SYTB 15: Recap Season One
A little review of all we've covered so far!
As you have been following along, you may have started to notice a formula for designing your own boundaries. The first piece of this formula is focusing on becoming the leading character in your own story. The boundaries define what goes in your story and what gets edited out and left on the cutting room floor. Write what you want to see inside your boundaries. As you take steps to expand your sphere of what you want inside your boundaries, you become more conscious of the amount of attention you have. You make conscious choices about where you wish to direct your energy to get what you want in the picture. You get from life what you put into it. As you start to develop this picture, you continue to become more clear about what you can afford to budget your energy on and what you can no longer reconcile.
Most people struggle with what to take out of the picture frame and how to do that. The formula for this is illustrated in this quote by Michelangelo. “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” The picture of the life you want to live, that you aspire to is your creation, yours to sculpt. As you get clearer on what that is and shape it in your mind, the jagged, ill-fitting chips of stone that stick out from this sculpture will be more and more apparent. You won’t “rid” yourself of people. You’ll just say, “that energy, situation or relationship is not what I want anymore.” And maybe you finally realized you never wanted it. It’s only after one gets clear, that one may see things in their proper perspective.
A struggle with boundaries can often be an inability to see circumstances and people for who they are. I shared some exercises in switching places with people, recasting them as they are behaving rather than as we idealize or misidentify them. We have to start taking honest assessments of behaviors rather than identifying people by what we perceive as their motivations or even how we are related to them. I think we also have to assess if we are being treated a certain way in general or if we are experiencing certain behaviors from others that we find undesirable. In taking an assessment, we can imagine a positive way or ways in which we would rather be treated as a whole. This new found ideal goes inside the frame.
We looked at our core values. We created a pitch perfect tuning fork of ideals with which to align our future actions and decisions. Along that line, we also talked about thinking of someone who might be living up to our core values and recasting them as us, in our shoes, living our lives and making our decisions. We asked what kind of expectations would they have? How would they be treated? What moves would they make? These all help us to step into the middle of our frame and take the leading role we always dreamed of.
We looked at the myths around what it means to “honor” others be it our parents, our elders or our “superiors.” Keeping in mind that humans should be treated as equals, we acknowledge that the best way to honor anyone who has invested in us is by being a good leader in our own lives. We also broke the myth that people deserve honor merely because of their title or relationship to us. Behaving honorably should be the only factor upon which we determine if and to what degree we honor others.
We learned how to negotiate with people who push our buttons and activate our VACS or Voice Activated Control System. First, we acknowledge the mechanism within that turns us into automatons and puppets. Then, we notice the corresponding emotions toward the people who are triggering it. We learned some simple questions to engage these people to make commitments of their own about how they will act toward us making sure these decisions are so clear that we know the moment they have violated their terms. Should these terms not be met, we can reinvest our own energy in people who live up to their commitments. I also showed you how some people use covert ways to manipulate us. I gave you a game plan for keeping them in your life in formal ways, such as keeping everything in writing. I also showed you how to make a fail proof contract to yourself based on your own feelings as you continue to interact with this person under any terms. Should you notice you are feeling terrible after every interaction, it’s probably not in alignment with your core values to perpetuate such a relationship with your time and attention.
In Lesson 8, I talked about controlling the narrative and noticing your self-talk and inner dialogue. This is a great tool for shifting how others treat you or even better, how you allow others to treat you. The great quote from Don Miguel Ruiz in this lesson was, “the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else.” As we work on noticing our inner critic, we can shift that language to something more positive. As we become more self-promoting, we attract more of that in others and tolerate less criticism.
The following lesson was about the fear of lack or FOMO. The tools to keep this hidden limiting fear and accompanying beliefs from messing up your potential isn’t to hang on tighter to what you have, but rather to dream bigger and push the boundaries when asking yourself what you can imagine as a bigger possibility for you.
We tapped into the wisdom of our bodies for answers as a way to discern how we are treating ourselves and what we deserve from others. We employed a body scan to start treating our bodies as the most honest storehouses of information. As we become more honoring of our bodies, our bodies respond to us with good feelings such as health, vitality, comfort and ecstasy.
I took you through some journaling exercises to really shake up and break up our attachment to old behaviors, habits and choices that are holding us back from getting what we want. We looked at the power of gratitude in acknowledging our defense mechanisms. We looked at what we gained from making the choices we made in the past. Then we looked at the cost of continuing to make the same choices. We compared the two so we could make better decisions for our future.
I took you through a case study employing some of the tools we learned in a real time situation in my own life which cured me of my neck pain instantly.
I also shared that it is important to show up your best in all situations so that when you get to the point in which you choose to put your time and attention elsewhere, you don’t feel like you missed a step. No one wants to feel regret or remorse walking away from a relationship. The best way to avoid that is to, should you choose a relationship in your circle, give it the attention a relationship you truly desire deserves. As we looked at our core values, though, we really started to flesh out the kind of people who resonate with our ideals.
I’m not advocating for homogenous relationships with people that parrot everything we think and believe. However, I only believe in deeply personal relationships. I believe in having relationships that are value centered. Whether or not our friends share the same values or have their own unique set of values, at the very least, if we are investing our time, attention and money into others they should be accountable to their own set of values.
We finally looked at what boundaries are and can be in our lives. I introduced throughout the series the concept of playing offense with our boundaries. I wasn’t advocating being offensive per say, but rather advancing towards our goals and staying focused on what we want in the picture. We don’t want to spend our lives focused entirely on others at the cost of our own advancement. Advancement ensures we are better situating ourselves to help even more people. We also can’t spend all of our time and energy trying to be dragons curled up defending our hoard. Unless that solitary, stationary life appeals to you, I think you can do something better.
Boundaries are about structures in some ways. They are internal structures. We are prioritizing and focusing on our priorities. When addicts get sober, they need to restructure their lives. They need to develop new habits. They get new friends. If you are taking a deep look at boundaries to get permission from me or any other coach to kick your husband to the curb, you’re looking for the wrong thing. You have to decide if your husband is right for you, if you can negotiate with him, if he belongs in your circle and if you have harmonious values or whether you can develop your shared values together. Your answers are in you. This first series of classes has given you the tools to find your answers more easily. Moreover, these are the tools for getting the life you desire and editing out the rest.
I hope you will stay tuned for the second and final season of the series where we start to flesh out the moving pieces of our lives in more fun and profitable ways! You owe it to yourself to say “yes” to boundaries!