently.

👉 Ready to stop settling for less and start backing yourself? Then let’s talk!

💡 TL;DR: Stop letting things slide, because you end up teaching other people (and yourself) that it’s OK to show you less respect than you deserve. 🙂

New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hello! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:

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Episode Transcript:

How to stop settling for less than you deserve

What are you putting up with that you shouldn’t be?

If someone or something in your life is treating you badly, it’s time to stop letting that happen.

Because every time you allow things to slide and either say or do nothing, you’re reinforcing that it’s fine… and you’re teaching yourself to just put up with it.

I know that taking action can feel awkward and exhausting and maybe even scary, but staying quiet has a much higher cost and you’re the one who’ll be paying it.

So let’s talk about… how to stop tolerating crap.

Hello and welcome! I’m Jeremy Godwin and this is the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, where every week I help you understand and improve your mental wellbeing.

When you’re tolerating something you shouldn’t, whether that’s a person or a situation or even how you talk to yourself, you don’t have to keep on doing that. But let’s be real here: changing things requires you to change things… and that can be incredibly uncomfortable and maybe even terrifying.

For a lot of us, it’s easier to just stay quiet or to just get used to it than it is to risk shaking things up. But avoiding it isn’t going to change anything. So today we’re going to talk about how to actually approach it so you can stop putting up with crap in whatever shape or form it’s taking in your life right now. Because in any situation there is always a moment, a split second, where something happens and you either decide to address it or just let it slide. That moment is where a pattern lives.

We’ll come back to what to do about that pattern later, but I just want you to be aware of it as we continue talking throughout this episode. But first, we need to discuss what’s actually going on. So let’s talk about…

What does putting up with too much mean?

Alright, let’s discuss what this all actually looks and feels like… because ‘tolerating too much’ is a bigger thing than most people realise. Yes, it’s stuff like the family member who says something nasty and calls it a joke or the work colleague who you can guarantee is going to talk over you in every meeting… but it’s also quieter than that.

It’s things like the job that’s been underpaying you for two years, and you’ve never once brought it up. It’s the friendship where you’re always the one reaching out, and you’ve stopped noticing because it’s just how that friendship works now. It’s the relationship where you’ve slowly, almost invisibly, lowered what you expect until ‘fine’ started to feel like it was enough.

Sometimes it happens in a single sharp moment, where things blow up over a specific interaction or situation or event and you decide not to tackle it in that moment. But a lot of it isn’t a particular event or moment at all. It’s a slow leak that you’ve gotten so used to that you’ve stopped even hearing it or seeing it.

With the more sudden kind of ‘blow up’ stuff, it can often feel like it’s a tight knot in your chest right after it happens or you may end up having a conversation later on with yourself; where you finally say what you really wanted to say in the moment. But with the slower stuff, it’s different. It’s more like a kind of low level background noise that builds over time that you’ve learned to live with; things like tiredness in a situation that doesn’t have an obvious cause or a kind of flicker of something when you compare your situation to someone else’s and, for a split second, you think to yourself, “Huh, I didn’t realise I’d normalised this.” Both versions, the ‘full on’ and then the sort of ‘underneath’ stuff, it’s the same thing: something in your life is asking less of the people and situations around you than it should be, and it’s asking more of you. You’re carrying the weight of it.

There is a fairly common misunderstanding here that when I say something like, you know, “stop putting up with crap” that it’s then just about confrontation and conflict, right, and whether or not you’re ‘brave enough’ to say something in the moment. And sure, that’s part of it… but it’s not the entire story.

Because sitting underneath all of this is self-respect. And self-respect is not just a skill that you pull out whenever someone’s rude to you. It’s a standard that you set for yourself. It’s what you’ve decided, whether that’s consciously or not, that you are willing to accept for yourself in life; whether that’s from the people that you let closest to you, from the situations that you choose to stay in, and honestly what you accept from yourself, like in how you talk to yourself when nobody else is listening, and how you treat yourself.

Self-respect isn’t just how you react. It’s what you’ve decided you’re worth.

So the answer here isn’t just “learn to speak up,” right?! I’m not going to just say that and we’re done with the episode! Because the fact is you can get brilliant at speaking up in the moment and still be tolerating something enormous simply by staying or by not questioning it or by never asking whether the idea of, “Oh, this is just how it is,” is actually true or if the reality is is that it’s more familiar and safe… like the friend who never checks in, or the job that undervalues you, or the version of yourself who you talk to like trash.

So I did not create this episode just to tell you what to say back when someone’s rude to you, although we’ll absolutely get to that sort of stuff. This episode is really about self-awareness, and it’s about the bigger and sometimes much more uncomfortable question that sits underneath all of it: What have you quietly decided you’ll accept? And is that actually the standard you’d want for someone you love? Because chances are, if a friend described their job or their relationship or the way they talk to themselves to you the way that you would describe yours, you probably wouldn’t go, “Oh, that sounds fine!” You’d tell them that they deserve better, right?!

And so the real work here is figuring out why you haven’t told yourself the same thing. Because you do deserve better. We all do.

So with that in mind, now let’s talk about…

Why putting up with crap has a high cost

And it’s because this stuff actually messes with your mental health in the long term, not just your mood on a particular day. None of this is really ever about single specific incidents, right? Even the ‘sharp’ kind of ‘blow up’ moments are only ever the visible tip of something bigger. Often it’s a standard, or the lack of one, that’s been quietly running in the background the whole time.

And so every time you accept less than you should, whether that’s from a person or a situation or yourself, and also when you don’t question it, you’re not just letting one thing go… you’re actually confirming that standard. You’re telling yourself and everyone around you that this is just what you accept now.

Putting up with crap trains everyone, including you, to expect it.

That’s what sits underneath all of this. You’re not just tolerating too much. You’re actually teaching everyone around you, and yourself, to expect more crap. With other people, that ‘training’ becomes quite obvious once you see it: they learn over time what they can get away with.

But the same thing happens with situations, and with yourself; it’s just slower and quieter. You know… you stay in an underpaying job for long enough without saying anything, and you start to actually believe that you’re not worth more. Work in a toxic environment for long enough, and you start to believe that you don’t have any other options. Talk to yourself harshly for long enough, and it stops feeling cruel and starts feeling accurate. That’s you training your own internal standards downward. It’s the exact same thing as other people doing it to you, just aimed inwards instead of out towards someone else.

And look, that’s probably confronting to hear and I get it… but it’s the truth. And there really is something genuinely freeing buried in that truth too, because it means that none of this is permanent. It’s not set in stone. You are not permanently stuck with whatever you’re currently accepting, like it’s some unchangeable fact about your life.

Change what you accept and you change what keeps happening.

It’s easy to think that the problem is other people’s behaviour, or it’s your job, or just bad luck… but sometimes it’s genuinely none of those things, or they’re only a minor contributor. Sometimes, the problem is that you either haven’t recognised the long-term cost of putting up with crap or you’re aware of the cost and you just don’t want to accept the reality of the situation… because that would require you to make changes. And change is scary… no matter how good for you it might be.

But very little in your life will ever cost you as much as it will to continue putting up with crap. If nothing changes, it costs you more than just feeling annoyed or a bit flat sometimes. Constantly accepting less than you deserve, whether that’s in big ways or small ways, that’s exhausting in a very specific way: it’s emotionally exhausting, emotionally tiring. And that feeling chips away at something much bigger: your sense that your own comfort, your own standards, your own worth, actually matter.

Now, this is not some fluffy woo-woo concept. This is about self-respect. And self-respect is the thing that decides how much of your own life you actually get to have. It’s your life, and it’s your choice what your life looks and feels like. You are not a victim of circumstance, and you don’t have to put up with crap at the cost of your self-respect. Every time you think, “Oh, I’ll just let this one go,” you’re paying for that with your self-respect. And that’s too high of a price to pay if you want to improve your mental wellbeing, and if you want to truly feel like the most honest version of yourself.

Deciding you’re not going to put up with crap anymore is the first step. And we’re going to talk through the next steps right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

And welcome back! So now let’s get into the ‘how to’ part of this episode, and let’s talk about…

How to stop putting up with too much

Alright, so let’s talk through what you can do to make some different choices and take a different approach… which really is just a much nicer way of me saying ‘so you can stop putting up with crap’! First…

Don’t just notice it, use it.

So remember that thing I mentioned earlier about the split second, the one where something happens and you decide almost automatically to just let it slide? Well, noticing it is step one… but noticing on its own doesn’t change anything. Plenty of people notice the moment and still let it pass every single day. What actually shifts things is doing something with that moment before it closes. That doesn’t mean having a perfect response, or the perfect comeback. It can be as small as a pause, a raised eyebrow, a, “Hang on, let’s not do that.” Anything that breaks the automatic pattern of ‘just swallow it and move on’.

The goal here isn’t to win the moment; it’s to prove to yourself and to whoever or whatever’s on the other end of it that the moment doesn’t get to just sail through unchallenged anymore. The more you do that, the more it starts to shift things bit by bit.

Now… that works for that sort of ‘sharp and sudden’ stuff that we talked about earlier, like when somebody says something to you that’s just not appropriate. But the slower… well, not just ‘not appropriate’, maybe it’s just mean… but the slower stuff, well I mean, that needs something different. And so my next bit of advice is…

Run an audit on ‘the slow leaks’.

For everything that isn’t just a single sudden moment like a one-off argument or a disagreement, you need to approach it differently… because it’s a very different beast and there’s no obvious trigger to catch. So I’m talking about things like the underpaying job, the one-sided friendship, the relationship that you’ve quietly downgraded your expectations for, and so on and so forth.

OK so what I want you to kind of think about, and what I want to encourage you to really do, is to build yourself a habit of actually auditing it.

So here’s what I mean. Every so often, properly ask yourself: “If my closest friend described this situation exactly the way that I would describe mine, would I tell them that this is fine?” So for example, if they were talking to you about their job or their relationship or whatever challenge they’re dealing with, right? If the honest answer to that question is no, you would not tell them that it’s fine, then that’s information. It’s not a final verdict on things. It’s not a judgement. But it’s definitely important information that you cannot un-know once you’ve actually looked at it squarely and honestly… because you can’t un-know what you now know. Next…

Catch the way you talk to yourself.

This one’s uncomfortable… because your own head is part of this too, and it just might be the most difficult part to navigate, but catching the way you talk to yourself matters just as much as anything that anyone else does or says to you.

So if you regularly talk to yourself in a way that you’d never accept from another person, calling yourself things like ‘stupid’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘a failure’ over things that, you know, you would extend real, true compassion and understanding to a friend for, well… it’s the exact same thing. It’s just aimed inward, right? You are training your own internal standards downwards every time you let that stuff slide unchallenged.

So when you catch yourself speaking to yourself unkindly, and you will if you’re actually listening, treat it the same way that you’re learning to treat the external stuff: interrupt it, call it out, “Hang on, we’re not doing that,” and say clearly to yourself, “That’s not fair, and I wouldn’t say that to anyone else.”

When you start to change the way you talk to yourself, you begin to respect yourself more. Next…

Expect pushback, and don’t take the bait.

Now… the big thing to be aware of is that deciding to do this, deciding to make changes, that’s one thing… but sticking with it under pressure is another thing entirely. When you start holding a higher standard for yourself and for others, whether that’s with a person, a workplace, or yourself, don’t be surprised if there’s resistance before there’s any kind of adjustment.

With other people, that might look like them pushing back even harder. It’s the reason why people tend to run from conflict, or give in quite quickly, because very often people do push back harder, at least for a little while, because what’s happening is a pattern that’s worked for them for years doesn’t just quietly go away and retire, right? And they’re unlikely to want it to either; it’s in their best interest. Whether they’re pushing back intentionally or subconsciously is a whole different conversation, and that comes down to the person and their intentions. But, you know, even well-intentioned people often tend to push back without even realising that they’re doing it. With yourself, it might look like feeling guilty or having a nagging little voice in your head that’s telling you that you’re just being difficult or dramatic or ungrateful. That kind of resistance isn’t proof that you’re doing anything wrong; it’s just what change feels like before you begin to settle into the new normal.

So here’s the challenge that’s really worth sitting with. Think about this: if nothing shifts here with this exact situation, or this relationship, or with your relationship with yourself, if nothing shifts and things are still the same in five years time… is that actually acceptable to you? Because five years really is a very long time to put up with crap. Next…

Let the response tell you something real.

Look, not every relationship or situation is going to respond to calling out this stuff the same way… and that in and of itself tells you something. Once you start holding a firmer line and setting higher, clearer standards, you know, whether that’s with people or your workplace or yourself, I want you to really pay close attention to what happens next.

A person or situation that basically respects you will generally adjust, at least to some degree, over time… even if there’s a bit of friction at first. But one that pushes back constantly, or escalates things, or attacks, or punishes you for having limits, or makes you feel ridiculous for expecting anything different…. they’re showing you something very important. And they’re not showing you something about you. It’s about them, or about that situation.

Now, this is not about then just cutting everyone off or everything and, you know, never giving people an opportunity to change. But it’s also about being realistic that not every person or situation will be right for you when you start making healthier choices that are grounded in self-respect and assertiveness. And so when you get that kind of ongoing resistance that is real evidence of a bigger issue with the situation or the relationship, and it’s something you need to really think about as you decide how you want to move forward. Next…

Set the standard before you need it.

Look, the cold hard fact here is that none of this stuff even remotely holds up in the long term if you’re having to decide it fresh every single time. What you need is a set of standards for yourself so that you are absolutely crystal clear about what you will accept and what you won’t, as well as what you’ll do about the stuff that you won’t accept.

Now, this is something to build slowly over time; you don’t have to have it all worked out right now. But also trying to work it out in the heat of the moment, or during sort of, you know, mid slow burn exhaustion, that’s genuinely way too hard, right?

Let’s be real: your brain is not exactly optimised for making calm and clear decisions under that sort of pressure or fatigue. So the way to tackle it longer term, and to set yourself up for handling any future challenges like this in an assertive way that shows you self-respect, it’s to do some real thinking about your standards in advance… somewhere calm and away from any actual conflict or exhaustion. Be really honest with yourself about what you’re actually willing to accept from other people, from situations, from yourself, and your own inner voice, and be really honest with yourself about what you are not willing to accept.

Look, you don’t need a rigid rule book here. You just need a rough, honest sense of what your own standards are so that in the moment, or even just in your everyday life, you’re applying something that you’ve already worked out instead of having to make a decision from scratch every single time something happens and also so that you’re not having to decide when you are emotionally overwhelmed… or emotionally exhausted for that matter.

That’s the real stuff for you to work on here. It’s not about having one perfect and spectacular conversation or confrontation, or making one big overhaul to your life that fixes everything overnight. It’s really about making a series of smaller decisions that feel true to you, where you choose the standards for yourself that you actually deserve and where your self-respect guides what you will and won’t allow in your life.

Now, a big part of that involves setting clear boundaries and sticking to them as well as learning to stop people pleasing. I talked about how to do that in Episode 322 if you’d like to dig deeper into that topic, and I’ll leave some other resources about boundaries in the description as well. And if you’re finding yourself on the receiving end of manipulation from someone… which, you know, can often go hand in hand with this stuff, check out Episode 333 on dealing with manipulation because that goes a lot deeper into that specific topic; they’re both linked in the description. As always though, you can also find them at ltamh.com/episodes.

Conclusion

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode.

Putting up with too much doesn’t actually keep the peace. All it does is lead you to quietly agree to less than you deserve. When you have clear standards in place, and when you stick to them, that’s when you’re able to make sure that your worth is respected in every relationship and every situation… as it should be.

So is there something or someone that you’ve been putting up with that it’s time to approach differently?

Because when you boil it all down, self-respect isn’t a feeling you wait around for. It’s the standard you set for yourself and that you stop apologising for.

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is:

The only people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who were benefiting from you having none.

Unknown

Let me repeat that:

The only people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who were benefiting from you having none.

Alright, that’s it for this week. If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who might need to hear it and leave a rating or review on your favourite platform because it really helps more people discover the show and the advice that I share. And come and join me on Patreon to support my work. You’ll find it linked in the description below.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Join me next week when I talk about figuring out what you’re chasing in life. And check out my episode on dealing with difficult people next. It’s linked in the description. I release new episodes every Sunday, so follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program. Discover more at ltamh.com.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Find more content at www.ltamh.com

Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Making Mental Health Simple.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2026 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or mental health professional if you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.