Releasing Toxic People to Step Into Your Worth

There comes a point in life when you realize that the weight you’re carrying isn’t just your own. Some of it belongs to the people you’ve let get too close, the ones who drain, belittle, or keep you small. And if you’re honest, that weight doesn’t just hold you back from growing, it holds you back from believing in yourself at all.

Toxic relationships have a way of breeding self-doubt. You begin to second-guess your choices, silence your voice, and sometimes you even abandon parts of yourself just to keep the peace. Before you know it, you’re living in reaction to someone else’s whims instead of walking in alignment with your own truth.

But you deserve more.

You are worthy of your goals, your dreams, and the life you imagined for yourself. And the first step toward that life often begins with letting go of those who make you feel unworthy of it.

Releasing toxic people isn’t easy. It can feel like cutting away a part of your history, or losing a familiar piece of your world. But when you step back, you’ll see that those relationships only thrive when you shrink yourself. If you’re constantly combatting criticism or bending to someone else’s control, how can you possibly hear your own values? How can you know what you truly want if you’re too busy living in survival mode, trying to live through their noise?

This is why understanding your values matters so much. Your values are your compass. They show you what feels aligned, what feels nourishing, what feels like you. And once you know what they are, you can make choices rooted in who you are, not who others demand you to be.

When you release the people who keep you under their thumbs, you make room for your own voice to rise. You create the space to trust yourself again. You begin to see that you don’t have to abandon yourself to be loved, and you don’t have to settle for relationships that keep you small.

Remember, growth is never just about what you add to your life, it’s also about what you let go of. And when you finally put down the weight of toxic people, you free your hands to carry the hopes and dreams that are waiting for you.

A Pure Design Framework for Moving Forward

1. Identify your values
   Write down five values that feel most important to you right now. These might be health, freedom, creativity, faith, family, or something else entirely. Let them reflect what you truly want.

2. Notice alignment and misalignment
   Look at the relationships in your life and ask yourself: do these connections support or undermine my values? Do I feel closer to myself or farther away when I am with this person? It's not always easy to think about these questions, but really sit with them.

3. Choose one step of release
   Releasing doesn’t always mean walking away in one swift move. It can be as simple as setting a boundary, limiting access to your energy, or saying no when you would have once said yes.

4. Refocus your energy
   With the space you create after accomplishing one step of release, choose one small way to live more fully in line with your values. It could be scheduling time for your health, starting a creative project, or building a new routine that feels nourishing.

These steps may seem simple, but they are how you reclaim yourself. Once you begin to live from your values instead of the noise of others, you’ll see clearly that you are not only worthy of your dreams, you are capable of reaching them.

If this feels like the season you’re in, the free Pure Foundations course can help you take the next step. It’s designed to guide you through uncovering your values, creating clarity around what you want, and setting the kind of goals that align with who you are. You don’t have to walk this alone, start here, and begin building the foundation for the life you deserve.

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