Maintaining Healthy Boundaries

SUMMARY

Do you get frustrated by the way that people treat you or have you sat down and set some boundaries and then communicated them with people?

For many years in my life, I was exactly that; I'd get really upset because of the way that people treated me. Then I realized that the first problem was that they were only treating me the way that I was treating myself. So, the first thing that we need to do when we set healthy boundaries is to decide that we're worthy of having them.

Let me take you through the three steps that you need to take, so that you can set and maintain those boundaries. This is going to give you more energy, it's going to remove conflict, and you're going to feel so much better in your day.

The first thing you need to do is to lift your self-worth.

The second thing we need to do is make a decision.

Then, the third thing you want to do is to enforce your boundaries.

When we set and maintain healthy boundaries, our whole world changes and it starts with building our Personal Power. So, if you haven't listened to the last few weeks, go back, go through them. And together we can continue to work on this thing called our identity. Where we shift our beliefs from past experiences, we change the meanings that we've put on them, and we start living a life where we feel more worthy- where we are self-approved and not looking for it from other people.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, where I continue this conversation around Personal Power by helping you to say yes and no appropriately, I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you get frustrated by the way that people treat you?

Or have you sat down and set some boundaries and then communicated them with people?

Stick with me in this episode as I'm going to show you exactly how to do that.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Personal Power by helping you to set and maintain healthy boundaries.

For many years in my life, I was exactly that; I'd get really upset because of the way that people treated me. Then I realized that the first problem was that they were only treating me the way that I was treating myself. So, the first thing that we need to do when we set healthy boundaries is to decide that we're worthy of having them.

Let me take you through the three steps that you need to take, so that you can set and maintain those boundaries. This is going to give you more energy, it's going to remove conflict, and you're going to feel so much better in your day.

The first thing you need to do is to lift your self-worth.

As I said, people were treating me the way that I was treating myself; and you're never going to have people treat you better than the way that you treat yourself. So, the first thing is to make sure that you continue to work on that Personal Power. As I said, this is going to be a continual process. It's not something that you do once and it's done- it's something that you walk in every single day. When you lift your own opinion of yourself, you will feel worthy of having boundaries. You will feel worthy of people treating you in a way that is better than the way they're treating you now.

The second thing we need to do is make a decision.

Now that we've got ourselves in a position where we feel worthy of having healthy boundaries, what we can then do is decide exactly what's important to us. Decide how it is that we want people to treat us and how it is that we don't want them to treat us. We need to also decide to be extremely sensitive about your boundaries, making sure that we continually realize that we are worthy of having them. It’s no use setting boundaries if we then don't do anything with them. So, make a decision that you're worthy, that these are your priorities, and this is the way that I want people to treat me.

Then, the third thing you want to do is to enforce your boundaries.

I remember as my kids were growing up and they would do something which was against the normal behavior and the boundaries that we wanted in the house. As any other parent has done, I would ground them where they weren't allowed to do certain things or go certain places. Then a couple of days later, something would come up and I would go, “yeah, no worries. You can go to that. Just don't do that again.”

So, what I did then was to say that the initial behavior that I had enforced a boundary around was actually, okay. When we are working with people and making sure that they treated us the way that we want to be treated, we need to enforce those boundaries. It's no use putting a boundary in place and then not going through with it like I did as a parent. And I'm sure there's many parents that have done exactly the same thing.

The word enforce here needs to be understood. It's not so much what we're doing; so we're not pushing our boundaries on people; It's how we're doing it. And that's through healthy communication. To do that, we need to stay in the logical brain and be in control of our emotions. There are four steps in this process.

The first step is to educate people around your boundaries. If you were the only one that knows what your boundaries are, and you haven't communicated them to anyone else, then they don't have a set of guidelines to work with you. This can be done in a matter of fact way through general conversation where we sit people down and we have a conversation and say, “hey, this is how I'd like this to happen.” As a part of that conversation, we need to let people know where they are actually encroaching those boundaries.

The second step is, we also need to let them know what the consequences are if they continue the same behavior rather than what we have asked for.

Thirdly, if that behavior still continues, rather than the behavior that we've asked for, then we need to let them know what we're going to do.

The fourth step is to make sure that if that does happen, we go through with what it is that we said we were going to do (Remember my story about grounding the teenager).

So, let me give you a framework around that four steps.

Let's imagine that we're having a conversation with someone who, in a meeting at work, is continually talking over us, not valuing what it is that we're saying or putting us down. Let's call him “Bill”.

So, let me give you a framework around that four steps.

What we want to do is use this four step process to communicate those boundaries and where they've been overstepped and what it is that we want instead.

So, let me give you a framework around that four steps.

So, let me give you a framework around that four steps.

So, the four elements of this conversation are:

“When you, I feel”

“If you, I will”

So here's how it would go:

“Bill, when you speak over me in the meetings, I feel like you don't value my opinion. If you continue to put me down and speak over me in the meetings, I will not be able to contribute. In fact, if it continues, I'm not going to come anymore.”

That second part, we can do slightly differently, where we go:

“If you allow me to finish speaking and then give me feedback, I will be able to give you even more value in the meetings.”

So it’s: “When you, I feel. If you, I will”

So, there you have it; the three things that we need to do to set and maintain healthy boundaries.

The first one is to feel worthy of them.

The second one is to decide what they are.

Then thirdly, we need to enforce them.

When we set and maintain healthy boundaries, our whole world changes and it starts with building our Personal Power. So, if you haven't listened to the last few weeks, go back, go through them. And together we can continue to work on this thing called our identity. Where we shift our beliefs from past experiences, we change the meanings that we've put on them, and we start living a life where we feel more worthy- where we are self-approved and not looking for it from other people.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, where I continue this conversation around Personal Power by helping you to say yes and no appropriately, I'll see you then.