week 16
the failure to set effective boundaries
When I find myself waking up at 7 am on a beautiful Saturday morning to a to do list verbally accosting me and feeling RESENTFUL in all caps, it’s a sign to me that I have failed to set good boundaries during the week (my failure for this week).
“Boundaries” has become such an annoying word in the wake of its overuse, in my mind akin to “mindfulness” and “self-care.” They may be important, but after being bombarded with these terms in popular media, they have lost a lot of meaning and have put more items on our to do list that we can beat ourselves up for not checking off.
This week I listened to We Can Do Hard Things podcast “Real Self Care: Burnout Is Not Your Fault and The Way Out,” going in skeptical and already begrudging the “set boundaries” talk that I knew was coming. Setting boundaries was the first instruction we were given. Surprisingly, this was the first person talking about boundary setting that acknowledged how we consistently act like saying no is free — it’s not free. Saying no, just like saying yes, comes at a cost, and sometimes we can’t afford to pay that cost. But we can set a goal for ourselves to work toward being able to do it a little more/ better/ more easily next week, month, or year.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, author of Real Self Care (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths not Included) discusses the importance of not adding the vague notion of “self-care” to our lives as one more thing (or set of things) we need to do (do yoga, do meditation, do the juice cleanse, etc.) but in practicing making decisions and living our lives according to our self-identified values. She brings up the idea that when people are asked about their values, they immediately grab for vague “shoulds” like “family,” but that it’s more helpful to come to values indirectly. “Imagine you’re going to have a dinner party,” she prompts. What are the most important elements of the dinner party? The people? The food? The setting? This is one exercise that can start leading us to think about the elements we really care about and want to prioritize across our lives.
As I am right now at this point in my journey, here are my values:
Freedom - to be myself, to live by my values, to make decisions that are in my best interest
Creativity - to be able to play and enjoy creating for the sake of creating
Spaciousness - to have the space to feel calm and free, to be myself, to be seen, to be heard, to daydream, to think deeply and recognize opportunity when it presents itself
Being unburdened - from stuff, from fear, from resentful obligation, from old wounds, from grudges, from being anchored to people/ places/ jobs/ etc. that are not in the best interest of me or my family
Calm - even when things are crazy
I do believe that boundary setting is not about changing other people but it is the boundaries we set for ourselves for how we act/ react to other people’s requests and demands and bids for our time and attention. Here are the non-negotiables that I have effectively set in my life:
3 pages of Morning Pages every day
Weekly blog post for this website
I would like to strengthen and solidify these even more, which effectively happens every time I sit down and write. I also would like to get better at setting time and space for my above values, and think about how I can incorporate these throughout my days and routines and interactions. Maybe this comes in the form of asking some non-judgmental what if? questions:
What would freedom feel like? What would freedom look like for/ in my life?
What would happen if I gave myself two hours to just play and create for fun each week, as an artist date (as Julia Cameron recommends along with Morning Pages, but seem to be much harder for me to stick with than Morning Pages)?
What if I gave myself space by clearing out and donating stuff I don’t need or use each week, and each day gave myself space to just daydream in silence?
What if I named my burdens and then figured out ways to let go of them or shift my perspective around them?
What if when things got crazy I gave myself a moment of space and asked myself what would need to happen in order to feel calm?
I am looking forward to achieving more fails, but I think I need to first tackle some of these questions. It is important to me to set myself up for joyfully failing and reaping the fulfilling benefits of those fails, and I think I do that by setting a foundation in which I am living and making decisions by my values instead of others’ agendas. I don’t necessarily need “more time,” but I do need to create a little more space. I’ll let you know how it goes over the week ahead.