In the world of mental health and well-being, boundaries are a crucial component. When you are able to say what is acceptable or not acceptable to you, you are engaging in one of the most powerful acts of self-care and self-respect.
The article below articulates some of the more significant perspectives of boundaries and offers a great checklist for assessing where you might stand in relationship to your personal boundaries. It outlines ways to identify whether you interact with others with rigid, porous or healthy limits and offers insights and suggestions to establishing boundaries that work for yourself and in turn, for others. The information can be applied in your personal as well as professional life because our human existence has become a tangle of rules, demands, power grabs and struggle that doesn’t stop when you walk out your door and into the world each day.
Enjoy the read and consider your own boundary status – what needs to change? How can you employ a bit of ‘sacred selfish’ in your life to save your own health? Where might you be ignoring others’ boundaries and how might you restore balance between a welcoming heart and feeling safe in your interactions?
Set Boundaries with Sacred Selfishness (Excerpt from Breathing Into A New Life):
Being responsible is really all about empowering the self. It is about learning to respect yourself and knowing that you can set boundaries and say ‘no’ without losing love.
Each day it is important to do what I want, eat what I want and go where I want to go. This behaviour sources from something I call Sacred Selfishness. It is not about, “I want this or that,” from an egotistical selfishness. It’s actually about respecting myself and recognising my own holiness. In that recognition, I treat myself as a holy temple and honour myself as I would a holy place.
Sacred Selfishness is about having boundaries around how I want my time away to be structured. ‘Sacred Selfish’ simply acknowledges that I value my time and I value my energy and I want to preserve it. I don’t want to feel exhausted, so I create a boundary to take care of myself. All the systems I developed in my life were implemented for the same reason. At its core, Sacred Selfishness represents my evolution to self-respect and self-love. I have learned to honor what I know is best for me and to make choices that are in my best interests.
Be well, restore balance, love yourself
John
