Healthy boundaries create healthy relationships.
Every time you say yes when you want to say no, I mean your soul…your gut is giving you that NO WAY signal, you send a message to yourself. You are saying: “I am not a priority in my own life. I am not good enough. I am not worthy. You are more important to me than my own self.”
Saying yes when you want to say no:
- To your boss when they want you to work over time to finish a not so urgent project and you have set plans to be somewhere after work
- To your friends when you don’t want to hang out with them because all they ever do is talk about themselves and there is never enough time to talk about what is going on with you
- To your family when they just invite themselves to your home so you can host the next holiday dinner
- To your partner/spouse when you don’t want to have sex
You are violating your own boundaries.
A boundary is a limit. It lets people know what is and what is not acceptable to you. Healthy boundaries are important to living a loving, respectful and responsible life. Having boundaries is a lifestyle because the focus is on what’s of value to you which is continuous and not a quick fix or only for one day type of situation. Therefore, when you violate your own boundaries, you are telling people that it is ok for them to violate you because even YOU don’t value YOU.
And when you do this it costs you your self-respect, self-acceptance and self-love. You begin to feel unworthy, disrespected, undervalued and unloved. You begin to have trust issues and this builds anger, resentment, fear and sadness. It costs you your relationships. No one will, in the long run, respect someone who doesn’t respect, love or appreciate themselves. You are viewed as a doormat, a pushover or simply “just too nice” which is code for I don’t respect her because she doesn’t have cojones.
It is great to be flexible in your relationships. Flexibility doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries. It means your boundaries are not rigid and you still have value. It means that you are willing to meet the other person half way because they are also meeting you in the middle. Saying yes when you want to say no is not the same as being flexible. There is no flexible boundary here.
You might be wondering – well – I want to honor my own boundaries, why don’t I do that? Because you are afraid that if you do and you say NO that the other person will reject, abandon, not love or accept you in some way. You may even believe that if you disappoint them you are a bad or wrong person. However, when we have boundaries we can love deeply because we are loving ourselves deeply. As we value ourselves, we are much more capable of valuing someone else. Haven’t you found that when you are feeling happier and more loving in your own life that it is much easier to feel that way towards other people? Is it not easier to treat someone else with respect when you are feeling that way too? You betcha!!
Boundaries communicate – “I know who I am and I value myself.” It tells people that “you will always know where you stand with me because I will tell you truth. You can trust me.” People honor your boundaries when you honor them yourself. That’s an investment that is worth making over and over again. You are so loved, so love yourself just as much!
