By Adriana James and Brett Ellis
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this article we wrote about the importance of knowing what you want, defining what you want, and we introduced the notion of “boundaries”. Here’s something to ponder, and we are aware that we have addressed this issue in previous articles: if the mind actually dictates how we interpret reality around us, and this, if viewed for the sake of argument it is an essential difference between how we think compared to the main stream society. But consider something from this article that is very telling: “The value of defining clearly what you are, what your limitations are and what they are not is instrumental in defining your personality if not your entire life.
One of the most important things to remember for the sake of understating how it works, remember that in Part 1 and Part 2 we defined our “boundaries” as “indicating the limit or the extent of what we think we are, the extend or the limit of what we can do or have. This could fulfill both functions as limiting, or as defining.
You Have to Love How Much Control You Get With This
But what about when what we define as our boundaries are “stepped over” by other people? Every one of us has experienced at least once the case where another person has stepped heavily over what we desired or wanted or defined as our “boundaries”. That feels really bad and as a result we may even begin to believe we’re unworthy or not good enough!
And here we get into the secret part of how this all works.
An untrained mind will look outside to fix the blame fast. It is “their fault” pointing the finger accusingly to some outside person or situation – “I did not do it, they did it to me”, they’ll say. We have gone so far in our societal thinking that to believe that you have a hand in what happens to you in life you can be considered mentally troubled.
After quickly finding somebody to blame, many people will be satisfied to know why they’re messed up. But that does not help with a better life, does it? That does not help with success, satisfaction or personal achievement. This does not help feeling better in long term.
So, You Did Your Best To Set Your Boundaries Right?
In general most people do their best to define their limits and extent of their personalities, interests, goals, values, etc. And yet at times they feel like their definition of what they say is important to them is “stepped over” by other people. Here is a question for you – what if you were unconsciously “stepping over” the boundaries of others and all you got was the boomerang effect? What goes out comes back in sustenance. You heard that before. It is almost like a cliché.
What would happen if you had clearly defined boundaries and in the process supported the boundaries of those people around you? Think about that for just a moment.
There is more to say about this, but it will have to wait until Part 4.
Be well