Everyone is in the middle of a life story, and your story is being shaped by what you are saying yes to and what you are saying no to. Your Yes’s and No’s are what boundaries are made of.
So what are boundaries? How do we build them? How do we heal when our boundaries are violated? And how do we push through boundaries? These questions have been the center of my life and my work.
When I was a little kid, and my world was just my family, I was pretty sure we were the only ones struggling with those questions. And then I grew up, and I became a family therapist. And I saw lots of people struggling with these questions.
And when I took a detour and ran nonprofits, I saw communities and leaders struggling with these questions. So now I teach workshops and wrote a book to help people answer these questions. And as people answer these questions and learn more about their boundaries, I’ve watched hundreds of people make the journey from being overwhelmed, and exhausted, and stressed out to people who trust themselves, and are decisive, and are committed to healthy relationships.
I’m going to share some stories and some tools that you can use to strengthen your boundaries. Let’s begin with the most essential boundary tool that everyone has. Take a moment and visualize a compass in your hand. It looks just like this. It has two words on it, yes and no, and only those two words. You use this compass to make your decisions, figure out your relationships, and set your boundaries for your whole life.
Today I’m going to talk about how you can use this compass to place boundaries where you need them the most, lower your stress, and figure out your life’s purpose.
Now the key to placing boundaries where you need them the most is tolerating stormy emotions.
I was raised by my grandparents, and my grandfather had one way of doing things: his way.
And when I was 24, he came to me, and he asked me to be the executor of his will. And I asked him, What was it he wanted me to do after he died? And when he told me, I got all this stress inside because there were things I didn’t want to do to other family members on his behalf. And I really wanted to please him, but I couldn’t say yes to all this stuff. So I told him, “No,” I couldn’t be his executor. And he did what most people do when you tell them no. He got angry.
You know, when you listen to your own yes and no, other people are going to get angry, or they may get disappointed. Boundary setting will unleash emotions, and yes and no are not feelings. So I couldn’t let my fear of my grandfather’s anger nor my desire to please him determine my boundaries.
Now, sometimes, your compass is clouded over, and you can’t see if something is a yes or a no for you, and this happens if you’ve been ignoring your compass or arguing with it because you don’t like what it’s saying.
Years ago, I wanted to be a writer, and I was very busy working, and I couldn’t figure out how writers made time to write and earn a living. So I took this yes, and I shoved it to the side. Those are the writers that are here. And my daughters and I were attending this writing camp, week-long thing for middle schoolers, and I got to go as a chaperone.
And one night, this real writer got on the stage, and he told us how he made time to write, what he said yes to with his time and what he said no to in order to complete his books. He lived very cheaply, and his sole job was writing. There was my answer.
So for two years I saved my money, I lowered my expenses, and then, when the time came, when I had my money saved up, I devoted myself to writing. All that work, and in, like, just a few short months, my yes became a no. Writing is a solo sport; you sit alone all day. There I was, talking to my dog. Oh, this is not the move for me; I’m a people person.
So I listened to my no. I went back to working with people, and I saved some of my time for writing. That was a much better fit.
Now if you pay attention to this compass, it just gives you the basic guidance, the yes and the no. It doesn’t give you any details. You have to figure out the details.
But the thing is, you can trust this compass, because it’s only trying to do one thing, and that’s take care of you. And if you allow your compass and your boundaries to take care of you, it’ll mitigate stress, and stress is a very serious issue. According to the American Psychological Association, 50% to 58% of us — I’m not going to say who — are suffering from high stress. That’s kind of a shocking number. And employers who are listening may want to pay attention to this and think about how important is decision making on the job, because this compass is highly sensitive to stress, and stress clouds over your compass.
I teach people boundary skills so that they can reduce and prevent their stress from accumulating. The challenging thing, though, is that setting boundaries is just a little stressful. Right? It’s brief stress, though. Like, once you get over that brief stress of actually doing it, you feel all this relief, and I call that brief stress “sweating”. You’re going to do a little sweating when you set your boundaries. I sweat, and I teach this stuff.
So let’s go back to this compass in your hand that is only trying to take care of you and ask yourself this question: Are there ways that you could improve your self-care?
And when I say self-care, many of you may think first about what you eat and how much you exercise, and those are really important, but even people who do those really well are going to have high stress if they aren’t managing their boundaries. Self-care is a much bigger landscape than eating and exercise.
Self-care is how you treat yourself. It’s how you find enjoyment, play, happiness, balance, rest, and companionship. I’m the first to admit, though, that self-care can be really hard, and it took me a long time to learn how to do it.
In the past, and I like saying ‘past’, I was a workaholic caretaker. And back then, I was running an agency that was serving teens who were homeless. It was an agency that I started, and I was deeply committed to. And over the years, as the organization grew, it needed more and more from me.
So what if I was up night after night trying to make that budget work? — And I couldn’t, a lot of the time. So what if I was on call 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, year after year after year?
So what if I was getting sick from watching so much child abuse? So what if I actually had post-traumatic stress from it? I ignored my own care, until one day, I was sitting in this dark movie theater, and I was crying and crying. I broke; I couldn’t stop crying, and I realized something inside was trying to reach me.
And as I listened to my tears, I understood that I couldn’t keep running this organization that I started and that I loved. My compass was saying no for my well-being. That was really hard to take. My well-being, up against all these kids who needed help?
So I dug deep with my compass about my purpose. And I understood that maybe it had been my purpose to start the organization, but ten years later, the community loved and could care for this organization. And so I spent a year with my board of directors, and we transitioned leadership to new leaders for the organization.
And I want to tell you it’s still standing, 24 years now, taking care of kids every day — Oh, that’s to you guys! — every day and every night, doing exactly what it was designed to do, the way it was designed to do it.
And I learned from my compass that other people could take care of the kids, and the staff, and the organization, but only I could take care of me. And then I had to face my workaholic. Oh my. My workaholic, she’s terrifying; she’s worse than my grandfather.
My workaholic never says, “Oh, take a break. You’ve done enough.” My workaholic is crazy. And she just keeps going and going and going. And I had to intervene with some care for me. And my care for me got better and better, year after year, step by step.
Now I challenge myself every day to do some of my work and then do something that I love, that I can fit into each day. So I knit more, I hang out with my friends. My friends are kind of shocked that I have time for them. My husband and I, we do less chores, and we just have more fun. And my daughters and I are in this ongoing conversation about healthy living, as they both grew up and went into healthcare. Go figure.
And this summer, on a hot sunny day, I was watching this eagle soaring overhead at the beach. I remember everything about this day. It was a Tuesday, a work day. I had taken my lunch. I drove four minutes from my office to the beach. And there I was, taking a 45-minute lunch break, watching this eagle and listening to the waves. Now that’s recovery.
Now I need to warn you. Even if you’re doing all the boundary pieces, like, you — you’ve separated your feelings from your boundaries, and you’re doing some good self-care, and you’re really listening to your yes and no, and maybe you’ve recovered from workaholism or numbing out; even when you do all these pieces really, really well, there are going to be some things that are going to challenge your boundaries, and they’re going to make things extra hard.
None of us are immune to health issues, to a financial crisis, or to a family member who has an addiction problem. And some of you are dealing with those struggles every day. Some of you are dealing with really tough challenges at your job every day.
There are three things that you can do to support your compass.
First, increase your self-care. You may already be doing some self-care, but you need to step it up. When your loved one has breast cancer, what I always see is your care for you goes down while you care for someone else. And taking that time to care for yourself may seem completely ridiculous in the face of such a big challenge. But I want to see the care for you go up while you care for someone else so that you’re a stronger support in the long run for you and for them.
The second thing to do is to reach out and build a web of resources. Your compass may not have enough information to guide you through the challenge that you’re dealing with. We’re not all experts in everything; find people who have this expertise. Join a support group, see a therapist, take a class, reach out.
The third thing to do is to really focus on choosing your responsibilities and limiting your time during a challenge. During a challenge, we have, like, tons of extra responsibilities just coming down the hill at us, and you can’t do it all. You have to decide what you will and won’t be responsible for, and you have to let go of some of the rest.
And nowadays, our technology has created this illusion that you are all a device that is always on. And now more than ever, you need to be careful and be protective so that you have some time to recover during a big challenge, and times when you’re not doing ongoing problem-solving.
All of you are in the middle of a life story, and your story is being shaped by what you are saying yes to and what you are saying no to. If you shut out the noise and listen, you’re going to find yourself going through life with less stress and profoundly in tune with your purpose.
