If you don’t know what boundaries are, or you’re not clear on them it might show up in your life with you feeling as though you can’t do right for doing wrong, sometimes with the same people, over and over. No matter what you do, it never feels like enough. You begin to feel like you’re not good enough. Let’s explore how you can start to redefine them. They’re a really common theme I often see in the gorgeous midlife women I work with.As giving, kind natured people, we find it really hard to say no when something is asked of us – the reality is that saying yes to others can mean saying no to ourselves.
Perhaps you haven’t recognised personal boundaries as being one of the issues for you?
Hopefully as you read this it will become clearer.
In the past, I’ve had my own issues with boundaries. I learned the hard way.
Some years ago, I got myself and my then business involved with another business, where they took liberties. They took, and I gave. This tested me to the max, and I didn’t know how to draw any kind of line. So, there was no line.
Everything in my life suffered as a result of this issue with boundaries.
- My health suffered.
- My happiness suffered.
- My family life suffered.
- My marriage suffered. In fact, it nearly ended at more than one point, because of constantly being torn in far too many directions.
- My kids suffered because they hardly saw me – my time was stretched so thin between too many places where I didn’t really need to be.
- And my business also suffered, so consequentially my bank balance suffered.
It was a real test of everything I could possibly muster. I felt miserable, and could see no benefit, nothing good about the situation whatsoever. I spent much of my time feeling frustrated that I had no time for the things that really did matter to me. It made me feel like I was failing at everything.
If you don’t currently have very good, or particularly healthy personal boundaries
This might be with people close to you, in your romantic relationships, in friendships – maybe its your adult children. Or maybe it’s someone new you have yet to ‘work out’; it can feel as though your energy is constantly being drained. If you are used to just being there for other people all the time – this can be a really lovely thing to do, to a point, but you don’t want to ever have to do that for anybody if it leaves you with nothing left to give to yourself. It’s not a good way to live.
To keep doing these things that you feel you’re ‘expected’ to keep doing just feels impossible, but you don’t want to let anybody down.
And if you’re not very clear on your personal boundaries, you will experience the feeling of not being enough – on a frequent basis.
That becomes a problem – because if those things aren’t actually things that you need to be doing in the first place, then the knock-on effect sounds something like this: “I’m not doing enough, I’m not enough for these people, I’m not helping enough, I’m not giving enough” – actually you’re probably already giving too much.
I often return to the saying ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’.
And if you can’t get a handle on that, it can really drain you.
- It can drain your spirit.
- It can drain all your resources.
- It can drain your energy.
- It can also drain your happiness.
- It can drain anything that you allow it to, unless you can take action to change it.
One of the ways that you can get clear on that, is by asking yourself a question or two. If you’re at a point when you’re thinking ‘I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. What is wrong with me? Why can I not keep supporting or going out of my way for X, Y or Z?’
Here’s a mini exercise for you.
The question to ask yourself here is what will happen if I don’t do the thing that’s expected of me?
You will probably have all manner of thoughts and answers flying around.
Try to do this as a gentle thought process, with no judgement – a quiet thinking moment, write it all down, get it out of your head and just ponder to yourself ‘If I don’t give my energy to this thing, or if I don’t give my attention to this situation, or if I don’t put any more ‘me’ into this, what will happen? What’s the worst thing that can happen? And how will that make me feel? Will a short period of time feeling bad that I didn’t say yes be worth it, for a much longer period of the relief I will feel from not being bound by it?’.
The counter-side question is, can you keep doing that thing indefinitely? If you’re running on empty already and really starting to wonder, ‘what is the point?’ It’s time to seriously look at where your personal boundaries are.
It might just be down to one situation, person, or activity – or something that you just take a little bit of time to work on.
Sometimes you really have to take stock and ask yourself a question.
‘What is the worst thing that can happen if I stopped doing that one thing – what happens to me, what happens for me?’
How can you start to feel, if you’re not constantly having to think about it, or focus on it, or have your intention probably pulled away from something quite important by this thing, this person, or situation.
There are loads of things that we find ourselves getting caught up in that probably don’t need our attention. It might even be something from the past, you focus so much on that, but then you’re not in the present either.
The most amazing things can happen when you have stepped back from the things that aren’t doing you any good.
That all comes down to boundaries.
If you struggle to say no to people often, it’s really quite common, what you have to think about is, what if saying yes to them, is saying no to yourself?
What if saying yes to their needs is saying no to your own?
It’s not necessarily something that you want, it might be a very real need, you might just need a little bit of time out and you are reluctant to treat yourself to that little bit of time in case you are needed somewhere else for someone else. It’s hard – it can be exhausting, and it’s not always necessary.
Start by adjusting your expectations of yourself, so that they’re realistic, manageable and healthy. And see what magic happens as a result!
If you need a little bit of help with this, just get in touch. Book a clarity call and let’s explore it together.