Having healthy boundaries is key to living a life that is authentic and balanced. This involves knowing and understanding what your core values are and where your limits are, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. After all, if you do not know where your boundaries are, how would anyone else possibly know?
Setting healthy boundaries around what you will allow into your world is key and takes practice until it becomes your everyday normal. Life gets a whole lot easier and flows better for you too when you are able to create healthy boundaries within your relationships. Self-care, self-love, self-approval, self-respect, and self-awareness is so important on many levels and can have such a profound effect in every aspect of your life. Trusting and backing yourself by knowing who you are and what you are about authentically are some of the keys to setting healthy boundaries. What it comes down to is this: If you do not know who you are, what makes you tick, what you truly want and do not want and what makes YOUR soul sing, then how is anyone else meant to know?
To really understand boundaries, think about where you live. There is a boundary on the property you live in, there is also a front door and rooms or spaces that serve purposes, including the space where you sleep. You have boundaries around who you let into your yard, you have stronger boundaries around who you let in your front door and even stricter boundaries around who you let in your bedroom. So, you already exercise boundaries in your life, just on a physical level, what about boundaries on other levels?
Where do you start? Actually, you start by just stopping. Seriously. Stop long enough to just breathe. That is a boundary in itself. It is you giving yourself respect by telling yourself that you are important and that it is ok to just stop, even if it is just momentarily. That is valuing and honouring you and your time. As you are reading this, take some big breaths, look around you and take note of what you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Appreciate the little things and put some wonder into your life. Start with ‘I wonder what is important to me?’ Is it respect, honesty, peace, freedom, authenticity? What is it for you? Everyone is different so don’t judge yourself or compare yourself to others.
Pick 10 items, narrow it down to 5, then narrow it down to 3 and really look at them. These are your core values or your non-negotiables. Really look at each of them and feel into them. Where are you in alignment with them? Where are you not? Let’s take respect for example. What does respect look and feel like to you? How do you know when you have respect and how do you know when you feel respected? Do you feel that you are being shown respect by others? And at the same time, are you respecting yourself? Are you respecting others? How are you showing up in your own life?
This process will enable you to decide where your benchmark is which will then help you to start setting healthy boundaries around people, places, situations, and things in your life. After all, if you do not love yourself or place a high value on your own needs, wants and desires and you are not willing to make YOU a priority, you are essentially giving from an empty cup and are telling everyone around you, you are not important. How can you give from an empty cup? I wonder how good it would feel to be able to fill your cup all the way up and even have it overflow. How will you know if somebody is overstepping your boundaries if you haven’t decided where they are?
Being triggered is a sign that there is a boundary being crossed, whether it’s your boundary or someone else’s. You or others do not get triggered for no reason. Perhaps you get a weird vibe, an unpleasant feeling or you just get sad, angry, or frustrated when you interact with someone or walk into a room or past a person. Or perhaps you know in your gut that something just is not right. It’s important to pay attention to these feelings, they are your flag to stop and pay attention to how you are feeling so you can assess what’s going on for you and within you. Then you know whether something is acceptable to you or whether a boundary is being crossed. Or even whether you just need to put some distance in place, whether temporarily or permanently.
You can love a person deeply and truly and still decide that doing so from a distance is best for your mental and emotional health. Setting healthy boundaries is key to your personal and spiritual development.
Share your experiences in the comments as it may help others in their journey.
If you need any support or are ready to learn about creating healthy boundaries in your life, book in for an individual reading.