Don’t compromise your Boundaries

“If you continue to blame other people for ‘making’ you feel guilty, they still have power of you, and you are saying that you will only feel good when they stop doing that.  You are giving them control over your life.  Stop blaming other people.” -Henry Cloud, Boundaries
I freaking love this particular excerpt from the Boundaries book because its something I think we all struggle with, this concept of feeling ‘guilted’ into doing things for people even when we’d rather not. There were many years of my life where that was pretty much how I operated on a day to day basis.  Constantly making choices that I knew wouldn’t cause ripples with people or making decisions out of a feeling of obligation or guilt.
 I started to blur the lines of what I truly wanted and what I thought everyone else wanted for me.
When you prescribe to this way of thinking and operating inevitably what happens is you grow angry, bitter, resentful and truthfully not a very fun person to be around.
Total buzz kill.
It becomes this vicious cycle that you default to almost on auto pilot until one day you’ve had enough, you get jarred when your finally sick enough of living with the ‘guilt’ mentality.
There is no action that has space for love when you come from a place of a guilt mindset.  When you do something for someone out of a feeling of guilt your not doing them or yourself any favors.  You are not showing up with your full potential and more then likely you are also not showing up with any type of positive energy, in fact your probably pretty irritated and pissy.
Seriously who wants that?
I surely don’t and I think its safe to say neither you or the other person would honestly want you to show up in that manor.
It’s crazy because now that I have had a little more practice implementing boundaries not only have I learned what the things are that I find unacceptable for my well being but I’ve also found that I can take ownership of my feelings with more grace.
‘Letting’ someone ruin my day happens less and less frequently, I’m able to shrug it off a bit quicker when someone says something hateful or disrespectful to me.  And listen, lawd knows I am far from perfect and I still have SO much room for growth fo real, but seriously that excites me babes!
So today I wanted to give you this friendly reminder for you to choose to take ownership of your life.  Choose to respect yourself enough to start to figure out where in your life right now you may be lacking solid boundaries.  Boundaries really are so very important for us to have consistently in our lives.
Please remember its ok to say no sometimes, its ok to take time for yourself, is ok to show up differently then what people are used to seeing you like.  That’s what we humans are here to do in this life, grow, evolve, change and reinvent!
It’s pretty freaking cool if you ask me!
If you’d like to go more in depth and learn some super amazing tools on how to really create and implement solid boundaries in your life you should pick up the book Boundaries written by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.  It was a total game changer for me when I read this book a few years ago.  Lots of AHA and light bulb moments happened through the reading process.
So remember in your core that you are made of love and light!  The world is ready and waiting for you to shine your brightness onto the rest of us!  Have a great day friends! MUAH!!!