Boundaries

You have many rights, for example:

• The right to choose what you do with your body
• The right to feel safe
• The right to express your thoughts or feelings without judgement
• Saying no to something or someone without feeling guilty (this is a problem for a lot of women!)
• Practising self care before seeing to others’ needs (if you struggle to believe that you can do this, think of the instructions on a plane when the crew tell you about the oxygen masks – put yours on before helping anyone else with theirs)

The tiles above make the stages in forming boundaries look pretty simple and quick to do. Whilst boundaries can be simple and quick to put together, they’re not always, and it’s important to form them properly, so that you’re focusing on the right boundaries and areas of your life. That way, you’ll get the biggest reward in communicating and maintaining these boundaries.

There are several examples of rights at the top of this page, and if you’re struggling to come up with your values, answering the following questions might help you:

What activities make you happy?

What do you enjoy doing every day?

What do you wish you had more time for?

What are you passionate about?

What in your life do you hold close to your heart?

What do you talk about to friends and family in a positive light?

If you’re still struggling, don’t stress, have a look at the list of values below and pull out those that resonate with you.

Present
Productivity
Professionalism
Prosperity
Purpose
Quality
Realistic
Reason
Recognition
Recreation
Reflective
Respect
Responsibility
Restraint
Results-oriented
Reverence
Rigour
Risk
Satisfaction
Security
Self-reliance
Selfless
Sensitivity
Serenity
Service
Sharing
Significance
Silence
Simplicity
Sincerity
Skill
Skillfulness
Smart
Solitude
Spirit
Spirituality
Spontaneous
Stability
Status
Stewardship
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Surprise
Sustainability
Talent
Teamwork
Temperance

Tenacity
Thankful
Thorough
Thoughtful
Timeliness
Tolerance
Toughness
Traditional
Tranquility
Transparency
Trust
Trustworthy
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Unity
Valour
Victory
Vigour
Vision
Vitality
Wealth
Welcoming
Winning
Wisdom
Wonder

I hope that those values have given you some inspiration and you’ve been busy writing down those that jump out at you!

So what now? 

Once you’ve got a list of 10-20 values and rights that are important to you, the next step is reduce them down to the most important. That way, your boundaries will be easy to remember and manage, and you’ll make sure you’re really zooming in on the most important areas of your life.

You might find it easy to prioritise your list of rights and values down so you have 3-5, but for some this can be a challenge.

It’s up to you whether you start with the first or last value, but start somewhere. Even if you just reduce your list of 20 to 15, that’s a start, and you’re on your way!

When you re-read the values you’ve written down on your big list, you might find that some are similar, or related.

For example, when I last defined my values, I chose ‘learning’, but quickly replaced it with ‘growth’. 

Why?

Well, I love learning, I am a voracious reader, I binge shop on Udemy and have about five courses in progress on Coursera.

But not only do I love learning, I love putting into action what I learn. That, to me, is represented by the value of ‘growth’, so I replaced ‘learning’ with ‘growth’ on my values list.

Some other examples of similar values could be ‘bravery’ and courage’. Bravery can be more physical, whereas courage is considered to be more of a mental quality. Bravery is often exhibited with less thought and a lack of fear, whereas courage tends to be motivated by virtuous emotions and is a conscious action.

You may choose both of those, or you may see them as hugely different when you examine each value a little.

This stage is putting some detail and qualification around each of your values. When you define what you will and won’t accept for each of your value, you’re just getting super clear on the value of your values.

Here’s an example of friendship as a value and what I define as acceptable and unacceptable, to give you a headstart.

Value – Friendship

What I’ll accept – friends who support me, friends who add value to my life, friends I can support, friends I can rely on, friends I can trust. Friends who are honest with me, friends I can be vulnerable and honest with and friends who are interested in my life.

What I won’t accept – people who call me a friend, but let me down. People who are passive-aggressive to me. People whose values contradict mine. People whose opinions I don’t value. People who don’t enrich my life. People who don’t practice friendship – by this, I mean they don’t demonstrate friendship by actions. For example, they let me down or cancel plans, or perhaps they rarely message me first and criticise me when they do message me. People who don’t keep their word.

Now you’ve got specific with each of your values, you know exactly what you will and won’t accept from each.

This is an incredibly valuable activity to do, because it allows you to easily determine in any situation whether or not your value is met. If friendship is one of your values, but you’re constantly around people who let you down, break your trust or criticise you pretty frequently, it’ll be glaringly obvious that friendship is not alive and kicking regularly.

Whilst you may get a general shitty feeling in the scenario above, without clear definitions of what you will and won’t accept for each of your values, you can’t be certain what a value looks like in practical, real terms.

Right o – now it’s time to write out what each of your boundaries is. Let’s continue with the example of friendship as a value. You’ve got someone in your life who always lets you down when you make plans. It’s a rotten feeling, and this is an example I’ve faced myself many, many times.

Start off your boundary with ‘I’ and make sure it’s not personally critical about someone. Be clear, so the person you’re setting the boundary with can clearly understand what your boundary is. Something along the lines of, “You make me angry when you constantly let me down,” is not the road to go down, because it’s quite possibly going to start an argument.

Some examples are:

“It would mean a lot to me if you came to the show this weekend.”
“I was sad that you didn’t come out last week. Can we hang out soon?”
“I was a little upset when you didn’t show up. I would really like it if you could let me know next time so I’m not expecting you.”

“I need to tell you that I can’t talk about our other friend anymore—I feel guilty.”
“I’ve thought a lot about this and I don’t think I can keep this secret for you anymore. It’s not right for either of us.”
“You are my best friend, but I have to say no.”
“This feels wrong to me, I need you to respect that.”
“I disagree, but I still care about you.”
“I need to talk about this tomorrow.”
“Thank you for telling me that, I need some time to think.”

If the prospect of setting a boundary seems scary, just think of it as putting yourself first. If the person you’re setting the boundary with is really a friend, they’ll want to understand how they can be a good friend. If they value and respect you, then it won’t be a problem when you set a boundary, because they’ll want the best for you.

If the person is affronted or argumentative when you explain your boundary, then it might show you that they’re not actually a decent friend after all.

The pre-cursor in communicating a boundary once you’ve defined it, or perhaps an alternative to actually saying it out loud, can be to practice a silent boundary.

This is a boundary that you put in place as a promise to yourself.

I’ll give you an example. 

I’m friendly with someone who periodically says let’s go for a coffee or a drink; we’ve made plans in the past and she’s either cancelled or forgotten. Every time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt that next time she might keep her word. 

But that never happened, and each time she let me down, I felt irrelevant and I knew that I didn’t matter to her. I wasn’t prepared to set dates anymore, because that feeling of being unimportant absolutely sucked.

I made a promise to myself that I deserved better, and that I wouldn’t agree to any dates anymore. So now, if I get a message, I’ll reply politely and say just give me a call whenever you want to get together.

I haven’t yet had to actually say my boundary of not setting dates anymore out loud; I know that if I need to, I will.

You’ll need to actually ensure that you stick to your boundaries once you’ve set them!

You might also find that as your life, goals and challenges change, you need to change or add boundaries.

Now you know how to create and communicate boundaries, maintaining and updating them will become easier the more you practice implementing them!