Healthy boundaries consist of rules that you follow for how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and for how others treat you. And we all need healthy boundaries. However, sometimes in life our boundaries become porous or get broken — but there is a way to fix this.
If your rules get violated , then behaving assertively can deflect the intent behind it. For instance, if someone isn’t behaving respectfully towards you, you can ask them to change their behaviour if the situation warrants it, or you can allow their remarks to simply to pass over you because you don’t believe it.
If you have low self-esteem, others are more likely to push you into doing things that perhaps you would rather not do. The reason you allow them to do this is because you don’t put any value on what it is that you want. However, once you start to place more value on yourself, and realise that what you want is important, then you will be able to create a more healthy boundary for yourself.
Healthy boundaries allow you to act independently, as a complete person who has thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes, and who exhibits behaviours that show respect both for yourself and for others.
Respecting and valuing yourself is essential, as by respecting yourself you allow yourself leeway to make occasional mistakes (you are human after all!), and, more importantly, to decide to learn from them. You will also begin to take your own needs into account in any situation, as well as the needs of others, and in so doing you are in fact enabling yourself to have your needs met (provided this isn’t hurting yourself or others).
As an independent individual, you can make decisions and do the things you want to do, while at the same time allowing others to be individual and independent as well. This means no riding roughshod over other people’s boundaries, whether they themselves have healthy boundaries or not.
Having healthy boundaries means that you can decide to say no when you don’t want to do something. It also means allowing yourself to schedule Me Time into your day, so that you can recover mentally from intense times. It might also include scheduling time for hobbies, interests and other activities that you enjoy.
You take care of yourself, your relationships and other aspects of your life because you want your life to be great. And by respecting your boundaries, and those of others, you are doing precisely that — making your world a better place.
As a result, you will have no need to feel guilty about something you said or did, because you will be acting within your boundaries, and in the present. You will start to feel more positive emotions than negative ones. You will have no need for jealousy, as your respect for yourself and for others will mean that you can see that everyone has their own life and path to tread.
Ultimately, you will make your life better than it is now.
When you have healthy boundaries you can easily deflect blame and criticism from others that might previously have impinged upon you. Mentally, you can allow this to flow off you, like water off a duck’s back. You don’t even have to respond verbally; instead, you can simply choose not take it on board, because you have your boundaries in place.
There are many compelling reasons why you should firm up your boundaries and believe in yourself. You have value and can share this with yourself and others. By recognising that you deserve more, and giving yourself more, you will create better boundaries. And this will mean that your life becomes a lot better than it has been. So take action now.