Setting Boundaries Is An Act of Self-Love
Boundaries are a pretty hot topic these days and for good reason.
They help you move from doing things that are out of alignment with how you internally feel about the situation or relationship to being in alignment with your feelings on the matter.
Alignment is a congruence between how you internally feel and the outer actions you take.
When you act out of alignment with your feelings on a situation or relationship, it often creates an inner experience of resentment, frustration, anger and/or guilt and it often leaves you with a sense of not feeling respected or appreciated.
There’s a discord between how your feel and the actions you took.
When you act in alignment with your feelings on the situation/ or relationship, you feel at peace and in your personal power.
This assumes you set the boundary from a place of inner power versus a reaction to feeling you’ve been taken advantage of…this can happen when someone first wakes up to the idea that they’ve been a people pleaser and wants to immediately “take back their power”.
Doing things from a reactionary state is still a power leak because it assumes your power is still in the person you leaked it to.
The energy you leaked in acting out of alignment did not stem from your true power so there’s no reason to try and grab it back from an aggressive, reactionary position.
Your true power remains inside you.
So it’s about letting go of where you where previously coming from (a position of leaking power) and aligning with true inner power (of which there is an infinite wellspring inside you).
Where letting go means forgiving yourself for coming from that position and forgiving the other for taking advantage of it.
To truly reclaim your power it’s not about waiting around for the other person to apologize (though that’s nice, it’s not necessary and it puts you in a waiting position versus empowering yourself to move forward).
Now let’s look at what happens after you set a boundary with someone…
It’s important to understand that setting a boundary is the same as giving someone a reflection of their own behavior (since the boundary is now saying what you’re willing to accept and what you’re no longer willing to accept) and people will react to a reflection of their own behavior based on where they are in their own evolution of growth.
The more emotionally mature someone is, the more grace they’ll have in the situation, whereas, if they fall on the other end of the spectrum of emotional maturity, they may become very reactionary…they may try to emotionally manipulate you or they may throw a tantrum and anything in between.
If you desire emotional maturity (which setting the boundary indicates you do), your job is to offer them space for whatever their reaction may be without it affecting your desire to set a boundary.
By offering space, I simply mean to accept it as the reaction they have chosen without attempting to change their reaction. This keeps you in your inner power.
How they react is NOT on you.
It’s up to them to decide how this boundary/reflection will be used in their personal journey to grow and evolve from. They could choose not to grow. And that could result in them never getting over this reflection. That’s not on you.
You setting the boundary is showing the Universe what you expect in the relationship.
The Universe can now read the new boundary (and corresponding energetic expectation) and arrange your relationships to meet the new boundary/expectation/standard.
Some existing relationships will evolve into this new expectation. Some will dissolve. And new ones will come in as a match for this new expectation/energetic frequency.
Things to consider as you move through the process of setting a boundary…
The butterflies and discomfort you feel from creating discord in the relationships (i.e., the other person is reacting and you want them to feel happy with you and the situation so you can feel at peace) is a chance to to double down energetically on how you desire relationships to be in your life.
Caving into trying to change the person’s feelings towards the situation doesn’t help you or the Universe know the new way you desire to do things.
In the long run this is actually helping the other person grow inwardly…if they choose to use it that way.
They’re used to the Universe responding to them in a way that allows their behavior to continue. The Universe can now match them up with someone who is a match for that.
It’s also important to see that holding your desired boundary is an act of respecting yourself whereas caving in is at the expense of yourself.
So to have relationships that respect you in the way you desire means respecting yourself through the setting of boundary.
This will also help you become comfortable with the discomfort you feel in your belly as well as your inclination to want to change the situation so the person is happy/likes you.
Breathe through the discomfort knowing this is working out in your favor.
Setting the boundary is an act of self-love.
When you already love and respect yourself, you don’t need the other person to be happy or to like you.
Fortunately, the new reality is that you draw new people to you (or evolve existing relationships) who Love AND respect you, but you don’t even need it to feel good.
This is the benefit of feeling good on our own.
The biggest thing to iron out in setting boundaries is learning to do so from a place of inner power versus a reactionary state.
Be patient with yourself as you learn to master this, but do your best in understanding how to come from your inner power as opposed to a reactionary state.
In other words, try to avoid to going from people pleaser to a-hole in one fell swoop, but if your do, forgive yourself, apologize to the other person and begin again.
And once you’ve set a boundary, do your best to stay in your inner power so you don’t rush back into the situation by trying to fix their reaction to it in order to feel liked and/or to avoid the discord the temporary conflict brings up.
People pleasers like peace. The problem is this peace is not true peace since it’s all being managed from a reactionary state, instead of a place of true inner power.
True peace doesn’t need to be managed.
The act of managing peace means it’s temporal.
If you’d like help sorting through a situation or relationship that requires some boundaries, I can support you in this process through one-on-one coaching. Email if interested (shannacovey@gmail.com).
Always Shine Brightly,
Shanna
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