When was the last time you re-evaluated your boundaries?
Let’s back up: do you have strong boundaries? Do you know what they are? A boundary at its most basic is something that helps you communicate your emotional, physical, and material limits. Boundaries help us to protect our energy, our time, our space, our material resources, etc. so that when we do make use of those things, we can show up fully rather than drained or burned out.
In order to have healthy boundaries it’s important to separate your needs from the needs of others. While it is great to take others into consideration when making decisions, it’s important to make sure you’re not doing that at the expense of your own needs. You are responsible for meeting your own needs, just like others are responsible for meeting theirs.
Setting boundaries can be difficult, but with just a little practice it gets much easier.
In order to set boundaries you need to:
- Evaluate your needs: where are you feeling worn out? Stretched too thin? How can you allow yourself more time, space, or support in order to combat that feeling? How can you prevent getting to this point in the future?
- Pinpoint the change you need to communicate: If you’re worn out because you’re constantly working off the clock, you need better workplace and time management boundaries. Maybe you need to stop checking emails when you leave the office, or delete your email app off of your phone entirely. Maybe you need to stop taking on work from other people’s projects. Identify what it is that’s wearing you out and what change you can make to prevent it.
- Communicate that: If you’re not going to be available after hours, let coworkers know via an out of office responder. If you can’t take on additional work, tell them directly when you’re asked so that there’s no confusion about what your limits are. Deciding on your boundaries is only half the work, communicating them is crucial!
But our lives are not stagnant, which means our limits will shift with our circumstances and environments. While some of your boundaries may be useful to you even when you’ve gone through a period of major change or growth, it’s always good to take time to reassess your boundaries and if they’re still serving you.
When is it time to reevaluate your boundaries?
When you’ve gone through a period of growth:
Sometimes you look around your life and you realize you are handling stressful situations better than a past version of yourself would have. While it is most likely the result of lots of long term work, it probably will feel sudden to you. If you get hit by the realization that you’ve gotten better at managing stressful situations, it might be time to reevaluate your boundaries. Your limits are probably different now that you have better coping skills, and boundaries that served you before may actually be holding you back.
When you feel continually resentful:
If you’re finding yourself feeling resentful all of the time, you’re probably feeling taken advantage of in some way. Ask yourself where that feeling is coming from. If you can find how it is you feel like you’re being overlooked or underappreciated or used, you can find where a new boundary is needed or where an old boundary needs to be adjusted.
You’re constantly flipping from too strict to too flexible:
When we first set boundaries, it can be hard to know what sort of boundary is appropriate. It’s easy for people to start off too flexible, keeping themselves worn out because their boundaries aren’t firm enough, or to do the opposite and start out too strict and make harsh decisions as a result of those strict boundaries being tested. If you don’t know how to set healthy boundaries, it can be easy to fall into both of these traps–going back and forth from too flexible to too strict to try and retroactively make up for your last mistake. But any boundaries that leave you feeling isolated or still worn out are in need of reassessing.
