Choosing A Corrective Experience Part II - Boundaries

Hey there, it's steve again and thank you for joining me for this week's podcast as well as for following me at www dot Believe in big change dot com. Hope your week is going well as we're hopefully building momentum going into May, launching into May and always remember you have the ability to call time out and pause, reflect and restart your day, restart the experience. That's what we're talking about again today, choosing a corrective experience. We talked about that last week. I called it part one, touched on a little bit about some of my fears and we touched on a few things and I'm gonna quickly highlight and then we'll get into the next part of this, which I'm gonna talk a little bit more today about boundaries. So, I'm recapping last week, I touched on in re creating this new experience, my fear for me before I chose to go down this path, was this fear of reliving and feeling a past negative experience. A lot of emotions, A lot of hurt pain can be traumatic for for many of us highly stressful. What I'm learning is we attract what we fear the most. I'm choosing to change that today and I want to share that with you. So, last week I touched on self love again and to really for me to get it to core of self love. It's rigorous honesty. Finding out what's true about steve. At first I was scared I had so much fear and anxiety because I was so afraid of people judging like telling people, I went to treatment for my alcoholism. I was so concerned. The first couple of times I went to treatment, I really didn't want anybody to know. I thought people, friends, families, uh my family, significant others in the past, people were just gonna pile on and say, well things didn't work out the way they were supposed to because you're an alcoholic, Well, I can tell you this today, that so far that hasn't occurred, That doesn't mean it won't occur in the future. Having boundaries will go a long way for me being able to deal with those one offs, because those can happen, it's a part of life and sometimes um unhealthy people can surprise us. What we wanna do is set ourselves up to be prepared for that to not attract it, which I'm going to talk about next week, and what blocks our ability to set boundaries. So moving on here, the second thing I touched on last week was self forgiveness. I'm gonna read you a quote, I read today from a guy louis b smears, summed it up quite well for me to forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you again. It's an inside job to open up to start to believe again, rebuild our self worth, to feel empowered. That gives us more courage to continue to get outside our comfort zone, to attract people, that will help us do that. That's real support people that will hold us accountable. I'll touch on that in a moment. The third thing I touched on was allowing the past to heal us. We don't wanna live in the past and re feel it. But what I'm doing is I'm on a fact finding mission. I want to discover more about me. The truth about steve well, the truth part of the truth, and the way part of the script played out is I became an alcohol. I'm not inclined to let that continue to play out. That's fate. I want to start going down a different path than I am now. We're talking about our dreams and our visions are aspirations and it's never too late to start this very difficult, very challenging, very tiring at times. So, I'm in discovery mode and the more I learn about me versus learning about others, I can I can The only thing I can control and changes me. So I want to learn as much about me factually without passing judgment on me, that's the key to set myself up to win and attract the people into my universe that I want and they want to be a part of my universe, simply put So in summary from last week's call, lack of boundaries, inability to consistently regulate my emotions and the shame that came with that enter in some pain, some highly stressful experiences at work, other relationships, me searching for external validation with high expectations. So, I'm going outside of me for validation with high expectation start to lose confidence, belief in myself and belief in others and I suffered. So let's move along here. Let's talk about a boundary. What is a boundary? I looked it up, I went online and wrote down a few things I want to share with you. A line that marks the limit of an era, a limit of a subject or sphere of activity. A threshold and a cut off point highlighted a few words limit threshold and cut off point. We all have our thresholds, our limits and our cut off point when enough is enough. So how can we realize that? Recognize that? I'm going to talk about that in a moment and what can we start to do about that in a healthy way? People are thinking oh boundaries oh I'm gonna show them I'm gonna put them in their place. Well that sounds a little bit like tip for tat and all is fair in love and war. You know you're looking to find peace for yourself. That's what we're talking about here. It may be uncomfortable but can we find peace from this patience, kindness. Generosity, compassion, empathy. Big words powerful were powerful ways to treat ourselves and treat others. And these limits they have limits at times but we wanna work on raising the ceiling because it feels good when we're that way with ourselves and when we treat others that treat others that you know people are gonna forget some of the things that we said when we lost our cool and some of the things that we did, but they're always gonna remember how we treat them. We gotta treat ourselves well first. So I'm gonna quote again from one of my favorite authors burn a brown read you. This quote sums it up well for me. I've been there so many times. It says when we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. Just let that sink in for a minute for a moment. So really my inability to do that in the past, then being upset about it, not being able to consistently in a healthy way, regulate my emotions and then I shamed myself for it. So how can we reverse that? It's an inside job. There are several kinds of boundaries I'm gonna touch on a few of them and I'm not gonna be able to get in a lot of detail in this session. There are physical boundaries that can simply be being too close to people in a crowded elevator. I get a little claustrophobic sometimes being in big crowds or an individual just getting a little too close for us. Unfortunately, there are people that violate physical boundaries and it leads to emotional boundaries as well. There's physical abuse, domestic violence violence, period, sexual abuse that's dramatic. It's emotionally abusing not only physically but emotionally abusing. And we think about not being able to set these boundaries And then this pain comes in. I mean, it's just it's it's tough and I feel for those who have gone through this, there are also spiritual boundaries. Not getting into religious boundaries, not because, you know, I'm put off by it, but we're gonna stick with the spiritual uh concept at this point. So those are different types of boundaries. So what can we do about this? What can we start to do about this? Just gonna raise the bar here a little bit. Talk about some next level stuff. I wanna keep it simple for you. But simple doesn't mean easy when I talk about this stuff. I don't mean it's easy. This is hard work and I'm in a much better position to do this and follow through on this. And again, it doesn't mean you can hear this stuff and run right out and say you're gonna test it on somebody and seek them out. You know, we got a part of it is sitting still with our feelings, which I'm going to talk about in a moment and trusting in the universe that these opportunities will come to us when we're ready when we're doing the work. Some call it turning it over to a higher power. So remember toxic people hate boundaries. So let's talk about a few things here, some of the things that I've been working on today, number one, and I've mentioned this before in several podcasts and I've written about this sitting still with our feelings to be able to pause, create some space for us observe journal about it. Talk about it. There's a number of ways to do that. Meditation is very useful. Journaling is very useful talking to other people in your support group is another way. That's one component. Now. We're in the moment, it's real time. It's on how can we sit still with our feelings when we're triggered early on? We're gonna feel a bit surprised. We're still in growth mode. We're learning, we're rebuilding. Don't beat yourself up on this stuff. Look at it as practice doesn't have to be pass or fail. We've got years in some cases, decades of conditioning that is built up. So the key is what can we do when we're triggered? Here's a few suggestions that I've used and continue to use when it comes up. You're in, you're in the moment with somebody you can simply pause by listening to them. You may not like what they're hearing. It may not be constructive. Give yourself time to pull things together to do that fact check is this person just having a moment fact check is this person always consistently been this way? Well the answer is quickly no, okay, they're having a moment. I'll give them some time. You can simply call time out. Somebody who could be an existing relationship, Somebody could become an after and you say, hey, you know what I appreciate that. That's a lot for me to take on. I need some time to think about it. You may or may not feel comfortable to say I'll think about it and get back to you. If it's toxic, don't commit to. That is my suggestion. Because if I commit to say I'm gonna get back to you, I want to get back to you, I don't want to commit and say I'll get back to you and then don't do it. And I'm carrying that with me. All we can control is our part. So a few thoughts there for you and this isn't any, um, specific order here. By the way, the next one, choose to be around people who will make you better people that will support you will also hold you accountable. There's mutual respect. You build integrity on a regular basis and trust if you're working on you, you will start to be able to find those people and they will find you. Sometimes we have to pull some weeds in our garden to plant some new soil and to plant some plant something new and allow it to grow and start to learn how to make sure we don't allow people to come into the garden and pluck things up. Few more examples here saying no, make sure again we're not retaliating saying no can be uncomfortable for many of us. This is big stuff. Ask yourself, but will this bring me peace, Say no when it counts. Hey, I don't have time right now, especially if someone interrupts you. They want to cut into your space, Take up your time building off of that a little bit saying, I don't know with confidence. Hey, sometimes we don't know what we don't know, there is nothing wrong with saying, I don't know and I need more time, I need to digest this. And if people aren't comfortable with this, you may already have your answer again, toxic. People do not like boundaries as you're listening to these people deciding when you're gonna cut things off. Sometimes you don't have to respond at all, especially if it's through texting email, social media. I hope and pray. You don't use that as a form of trying to engage people on an emotionally intimate level. If you're not going to respond come from a place of love, loving yourself, protecting yourself. Remember boundary. People want to feel safe too. So don't just say no for the heck of it. Another way to set a boundary, a mutual boundary is to reciprocate by respecting people's time. If you're gonna vent a little bit, we all need to vent five minutes, 10 minutes. Give yourself a time limit, respect the other person's time. They'll respect you for that and they'll be much more inclined the next time you reach out to them to meet you for a cup of coffee or for lunch or whatever. If you're abusing their time, I have a hard time when people get going Zane. No, I'm learning. I'm working on it, respect their time. Give yourself a time limit. Hey, I unloaded pretty good for 5, 10 minutes. Do you have anything that, you know, any thoughts and reciprocate now by listening to them, don't unload for 10 minutes and then they speak up and make a suggestion and cut them off in 15 seconds and you're not doing the fact check and you're not chilling out and sitting still with what's coming up for you and interrupt them and keep interrupting them. And what about this? And they did this? And she said that and he said that mutual respect, respect the time. We're gonna talk about fact checking next week we talked about it in the past and we're gonna talk about it in the present again real time. So we're working on being comfortable where it's uncomfortable at first, this is gonna be uncomfortable. There's no other way I can put it to you and being confident with being uncertain. Next week, I'm gonna talk about how we block our ability to set boundaries, common errors in our thinking that we've been conditioned to. That's getting in the way and it just contributes to more suffering. So we're gonna talk about things like projecting blaming catastrophic thinking all or nothing. Thinking one day it's great the next day the sky is falling in. So thank you so much for listening. It's great to be with you. This is big stuff. This is simple. I'm trying to keep it simple, but by no means am I saying it's easy. So let's practice on this. Please continue to reach out to me. It means a lot. The interaction is great. Good luck with this and I want to be there for you. Your efforts are enough today. Remember that. Remember when you go to bed at night to reflect about what you did. Right? Give yourself that pat on the back. You do matter. You are lovable. I love you. And good luck to you. And I'll talk to you soon. God bless.