Hello Readers,
Personal boundaries are the imaginary lines you draw around yourself that no one should cross either physically, unless invited in, or emotionally. You are entitled to respect, privacy, decency, kindness, love, truth and honour, to name but a few rights. If people cross the lines and blur the boundaries, in order to preserve your sanity, it is your duty to yourself to take personal responsibility and stand up for yourself by saying ‘No, I am not prepared to put up with other people’s bad behaviour’. Bad behaviour should never be rewarded. For example, if your pet chewed your best pair of shoes, would you reward your pet with a treat???? I think not….
But, you have to draw the lines first. You have to know what you will stand for and what you wont. You have to set the boundaries in your own mind before you can expect others to respect them and stick to them.
The more secure you become with your boundaries, the less power other people will have to affect and upset you. The more clearly defined your boundaries, the more you realise that other people’s stuff is more to do with them and less to do with you.
You are entitled to self respect. You cannot expect others to respect you unless you first respect yourself. You cannot respect others until you have formed a clear picture in your mind of who you are and what you are. It is imperative that you value yourself enough to set those lines. Once set, you then have to be assertive enough to reinforce them.
There is absolutely no point in doing all these things and then saying ‘No, no, no, no…yes all right then, you win, I give in’. You are never going to earn any brownie points by forever being a people pleaser because in the end you will only find yourself literally run ragged in ever decreasing circles being at the beck and call of others and no one will think any more of you for it either. ‘No’ has to mean ‘No’. Life is not a popularity contest. Its about you doing what makes you happy. You are not responsible for other people’s entertainment. Once you have got this into your head, life will begin to get a whole lot easier. Of course, there are bound to be people who do not like the new, assertive you and you can expect them to go off into the distance in a sulk and lets hope they will stay there, but there will also be those who will love the new you and will not only mutter noises of total agreement and support, they will also learn from your example. Success always breeds more success. The other good news is that you will attract the sort of new friends who don’t have an agenda, that will respect and like you for who you are, not for what your uses are.
Setting boundaries means that you never have to be scared of other people again because you now have a clear idea of what you will put up with and what you most definitely will not tolerate ever again. Once someone crosses the line between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour it gets really easy to say ‘No’. Setting boundaries enables us to resist pushy people, rude people, aggressive people, people who are only too happy to take advantage for their own gains and those who think nothing of using people unwisely and unwell.
This situation happened to me a few years ago. I chose to put a healthy distance between myself and someone whose behaviour became increasingly intolerable. But do you know, I still received greeting cards and telephone calls with no one speaking at the end of the phone for months afterwards. They either didn’t get the message, were plain thick or believed that after enough poking and prodding that I would eventually become worn down enough to succumb to their methods of caving in, which of course, I didn’t because ‘No’ means ‘No’.
Successful people know their worth and don’t get messed around. Successful people are the ones who can recognise emotional blackmail, mind game players, people who themselves are weak, needy and manipulative, not to mention those who dump on others and so forth. They will use every trick in the book to grind you down if you allow them to.
Its knowing when to recognise the types who trade on playing big and superior by making you feel small and unsure of yourself and putting that all important bomb proof barrier around yourself. Once you have got those important lines drawn around you, it gets a whole lot easier to stay behind them and be firm, resolute, strong and assertive.
Until Next Week,
Love and Light,
Linda and The Lulas xxx
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