The Implementation Of Personal Boundaries Is One Of The First Steps On Your Healing Journey.
Learn To Say No And Live A More Balanced, Peaceful and Connected Life.
Boundaries dictate how people can treat you, what they can expect from you and how they can behave around you. They are drawn from the framework of your core beliefs, your, perspective, opinions, and your values.
Knowing who you are and how you show up in the world, depicts how you manage a situation when conflict or differences of opinion arise. It helps you understand what you can handle and what you can’t. When what you want and what another wants creates challenges or even worst, arguments –it’s time to go inward, discover where you are at, and start implementing the wonderful word ‘No’.
Easier said than done right?
Ask yourself these questions
- Do you hesitate in saying ‘No’ to anyone?
- Do you find decision making difficult?
- Do you hate to let others down?
- Do you find it difficult to say what you mean? Or how you feel?
- Do you focus on everyone else before yourself?
Did you answer ‘Yes’ to any of the questions above?
At the core of our human beings, we want to please people. Yes – all of us. And from an early age, and through social conditioning, life experience, and ancestry lines, we learn the subtle art of fitting in. It’s an unconscious defence mechanism that we hone over time and bless us all – it has to stop!
Without personal boundaries in place, we create unsustainable patterns that soon enough lead to feeling disrespected, disappointed, burnt out, unheard, and unloved. and for the highly sensitive, people-pleasers among us, these are hard lessons to learn.
Leaning towards being flexible to keep the peace prevails, mostly at the expense of our own needs and the extreme is forming reliance upon helping and caring to the point of personal suffering. Martyrdom. And at the root of martyrdom and everything in between, is fear. Fear of not being good enough.
Imagine this.
I beg you to come to a party that you really don’t want to go to. Do you tell me, “No thanks I’ll pass.” or do you say “‘Sure!’ with a pleasing smile?
Are you being dragged to that party? Are you going along mindless without intention but wishing you were somewhere else? Are you going just to please me? How does it feel in your body?
If this is a struggle – you are being knocked off centre and will no doubt immediately go into your safe ‘pleasing’ mode.
The pattern must break.
My Metox
I never knew I needed boundaries. I wasn’t taught in school. Nor by my lovely parents. It was news to me. At 45 no less! What I did know, was that I have always been people aware. I was always ultra-conscious of whoever was around me and in service to everybody I knew. I constantly felt the need to fix, help, entertain and care to the point that I eventually ended up seeking the people out who needed it most and this lead to a kind of caring co-dependency. I worked out that most of my day was spent thinking of others. I barely got a mention.
I later learned that was the healer in me and on my incredible healing journey, I had to detach from everyone and learn who I was all over again. And to do that, I had to unlearn all that I knew.
I was having a Metox.
I became aware of energy. Mine, theirs, ours. I learned how an invasion of my own energy, lead me to somewhere I didn’t want to go and things I didn’t want to do.
So I learned how to zip myself up and remove the energy leaks from my life. I also learned that ‘zipping myself up’ didn’t mean to shut myself off. That trusting didn’t have to stop. And more.
I felt inner strength like I had never felt before and started to get excited about employing this new superpower.
My juicy, soul-filling unlearning journey continues.
Break The People-Pleasing Pattern And Learn To Say No!
Imagine this
You’re going off to meet a friend for lunch, the sun is shining and you’re in a really good mood. You meet your friend and they are in the worst mood ever.
Are your vibes are instantly lowered?
If your personal boundaries are not in place, you will absorb their energy and also end up in a bad mood. If you have set your boundaries, you will be in your power, zipped up, and protected from any bad vibes that are around you. You are able to stay in your own lane, stay in your good mood and have the best chance of lifting your friend out of theirs at the same time.
Win-win!
“The Boundaries will feel ‘mean’ when you’ve spent your whole life over-giving.”
Observe Not Absorb
Learning to say ‘No’ is hard at first. It first feels like a rehearsal, then eventually it comes naturally because you are connected to soul and you will know how you feel about a situation instantly.
“We should never accept another’s portrayal of how life is supposed to be. We should begin to live our lives from self-referral, reconnect with our higher self., detach from external messages, and live from our own consciousness. We need to get into our own energy field and strengthen our connection with this field until we understand what is ours and what belongs to another and when we stand firm in our own energy field, we can navigate anything. ” Lee Harris
Try This:
The next time you are with someone who is feeling negative in some way, notice how you feel when you are in their orbit. Then walk away. Take a breath and return to your own energy flow. There will be a mighty difference.
We are consistently sharing our energy with people around us and when boundaries are in place, we can conserve the energy we need, for ourselves. The book 'Energy Speaks' by Lee Harris really helped me in my own journey. Snap the code to learn more.
Developing healthy boundaries is an important stage in our personal growth and learning to express how we feel to others is a process we must consistently persistently polish. If you are incapable of saying ‘No’ – then the uncomfortable circumstances you find yourself in will continue to repeat until you do.
The work has to be done on the inside first and once you have mastered it, the no’s will flow.
Author: Andrea Britton
Andrea is the Creative Director and Editor at GITH. Tweet her at @andreabritton or send stories to hello@gozointhehouse.com.
