How to Establish the Right Boundaries that Show Your Worth

Boundaries

Hey, Welcome back, glad you’re here. A while back I tore down a shed in my backyard. I threw the debris into a truck, grabbed my water bill and driver’s license and headed to the city dump. As I pulled up to the dump, I passed a broken gate and approached a small shed with a guy half hanging out of a window who was supposed to check for residency by asking for my water bill and driver’s license, instead, he casually waves me through. He wasn’t interested in looking at my documentation, he didn’t even look at me. So, I went in, dumped my junk and left.

A few days later, I went to a bank. I mean a real bank, not a branch in a grocery store. As I approached the entrance, there was a sign on the door, “No hoodies, no sunglasses.” I walk into the lobby, I see cameras at every angle, a vault with a two foot think door, safety deposit boxes, bullet proof glass separates me from the customer representative, and there’s a guard walking around with a gun.

Now both places offer customer service, the dump and the bank. But what is the big difference? Everybody want’s what’s in the bank, nobody want’s what’s in a dump. If trash was precious, I guarantee landfills would have security. But if you want to go to the dump and fill your car up with trash, they won’t mind, saves them the hassle of bulldozing it. The ultimate point here is if it has value in society, it controlled. In order to do business with the bank, there was an expectation of behavior that did not exist for the dump.

Okay, let’s transfer that concept to you. Are you a bank or a dump? In other words, are you letting just about anybody in, do any kind of behavior without any kind of accountability and leave when they want to? Or are you limiting access to your time, energies and priorities, do you expect a certain respect, allow certain behaviors and hold people accountable in a relationship?

These are called boundaries.

People who recognize their worth, who know they have value, have boundaries. They do not let other people fly through their own lives and wreck what they have because of some poor belief system or crappy sense of self-worth.

There are a number of reasons boundaries are not intact:

• Poor self-esteem/worth
• Inability to prioritize
• Need to feel wanted
• Trying to do too much
• Need to feel busy
• Lack of faith in others to get the job done
• Lack of faith in God

Boundary Basics

1. Boundaries exist to protect your worth – If you are of the false belief system that you are worthless, then you will never establish boundaries. Have you ever left something out, overnight in the front yard, because you knew no one would ever steal it and if they did it’d be no loss? When you understand you have worth and that worth does not come from money or family or jobs or coolness then you’ll begin to understand everybody’s worth. I’ve got worth, so do you! Unfortunately, so does that jerk who cut you off bad in traffic the other day. As does the school bully. They may not be living a life of value or worth to anyone but they have it nonetheless. Your worth was given by God, therefore it can never be taken from you by a government, a church, a relative, a bad business deal, a lost wallet or a lost relationship. His love for you in the proof that He sent His Son Jesus Christ is proof of that love and that is worth in anyone’s eye. So, you have worth, you just may not be acting like it. Meaning, it’s a choice, act like it, you have worth. The battle for rights has sounded the drumbeat throughout history. And only things that have worth, have rights. Rocks have no rights but we do.
2. The one responsible for establishing boundaries is you – Yeah, I can see your eyes rolling from here. You’re gonna have to do this one. But that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go it alone. Lots of information on how to set up boundaries and we’ll get into the nuts and bolts toolbox in a moment. But it comes down to you making the choice to protect yourself. If you hand your wallet or purse over to someone to watch, you might trust them but you will feel a natural stress of it not being under your control. If someone borrows something of yours, you keep it in the back of your mind that it is missing until it is returned. Therefore, you cannot fully trust someone to protect you as well as you should protect yourself. In actuality, this is a moment of power for you. You get to say what goes, what stays, what matters, what doesn’t, what is appropriate and what is not. You. You, you, you! No one else is as qualified, worthy or as informed as you are to set up your boundaries.
3. Boundaries protect space and time – The Police knew what they were saying in 1980, when they wrote, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” That’s a spatial boundary, related to space. Give me some room here. People who lack some degree of social skills miss this one. Our personal space though is just one of the several ‘invisible bubbles’ that we think of as ‘psychologically ours’. Accordingly to anthropologist Edward T. Hall, we actually have a total of four. These are:

Public Space: This is the region that is a comfortable distance for strangers to exist in and is generally around 12ft+. People who you don’t know can stand 12 feet away from you and look in your general direction and you should find you don’t generally feel uncomfortable.

Social Space: Social space is the distance that we want people to stand when they talk to us. Anything closer than this will make us feel uncomfortable, while anything further will feel rude and awkward. Generally, social space is anywhere between 4ft to 12ft.

Personal Space: Personal space is the area that we reserve just for ourselves. It is assumed that once someone crosses this threshold that they are either being aggressive or intimate. For most, personal space ranges from 1.5ft to 4ft.

Intimate Space: Finally, intimate space is anything lower than 1.5ft and is a space we reserve only for those that we are already intimate with. If someone should invade our intimate space against our will, we will likely feel very uncomfortable or violated.

To protect yourself, you have to understand and put into place these spatial interactions.

The other is time. Time is irreplaceable and is of more value than money. Steve Jobs had all the money in the world but ran out of time. To manage your time requires the backbone and (ready for this…) self-worth to believe your priorities are more important than others. Now, I’m not teaching you to be selfish here, Jesus would have alone-time to be with His Father or to start another purpose (Matthew 15:39) I’m helping you to see that in order for you to start taking better care of yourself, you’re going to have to master the Art of “No.” They may be at the end of their rope, over taxed and under-resourced, but if you are too, what makes theirs more important? The answer, your priorities. Go ahead and say, “No” if you have plans, if you don’t want to, if it’s not cool with you, if you know better. It’s your life, set your own boundaries!

How to Set Up Your Boundaries

Nuts and Bolts Toolbox Time.

1. What Do You Want? – More time, better friends, more respect, better job, better health. Identify what you want to target, start with just a couple, once you get the hang of this, you can approach the others. Make a list to stay focused.
2. Identify what it will take to get what you want – reprioritizing time, money, energy is disruptive and will not happen on it’s on or by accident. You have to MAKE this happen. Like redirecting a river, you have to will this into being. Sit down, make a graph or flow chart. I’m a very visual guy and this step helps me to attain goals and set boundaries. Start with the list you made above, say better health. To get better health you have to change eating habits, spend some time walking or at the gym, if you are going to use a gym, you may have to reallocate money for that expense, you may have to rearrange your social calendar. Most of these things are very doable it just requires discipline.
3. What will you not tolerate? – Are there people around you who are not on-board with the New You? Are some people acting like baggage rather than helping with the load? Or is it certain behaviors you have had enough of from others or even yourself. You get to decide what you will and will not tolerate. This includes but is not limited to: How people talk to you or about you, how they touch you, how they behave around you and what habits they display around you or your family. Do they smoke or drink around your kids. Do they use around you, even though you may have been in treatment for addiction. Don’t think you’re being a snob by asking them to behave a certain way around you. You aren’t controlling their behavior, you’re asking them to respect you enough to treat you a certain way. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to…and you get to decide if you will tolerate that. If you worry about someone else’s reaction to a boundary you have set, you’re already working too much.
4. Be Assertive – That’s therapist talk for speaking plainly and directly with respect. If someone is not talking appropriately to you, don’t escalate things by talking back badly, it won’t solve anything and will happen again. Instead, look them in the eyes, speak up and say, “Please, don’t talk to me that way.”
5. Don’t apologize – Seems kind of strange but people often apologize for taking care of themselves. It sounds like this, “I’m sorry, but could you not do that?” Most of the time, when people do that, it’s really passive-aggressive. Meaning, they say it nice but that’s not their intent. But if you really don’t want something to happen, don’t apologize, just go back to #4 and repeat as necessary.
6. Dump the guilt – You’re not cutting them off from civilization, you’re setting guidelines on accepted, appropriate behavior around you. They can do whatever they want when you’re not around, but you should expect behaviors that generate and show respect from others. Once you get the hang of this, guilt will happen less as you see how others treat you better.
7. All this boils down to the belief that you have worth. If you believe that fact, because you do and just need to start acting like it, you will treat yourself like it and expect others to do the same.