How to Set a Boundary No-one Can Break

[00:00:00] Rachel: I don’t know if you’ve ever had a weekend like this, you wake up on a Saturday morning. You think I am so tired? I just need a couple of hours to myself, maybe to go for a run or let’s go for the gym, and to just quietly read a book, gather myself together, recover from the week I’ve just had. And then on Sunday evening, you look back at your weekend and think. What the flip just happened? I’ve spent all weekend running around after other people, picking up after them, cooking for them. I’ve been out. Yes. I’ve had a nice time, but I’m utterly knackered, I’m utterly exhausted. Why did nobody respect my boundaries, respect what I needed and give me that time?

[00:00:39] Now I have been there several times. And I often reflect that even though I think I’ve set boundaries and I think I’ve said what I needed. Actually they weren’t boundaries at all, they were requests. If I really had set boundaries, I would have got the time I wanted, I would have got the time I needed. So today, in this podcast episode, I want to talk about the fact that your boundaries are under your control. And when we say to ourselves, well, nobody respects my boundaries or everybody keeps infringing on my boundaries, that is just not possible. And I’ll explain why.

[00:01:14] This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to. Feeling energized and inspired for more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work. Don’t forget to subscribe to you are not a frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:44] As you can guess. I absolutely love podcasts. And I was listening to a podcast recently by Dr. Becky Kennedy and she was talking on the Knowledge Project podcast about the one thing you can say that changes everything. I’d really recommend it. It’s got huge amounts of good advice about how to talk really kindly compassionately to your children, your teenagers, your partner. Totally brilliant episode. We’ll put the link in the show notes.

[00:02:08] She said something that stopped me in my tracks. She said that the thing we get so wrong about boundaries is that we don’t realize that a boundary is something that we do. It doesn’t take the other person any effort to enforce my boundary. Let me explain a little bit more.

[00:02:27] Say if we’re thinking about kids, we think about teenagers, but thinking about the fact that having their phones in their bedrooms overnight is probably not a good idea. Now, as a family, we have decided that we do not want to have phones overnight in the bedroom for any of us, actually, because it really interferes with your sleep. And side note. If you have your phone in your bedroom and you use it in an alarm, this is what will often happen. You’ll go to set your alarm. You’ll get your phone. You’ll think, oh, just as I set the alarm, let me just check my messages. Oh no. I’ve forgotten to do that thing. So you’ll open up your email and without knowing it, you’ve done half an hour, extra of work, and then you wonder why you can’t get to sleep. So that is the reason to have your phone out the bedroom. Byy yourself a cheap alarm clock. Honestly, it’s made a huge difference to me.

[00:03:10] Anyway, we have a rule in our house that phones go downstairs. Now, I have a 14 year old daughter. And, uh, it’s been quite a struggle to enforce that. No phones overnight rule. Now, I thought that I had a boundary that she doesn’t have her phone in her bedroom. That’s not a boundary. That is a request. That’s a request from me that she doesn’t have her phone in the bedroom. So to enforce the boundary, I will come in at nine o’clock and take the phone away from you, take it downstairs and charge it. It’s something that I will enforce.

[00:03:45] So my boundary is that if she doesn’t take it off and charge it downstairs, I will do it for her. I will take it off. You can think of other things like children playing video games, your boundary might be video games stop at 10:00 PM. And, uh, I can’t then get cross when the child is still playing it at five, 10 past 10, half past 10. My request has been denied. The boundary is that I’ll just turn the wifi off. If you haven’t complied with that request.

[00:04:13] So there is a subtle difference between the boundary and the request. I might have all sorts of requests that I make of other people. So in those weekends where I just want some time to myself, my request is please can I have a couple of hours to go to the gym? Please can I have some time? To sit down and read a book? Now people may comply with my requests, they might not. But it’s only me that can set the boundaries that can make that happen. Only I can say, Right, well, I am now going to sit down with this book and that might mean. I say no to doing other things like acting as a taxi service, taking people here, there, and everywhere.

[00:04:50] Now the problem with getting confused between boundaries and requests are that we just ended up getting really, really frustrated. If we set a boundary and our boundary consists of requesting that somebody else does something and they don’t do it, oh, my goodness, we’re never going to get what we want, we’re never gonna get what we need. It’s gonna make us feel really resentful and really, really angry.

[00:05:10] If we get this right, however, it starts to get easier. We thought to be able to set more boundaries, to protect ourselves, to protect our emotional energy, and to protect our time. So it’s incredibly important that we know the difference and we get it right.

[00:05:27] So, what should we do about this? If you find that people seem to be constantly overstepping your boundaries, then there are a few steps that you can take. Number one is actually getting clear what your boundaries are.

[00:05:40] Have a clear definition. So one boundary might be that you never work on a Wednesday evening. And so other people can request you to work and you can’t possibly say, oh, you’re infringing my boundaries by making the request, they just making the request. You are infringing your own boundaries if you agree to working, but you will be enforcing your boundary if you say no, you’re not going to work.

[00:06:03] Clear is kind. Clarity with yourself about what your boundaries are, but also clarity with other people about what boundaries you’re going to set, what requests you’re going to make us then to help you set your boundaries and enforce your boundaries, but you cannot expect the other person that’s being charge of whether your boundaries are enforced or not.

[00:06:23] The second way that we can get clearer boundaries and more clearly enforced boundaries is to stay in your sown of power when it comes to setting boundaries.

[00:06:33] Now, just a quick recap for those of you that don’t know about the zone of power, the zone of power is a very, very simple tool that helps you recognize what’s in your control and what’s outside of your control. And all, if it’s a circle on a piece of paper, Now on this piece of paper, everything outside the circle is things that is not in your control and everything inside the circle are things that are within your control. So they think that you can actually do.

[00:06:56] So when we think about life in general, whether the traffic, COVID, what other people say, do, think, that’s all outside of your control. Inside the circle, those are things that are in your control.

[00:07:08] How do you make sure you’re staying in your zon e of power when it comes to boundaries? Well, it’s really important, first of all, to work out what is outside. If, for example, your partner likes to read a book in bed and they want, and I’m guilty of it, love to read really late on, and they’re still waiting at midnight and the light really, really disturbs you and you just want to go to sleep, you can make a request of them to turn off the light.

[00:07:33] But it’s very difficult to set a boundary with them of you must turn off the light because that is not in your zone of power. Whether they’re reading or not, whether they turn the lights off or not, that’s not in your zone of power. Now, of course you could reach over and turn off the light, but you might then get into bed for tussle, ’cause they could just turn it back on. So whether the light on that side of the bed is on or not is probably in their phone, a pound, not in your zone of power.

[00:07:58] What is in your Vader power in that particular scenario? Well, and you were saying the power is a making the request. Definitely. You could make the request more loudly or tell them what the consequences are for you for not getting a good night’s sleep, but you can’t force them to turn the lights off. One of the things that is in your sign of power is to say to them, look, if the light doesn’t go off, I’m going to go sleep somewhere else because I cannot sleep with this light on. So you setting the boundary may look like getting up and leaving the room and going to sleep on the sofa. That is you enforcing the boundary.

[00:08:27] So when we think back to a weekend where we just not got any rests. Well, actually what was in my zone of power about that? When did I say no to things? When did I make it really clear what I wanted and I needed? And when did I go and get that book and take myself off to a quiet place to go and read it?

[00:08:45] We get very resentful, don’t we, about other people and what they do and their actions. They all outside or they don’t have power. The only thing we can do about that. Is to accept it.

[00:08:56] And then finally, I think it’s really important to know the actions you could do in advance. If you find that there’s a boundary that you have set that you’re getting very frustrated about, because it seems impossible to enforce, then work out in advance, what sort of actions you could take.

[00:09:12] So imagine your mother-in-law for example, always serves you meet when you go round for dinner at their house, and you’re a vegetarian. What is that? It’s in your zone of power? What could you plan to do in advance if she does it again?

[00:09:25] So the first thing could be making that clear request, saying actually, you do remember that I’m a vegetarian? I’d really appreciate non-meat food. The next thing you could do is actually take your own ready meal over, and if she does serve meat, then you actually say I already said I don’t want to eat it. I’ll eat this, thank you very much. You could also do the nuclear option of saying if I come over and you’re saving meat, I’m just going to go home again.

[00:09:51] These are all things that you can do. And you might want to grades your boundaries sort of red amber green. So the green bound is just the, oh, just to remind you of just calling you to say that I’d rather have a vegetarian meal if that’s at all possible. Would you like me to bring something for myself? The amber would be when it comes out saying actually, I’m not going to have any, thank you very much. The red would be I’m going to leave if there’s meat on the table. So, do you see what I mean? You can, you can scale these sorts of things, but these are all actions that you can do and planning it in, in advance is really, really helpful.

[00:10:22] Now sometimes people get this a little bit wrong. Sometimes people think that, well, you know, boundaries are really, really important and I must never, ever flex my boundaries. And I agreed to some extent. I think we flex our boundaries far, far, too quickly. So if we said no to something and someone’s a little bit pissed off, or it’s a bit inconvenient for people, we get the amygdala hijack and we just give in because we don’t want people to think badly of us, do we? And we feel guilty.

[00:10:47] In that sort of situation, we need to just hold up boundaries and know why we’re doing it. But if somebody is particularly ill, it might cause patient harm or there’s really serious consequences, then of course we can choose to flex our boundaries. After all, it’s in our zone of power, what we choose to do. So just make sure that you’re not too inflexible or too flexible. I think we can go either, either way with this boundaries.

[00:11:13] The other mistake I think people make is not really knowing in advance what they actually want. So we haven’t actually done the work to think what are the boundaries that I need to set in the first place to live a life in which I’m going to thrive and be able to give my best to my patients, my colleagues and my family? And if that’s you. Then can I suggest that you download our thrive weak planner. This is a toolkit which helps you plot out an ideal working week to think, how do I want to live and work every week in a way that’s sustainable for me and everybody else? And this is a toolkit that asks you some simple questions to help you realize what’s going wrong with your current working week and how you might want to put that right. So download that, we’ll put the link in the show notes.

[00:11:56] So make sure you understand the difference between the requests of other people and the boundary that you set for yourself that you can enforce. The boundary that you set must include things that you can do to enforce that boundary, that all within your zone of power, things that you can do, and it doesn’t depend on other people.

[00:12:15] Now, making a request, that is inside your sign of power, but whether other people comply with your request or not. That is outside your sign of power. That’s why it’s so crucial when we set boundaries. To know what we are going to do to enforce them.

[00:12:29] And just a reminder abound tree is simply a wall that we put around our energy, our time and our emotions so that we can stay healthy. Happy and whole, so good luck with that.