I Choose Boundaries
AND THE MESSINESS OF REBUILDING THEM
One of my oldest, sneakiest unconscious limiting beliefs is that I must be doing the most (most helpful, most giving, most responsibility, etc.) or people won’t want me around.
While this idea may have been a helpful guide as a child, it created a burnt out, very helpful, undervalued, over-committed, high-achieving martyr with an excessive amount of co-dependent and imbalanced relationships.
Oof.
Now, I am choosing to love me enough to protect my resources. I am choosing my priorities. I am choosing greatness. And that means choosing to renegotiate my imbalanced relationships.
For me this looks like:
Recognizing a relationship or agreement is imbalanced. Getting specific about what of mine is out of balance.
Exploring how and why I created this arrangement (for my own learning).
Cleaning up my emotions around the situation.
Determining what balance looks like, specifically. Clarifying what is/not in my domain.
Making communications to renegotiate the agreement or relationship. Then navigating through the mess I make in my honorable attempt and repeatedly coming back to my why for this renegotiation.
Asking for help and leaning on trusted advisors for support because, damn baby, this shit is HARD!
This is proving to require feeling a lot of feelings, too. Which is slowing me down, but in a good way. Easy does it. One action at a time. One communication at a time. One feeling at a time.
Fortunately, my belt is full of the tools I need to recognize the misled guilt, misplaced sense of obligation, kindness and caring turned codependency, and “yeses” that were really “nos”. Then to identify specifically what balanced would look like in each situation.
Unfortunately, my skills for setting and upholding the necessary boundaries (outside of client agreements) are not so sharp. I screwed up today and tried to clean up a boundary while still in my peak of frustration. It created hurt for someone I care about and myself. It used up a lot of time and energy. It hurt. It almost triggered a spiral of negative thinking/beating myself up.
This is my reminder—to myself and the world—grace is required as we build new skills.
I choose to give myself grace as I learn.
I choose to keep muddling through until my relationships are balanced.
🌿To your journey and mine… let’s build the boundaries we need!