Hey there, it's steve again and thank you so much for joining me for this week's podcast. It's good to be with you as always hope you're having a good week. You know, last week we talked for a few minutes about boundaries And I want to continue that discussion today because it it weren't so much more time than 10, 15, 20 minutes. There are people with a lot more knowledge that I have that have written and blogged and podcast id about boundaries for a very long time. So I wanna share with you a little bit more about what has come up for me in the past, because this is very challenging for many of us, whether we want to admit it or not. And I think it's a major source of our suffering and our misery when we're not able to set boundaries and just as important and even more important is to have the courage to maintain those boundaries and keep them in place. When we're getting tremendous pressure from the outside. Now, we've talked about this a little bit before, a lot of that has to do with our universe. And sometimes we've gotta, it's hard work. We've got to make ourselves vulnerable and get out there and and look to connect with other people and expand our universe, because at first, when we're doing this, it's gonna feel like it's going to contract and get smaller and it's gonna feel uncomfortable. We might feel like our confidence is shaken and we're really unsure about things. So when I think about I meant I made the comment surround yourself with people who are gonna make you better. Let's back up and start with, here's the thought being around people that aren't gonna make you feel worse about you or your situation. I think many of you can relate to this. I certainly can were around people that we reach out to over and over again, hoping for some reason that they're gonna change, they're gonna understand us and that they're gonna have some compassion and empathy. We walk away, we wonder why we just did what we did. We put our heads down, our shoulders droop and we find ourselves very ourselves very frustrated and very lonely and then we beat ourselves up about it. So I think it's very important to be around people that aren't gonna make us feel worse. And there are even those people that for a moment will make us feel a little bit better. But in the same conversation they might say, oh yeah, I thought you did good with this and I think you're doing a good job and maybe you should try this and then it's followed up with something like this. If you if you follow me now, I know how you get sometimes and I know that you struggle with this and this has been a challenge for you and you're a little weak in this area and it just shoots us down. I don't know about you, but I just feel like someone just poked a pin in me and all the air came out that's changing for me as I'm working on my universe. So what I want to talk about today, a little bit more on the boundary front. First of all, it is perfectly okay to set and have a boundary. It is perfectly okay and healthy to say no or I don't know or I need more time or this is a lot from I need some time to think about this and reflect on this and to say that with some, some conviction to have some confidence, to say words like no, that doesn't work for me or I'm not feeling that I have some reservations about that. If people don't want to respect that or they want to challenge it and they challenge us. I used to get you always do this. Why do you always do this to me? I find that interesting in that conversation that exchange with the other person is saying, well, it's pretty much about them. Why am I doing it to them? Sounds like manipulation to me. Why do you do this to us? What is wrong with you? I don't get you. Why are you being so difficult? And sometimes we just have to hang in there as tough as it is. And we may not have all this confidence and conviction when we're working on this stuff and just listen to our gut, that intuition, that other voice and it's saying, you know what? this just doesn't feel right, I don't know about you. I feel things physically. I can get nervous. I can get when I've gone to practice this in the past and I'm still working on its ongoing. There's no finish line here that this is a marathon. This ain't no sprint. I've got nervous butterflies, cotton mouth, my lips had quivered, my knees have started to knock a little bit, thankfully it doesn't happen all at once. Hot stomach tightens. I felt bloated. Listen to what's coming up for you. When you go to put that boundary in place might tell you something about the person on the other end again. This is like an addiction for some people to manipulate others and play with our heads and our feelings get inside our heads and play with our feelings. So when you think of addiction, it's not necessarily always drugs and alcohol and there's a saying that at least favorite word is no, you want to test the waters a little bit. I think that might be a good place to start. It takes a lot of courage because when we do that and we're around unhealthy people, they're going to challenge us just like I was alluding to a moment ago. So this is perfectly okay for us to start rebuilding our self worth and for people to respect us and remember others are watching and listening, when we're talking about this, we want to attract people and get the law of attraction, working for us, we gotta work on this and others will notice. And they're like, hey, I learned something from this person, they stood up right on man way to go. Those are the kind of people we want to be around and that's something I've been working on daily for quite some time and again, it's ongoing. So again, this is perfectly okay. I cannot say that enough. So again, a good way to start building up some courage is to start surrounding ourselves with others and to do that. We gotta start looking for reasons to say yes, which I've been working on for quite some time versus I'm just gonna stick with what's familiar and make up some excuse, people aren't gonna come around so many times for us to for and and allow us to reject them. They have schedules too and their time is valuable and they want to hang around people that value them. So look for reasons to say yes is my suggestion and that's something I do on a regular basis and show up honor our commitments. It takes a lot of courage to do that. I'm trying to keep this simple for you for me. And again, simple doesn't mean this is on autopilot because it's not, I think what's important about boundaries is yes, it protects us from being mistreated and feeling used and abused and taken advantage of and feeling devalued and not feeling connected, but having the boundaries will open up doors for us, opportunities to expand as we get more comfortable in this new universe. We're around healthier people, we will have more compassion, more empathy, more willing to take chances to experiment and try new things with with others, with new people. Again, this stuff isn't easy. And remember what I talked about A number of months ago about ways to make connections with others, saying Hello 1st, a smile, a handshake, a compliment holding the door. And again, hugs are bonus points. So I talked about that in a previous podcast. We want to be building that universe, that we're building our self worth our confidence. This stuff I don't know about you, I need other support in doing this and I'm not embarrassed anymore and I don't shame myself, like I used to and decided I wasn't gonna talk to anybody about this and then I was gonna go it alone. And I already had challenge, difficulty in regulating my emotions. So I was kind of like leading with the chin as they say in boxing, not really giving myself a chance to succeed. If I met, was met with resistance. You know, I I started to blame me and I think that's a big part of this and setting and maintaining boundaries because when people have pushed back on us, they wanna make us feel like we're doing something wrong, something's wrong with us. We walk away and we question, question ourselves, enter in self doubt, enter in more fear. We feel guilty about doing it doing this, they lay guilt on us. So again, this stuff requires action participation if we're gonna expand our universe. So for me, when I felt it wasn't okay to do this and it was something wrong with me and I caved in, I beat myself up for that. I was frustrated, I felt that I wasn't being heard and people didn't understand me and some people just aren't going to make the effort. I want to find people when I do today that are willing to make that effort and give me a few minutes of their time and then we have to reciprocate. That's a healthy intimate relationship with good emotional intimacy and emotional boundaries. So I'd walk away feeling guilty and shame that leaves, that's when I feel lonely. You know, I'm single, I have a couple of cats, um that's great pets are good, I have very good friends, but I don't get really lonely unless I'm caught up in this vicious cycle. If I don't set these boundaries and advocate for myself on things that seems simple to others, but are some some a bit of a challenge for for people like me historically, that's when I'm gonna feel lonely, I'm gonna feel alone and not enough and for me as a recovering alcoholic, that is not good for you recovering from and we've all had to recover or hopefully recover or in recovery from an unhealthy relationship, a toxic relationship, a marriage, um a friendship, trouble with, with family, the inviting some other condition or disorder. There's a lot of forms of recovery, that recovery out there, that where we need a lot of courage and we need a lot of support. So just giving you a few things to think about. So continuing on with that, I wanted to talk about a couple of things and this is gonna be continued for the next few weeks that I think would would be helpful to do this. We talked about expanding our universe for me. I had to take a step back and think about what my core beliefs about steve really were. I've shared these with you about the feeling of not being enough about the shame associated with becoming an alcoholic. There was a time where I didn't think there was any good at relationships. I wasn't good in school and sports. I beat myself up about so many things. I even start to get choked up about it thinking about it and how much I suffered. I didn't think I was good in business. I didn't think I was good in the classroom. I didn't think I was good with people in relationships and meeting new people and carrying on conversation and people were thinking a lot of people thought steve's okay, he's good, he's strong, he's just kind of quiet hell yeah, it was quiet. I was holding all that stuff in. So I challenge you and encourage you to think about those core beliefs. We need to work on that and replace that and start replacing that with what we want to believe in, what we want to stand for. Core values. Ask for help in this exercise, write it down for yourself and see if you can find somebody and if you want to reach out to me, I'll be there, find somebody that will be constructive and again, won't make you feel worse. And then they start adding to the list and it's like, oh my goodness, why did I ask this person and have the courage. It takes a lot of courage, vulnerability. I think it's a good place to start to rebuild our self worth so that we can set and maintain these boundaries, otherwise we're living in the past, then when we're in the present and it's real time the past comes up and this person someone different, it's not somebody from our past and it's triggering and we think they're doing the same thing to us that somebody from 10 years ago did. And then we wall up, they get confused and we go, oh boy, I guess they didn't understand me. There goes another one, we make assumptions, we start to pass judgment because we get angry and what I found out as I was, I was really just angry at myself not having boundaries and maintaining them. I realized I was the primary contributor to that and I don't need to suffer anymore. And the shame and this loneliness can be fatal. It kills people from addiction, other unhealthy coping mechanisms, behaviors we isolate and we feel helpless and we know how sad that is when we see someone that we love so much. So give that some thought we're gonna talk more about this in the upcoming weeks. I thought it was was good to to back up a little bit and delve a little bit more deeply. So it's great to be with you all as always. Um, you do matter. This is big time stuff and it takes a lot of courage. And if you're listening, you've already started. Yeah, you can do this. It does matter. You do matter. I love you. Talk to you soon.