Setting Personal Boundaries: 5 Tips
It isn’t always easy to implement boundaries in your personal life. However, it’s a skill everyone should have. Boundaries let you separate your feelings and needs from those of your family, partner, friends, coworkers, etc.
The right set of boundaries helps you create healthy relationships with limits attached to them. If you plan to set personal boundaries, make sure you’re aware of what you will do if someone pushes past them.
Below are five tips to help you create good personal boundaries.
1. Understand Your Needs
The first tip is to think through your needs and why they exist as needs, not wants. Once you understand the purpose of a need, it’s easier to keep it in place.
Having that boundary may be important to ensure you keep your mental health in a good place. This is important to thrive and enjoy your life. When you take care of yourself first, you can take care of others better.
2. Choose Radical Honesty for Yourself
While being radically honest with others may not always be possible (and can come off the wrong way in some cases), it’s something you owe to yourself. Before you share your boundaries with others, you need to be honest with yourself.
For instance, consider jotting down what is holding you back or bringing you down in life. Are there relationships that pull you down? Is a situation making it hard to fulfill your needs? When you start to think about what feels wrong, you can choose to make changes that give you more control in your life.
3. Work Towards Direct Communication
It can be challenging to state your needs directly. You might feel more comfortable being vague. However, you need to push past this. When you are direct, there’s no chance of miscommunicating your needs. This means a single conversation may be all that is needed.
You don’t have to go into the reasons behind your boundaries. You simply need to make it clear that these boundaries exist. Share the line you will not allow to be crossed. The less clear you are about this, the more your words can be misinterpreted. This can lead to a lot of frustration down the line.
4. Move Inward Instead of Outward
It’s a bad move to try to fix someone else. It likely won’t work and is often a source of serious stress and frustration.
Instead of focusing on how to make someone else “better,” turn that focus on yourself. How can you change how you respond to a person, instead of focusing on changing them. You’re creating boundaries for yourself to be mentally healthy. That is what matters.
5. Build a System of Support
Whether it’s you, friends, or family members, everyone needs a support system. It can make it easier to stick to your boundaries. Remind yourself that you’re doing well and have a reason to hold boundaries.
If a complicated conversation is coming up, ground yourself first. Once it’s over, provide yourself with a reward or some deep breathing to relax. This is a time when self-care will give you a lot of benefits.
Final Thoughts
Identifying your boundaries and sticking to them is hard work but it needs to be done. Your wellbeing should always come first. Whether with friends, families, or partners, you deserve to feel safe. If you have trouble setting boundaries, consider talking to a therapist. They can help you find a good way to deal with the situation.