Often when people think about setting boundaries, they look outside themselves and think about setting limits for other people’s behavior with them. For example, your clients try to get more time, service, or content out of you than your agreement includes; your partner keeps leaving dirty clothes on the floor; your friend invites herself into your plans. (Reminder: you can’t control other people’s behavior but you can control what you will do when they cross your boundary.) This outward focus is totally normal and a great place to start.
It can be a bit harder to notice and accept when the challenging person is you. For example, you carry your phone with you wherever you go, frequently checking for emails and texts; you hop on social media while you are supposedly watching a movie with your sweetheart; you work into the evening thinking you “have to” to stay on top of your workload.
PAUSE. BREATHE. NOTICE.
As you go deeper and start to pay more attention to your personal boundaries or lack of them,
you’ll see that you can’t point to anyone outside of yourself for these kinds of boundary breaks. It’s an inside job to take responsibility for your heart and character, your presence and priorities, your talents and dreams. To have the agency over your life that I’m certain you want, you must become more deeply concerned about your own boundary blind spots than any other person’s behavior.
If you’re too busy for self-care, to eat right, to be present with your loved ones…chances are you’ve been galloping so long that speed and overwhelm became normalized. Not much wellbeing, connection, and contentment in that! You are sooooo not alone in this. We all need to rein ourselves in sometimes and do the inner work to set some overdue self-boundaries.
Maybe tonight you’ll put your phone away at 6pm. Maybe tomorrow you’ll unplug from work at 5pm and fix a simple, healthy meal. Maybe the next day you’ll go for a night stroll, hand in hand with your sweetheart, or take a self-nurturing candle lit bath…alone.
Every time we set a limit, even with ourselves, we learn something about ourselves, build confidence, increase self-worth, and make our wellbeing a top priority. Self-boundaries are how we demonstrate love for ourselves and show others our connection with them matters to us.
Journal Prompts
When/where/in what way is my cell phone keeping me from being truly present with myself or those around me? If I limited my social media engagement to X minutes per day/week, what are three things I could do with the time and attention that would get freed up? What is one little boundary change I’m willing to make just for a day to try it out?
Peace and harmony,
Dinah