I hung up the phone wishing I had let the call go to voicemail. I felt soooo tired and resentful and didn’t know why “yes” slipped out so easily and quickly. In that moment, I knew I didn’t have another “yes” in me. In fact, I wanted to stand on a rooftop and shout “Nobody ask me for anything else! … I’m tapped out … past my limit … and I have nothing left to give!” So, I wonder, why was it so hard for me to say “no”? As Anne Lamott says, “No is a complete sentence.”
Have you ever said “yes” when you meant “no”? I did it all too often for many years. People were in a habit of asking me because I was a “yes” girl. I made myself available. I said yes to a lot of great things, and many of the things I said yes to were intentional. But sometimes, I was overstretched and over committed, and I wished I’d said no somewhere along the line. I have limits. So do you. The limited capacity we have varies depending on what else is going on in our lives. I was empowered to say “no” all along. So why didn’t I?
Sadly, to some extent, I didn’t even know it was an option. I felt that I “should” do what was asked of me. I was driven by people pleasing, addicted to praise of others (“how does she do it??”), and I knew what was being asked came easily to me. Most times, the idea of saying “no” didn’t occur to me until later … when I was already committed and it would’ve been worse to flake. Finally, I’d reached my limit, and I was on the brink of burning out. I felt exhausted, mildly depressed, and totally depleted. My family was resentful that I so willingly dropped everything to make myself available to others at the expense of my own health and time with them. I was disappointed in myself and I knew I was letting those closest to me down. I felt guilty, and like a victim to time, as if time had control over me instead of vice versa. Something had to give, because I was so overstretched, I felt like a rubber band ready to snap!
Greg McKeown, in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less , said “Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
I had reached a point where I wanted to focus on what really mattered. I wanted to focus on the essential things, and let some things go that no longer belonged. You know how sometimes when you clean your closet you pick out a few things that no longer fit or are past their prime and you donate or toss them? Other times, you empty out your whole closet and evaluate each item before you put it back in. It takes a lot longer, but when you’re finished, you know that everything left in your closet is wearable and wanted. It’s so much easier to see everything and get ready each day. Well … that’s the equivalent of what I did with my calendar. I did something really radical and cleared my whole calendar completely. Everything. It was the hardest thing I ever did. I relinquished roles and responsibilities that were important to me, without knowing what would replace them. I was left with a lot of margin, and time and space to think. It was uncomfortable for me. I had become so addicted to being “busy” that having time on my hands felt like apathy. Uncomfortable as it was, it gave me the chance to evaluate what I was doing and why, and it was a growth process that benefitted me and all my relationships!
Dr. Henry Cloud says that "The two most important resources we own are our time and energy. And it’s essential that we protect those two things, because it’s ultimately what we have control over.” In his book Changes that Heal, Cloud lists a number of areas where creating clear boundaries allows us to live loving, responsible lives with healthy relationships with God, others and ourselves. It’s interesting to note that relationships flourish with healthy boundaries. I had a lot of work to do to create healthy boundaries in my life. My exhaustion was tied to a lack of boundaries in so many areas.
When I first read his book, I was surprised to discover how many different boundaries were possible, and that it was my job to decide the boundary lines in all those areas. It makes perfect sense now, but then I was so imprisoned by my own limited thinking that I didn’t recognize how easy it was for me to take a stand and say “no.”
If you feel drained and disconnected and suspect it may have to do with a lack of boundaries, below are some thoughts on healthy boundaries that might help you, as they did me.
1) Attitudes. Your attitude is your own and in your control. Other people’s attitudes are theirs, and not in your control. This understanding changed my life and freed up so much energy. For example, I stopped focusing on trying to control my kids’ attitudes. Since I can’t dictate their attitude or make it match up with my preference, I can focus on other things that matter. Of course, if they’re rude and disrespectful, that’s another story. But if they do what’s expected of them, I don’t need to concern myself with their attitude. I want them to mature into adults with healthy boundaries, and their attitude is on their side of the boundary line. A friend once encouraged me to listen to what they’re saying and doing, not how they’re saying and doing it, and that really helped. My attitude is in my control, and it’s a relief not to be in control of other people’s! Boundaries provide freedom more than constraint!
2) Thoughts. Your thoughts are totally in your control. If your thoughts are negative and undisciplined, you can change that. You can’t tell other people what to think, and others can’t tell you what to think either. The good news: you can transform your own thinking. The inner critic that says you’re “not enough” or that your worth is hinged to performance, can be silenced. One of the first things I learned as a life coach was that our thoughts inform our feelings, and our feelings drive our behavior. So … our thoughts really do matter.
Several years ago, when I started working on raising my EQ, I recognized that my thoughts were toxic and completely undisciplined. I read Joyce Meyers’ Battlefield of the Mind and started transforming the way I think. I’d capture thoughts that weren’t serving me and exchange them for thoughts that did. It took me over a year to become more deliberate in my thinking and silence the harsh inner critic, and I began to embrace the truth that was more supportive and positive. Negative thoughts create negative life patterns and replacing them with positive truths allows healthier patterns to emerge. It’s truly life changing to transform the way you think, and once you do, maintaining healthy boundaries comes more naturally.
3) Feelings. Your feelings are your own. No one has to power to make you feel happy or sad, nor do you have that power in someone else’s life. A dear friend once said that they could only be as happy as the unhappiest person in their family. I can understand that it’s hard to see our loved ones struggle to find happiness. But, letting someone else’s feelings dictate our own is a sign of co-dependence, which signals an unhealthy relationship and lack of boundaries. It’s a heavy burden for both you and the other person if your happiness depends on theirs. Allowing them to see you happy also provides them hope that they too can find happiness. Respecting boundaries of your own and other people’s feelings opens the door to empathy and compassion.
4) Choices. You always have choices in life. Nothing drains your energy faster than thinking that you don’t have a choice. When I recognized the rut I had gotten into with “have to’s” and “should do’s” draining my time and energy, I decided to put everything in my life under a microscope. If I couldn’t figure out a reason that I actually wanted to do something, I gave it a break for awhile. It was an uncomfortable process, but life became joyful and I was able to bounce out of bed more easily each morning when I woke up thinking, “I’m excited I “get” to do this today!”
One of the weightier thoughts I used to struggle with, and a lot of my clients have struggled with this too, is the thought that “If I don’t do this, no one else will.” I took the weight of the world on my shoulders. Ugh! Stopping some of those things felt scary, and it’s true that when I put down the baton on a few things, no one picked it up, and a few things stopped getting done. At least it was getting done with less regularity than before. Several household chores fell in this category. I felt a bit rebellious letting things go that I thought “had” to be done. Like making my bed first thing every morning. And you know what? I found out on the days I didn’t make my bed, the sky didn’t fall down. No one was having hissy fits and blaming or shaming me. I started to feel a lot of freedom about it. I stopped caring if the kids made their beds and realized I could close their doors if their mess bothered me. Now I make my bed because I like to, not because I “have” to. That’s a silly example, but there were hundreds of similar things and it felt good to experiment to decide what I really wanted to do, as opposed to feeling that I had no choice. Exercising choice is a clear way to set boundaries.
5) Desires. Being conscious of your desires and being able to verbalize them is important. Do you ever feel like you’re living someone else’s best life and not your own? There have been whole chapters of my life I spent trying to remember what I loved doing. I couldn’t remember what I used to love doing before I got married and had kids. I had started to begrudge myself fun, and I wanted to re-discover my deepest dreams and desires and live them out. I had been waiting for the “right time” … telling myself when my kids grew up I could reconnect with my passions. But, when I couldn’t even remember them any more, it became an urgent problem that I wanted to solve. I wanted to start living more fully now, right at the phase they were at. It was fun re-discovering my desires and passions, like hiking and biking, and establishing some new ones, like getting away with my girl friends, and furthering my education because I love learning!
Understanding your core values and unique purpose in life helps you to create healthy boundaries. When you consider your purpose, passions, and the values you hold most dear, it’s easier to align your time and energy in ways that fill you up instead of deplete you. You’ll feel inspired to live deliberately and experience more joy, rather than feeling drained and disconnected as you’re likely to feel when operating on autopilot. You’ll also better understand some of the inner and outer conflicts you experience when looking through the lens of your core values. The thing about values is that they are so much part of who we are, that we’re often not in touch with them. Once you bring them to the surface, everything makes more sense. If you’ve reached your limit and you’re struggling to establish healthy boundaries in your life, you might benefit from working with me as your coach. Contact me to book a complimentary coaching consultation and we’ll see if my coaching is compatible with your needs! Why wait?
