There are many aspects of self-compassion.
There's honesty with yourself.
There's self-care.
There's doing work you love.
There's taking time to rest.
But a very important part of self-care that usually goes unnoticed are our boundaries.
Setting boundaries is an act of self-compassion.
Today,
Let's look at the five ways we hurt our boundaries.
Every time you hurt your boundaries,
It's in one of these five categories.
And I don't want you to fall into these potholes.
I want you to avoid these pitfalls.
So here are the five.
The first is being a workaholic.
And workaholics have trouble setting boundaries because they just say,
I'm too busy.
I'm too busy doing these really important things in order to live my life and do the other important things.
The first trouble we have with boundaries is being a workaholic.
The second is the caretaker.
It's people who have this hyper-awareness that people are suffering,
And they think they're the ones who need to take care of all the suffering of everyone.
So the second way we hurt our own boundaries is I need to take care of all their needs so my needs don't matter.
I'm gonna ignore my needs because there is so much suffering in the world that I'm in tune with that unless I adopt every single stray dog and cat,
I don't feel like I'm doing enough.
The third is someone who sacrifices what they believe in order to fit into their family,
Their religious tradition,
In order to meet others' expectations.
It's the feeling that this institution,
This structure,
Its demands,
Its values are more important than what I feel inside.
So I will sacrifice myself at their altar.
I will sacrifice myself for this law firm.
I will sacrifice myself for this relationship.
Now that I'm a mom to kids,
I will sacrifice myself for these kids.
They're the only thing that matters.
There's nothing else that matters.
So it takes one thing.
It makes it the idol of your life,
And you're here to serve that idol,
And boundaries are irrelevant because all you're doing is serving that idol.
The fourth way we hurt our boundaries is similar but different.
It's the lover.
I love this person so much,
I will do anything to please them.
I will do anything to please the people around me.
I want them to like me,
And them liking me is so much more important than my inner compass.
Them liking me is more important than my happiness.
Sometimes them loving me and liking me is more important than my life.
That happens to people,
And it ends up being very harmful.
Those relationships are always abusive.
The fifth way we hurt our boundaries is numbing ourselves.
I shut myself down to reality.
So I build a boundary between me and reality.
Leadership has to be reality-based.
You need to be grounded in reality in order to grow a business,
To make a positive change.
In order to thrive professionally,
You need to be grounded in reality.
So the numberer is someone who builds a boundary between themselves and the present moment through drinking,
Through drugs,
Through over-shopping,
Through food,
Through gambling.
It's an excess of something in order to ignore something else,
And that's a huge boundary.
So setting boundaries is important.
I also wanna say everything in moderation.
You can have a boundary problem in the other direction.
You can be so good at setting boundaries that no one on this earth will ever get on your calendar,
And you won't ever spend time with anyone.
You can be so good at setting boundaries that you can actually be in a good relationship,
Or you can't actually get a job done because you just have boundary after boundary after boundary.
So set boundaries.
Don't numb yourself.
Don't do things just so people love you.
Don't sacrifice yourself at the altar of some institution.
Set boundaries.
But also know that the extreme of boundaries is being alone in your apartment 24-7 doing nothing,
And yet you have total,
Total boundaries.
So too many boundaries can be an issue.
Too few boundaries can be an issue.
