Boundaries 101: A Common Problem

We often talk about setting boundaries when we are upset.

We think people are taking advantage of us, so we decide we need to create a boundary.

The problem with setting a boundary when we’re not happy is that it often shows up more like a punishment for someone else rather than a tool that we use to protect ourselves.

Ideally, we set boundaries from a place of love. Love for ourselves because we are choosing to prioritise our needs and wants, just like we spend so much of our time prioritising others.

The beauty of the setting and applying a boundary from love means that when someone encroaches on our boundaries, we can respond from a place of love too. For context, imagine deciding that we are no longer going to respond to work emails over the weekend, and our colleague texts us on a Sunday. How do we want to respond?

Boundary enforcement with resentment: read the message, ruminate about how they shouldn’t be contacting us, complain about it to whoever will listen, judge the other person, respond with a terse email that we won’t be attending and mull it over in our minds for the rest of the weekend.

Boundary enforcement with love: read the message, accept that our colleague may want a response from us, and that’s okay (love for the other person), respond to our colleague advising that we will review it first thing Monday morning and enjoy the rest of our weekend (love for us).

The moral of this story is that we want to start creating boundaries when we are not feeling frazzled, stressed, or resentful. The boundaries we create and apply when we are in better frames of mind work in our favour and are so much easier to follow through on because we know it’s coming from a place of love.

Creating boundaries can feel confronting because, often, it involves us saying no to other people. So, if you need some help, take the next step, and book a Time Design session with me. I'd love to share more about my program and how it can help you create more hours in your week. Click on the clock to connect!