I stopped being “the bigger person” — and I’ve never felt more free

by Lachlan Brown | August 15, 2025, 1:13 pm

For years, I wore “being the bigger person” like a badge of honor.

I let slights slide. I smoothed over other people’s bad behavior to keep the peace. I chose politeness over truth, even when the truth burned a hole in my chest.

And each time, I convinced myself this was maturity. Strength. Emotional intelligence.

But if I’m honest, most of the time it wasn’t about strength—it was about fear. Fear of conflict. Fear of being disliked. Fear of making things awkward.

When you’re “the bigger person” too often, you learn to swallow your own needs in favor of harmony. You keep showing up for people who don’t show up for you. You keep letting people off the hook for behavior they should be called out on.

It can look noble from the outside. But inside, it quietly eats away at your self-respect.

It took me years to see that constantly being “the bigger person” was actually making me smaller. And the day I stopped was the day I started to feel free.

Why “the bigger person” can become a trap

There’s a difference between choosing grace because it aligns with your values and choosing it because you don’t feel safe expressing anything else.

I used to think taking the high road meant not engaging, not responding, letting it go. But in reality, I was letting a lot of people cross boundaries without consequence. I told myself it was about preserving relationships, but what I was really preserving was my image as the easygoing, forgiving one.

Here’s the thing: some people interpret your silence as kindness, but others interpret it as permission. If someone can hurt you, dismiss you, or take advantage of you without facing pushback, why would they stop?

I realized that “being the bigger person” had become my default because it was easier than confrontation. It allowed me to avoid the discomfort of saying, “That’s not okay.”

But that avoidance came with a price—resentment.

I’d tell myself I was fine, that I’d “moved on.” But in truth, I was keeping score in my head. Every unspoken frustration became another layer of emotional debt I was carrying. And the weight of that debt was exhausting.

The real turning point came in a small, ordinary moment. Someone made a cutting comment in front of others—something they thought was a joke but hit a sore spot. I smiled and brushed it off.

But later, I found myself replaying it over and over, feeling that familiar blend of anger and shame.

That night, I asked myself: if I never say anything, what’s going to change?

The answer was obvious—nothing.

From that day, I decided I’d stop automatically taking the high road. Not because I wanted to become combative, but because I wanted to become honest.

What I learned when I started speaking up

The first few times I pushed back, it felt unnatural—almost wrong.

My voice would shake, my heart would race, and the old part of me that feared conflict would whisper, You’re making a mistake.

But then something surprising happened: the sky didn’t fall.

The people who respected me… respected me more. And the people who didn’t? They faded away.

Here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t owe everyone the high road. You owe yourself a life where your boundaries are clear and your self-respect is intact.

That doesn’t mean responding to every slight. It means picking the moments that matter and refusing to betray yourself just to keep someone else comfortable.

And sometimes, yes, it means letting people be disappointed or even upset with you. This is exactly what shaman and teacher Rudá Iandê points out in his new book, Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life.

Reading his insights felt like someone had put into words the lesson I’d been stumbling toward: “Being human means inevitably disappointing and hurting others, and the sooner you accept this reality, the easier it becomes to navigate life’s challenges.”

If you’ve struggled with something like this, if you’ve always treated other people’s happiness as if it were your responsibility, this book might inspire you to flip that thinking entirely.

Their happiness is theirs to manage. Your responsibility is to live in alignment with your own values.

Another valuable insight came from his perspective on authenticity over perfection.

We all want to handle conflict in the “right” way—calm, measured, almost scripted. But sometimes, being real means being messy. It means admitting you’re hurt or angry without trying to package it neatly. And that’s okay.

I also started paying closer attention to my body. When I was defaulting to “the bigger person” mode, my body would tell me—tight shoulders, shallow breathing, a knot in my stomach. Now, I take those signals as an invitation to pause and ask: Am I about to betray myself here?

The more I practiced, the more I realized that freedom doesn’t come from never engaging in conflict—it comes from knowing you can engage without losing yourself.

These days, I still choose grace when it feels right. But I also choose truth when it’s necessary. I no longer see those two as mutually exclusive.

Walking away from the automatic instinct to be “the bigger person” hasn’t made me colder or more cynical. If anything, it’s made me warmer—because the connections I have now are built on honesty, not silent resentment.

The people in my life know where they stand with me, and I know where I stand with them. There’s no scorekeeping, no quietly swallowing things I’ll later replay at 2 a.m.

And perhaps the biggest change? I no longer see my worth as something tied to other people’s comfort. My worth is in showing up as my full self—sometimes gracious, sometimes blunt, always real.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: you don’t have to take the high road every time. You just have to take the road that lets you sleep at night.

And for me, that road is the one where I stop shrinking, start speaking, and finally feel free.

Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Brown Brothers Media, a digital publishing network reaching tens of millions of readers monthly. He holds a Graduate Diploma of Psychological Studies from Deakin University, though his real education came afterward: a warehouse job shifting TVs, a stretch of anxiety in his mid-twenties, and the slow discovery that studying the mind is not the same as learning how to live well. He started experimenting with Buddhist principles during breaks at the warehouse and eventually began writing about what he was learning. That writing became Hack Spirit, a widely read personal development site, and his book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism became a bestseller. His work breaks down complex ideas into frameworks people can apply immediately, whether they are navigating a career change, a difficult relationship, or the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Lachlan splits his time between Singapore and Saigon. He writes about high-performance routines, decision-making under pressure, digital innovation, and the intersection of Eastern philosophy with modern life. His perspective comes from having built things from scratch, failed at some of them, and learned that clarity comes from practice, not theory.