Boundaries: Separate or Together?

I wanted to address something I feel very strongly about.  I have encountered many people in the past 6 months who believe that boundaries are about separating ourselves from others; building walls; or keeping our energies divided.  Comments that strike me are that “we are from the same consciousness”, or that we all share the same energy.  What I want to address today is that boundaries are all about living in harmony and sharing energy, consciousness and wellbeing with our fellow man.

How does this work if I’m separating what I own versus what you own?  Good question.

Think of our very cells that work in our body.  Each and every cell has a unique and different function.  Liver cells work together in the liver.  Brain cells work together in the brain.  They know their place and what they are supposed to do.  Each cell’s cell wall is their boundary of skin.  They own what is inside their own cell.  They need to look after themselves in order to keep the function of the brain intact.  If any of them is a “bad cell” then the other “like” cells can come over and lend their energy to the best of their ability to the one “bad” cell.  If they deplete their own energy, they need to take a break, allow others to come in and help out, so they can rejuvinate in order to help again.  If at any time the one helping cell gives away their energy, instead of lending it, they face the possibility of never regaining that energy and then the actual possibility of 2 cells now require help.  If that happens continually, then health issues happen, cancer, tumors, and for me, crohn’s disease.  Brain cells do not go down to the liver and start helping out there.  They don’t have the same values, energies or talents.  Every individual cell needs to be respected individually, when they are they work together as a beautiful team creating the function of each organ.

Each organ now works together in perfect unison.  Because of each organ knowing its own function, humans are able to walk, to bend, to sit, to think, to create, to learn.  The entire body of each individual is made up collectively of individual cells working within their own boundaries.  We now have this wonderful individual called YOU.

Now that you know each cell’s responsibility, you too have the same obligation to mankind.  When you are whole and defined you are perfectly within your rights to lend your whole energy to others who are in need.  Each person works within their specialities, talents and values to create the best person they can be.  When you have 2 people working together, expressing themselves, asking for support, understanding where they begin and where they end and respecting other peoples beginning and ending, then you have 2 people, whats that called?  A group of people?  Then let’s say you attract another group of people who have similar interests and talents and values.  Your group is now larger and each person is expressing themselves as an individual and at the same time creating influence for others in their own personal growth.  You now have a community.

What say your community comes together with another community, separated by city lines, working side by side with each other to create the best community they can, and other communities come together, well then you have a city.  Then you have cities situated nearer to each other and many surrounding towns, then you have a province.  How about several provinces all within the boundaries of a large land mass: then you have a country.  Several countries now all put together on several land masses, which now make up the earth.

Each cell as an individual, each individual as a person, now we are all sharing our energies together with people all around the world as one consciousness, sub or otherwise.

Create a wonderful boundary for yourself this holiday season.  Learn your own personal values and talents, develop yourself and grow.  Learn what your best actually means to you and sometimes you can be your best even at your worst, with your own values.

For more information contact Michelle Post at (403) 266-2867 or michelle@making-strides.ca

Boundaries: Blame 2

I blame my mother for not giving me the tools I needed in order to start my adulthood successfully.  I blame my father for blaming me for his negative feelings towards me.

As adults (the age of maturity) we become responsible for ourselves.  Our parents do what they can simply to grow you up.  I’ve said quite often in my life, of course my children are going to be messed up, its about messing them up the least.  Very rarely do children not take issue with their parents.  Its cool when I hear people who don’t.

Of course with proper boundaries, an adult who hits maturity recognizes the tools they didn’t receive from parenting and looks towards different support systems to find the tools they need to continue growing themselves up.  They take responsibility for their own actions and become self aware.  They take action and do the hard work.  Delay gratification as Drs. Cloud and Townsend would say in their boundaries book.  It is fantastic to see and the majority of us see it quite late in life and for some not at all.

Blame becomes positive when it is not used as a tool.  When someone who is known to take responsibility for themselves has an interaction with someone who does not take responsibility for themselves, blame can be used in order to show the non-responsible person what they are truly responsible for.  (Eg., you made me feel guilty, how could you do that to me?, response: I am not responsible for your guilt, you are.) That may or may not set someone off if they are not used to being treated as a person who is capable of dealing with themselves.

Oh, I love that.  When you see someone who needs help, do you help them?  Do you help them help themselves?  When you do a favor for someone, is that favor yours or their responsibility for going wrong or even right?

People who are givers and are unaware of themselves and self ownership often will do favors for others.  If they make a mistake and hurt the person they are doing the favor for, they have a tendency to blame their friend for their own feelings of guilt, instead of taking ownership of themselves and their personal choice to do that favor.

Guilt and blame.  Who wants to tell me about that?  The most useless emotion is guilt.  It is a go nowhere emotion.  It walks hand in hand with blame.  When people feel guilty about something they sometimes will do their damnest to make it up to so-and-so and will not stop to see how so-and-so needs to respond to themselves.  Or another option is them feeling so guilty that they choose not to be in relationship with that person.  They also may choose to procrastinate their own responsibilities, or ignore the situation as if it didn’t happen.  Another thing that people do with guilt is blaming the other person for putting them in that position in the first place.  Guilt is a negative emotion and in no case, is it ever a positive.  If you feel guilt that is your feeling and never the other person.  It is up to you to figure out what your responsibility is and work with your own issue of where and why it is occurring.  Move past it, seriously. Guilting others is used by controllers.

When someone actually tries to guilt me, because I believe so strongly about the negativity of guilt and how controllers use it as a tool, I personally go right to anger.  I move past all the emotions of controllers right to that negative spot.  The biggest emotion I miss out on is sadness.  I don’t personally know the whole range of emotions involved in going from guilt to anger, but there is more than one.  Sadness is a big emotion involved.  I usually ask myself when I’m angry at someone trying to guilt me, “what is the sadness in this?”.  If I allow myself to feel the range of emotions involved, the anger part of it doesn’t last so long and I can get past whatever the issue is sooner, rather than later.

Because I can move on sooner rather than later, I can get back to my life and what it is that I truly want out of it.  Blame goes away and abundance comes back to me.  I can feel happiness and be successful in whatever I choose to do.  I have a new tool in my life now that replaces blame and guilt.  Successful people sometimes don’t even know blame was an option in the first place.  How cool is that?

For more information on boundary coaching, contact Michelle at (403) 266-2867 or email at michelle@making-strides.ca.

Boundaries: Blame 1

How many of you have had situations where you’ve been blamed for something you did not do?  Now that you know what you own and don’t own in boundaries, how have you taken responsibility for yourself and your thoughts and feelings?  How have you answered to someone else when they’ve pointed their finger at you for their thoughts and emotions?

Our legal system is the epitome of blame. Someone did this to me, someone did that to me, I’ll just sue, then they’ll see.  We’ve seen this all over the news where people are suing for the most ridiculous things.  Most of these are called frivolous lawsuits.  Some actually leak through and make it to court.

The basic original function of the legal system is to incorporate consequences when someone has been wronged to the point that they cannot function forward.  When someone gets a consequence for doing this wrong, the basic freedoms that they take for granted are taken away, so they can in turn, feel the pain they’ve caused others and ideally learn from that.  Most of these offenders take these freedoms for granted or they are so broken themselves that they don’t even recognize these freedoms as a positive in their own lives.

When someone does us wrong in our own lives, those are boundaries.  The original idea when someone does this is to promote “natural” consequences, not contempt or blame towards them.  Successful people look at the negative situation as a whole and try to find the options they need in order to move forward.  Blame does the exact opposite.  Blame stops a person from not only being able to move forward in their own lives, but is also used as a tool for controllers.

Alot of us have grown up in households where blame has been that tool and we’ve taken that tool into our adult lives and used it in order to not get into trouble.  I, like alot of people, have been known to carry grudges in my life.  It was a tool I’d gotten in my family.  I had to know absolutely every detail of every situation in order to avoid getting blamed for issues and situations that I did not own.  As an adult I carried that into relationships.  Of course those relationships did not work out.  Relationships are not built on keeping score.  I had also developed paranoia for a long time in my life because of this tool.  I was always worried about what the other person was going to do to me so that I could correct it before it started, or when it started.

Blame only has one good quality about it.  It is used only when someone else is trying to blame you for what they themselves own.  I had a great friend at one time turn to me as I was telling her my story from childhood and why I can’t stand when she treated me the same way, she said “I don’t own that!”…. She stopped me dead in my tracks.  Even though her behaviours reminded me of what I had gone through, she still was not responsible for how I felt about it now.  I owned that myself.

Blame is a tool, as an adult that is what you focus on.  How do you go about changing that when it is what you know?  Blame is about focus.  What are you focussed on?  Where else in your life do you stop short because of what “other people” do?  How can you forgive someone when you actually blame them for who you are today?

Blame will stop you from forgiving.  Blame will stop you from proceeding.  Blame will stop you from going forward with what it is you really want out of life.

What other tool can you use in order to stop the blame game and truly go for what fulfills you?  If you are having issues with your significant other at this time in your relationship, what is it that you blame them for?  If you weren’t dependent on their behaviour in order to blame them, how would you like to see yourself proceeding?

For more information please contact Michelle at michelle@making-strides.ca or phone (403) 266-2867.

Boundaries: Forgiveness, Q&A

BooDa

Hey there Michelle!
Well a very powerful article there, and I agree with a lot of it, I am going through wrestling with forgiveness with someone right now, but you already know that I almost called her yesterday to forgiver her in part in……well all the pain that i still feel today and will probably feel for a long time.
I have pretty much the same ideals as you when it comes to forgiveness, but I have a slightly different perspective when you got to number 3. “HOW DO I MAKE IT UP TO YOU?”
I give ya what I’m thinking and let me know what you think.
It has to do with expectations of that person, you put it out there and say the words “how are you going to make it up to me?”, no matter how delicate you say that, you are putting an expectation on them, and if they didn’t think of a way of making it up to already, then they probably won’t. And if they didn’t think of a way, or it didn’t even cross their mind and you say that to them, you are almost crossing a boundary with them. And anytime you have an expectation of someone and they don’t live up, there is only let down. I belive in mistakes, life is just one big beautiful mistake.
Anyways…….. If they are a type of person that didn’t think of making it up to you, then they probably won’t be able to process or positively vocalize the feelings of having their boundary crossed.
So I look at it his way.
Someone wrongs me, I have to process what they did to me right away because if I don’t then my ego takes over, and we all know what happens when egos take over in dealing with emotions. And when I process this, I usually take at least 24 hours to do this, that way I get a sleep in between. I vocalize my feelings in a positive way, and they usually apologize for it. Now I have processed the wrongdoings already, so there is no harm, but if this behavior of wrongdoings continues, then that is mentioned to this person that there appears to be a cycle present. Now it would be good to morph #3 and say something like “I’m finding it difficult dealing with this over and over, what can you do about this so we don’t go through this again?”
That way the person is doing #3 by doing something to make it up to me, but they are doing it by improving themselves. Win win!!
When it comes down to it, reality is like crystal. The light of the universe beams into this crystal and it breaks off into billions of different light realities. Each one of these different beams are our own personal beams of reality of everyone on the planet. We can only expreience our own realities, we cant jump over to someone else’s beam and change the colours, skew, tint, whatever. So all we have is ourselves, some beams will be closer to us than others but we will never change the other beams, alter, or see what the other beams see. So knowing that, I will only effect myself, and if there is a lesson coming down my light stream, then I better learn it so I don’t have to repeat it. But feel the warmth and love of the beams around you, it will only help you grow!!

 

edit this on November 3, 2009 at 3:35 pm | Reply michellepost

It is never a boundary that you are crossing when you are stating, with ownership, your own boundary. The boundary that is being crossed is when a person does not state their boundary because they fear the other person’s response to their own statement. The first boundary of skin teaches us that we do not own someone else’s feelings, actions, values, boundaries, inactions and the like. If you are anticipating what boundary you think you are crossing for someone else, then it is you crossing the boundary by anticipating what others think. In coaching we call that a saboteur. A saboteur will stop you dead in your tracks from having the life that you truly deserve.

There is nothing wrong with having reasonable expectations of others. I expect to be treated with respect and consideration in my life. If I am not being treated that way then how am I contributing to that? Am I not stating my boundaries or values to others? Am I allowing others to walk all over me? I’ve had a recent situation where I’ve asked certain people to stop making me responsible for their decisions and choices when we are a team effort, and when that was clear, caught myself taking full responsibility for something that was a joint effort.

When it comes time to ask for someone to make it up to you, it is you that needs to come up with something beneficial that would help you forgive. Eg., someone smashed your car and totalled it, and they want to make you dinner to make it up to you. Is that reasonable? Or would you go to the insurance company so that you can get another vehicle?

If someone else actually learns by you stating your boundary, it is up to them to do the learning and not you to insist that they get that learning at that exact time. Sometimes people don’t tie in events until other events occur. No party will dictate to me when I learn, how I learn, the means I learn by and so forth. That is mine. This is why stating your boundary and asking for the work to be done must come from you with the intention that you will be able to get back on track. Not with the intention that “they will get whats coming to them”.

It is a win win when everybody learns. The reality of life is that not everyone is self aware, or has personal growth that is on the same time schedule. It is up to us to have compassion for others to do their learning at their ability, but to continue that growth by stating our own boundaries and values. If people choose to not respect your boundary and they leave your life, again, that is and was their choice on how to deal with it. You do not own that. Allow others to own themselves and their actions and reactions. Allow others to have their own personal growth. Live your life as fulfilled as you can be, with integrity.

Boundaries: Forgiveness – How do I forgive?

We’ve now spoken about the different types of forgiveness.  I hope that its sparked some insight into everyone on what their type of forgiveness is.  I have teetered with all the different types of forgiveness during my life.  I have some relationships that will never continue because I feel I need genuine forgiveness.  My mother, specifically, because she refuses to take responsibility for her own actions, and my fear of being in relationship with her is that without her taking responsibility for herself, she will continue to treat me as poorly as she has as the history of our relationship shows.  I need to be acknowledged.  So how do I forgive her?  How do I move on?

Obviously I have moved on.  I’ve gotten married, changed careers, own a home, have pets, am a step-parent and am working on being a parent.  Yet our negative relationship still haunts me.  Other people say to just get over it, or even she’s done the best she can.  I haven’t been able to believe that because even as a coach, I have always believed that everyone is naturally creative, resourceful and whole, no one is broken, no one needs fixing, if anyone is stuck, they are exactly that, stuck, and all the answers can come from within.  I have always believed that and feel I always will.  So what does that have to do with forgiveness?  Hope.

I hope that my mother will see herself as not broken so that she will acknowledge herself, therefore acknowledge me.  I hope that she will change how she interacts with people.  I hope that she starts to believe that how she views things is more important than how she views others view her.  I hope she finds the strength to quit smoking and clear up her fibromyalgia by healing herself.  I hope that she understands that she is capable.  And the list goes on.

All of this hope is what I want from her.  Maybe its actually not what she wants for herself.

So how I want her to be is all my own personal agenda.  Maybe her wholeness is the oval to my circle.  Maybe her own agenda has nothing to do with me.  Maybe this is the only way she knows how to be in the world.  Maybe she’s not open to her own personal growth.  If any of this is the case, my hope of her changing is what’s feeding my addiction to needing her to change.

What if I change my perspective?

People who are in any form of relationship with anyone out with a physical or recognizable mental illness do the work it takes to learn about the illness.  A family I knew found out that the step-son who came to live with them had Asperger’s, a type of autism.  At first they did not know and they treated  him badly.  He did not have the capability to form relationships outside of himself and his needs.  There was no empathy.  He was treated as someone who deserved abusive treatment (mostly the siblings, they didn’t know better).  When they finally found out the child was already  9 or 10 years old.  He was diagnosed quite late in life.  The family did the research to understand what it was like for him to live in his own world.  That way they could be in a nurturing relationship with him to the best of their ability. He was forgiven for his issues and the family moved on with the new knowledge.

How is that different for someone who simply doesn’t look abnormal?  There is nothing diagnosed that they have a problem, but like everyone, we all have different values, life experiences, and talents.  According to boundaries, we must find our own fulfillment and embrace the difference that it is from everyone else’s.  We must uphold our own personal boundaries and know that others don’t own our issues and we don’t own theirs.  This would mean that we are all truly different from eachother.  Some are more broken than others.

My mother’s issues then are hers and not mine to own.  Perhaps she is more broken than I am.  Perhaps I am more than she.  Even though I cannot be in relationship with someone who chooses to live their life blind, as I see it, I still have a choice to forgive her and not carry the anger I grew up with.

Can I accept theses differences?  In time, I’m sure I can.

Boundaries: Different kinds of forgiveness

I want to start off with a side note today.  I’ve had many conversations with people in the past few weeks about how they are recognizing boundaries that other people are crossing.  What I’ve noticed is that these people are laying blame to others for crossing thier boundaries without ever stating what the boundaries are in the first place.  Basically bitching.  Boundaries are about taking responsibility for yourself.  Blaming comes in later, once you’ve worked with boundaries and have come into ownership of your own boundary.  Whatever the boundary is for you may not be a boundary for the other person.  Another situation is where people are using boundaries as a means to control others, by stating them as a means of control.  When advising people of what your boundaries are, again it is important to note that what is a boundary for you may not be a boundary for another.  Dictating to them how they are to be when they are around you is not boundary setting.  Each person is different and unique and that is how owning your boundary can help in negotiations.  In the beginning of this series I spoke about the need for sameness.  This even includes having others think, be and do what you believe is in your best interest.  This may not be the same as what they believe is in their best interest.  Boundaries are about differences and ownership of yourself.

My husband just reminded me that even if you know what a boundary is, if you don’t practice it, it can become atrophied, just like a muscle.  It is something that a person needs to practice to keep them becoming stronger.  And again, boundaries change, depending on the relationships.

Which brings me to forgiveness and what the different choices you have:  Cheap Forgiveness, Refusing to Forgive, Acceptance and Genuine Forgiveness.

Different types of relationships deserve different types of forgiveness.  A stranger on the street bumps into you.  Its easy to get mad, and even easier to forgive, as you’ll never see them again.  Long term issues with parents seem to take forever to come to that place of erasing the debt you believe they owe you, or even ignoring the issue for the sake of getting along.  How do you want to be in relationship with the different relationships in your life?

Cheap Forgiveness: cheap forgiveness is a way of being in relationship with someone who has wronged you where you may or may not even mention that harm has been done, and continue living in the same relationship without the person doing the harm does nothing to earn your forgiveness.

Refusing to Forgive: When someone has wronged you refusing to forgive is a way to gain back the personal power you feel you’ve lost.  When the party is unwilling to apologize or make amends for their wrongdoing, shutting them out is a means of control to show them how hurt you’ve been by them.  The hurt, pain and anger of the incident is never lessened and grudges are formed.  If the party is willing to apologize, refusing to forgive them becomes a power struggle in showing who is in control of the situation.  “I will never allow myself to be hurt again, by you or anyone”. Getting revenge on someone could also be a train of refusing to forgive.

Acceptance: Acceptance is about choice in how you want to move from the incident.  It only requires your participation. The offending party is still responsible for their offense, however acceptance allows you to understand the reality of the situation and choose how you want to move forward from thereon.  You take responsibility for your own healing process and how you want to be afterwards.  It can be very empowering and life affirming.  There are steps to get to full acceptance including allowing yourself to actually feel the full array of emotions that come with being offended. You also get to take another look at the relationship with that person and then choose how you do want to be in relationship with them.

Genuine Forgiveness:  To genuinely forgive requires both parties to participate.  It is quite like our last week’s blog on the 3 components to an apology, 1) acknowledging there was a problem “I’m sorry”, 2) taking responsibility for the part that you played “it was my fault” and 3) earning the respect or trust of the other party “what can I do to make it up to you?”  When asking for the offending party to make it up its important to be clear on what it is that you do need from them.  Work takes place afterwards for both parties in order to ensure that the habits or patterns of the past do not continue to repeat.  It is up to the offending party to work on their own issues to not reproduce these habits, and believe it or not, the party offended may have even put themselves into the position of being hurt (continuously) and need to work on their habits, as well as remind the offended party if their behaviours are slipping back to old ways of being.  It is not a means of control, but a way for both parties to be in relationship together in a whole new and different way.

I would like to ask if anyone is interested I could elaborate more on each different types of forgiveness next week and the few following weeks, please send me an email or drop me a note.  If you would like to work on these issues individually you can contact me at (403) 266-2867 or email me at michelle@making-strides.ca.

I also would like to acknowledge the book How Can I Forgive You by Janis Abrahms Spring.

Boundaries: Forgiveness

I really enjoy this topic on forgiveness.  Right now I am struggling with it on so many levels so I’m going to enjoy sharing this with you.

What does it mean to forgive?  What does it mean to you?  I watched a wonderful informational video on forgiveness and have taken it into my own.  Integrity is my highest value.  What I say is what I will do.  If something comes up that gets in the way I will absolutely communicate that to the  parties involved.  Alot of people do not.  How many of you have been wronged by someone?  Has that person ever come to you to apologize for their behaviour?  Have they ignored their wrongdoing?  How many people have apologized with intention to make it up?  How many people have followed through with that intention?  Are you still carrying feelings of hurt inside you?  When you find someone else acting in the same manner that hurt you in your past, do you get that feeling of anger or resentment all over again?

What can forgiveness do for you?  What is the meaning of forgive?  To some it means to forget they ever did wrong.  To ignore the problem.  There is still a debt to be paid however its “easier” to just allow others to be, for some.  The relationship stays exactly the same and the offending party continues to act in the manner which hurts others in the first place.

To others,  to forgive means to erase the debt that is owed to them, but discard the relationship altogether.  Allowing them to continue their bad behaviours elsewhere and unto others.

The video I saw changed my whole idea.  There are 3 components to an apology.  We usually hear the 2 but the 3rd one is rarely heard.  When someone apologizes they are acknowledging that a wrongdoing has been done.  A simple “I’m sorry” is the statement acknowledging, acknowledging, acknowleding that something has gone on.  For most of us, we were never acknowledged in our past and have a hard time understanding it now.  I personally love to be acknowledged and most of the time it is all I need.  Then the 2nd component, again we rarely hear, “it was my fault”, taking responsibility for the part that you played in the whole misunderstanding.  Usually in any problem there is someone who contributed more to the issue than another.  All parties must take responsibility, however if you’ve discussed your boundary previously to someone and they continue to walk on it, they are disrespecting you and would be more at “fault” for trespassing.  Again, the boundary is yours and belongs to you.  If you didn’t have that as a boundary in the first place, the problem wouldn’t have taken place, so yes, you are a contributing factor, even if it is only 2%.

Ah, the 3rd component, “HOW DO I MAKE IT UP TO YOU?”.  This is where forgiveness becomes tricky.  When someone does the hard work to make up their wrongdoing, then they have built character which will help to replace negative habits that have hurt others.  They will learn their lessons through experience and then know how to better the situation should the next time it happen.

I had a friend who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, make plans with me to get together.  I was going to drop by in the morning with some breaky and get reacquainted.  When I got there in the morning, he wasn’t there.  His roommate answered all sloppy haired and disheveled from being woken up.  He called our mutual friend only to find out he had stayed over at his new girlfriend’s house and totally forgetting I was coming by.  So while he was on the phone he apologized, recognizing it was an issue, he confessed it was his fault for forgetting, number 2, and he left it at that.  When can we get together next? he asks, well I asked him, “how are you going to make it up to me?”  “What?  What do you mean, make it up to you?”  Well I had spent my time, my money, in order to see him.  I could have booked an actual appointment with someone who wanted to follow through, but I took his word for it.  He never stated that he would do anything and I’m still waiting 3 years later.  What would have happened if I hadn’t cared if he was to make it up?  Well, I would have booked another day with  him, only to have him forget or give another excuse.  Do I trust him to be there when we make plans?  Of course not.

So the 3 parts of forgiveness, I’m sorry, it was my fault, how do I make it up to you.

Next week I’d like to get into the conversations of the different kinds of forgiveness.  Easy forgiveness to hard forgiveness, even forgiving someone who is not part of your life anymore.  How do you forgive someone who isn’t even there, or refuses to take responsibility for themselves?

For more information on coaching and boundaries, contact Michelle at (403) 266-2867 or email at michelle@making-strides.ca.

Boundaries: Actions, Reactions, Inactions – Being at Choice

So far we’ve been learning that each individual is responsible for their own selves.  Including actions, reactions and even inactions.  Every person has the ability to choose how they want to behave and even use tools to help them live by their own values in order to help them along with these choices.  We have also learned that our current actions, reactions and inactions are formed by how we’ve interpreted information during our formative years.  As adults we are now fully responsible for how we choose to interpret all things in our lives.  We are not responsible for others and how they respond or act, react or not at all, but for ourselves and how we are with them.

Those of you who know me may have heard my story how when I moved in with my husband that I hired the condo association to be the condo rental company.  They in turn, did not do their due diligence and put in drug dealers when the city of Calgary was at 0% vacancy rate.  After 2.5 months they did $10,000 worth of damage.  It was a horrible situation with which we are still in litigation as to responsibility.  A friend of mine voiced themselves to say that I was responsible for bringing that into my life.  Wow.  Wasn’t too happy hearing that.  If a person works with the Law of Attraction only, then yes, I brought it into my life and alone are responsible for it; however with appropriate boundaries, I am not responsible for circumstances that come up in my life because of how other people acted, reacted or made no action. Circumstances are not the issue as things happen that are beyond peoples immediate control that affect/effect them.  I believe that boundaries are the stepping stones to the law of attraction, and without good boundaries, people go back to feeling responsible for what they don’t own, thereby not owning anything they do.  With good boundaries you are strong in your integrity and values and will then attract others who have like minds and like actions, reactions, beliefs and so on.  In this situation I was only responsible for how I handled the situation.  I was at choice.

How the heck is this possible?

Good tools: as a coach I would often ask my clients, who do they need to be?, in order to maintain their values in whatever situation it may be.  Who? What do I mean by who?  Think of a person who inspires you, when you are with them you feel good about yourself.  If you could step into their shoes and review situations for yourself, how would they act or react differently than you?  How does this inspire you?  Whenever a situation happens you can take a deep breath and picture that person who inspires you and play their role of how you want to be.

Another good tool is future self.  Coaches use future self visualization to bring who you feel you are in your future, to you into the here and now.  They are powerful tools to use against saboteurs who may tell you not to act in any way.  Believe it or not, who you are in the future shows you who you are now, without the negative self feedback.  Very powerful.

Role playing.  My husband and I actually spoke about how we would respond in a situation where we were being mugged or attacked.  As Cesar Millan puts it, a dog has 3 responses to stressful situations, fight, freeze or flight.  Have I mentioned I love Cesar?  I believe the same reactions are for humans too.  I’ve always chosen to fight or fight back when being reactive.  My hubby has frozen most of the time.  So talking out loud to eachother, how do we choose to react if something suddenly happens like being mugged?  We envisioned ourselves to fight back.  Should such a situation ever arise (and those of you who know my husband would think no way would anyone ever attack such a sweet man) that first moment would be the one where we remember our choice and then we would be able to continue on with our plan.  (We have chosen not to do too much fighting if there is a gun involved.)  Scary situations but just an example.

Living with integrity with your values.  Knowing what your values are is a huge step in helping you understand what you are even at choice with.  Some people don’t even know what is important to them in order to be at choice with protecting it.  People will blow up and not even know why themselves.  Digging deep into the meaning of values.  Each person values something, dig deeper into what that something actually represents, then dig deeper into those meanings as to what they mean to you.  They are different and unique for each individual, but they are important on how you are living your life today.  Are living your most fulfilled life?

For more tools on being at choice you can contact Michelle Post at (403) 266-2867 or email at michelle@making-strides.ca.

Boundaries: Natural Consequences

What are consequences?  How do they apply?  When do we apply consequences?  How do I know its the right consequence?

Firstly, a consequence is the natural law to any action.  If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it would it still make a sound?  I say yes, simply because it carries a vibration.  To say no would discount the butterfly effect.  Maybe the sound isn’t heard by a human ear, but it causes a wind that can carry sound through and around the world in epidemic proportions.  A consequence could yield the same results.  A consequence helps a person to take personal responsibility for their own actions and behaviours.  It is not discipline, that is something else altogether.  As parents there might be a fine line between disciplining a difficult child and allowing natural laws to help them learn their lessons in life.

I have a wonderful friend whose 16 year old daughter borrowed her father’s vehicle.  She accidently hit forward while she was backing out of his drive way.  She went through his garage door and created thousands of dollars in damage.  When he came out to see what had happened he did not scold her, he did not even get mad at her, he simply said that she’s going to be working for a long time to pay off the damage she had done.  He is a wealthy man and does not need the extra money, he gave her a gift this day, the gift of consequence.  To take responsibility for her own actions and not rely on others to always bail her out.

I have also seen a father daughter relationship where the father is constantly bailing his daughter out of everything and every bad behaviour she has.  He is not teaching her the gift of self responsibility and instead protecting her from all learning and growing experiences that she needs to have before she reaches the age of majority.  He also ends up using her issues as an excuse for him to not follow through with his own adult responsibilities.  The consequences to his behaviour is raising a grown child who will not feel that they are capable of doing anything for themselves and who will feel that the world “owes” them their living, or that what happens to others is somehow her fault.  Relationships which exist because of integrity and intimacy with others may feel unachievable because her example of relationship is about her and what others can do for her.  Its a fine line in parenting to know when to step in and when to allow that child to feel the negative feelings of their bad behaviour.

I had a mother-in-law who was very mean to me for her own reasons.  The last time I chose to speak with her was because of her verbal abuse in calling me bad bad names over 30 times in one instance, simply because I did not take her dog in the car with my dog when I drove my fiance to work that morning.  The verbal assault was so abusive that I had to walk out on her.  At the end of the conversation I simply said one word back to her, and she couldn’t figure out how she could possibly be labelled in the same genre that she was labelling me.  Since I don’t believe in swearing in anger I felt badly about even saying it once to her, afterall 2 wrongs don’t make a right, do they?  I went to see a counsellor because I couldn’t deal with this situation well and when I told him my story he said to me, sometimes bad behaviour needs to be repayed with bad behaviour.  Wow, what the heck does that mean?  I was raised on 2 wrongs don’t make a right, how can I, of solid integrity, be okay with calling someone else names?  It took me years to understand.

In kindergarten if we don’t play well with others the other children will start to shun us.  It is the teacher’s duty to have us learn to socialize with others to get along so that we may learn to learn for our future grades, with support.  If one child acts out the children will ignore them or act out towards them.  Since most people are not empathic, they do not feel what they are putting others through.  They will repeat their negative patterns until they actually feel what they are doing to others, and that could even be by playing back to them how they are behaving.

Do I think my ex’s mother learned her lesson?  To a degree.  I did call about 4 years later when I found forgiveness and took responsibility for my role in the whole messy relationship as the victim.  She answered the phone and thought I had alot of courage to call.  She invited me over to help her learn to knit, and told me that she was no longer welcome in her son’s life with his wife and daughter.  Her son enabled her behaviour the first time with me.  When she emitted the same behaviour he put out the natural consequence that her behaviour in his life was unacceptable.

There is a consequence to every action, behaviour and reaction out there.  Even if you make a choice to do nothing about a situation, the situation will play itself out, whether you are there or not.  That is a consequence.  (Some people also call it karma.)  If you make a choice and act on the situation, cause and effect will take place, positive or negative.  If you are reactionary, the situation will react back to your reactions perhaps creating the same fears and assumptions that lead you to react in the first place.  You are at choice with your own outcomes to the situations, even if you are not at choice with the situation.  That is about living in the now.

Next week I would like to write about actions and reactions and how to be at choice.  Should you have any questions you would like me to address, by all means send me an email.  michelle@making-strides.ca

Boundaries: Geographical Distance and Emotional Guarding

Basically everything we’ve talked about is about you taking responsibility for yourself in every single way.  Allowing yourself to be who you are as a person, and still know you can make mistakes and learn and grow from them, with other people supporting you AND challenging you to continue to grow.

Geographical distance holds the same resolutions as time.  If the situation is something that is going against your boundaries you can easily remove yourself from the situation.

Emotional distance is a little different.  When something, or someone, is going against your emotional boundaries, then it is up to you to guard your own heart. I’ve had problems with this in my life as well.  I come from a family where my mother was the eternal victim and my father a controller.  Even though we never stated these personalities until much later in life, I reflect now and recognize my behaviours when dating boys during my teenagehood.  My mother always had something “wrong” with her and it was up to my father to “save” her.  The way of relating that I absorbed from that is that men are there to be eternal saviours to women.  So when I started dating I became very dramatic.  Something was always going wrong so that the men/boys in my life always had something to fix.  I turned into a victim.  Of course the relationship would never have worked out with this belief system of mine.  I became alone for a very long time.  I took a time out for years and noticed that my thought patterns even then would be so very negative.  I would open myself up to anyone and everyone who would listen to me so that they would save me.  I did not guard my own heart.  I dated many men who would turn my openness against me, thus reliving the cycle of hurt and self destruction.  I did not know then that I was responsible for guarding my own heart, I believed it was up to others to simply not hurt me in the first place.

What a responsibility to put on others.

Working in the native communities for the past year I’ve come across many natives who either guard their heart so much that they can’t move forward or they do what I did, open themselves up so that others can take advantage of them.  There has to be an equal balance here somewhere.

The balance has to be along the lines of making choices of what you are willing to share and with whom.  As with support, you are at choice with who you share yourself towards, and to choose wisely in a way that you are supported and challenged.

This is where the analogy of the gate on the fence comes into play as a boundary.  Say your yard has a fence around it and you have a gate.  When something negative is going inside of your property, you can open the gate to let the bad out.  If there is bad outside of your property that wants to come in, you can close that gate to keep them out.  Same thing with the good, you would open the gate to let the good in, and close the gate to keep the good inside.  You are at choice with who you share yourself with.

When have you opened yourself up to someone only to have them quash your openness?  Have you gone back to them again and again?  If so, what feelings followed you?  Where and when did you find an end to this relationship?

What friendships/relationships do you have that you have made the choices for yourself to be open and it worked?  How is that person a figure in your life today?

It took me until I was 32 years old to get rid of my negative relationships.  When I did, that is when the chronic illness I had (Crohn’s disease) disappeared from my life altogether.  I made room in my life to let in the good by letting out the bad.  Not only did my illness clear up but I was able to quit smoking (smoker for 20 years), start exercising and get my body back to a healthy lifestyle.  Because I was at choice.

How would being at choice with your emotions cleanse yourself both emotionally and physically and spiritually?

xoxoxoxo

Michelle