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E8: Boundaries: When to Say Yes and How to Say No

I Hear You
I Hear You
E8: Boundaries: When to Say Yes and How to Say No
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Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Forgive typos and odd grammatical mistakes—this was transcribed using the magic of AI, and while it’s insanely awesome, it’s not perfect.

[00:00:00] On today’s episode of the I Hear You podcast, we’re taking a closer look at boundaries. Boundaries play a key role in keeping us safe, both physically and emotionally.

[00:00:11] They play a key role in helping us build stronger, healthier relationships, and they also play a key role in boosting and maintaining our energy, health, happiness and confidence. If you have a hard time saying no to people, because you don’t want to be rude, or maybe there’s someone in your life that you’re always covering for because they’re acting irresponsibly, or maybe you’re always helping people, but no one ever seems to be there for you. If any of these things relate or apply or sound familiar, you likely have a boundary problem. And if so, that’s fine because many of us do. But that’s the topic of today’s episode, getting into what boundaries are, why they’re valuable, how they help us, how they help others, and then talking about how to change that, how to start implementing healthy boundaries in your life so that you can reap the many, many benefits that come from them. Let’s dive in.

Boundaries: Why Are They Important?

[00:01:22] Many of us learned from an early age to be kind. We’re taught to share, to think of others. And this is all good. Obviously we want humans that understand how to be kind and how to share and how to think of others in our world. The problem is, we’re often not taught how to stick up for ourselves, how to say no. Or how to communicate our needs to others and or determine whether or not helping somebody else might actually harm us. So, like so many problems in life, a lack of boundaries or inability to set or recognize healthy boundaries stems from good intentions. All of this wanting to be good, wanting to be kind. If you listened to last week’s episode, you might recognize some of those trigger words as potentially being codependent tendencies. Right? Feeling like, oh, I can’t say no. Oh, I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to do that because that would be rude or, you know, I don’t wanna step on anyone’s toes. I’m fine. Just giving up portions of my own happiness. That is codependency. And typically, when we are codependent, we also have a hard time setting boundaries. So let’s look at a handful of situations and you tell me or think to yourself if any of these sound familiar.

[00:02:40] Your sibling agrees to take care of a time sensitive task and simply forgets about it until the last minute, leaving you to drop everything and do it yourself. An employee of yours consistently shows up late to meetings, so you either have to wait to start or you backtrack to fill them in when they arrive. Your parent gambles away all of their money, again, and comes to you for a loan, you begrudgingly give them the money, but you know you’ll never get it back.

[00:03:09] You buy a car for your teenager, but they neglect to do the proper care and maintenance. So you step in to do it yourself, just so you don’t have to pay for the repairs later on down the road. Maybe your parents regularly offer unsolicited parenting advice. So instead of telling them you don’t want advice, you simply stop going over to visit and keep making up excuses as to why you can’t see them. Maybe the person you’re dating expects you to be there for them when they’re going through a hard time, but they’re never willing to listen when you are. Or maybe that person simply calls you up on the weekends expecting sex, but isn’t willing to commit at any level or actually develop a fulfilling relationship that you’re hoping for. And lastly, let’s say that your spouse is struggling with an addiction, and despite your pleas for them to quit and their repeated promises to do so, they continue acting out and are unwilling to get help. So, perhaps you try to, quote unquote, make them stop or just hope that they’ll eventually figure it out. Now, those are a lot of examples, but did one or more resonate with you? Are there elements in your life? Are there situations in your life that relate to some of these examples we talked about here?

[00:04:23] I ask that and I focus in on some of these examples here, because all of these situations breed resentment. They damage your relationships and they weaken your self-respect. And while it may seem like you’re helping the other person in these situations, the truth is you’re not. In fact, you’re hurting them. Because here’s how all these situations actually play out.

[00:04:46] First, someone drops responsibility. Next, you are negatively affected by it or you worry that they will be negatively affected by it. Then, you feel like you have to do something in order to save the other person and or yourself from the consequences. Fourth, you throw your time, focus money, energy, attention or self respect out the window, and five, you end up resenting them because of it.

[00:05:12] So while we actually mean, well, all of these situations, they’re they’re harmful to us, obviously, now, hopefully, but they’re also harmful to the other person because everything we just talked about kind? If you end up giving that money to your parents, but now you resent them for it. Do they appreciate that? And you certainly don’t feel great about yourself. You certainly don’t enjoy life at that moment. So in our attempt to help, we actually end up enabling or allowing or encouraging irresponsible behavior, at least in these instances.

Boundaries, Codependency and Happiness

[00:05:42] So, again, I feel like I always have to throw in these disclaimers here. I’m not saying you can’t help people. I’m not saying you can’t make exceptions, that you can’t go out of your way to help others. What we’re talking about here are situations when, you know, you are giving up some of your own happiness, when you know you are sacrificing your own self respect or you know that you’re doing something begrudgingly. That is a telltale sign that you need to place a boundary there. You need to stick up for yourself. And it will help you and it will help the other person. So, I mentioned codependency earlier on in this episode, and I won’t go into depth. I won’t go into in-depth today because we just had an entire episode on it last week. However, if you haven’t listened to that, go back and do so. But if you’re gonna keep listening to this one first, I’ll give you a quick overview. In simplest terms, codependency means feeling like you’re responsible for other people’s actions, feelings or happiness. If they’re not happy, you’re not happy.

[00:06:40] If someone’s upset, you feel an almost uncontrollable need to make them feel better. Then perhaps you worried that if you don’t show up in a certain way, or maybe if you don’t say just the right things, the other person will no longer like you or heaven forbid, leave you. So again, if you have listened that episode, I recommend you go back and listen to that, because codependency oftentimes is at the root of a lack of boundaries. So, again, if you haven’t listened to that episode, I recommend you go back and do so because issues with boundaries almost always stem from a strong feeling of codependency. So you have to understand that at least it’s very helpful to understand that to round out and support your understanding of boundaries. So what are boundaries? Well, they’re Lines, physical or metaphorical, that separate what is ours and what is someone else’s. So in the physical world, fences or obvious boundaries that tell your neighbors which land is yours and which is theirs. They show you where you have rights and responsibilities and where you don’t. So, I mean, let’s imagine for a second that your neighbor completely neglects their lawn for the summer. They refuse to cut, fertilize the grass until it’s completely grown over with weeds. But you, in contrast, find great joy in taking care of yours. It’s lush, green and well-kept, and it’s sort of sanctuary for you when you need to go relax and unwind.

[00:08:04] Then, one day you get a knock on your door, it’s your neighbor and he’s yelling at you because he wants to enjoy his yard. But it’s now so overgrown that he can’t even walk through it. It’s not fair that you get to enjoy your backyard like this when mine’s are just covered in weeds. You might say.

[00:08:22] What do you do? No. This is ridiculous. Right? His yard is not your problem. You’ve put in the time and effort to care for your land and you get to enjoy it. You have zero responsibility for taking care of his. And it’d be a shame to suddenly stop enjoying your own just because he didn’t put in the same work you did. Right?

[00:08:43] Now, similarly, boundaries in the emotional world help us understand what we are responsible for and what we’re not. They help us understand who we’re responsible for and who we’re not. And they are a tool to help others understand what we’re okay with and what we’re not okay with.

[00:09:01] So in the real world, if we’re looking at physical boundaries, it’s quite easy to see that your neighbor’s problem is his problem and it’s not yours. And if you had to, you can go out to your backyard, point to the fence, the boundary, and say, this clearly shows that this is your problem and not mine. But it gets trickier when we’re talking about emotions. It gets trickier when we’re talking about metaphorical boundaries. It gets trickier when we’re talking about relationships. So what does the boundary look like if it’s not a fence? If it’s not a physical fence? What does a boundary look like? Well, generally, you can’t make people do or stop doing something. Nor is it healthy or sometimes even legal to try to force somebody to act a certain way. And that’s not what we’re talking about here.

[00:09:49] We’re talking about setting a boundary that tells that person what you will do if they decide to show up a certain way. So essentially a boundary is saying, I’m okay with or excuse me, I’m not OK with blank. And if you keep doing that, I will blank. Or it might look like saying, I need or would like this, if you’re unable or willing or unwilling to do so, I will choose to blank. So honestly, as I’m using the blank and blank, I’m realizing it’s probably not that helpful. So let me try to give you a more concrete example

Examples Of Setting Boundaries

[00:10:25] A boundary might be as simple as saying that you have a friend that wants to stay at your house. Maybe he wants to spend a couple of evenings there and you’re OK. You’re fine with it, assuming he doesn’t trash your house. That’s a perfectly reasonable request to make. So you can say absolutely. You’re more than welcome to spend the night. So he comes. He spends the night, but he does trash the house. Maybe he just eats. He raids your pantry, he eats all your food and leaves the wrappers everywhere. So you wake up the next morning and you come back to him and you say, hey, will you please clean up all the wrappers? I don’t appreciate that. And he doesn’t. So you look at it when you say, well, and I k if you’re going to stay here, I need you to do this and says, well, no, I shouldn’t have to. You know, and of course I’m going to stay here because I don’t have a house. What am I supposed to do? Well, a very simple, healthy boundary can say, I’m OK with you staying here as long as you agree to ask before you eat something and you promise to clean up after your messes. If you don’t, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. That’s a boundary.

[00:11:27] I mean, he gets to do whatever he wants? He can choose to eat, he can choose to leave the wrappers there. That doesn’t mean you have to let him continue to do that in your house. Does that make sense? So a boundary is saying, I’m not okay with blank. And if you keep doing blank, then, here’s the consequence. Here’s what I will do to take care of myself.

[00:11:51] Now, I think this is a good point to jump in here and clarify one other point, and that is that boundaries are not threats.

Boundaries Vs. Threats

[00:11:58] So a threat, according to the dictionary, is a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury or damage on someone in retribution, for something that they do or don’t do. OK, so. So a threat is saying if you do this or if you don’t do this, I’m going to hurt you. That’s a threat and we don’t want to be threatening people.

[00:12:19] A boundary, in contrast, is a statement of intention to preserve one’s own safety. Comfort, respect, money. What have you. Healthy boundaries are rooted in self love. Not in a desire to manipulate or control the other person. I want to say that again, because that’s crucial to understand here, healthy boundaries must be rooted in self love, not in a desire to manipulate or control the other person. Now, boundaries may feel like threats to people who are emotionally healthy. And this is because they don’t yet understand the key truth that they are responsible for their own happiness, that they are generally not victims of their circumstances. So, it’s easy to feel like a boundary hurts you. You know, if we go back to your example with the friend for a second, when you say if you keep doing this, you’re going to have to leave. Well, he might hear I’m kicking you out. He might hear, wow, my friend’s a total jerk. I can’t believe he’d do that to me. I’m gonna be homeless. I don’t have enough money. I’m gonna be hungry. How could you do that to me?

[00:13:24] So it feels like a threat. But is it a threat? Who’s fault is it that he’d be living on the streets?

[00:13:33] Is it yours or is it his? So boundaries, again, not a threat because you’re not saying I’m going to hurt you if you don’t do what I want. You’re saying, if you don’t do, if you don’t respect my boundaries, here’s what I have to do to preserve my self respect and to make sure I’m taking responsibility for my own happiness. If you listened to Episode 2 on responsibility, you can start to see why this is a foundational principle, and you might recall an instance that I shared where I was dealing with a difficult colleague who, I won’t get into all the details here. You can go back and listen to it there. But the short version is he really threw me under the bus in front of his entire team with statements that were completely false. And I called him out on it. I was ticked. I was beyond ticked. I was not about to just let that go. Despite some other people saying, oh, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. But I thought in that moment I need to stick up for myself, because that’s not OK. And so I talked to him about it and I was very direct with him. And and I reached a point where after I explained him how I was feeling and why I was upset, I set a boundary and I said, I would like you to go back to your team and tell them that you were wrong.

[00:14:49] And if you don’t, then I will do that because everything you shared was false. And it just undid all of the work my team and I have been doing for the past several years. And I still vividly remember he recoiled. He leaned back in his chair and said, Oh, you’re threatening me now, are you? And I said, this is not a threat. This is a promise. This is a boundary. I didn’t use that word in that conversation, but that’s what it was. It was saying, this is what I need is all a company needs. This is what is important overall is to set the record straight, to reintroduce truth back into that situation. So I’m inviting you to go do that. You have the choice. You get to go do that yourself. If you do, I appreciate it. If you don’t. I will do it, because somebody needs to do it. And he understood it. As I explained it, he recognized that I wasn’t threatening him. He recognized that it was simply me telling him what I was going to do if he did not respect my boundary.

[00:15:47] So, perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here, though. Let’s return for a moment to your angry neighbor, the guy that we talked about at the beginning who was all upset because his yard was grown over with weeds. And yours wasn’t. So. Suppose you use.

[00:16:01] Suppose you politely told him that you were sorry that his yard wasn’t usable and you reminded him that he has the power to fix it. You shut your door and you return to your yard and your ice cold lemonade. Then, a few moments later, you see a giant weed fly over your fence and land in your garden. Then another and another, then a bag of trash flies over your fence. You stand up and you walk over to see what’s going on. And as you peer over the fence, you see your neighbor frantically pulling out weeds, picking up trash and then tossing it over the fence into your yard.

[00:16:36] Now, what do you do?

[00:16:38] It’s not your place to tell your neighbor what he can and can’t do in his yard, as long as it doesn’t affect or harm yours. Right? But this, throwing his trash into your yard, that’s too far. In this case, his careless actions are now affecting you and you’re not OK with it, at least I wouldn’t be okay with it.

[00:16:56] So you ask him to stop. Come retrieve the weeds and garbage you threw over here and dispose of it elsewhere. And if you don’t stop. You might say, I will call the police. Now, while this may not be an easy conversation, I think most would agree that it’s a perfectly reasonable, self-respecting way to handle it. You can’t make your neighbor stop, but you can be very clear about what you will do if he doesn’t. Again, this is a boundary. So if your sibling comes up to you last minute because she maxed her credit cards again and can’t make her payment, she’s essentially throwing her weed’s over her fence and into your yard. She is trying to make her problem yours. The unspoken message here is, if you love me, you’ll pay my bill for me. Now, if this is a pattern for her, the codependent response would be to lend her the money, even if doing so would strain your budget and save her from the consequences and then resent her for it. Again, there’s some drama triangle here. If you remmeber that, there’s codependency here and now you understand there’s a lack of boundaries here. So the healthy, loving boundary approach would be to kindly let her know that you will not lend her the money because you know it is enabling the irresponsible behavior.

[00:18:12] And while that’s not an easy conversation to have, it prevents you from feeling like you’ve been taken advantage of. And it stops feelings of resentment toward your sister. It also increases the chance that your sister will actually wake up to her actions and change her spending habits. So can you see here how boundaries are, in fact, healthy? Can you see how they protect your happiness? I talk in an early episode about how we are responsible for our own happiness. And sometimes people say, well, how on earth am I supposed to do that when all of this is happening to me in my life? How on earth am I supposed to do that when I grew up in the family that I did? How am I supposed to do that when I have a horrible job or where my friends don’t respect me or when you name it? You go on and on and on. How? By setting boundaries. Obviously, it’s easier said than done, but this is how we start taking responsibility for our own happiness. This is how we train other people to treat us. If we are in the habit of not setting boundaries and not asserting ourselves and not communicating to people.

[00:19:19] Well, they learn pretty quickly that they can get us to do wherever they want. They learned pretty quickly that they can get away with murder because we’re willing to just cover for it all or turn the other cheek or turn a blind eye. Well, what have you. So learning to set boundaries really protects our own happiness. And it’s a critical part of regaining that confidence and a sense of self respect. A second way that setting boundaries makes life better is it helps others. Our boundaries actually help others.

Setting Boundaries Helps Others

[00:19:52] Again, I mentioned this last week on our episode on codependency. I talked about my favorite book on boundaries titled “Surprise” Boundaries by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. And I shared a story there that they share in the book about some parents that came in and they were seeking help dealing with their irresponsible son. And essentially they said, we’re doing this and this and this for him. But he keeps quitting his jobs and he’s dropping out of school and so on and so forth. You’ve got to help us. How do we change him? And Dr. Cloud in that moment essentially said your son doesn’t have a problem. It’s your problem, because you’re taking all of his problems onto yourself. Quoting from the book here, he says he can do pretty much whatever he wants. No problem. You pay, you fret, you worry, you plan. You exert energy to keep him going. He doesn’t have a problem because you’ve taken it from him. Those things should be his problem.

[00:20:50] But as it now stands, they’re yours. And then he says, would you like me to help you, help him to have some problems? I love that statement because his observation is spot on. That couples lack of boundaries, their codependency was enabling their son to continue in all sorts of unhealthy, irresponsible and disrespectful behaviors. For their son to change, they had to stop saving him from the consequences of his actions. That again, is where boundaries come into play.

[00:21:24] In fact, I know a family who’s son exhibited similarly irresponsible behaviors and refused to change. So when he turned 18, they set clear and loving, I might add boundaries to show what they would and wouldn’t put up with in their home. And as long as he did, his part showed respect, abided by the rules of the home. He had a room, he had food, clothes and all the other essentials. But if he chose not to respect that boundary, not to respect those rules and continued to harm the family, he was out. And ultimately, he chose to violate those boundaries and so his parents followed through to their credit. That’s not an easy thing to do. And they told them to leave. Now, I’m not a parent yet, but I can imagine how hard that must have been. And if you are a parent, I’m sure some of you right now are writhing a little bit, thinking I could never ask my child to leave.

[00:22:18] But think about it.

[00:22:21] Letting him stay was doing what to him for doing what for him? Maybe I should say. It was enabling him, right? As long as they were taking away his problems, as long as he could act responsibly and not have to deal with the city, not deal with the consequences, he was not changing. And that’s not a very kind thing to. We don’t want our children to grow up like that, right? We want them to learn to take responsibility. We want them to become responsible, healthy, connected, grounded individuals. And clearly in this instance, this couple recognized that that was not happening unless they set some boundaries. Well, I actually watched as this couple struggled quite frequently with their decision, wondering if it was truly the right thing to do. And you can bet that they felt judgment from others in their social circles that even from their own family, how how on earth could you could they let their son fend for himself on the streets like that because he was literally living on the streets? Now, I won’t go into all the details, but this young man hit consequences fast.

[00:23:27] He found problems very quickly and he suffered through them for a number of months. And his parents stayed in contact with him and they always made sure that that he knew they loved him unconditionally without backtracking on their boundaries. Those two things can co-exist. You can love someone unconditionally and not put up with their actions. And so they reminded in the moment he decided to change. He had a place back home. That to this young man’s credit, after several months, he did change. He came around and after facing the harsh consequences of his actions and finding himself in some pretty bad places, he recognized that he brought it upon himself and that he had the power to change it. So, again, to his credit, he stepped up. He took charge of his life. He actually joined the military. He got his pride in check and he thrived. He continually ranked up. He gotten the best physical and mental fitness of his life. He started calling his family weekly and he began to live a life based on personal responsibility. I spoke to his parents a few months after all this happened and they said, he thanks us almost every time we talk to him, for having the courage to hold him accountable for making the hard call. He’s a completely different person now, happier than we’ve ever seen. And we have a fantastic relationship.

[00:24:55] How cool is that? How powerful is that?

[00:25:01] Now, obviously, not every situation plays out like that. I recognize that. There are going to be instances where you might set a boundary with someone and they never choose to take responsibility. They do choose to leave you. Or you might have to choose not have to, but you might choose to leave them. Actually, I will say that you might have to choose to leave them in order to stay true to yourself and your own happiness. And that is a difficult decision. So there is not a one size fits all. It’s impossible for me to ever tell clients. Well, you should leave him or you should leave her or they’re not going to change or they are going to change. It’s impossible for me to ever say something like that, which is why I teach principles. And this here is the power of boundaries that if you want to hang onto your own self-respect and your own happiness. And if you want to give other people the best chance at reclaiming their own happiness and their freedom. Boundaries are one of the most valuable ways you can do that. The final point that I want to talk about as far as how boundaries help us and benefit us. I’ve already somewhat spoken to here. But point number three here is that boundaries earn you respect. Few things are as attractive as a man or a woman who knows what they will and won’t put up with and holds their ground. Few things are more admirable than a leader who sets clear expectations, hold people accountable and doesn’t get pushed around. You know, a friend of mine had actually been dating someone for a good long while and she was ready to start moving it toward marriage. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, was still terrified by the idea and kept insisting that he just needed more time.

[00:26:44] And while she was happy to grant that for the first five times that he’d set it in the first two years that they had been dating, she was having a hard time now believing that things would ever change. And so after strong encouragement from her support group, she set a boundary and she essentially said to her boyfriend, either you go all in on our relationship or I’m out. I won’t just sit around waiting forever. I need to feel like this is progressing or it’s no longer going to work for me. You know I love you, but something doesn’t change in the next couple of weeks here. I’ve got to move on. You know, she’s back again. She’s saying she’s not threatening. Say I’m going to harm you. She’s saying if this doesn’t change, I need to move on for my sake. Now, a funny thing happened.

[00:27:30] It’s easy to sit on the fence of indecision when you feel like both options are going to be there for you indefinitely. Right? But it’s funny how quickly we act when one of those options suddenly threatens to walk away. That’s it. I use the word threatened, but you get it. It didn’t take long for this guy to realize that he was about to make a huge mistake by letting her go. And he recognized that if he didn’t snap out of it, she was going to go. She wasn’t bluffing and he knew it. And so she had she had enough self-respect to look out for her own happiness in the future. She found out, she recognized that she was starting to resent her boyfriend, which, of course, she doesn’t want to do. She loves him and nobody wants resentment breeding in a relationship. So she had a choice there. She could just resent him. She could complain to all of her friends and her family about how non-committal he was and kind of stew in this woe was me victim mindset, which wouldn’t change anything. Well, actually, it would. And it would make things worse. But it wouldn’t get her married. It wouldn’t help their relationship progress. So instead, she made the healthy decision and she said, you know what, I’m realizing I’m no longer happy with our relationship the way that it is. I need to set some boundaries. I need to assert myself. I need to be clear to my boyfriend on what it is that I’m expecting now. And if he decides not to do that, that’s fine. I can’t control him. That’s his decision. If he chooses not to. I need to move on.

[00:28:55] Well, surprise, surprise, he stepped up. He went all in and they’re now happily married so that that self-respect, peace, if you struggle with self respect, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg kind of thing here, because if you struggle with self respect, then you’ll likely struggle with setting boundaries. And yet if you struggle with setting boundaries, you very likely struggle with self respect. So all of these principles that we’re talking about aim to help boost that confidence, aim to give you the tools and the tips and the techniques to help grow your confidence, grow your EQ, your emotional intelligence, and help you find more of that confidence and happiness in life.

Wrapping it Up

[00:29:33] So as we wind down this episode, we’ve already talked about a handful of examples of healthy boundaries. But I want to give a handful more just to help round out round out the example pool, if you will. Every boundary is going to be unique to you in your situation, obviously. But here are a handful examples of what a healthy, self-respecting boundaries might look like. It might be telling your friends and family members that while you appreciate their concern, you would not like dating advice. It might mean making it clear to a prospective employer that you need to be home with your family no later than 6 o’clock each night. Now, obviously you can say if you have certain flexibility there, that’s fine. But it’s entirely appropriate to say, hey, I just want to make sure here this is a very important rule for me that I’m home by 6 o’clock each night.

[00:30:22] Is that going to work in this role? Because if not, I’d like to know that upfront. Healthy boundary might look like letting your kids know that you’re leaving for the movie at 4:45 sharp. And if they’re not ready and in the car at that time, they’re staying home. A healthy boundary might mean telling a toxic found new member how their actions are harming you and explaining that they will no longer be invited to family events unless they are willing to go to therapy with you. It might mean calling a colleague out for talking about you behind your back and asking that they come directly to you next time if they have an issue with you. It might mean telling a prospective client that you require 50% down before you’ll ship an order. Or it might mean telling your spouse about how their gaming or alcohol or drug addiction is affecting you and telling them you will leave if they do not seek help.

[00:31:11] All examples of healthy boundaries and simple right? It’s simple in principle and yet simple does not always equal easy. I recognize that I still struggle and still struggle with setting boundaries, and I likely will throughout my entire life because all of these principles we talk about are something that I don’t think anybody can truly master. And that’s fine. As long as we become aware of it, as long as we’re doing our best, that’s enough, at least in my mind, because it provides the freedom and the insight, the value that we’re looking for.

An Invitation

[00:31:49] So how are you doing?

[00:31:52] How is all this sounding to you? How are your boundaries? Have certain relationships or experiences come to mind as you’ve listened to this? Have you been able to identify ways that you could use boundaries to regain some of that self respect or happiness?

[00:32:09] My invitation here as we wrap up is this, as you go through the rest of your day. Keep an eye out for those codependent thoughts and opportunities to set boundaries. If you want a quick trick for finding areas that you might lack boundaries, look for any event that has left you feeling resentful, closed off or victimized, then explore how you might have used boundaries to help that play out differently.

[00:32:34] So, again, as always, I will leave links in the show notes to other articles on my Web site that might be valuable and other external resources to help round out your understanding. My aim again is always to provide an overall overview of these topics. Clearly, I could not talk about everything there is to say about boundaries in 30 45  minutes, but I hope that you’ve found some value in this. I hope that if nothing else, it’s been eye-opening to you and starts a conversation either within your faith with yourself, within your head, with your partner, with your family members, with your friends. Because all of these things are so valuable, so insightful, so life changing I should say, when we really internalize them and learn to take control of how we show up, learn to take control of our own happiness.

[00:33:22] So with that, we’re going to wrap up today. If you’re seeing value in this, if this is resonating with you, I’d love to hear from you. If there are questions that I haven’t answered, I’d love to hear from you. And I welcome feedback on the podcast. I’m doing this for you. This is a lot of work. I’m not going to lie. I already feel like a lot more work than writing my book, including the audio version of my book. So podcasting, I’m being totally honest and a little vulnerable here. Not my favorite, but I’m doing it because I get feedback that it is valuable and I recognize that some people don’t want to read. They like to listen. So here I am. But please feel free to reach out to making me feedback. And you can follow me on Instagram. You can contact me via my Website, michaelssorensen.com.  And with that, we will wrap up and I will talk to you next week.

Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash

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