Researchers in every field of human study agree that boundaries are
essential to a meaningful, well-lived life. They promote health, inner
peace, safety, confidence, exploration, expression, positive
relationships, and service to others. The best way to define
boundaries is probably to just say what they do.
Boundaries define your identity. Boundaries are your border-lines,
enabling an identifiable shape to emerge around your beliefs and
preferences. This definition produces a confidence within you that
lets others know what you have to offer. You become like a product
with clearly defined ingredients. People can sense that you are clear
and confident with yourself. They will know what to expect from you.
This doesn’t mean boundaries make you predictably boring; it means
they help you attract positive people and opportunities that will
welcome who you are.
Boundaries protect you from violators. Boundaries protect you from
people, beliefs, habits, and situations that lessen or block you in
some way. "Violators" are not so attracted to people with good
boundaries because it is tougher to manipulate or control someone with
clearly defined boundaries. Boundaries are like a sorting machine that
says "yes" to what fits and "no" to what doesn’t. They let in what is
good and keep out what is bad so that you remain safe to be and
express your authentic self. Boundaries are your border guards;
friendly but firm, welcoming but choosey.
Boundaries speak for you. People with effective boundaries give off
an often unspoken message that usually discourages boundary violators.
Just as self-defense teachers help students learn to walk a certain
way to project an "I’m prepared if you mess with me" attitude. Vandals
think twice when they sense this kind of confidence.
Boundaries bring order. The reason you require clear boundaries is
that without them you will be unable to regulate the coming and going
of swarms of people, demands, ideas, dreams, commitments,
responsibilities, opportunities, pleasures, and activities. Without
boundaries, life becomes a transit station without a train
schedule—chaotic, going this way and that on the whim of an engineer
or the threats of passengers. It is internal anarchy.
Boundaries attract respectful relationships. Others who also have
an effective personal boundary system will be attracted to you,
increasing your probability of positive, respectful relationships.
Their attraction stems from their own admiration for a person who has
made the effort to create boundaries and also from a belief that their
own boundaries will be respected. Those without healthy boundaries may
be drawn initially to a person of strength, but they’re usually scared
away when their efforts to control, put down, or manipulate are
resisted.
Boundaries promote you. Just as boundaries can speak for you, they
can also promote you to people and opportunities looking for someone
with your identity, confidence, and self-care. When you are a person
with clearly defined boundaries, you know yourself and your strengths.
You want to use them in your life and work.
Leaders and employers with good boundaries recognize this. They
know if you have boundaries you can be more trusted to state clearly
what you can and cannot do, offer workable alternatives, welcome
input, work passionately without
burn-out, and stick to projects and
jobs that suit your strength. As an employee with boundaries you will
also be better able to withstand the inevitable criticism from others
at work. They may often be intimidated or angered by their inability
to penetrate your ethic and reduce your production or service to their
level of mediocrity.
Boundaries protect you from the control of others. You are
president of your life and boundaries will protect you from people who
want to impeach you. They will also make it difficult for manipulators
to control you because you will recognize a threat to your ownership.
Boundaries preserve your purpose and mission. When you know your
purpose and mission, you have even more reason to create better
boundaries. Once your purpose and mission are identified, boundaries
will preserve you for those relationships and opportunities that fit
who you are and what you want to do about it. You will be undistracted
by sirens of opportunity that would otherwise tempt you to steer off
course.
Boundaries protect your finest personal assets. Your knowledge,
body, skills, and abilities are among your finest personal assets.
These assets deserve protection, and boundaries will both protect and
preserve them so you can invest them enthusiastically across your
life.
Boundaries satisfy your need for self-confirmation. When an artist
puts lines on paper, a form is defined, or confirmed. When you draw
lines around your life, you and your personality are defined. Your
boundaries confirm you exist and in what form. For example, if you are
an introvert, you will draw a line between yourself and pressure from
others to be "more social." The boundary confirms your true nature.
The New Need for Boundaries: The need for an effective boundary
system is increasing constantly for a number of reasons.
Fewer societal boundaries. You have fewer cultural, political, and
moral boundaries around you than you did last year. And last year you
had fewer than the year before because there is an ever-increasing
removal of established societal lines between what is acceptable and
unacceptable. The loss of cultural norms and standards makes it even
more imperative for you to set your own. In an age of relativism,
where people decide for themselves what is right, you have to figure
out what is right in your own eyes. Few cultural traditions are doing
it for you. As the lines of established tradition fade, the need for
people to create their own lines intensifies.
Although it has always been important to create a personal code of
ethics and behavior, the number of issues to be decided personally
were fewer because society made some of the choices. For example,
mainstream lines have been lifted around the following: cloning,
integrity expectations of public figures, sex outside marriage,
abortion, violence and nudity in the media, accuracy of school grading
systems and national testing, protecting children and teens from
pornography, living together before marriage, homosexuality,
expression of faith, truth in reporting, homeschooling, and too many
others to name. Right or wrong, these issues had fairly clear
boundaries around them in most cultures. Now they don’t, and each
person must decide where his or her lines will be drawn.
Another example of a shift in cultural boundaries is domestic
violence, once protected behind the cultural boundaries of privacy.
For years, mainstream society in America either turned its head or
possibly even chuckled, when a husband "reminded the little lady who’s
boss." Now the line of privacy has been lifted, forcing people to take
a personal position on the issue of domestic violence and abuse in
general.
Growing population. More people means more reasons for boundaries.
Population taxes the environment. The pace of life quickens. There’s
more noise, more congestion, and more competition. More people means
more potential relationships. Or more isolation. What will your
boundaries be? What will you let in? Keep out? Give? Receive?
Increasing neediness. Neediness among the population in general is
also increasing in every aspect of life. Good causes, real crises, and
desperate conditions cry out for your help. How will you sort them?
All of these reasons are in addition to the fundamental one for
setting boundaries: you value and own your life.
What Is a Personal Boundary?: A personal boundary is a line you
draw to protect all or a part of your life from being controlled,
manipulated, "fixed," misunderstood, abused, discounted, demeaned,
diffused, or wrongly judged. Personal boundaries protect your life and
preserve your highest potential so that your "ultimate purpose" can be
joyfully and effectively fulfilled.
Boundaries keep danger and harm out of your life. Harm can come
from people, places, or activities, or it can come from internal
beliefs and habits. Personal boundaries are a set of flexible and
inflexible limits that let good in and keep bad out. You get to draw a
line around your life because it is your life. You are in charge of
how you live and develop. You are the guardian of your spirit, mind,
and body, the curator of your soul and identity, and the keeper of
‘your dreams. The choice is yours.
For the Top Ten Ways to Maintain
Your Boundaries When They Are Challenged, send an email to
bs@futurevisions.org
with "MWS Boundaries Top Ten" in the subject and nothing in the body
____________________________________________________________________
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