Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
In this podcast Ciera talks to you about bringing out your confidence in all areas of our life. Dream chasing, parenting, body image, health, money, relationships and so much more. Ciera covers it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful.
Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Setting Boundaries & Expectations: What My Therapist Taught Me
Have you ever walked away from an interaction feeling disappointed, hurt, or let down? What if the problem isn't with the other person, but with the unrealistic expectations you've set? In this deeply personal episode, I'm sharing a transformative exercise my therapist taught me five years ago that completely changed how I approach relationships.
The concept is deceptively simple: deliberately adjusting your expectations to match what people are actually capable of giving you. I walk you through exactly how I created a note in my phone documenting realistic expectations for specific relationships in my life—a note I still reference regularly. This isn't about lowering your standards or accepting poor treatment. Rather, it's about acknowledging the capacity each person has and protecting your emotional well-being by approaching interactions with clear eyes.
When your expectations align with reality, disappointment diminishes dramatically. Instead of feeling let down when someone behaves exactly as they always have, you can approach interactions with understanding. And when someone exceeds your expectations? That becomes a delightful surprise rather than the minimum standard. Through practical examples—from friends who rarely initiate contact to preteens seeking independence—I demonstrate how this mindfulness around expectations creates healthier dynamics and preserves your confidence.
This milestone 75th episode gets to the heart of what Confidently Beautiful is all about: practical tools for protecting your emotional health while maintaining loving connections. If you've ever felt caught in cycles of disappointment with certain relationships, this episode offers a gentle but powerful path forward. Share it with someone who might need this perspective, and let me know how managing expectations has worked in your own life by connecting with me on Instagram at confidently beautiful podcast.
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you're listening to confidently beautiful with sierra a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful, because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out and I'm here to show you how body image, dreams, parenting, style, personality and more here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. With all of the skincare products out there. It can be very overwhelming and confusing about which skincare product you should actually be using for your skin. Is your skin oily? Are you dry? Do you even know the answer to these questions? Do you need to be exfoliating? Do you need more hydration in your skin? If you have questions about your skin and you are wondering where you should start with some products that have clean ingredients, simple ingredients and ingredients that are actually going to benefit your skin, then you are going to want to take my skin quiz. Go to beautysocietycom slash, sierra, lancaster and click quizzes and take the skin quiz today, or you can click the link in the show notes below and it will take you directly there. And a bonus is, after taking the skin quiz, you will be able to unlock 20% off your first order. So head over to beautysocietycom slash Sierra C-I-E-R-A, lancaster, or click the link in the show notes below Welcome back to the Confidently Beautiful with Sierra podcast.
Speaker 1:I am your host, sierra, and I am so happy that you decided to listen today. I think it's so fun recording this podcast and this is episode 75. Can you believe that we have had 75 of these episodes? I have learned so much that I have failed so much and I have had so many good experiences, so many awesome conversations and I have really loved doing this podcast and I hope that you have loved listening. It's been really fun to watch it grow and it's been fun to get some very influential people on the podcast and knowledgeable people about very different topics, and I hope that my goal with this podcast is that you leave feeling more confident in yourself and more confident in your life. So thank you for being a listener, or even, if you're a brand new listener, if this is your first episode, thank you for listening. Thank you for finding this podcast and tuning in. It means the world to me. I would love it if you find value in this podcast, if you want to leave a review. The reviews not only make me feel good, but they also help other people to actually be able to find the podcast so that they can grow their confidence and their joy in their life. So please leave a review. I would love it because it helps this podcast be more known and more on people's radar.
Speaker 1:Today I'm really excited to be talking about expectations. I wish that I could have this guest on the podcast, but you're just going to have to take it from me, which might be good because you're going to get a little bit of a personal perspective. But this is something that I learned from my therapist, actually, and she has taught me this. I learned this from her probably I think it was five years ago, but it is something that I think about almost daily. I mean at least weekly. I think about this all the time and it is one of the exercises that she did for that she had me walk through. That was probably the most beneficial for me.
Speaker 1:I think most of us can struggle if not all of us can struggle with boundaries or expectations in our life and feeling like we are not getting what we are wanting from certain relationships, from certain experiences, or maybe saying yes too often when we should be saying no, and these things can cause a lot of shame or guilt or disappointment, a lot of negative feelings towards ourselves, or about relationships or about situations, and so as I was talking to my therapist about this and about some situations in my life, then she had me write on my phone and I still have this note to this day. She had me write in my phone and in fact I can see the date. It was five years ago. I wrote my boundaries, or my expectations for specific people in my life. Now this doesn't mean that we love these people any less because we're only expecting so much from them. My love for these people is huge, like I love these people so much, but I have learned that everyone has certain capacities of what they're able to give, and I can sometimes hold people to a higher standard or maybe not a higher standard, but just a different standard than what they are wanting to give, and this can lead to feelings of disappointment or sadness in the way that situations play out or the way that relationships are. So she had me open up my phone and I went through specific people in my life and I wrote out expectations of what I can expect from them.
Speaker 1:As I was writing about these expectations from these people, then I thought about what is their capacity? What am I aware of that they have gone through. What is something that I know historically about this person that I can expect to happen in situations. As I did this, I wasn't like super specific about like specific situations, but I made it very broad so that it could be something that could be used like whatever came like all these years later in any situation that came. So I know for one specific person that this is what I will do and what my boundary is and this is what I expect them to do in return, and it is like not what I want them to do in return necessarily, but what I expect to happen.
Speaker 1:So then, if something above what I'm expecting actually happens, I am just like joyful and excited. But if what I'm expecting to happen does happen, then I'm not feeling walking away, feeling disappointed or like I didn't get what I was hoping for, because I had already had that expectation in my head and it was a realistic expectation of what this person is capable for, and not only what that person is capable for, but also what I am capable for with that person. Maybe there is, maybe I have a boundary that I don't want to cross, maybe I have some things I am trying to work through, and so I need to match my expectations to what I am feeling as well. Then, if something happens, then I can either be excited because it's something that was above what I expected, or just not surprised, just like, well, that's what I expected and that's what's going to happen. Then I don't have to feel the disappointment or the sadness that something didn't go the way I wanted it to.
Speaker 1:I know this is a really abstract conversation and it's a hard thing to have without having specifics, but out of just keeping the respect of the privacy of the people in my life, I'm trying to be very general about what I am saying, but an example of something that you could do is you could say OK, this is what I am going to do. I am going to only reach out to this person if they reach out to me. If they reach out to me, I am going to be so excited to hear from them. I am going to be like, yes, how are you? And trying to like connect with them and feel the love, but then I'm going to leave it at that. Maybe I will then just reach out to this person in a very general way, but not specifically, because maybe I have a history with this person of not getting responses or being told no when I feel like I should be told yes, or being told yes but then nothing happening, and so, rather than putting myself in those situations where I feel like I am being constantly let down, then I can know that I will always respond in love but I may not necessarily put the effort to try and make those connections but that they will always know that I am here. So that is just one example that you could use.
Speaker 1:It could be something like very, very simple like with maybe like a child in your life that maybe you were trying to connect with your preteen and there you're just like really wanting to have this connection with your child. But they're getting in this stage of life where maybe they wanna be with their friends a little bit more. Maybe they don't want to hang out with mom and dad as much, they just don't think it's as fun. So you can set expectations that are very similar to that last example I said. You can set expectations that you will probably be told no, like I'm not in the mood for that. So then, when they do say yes, you're like yes, I am so excited for this and you're going to do it, but that they always know your feelings for them, that you are always there, you're always going to ask and you're always going to be there and when they come you will respond in an excited way. But you are expecting I don't want to say the worst, because it's not the worst, it's just. It's just what that person is able or wanting to give at that time, and so if you're expecting that and you're going into it with that expectation, then it just takes away the disappointment. I hope that this makes sense.
Speaker 1:I am not a therapist, so please don't take this as therapy. This is just my personal experience with an exercise that I worked with with my therapist. That was very helpful to me. An exercise that I worked with with my therapist. That was very helpful to me. So if you are working with a therapist, maybe this is something you could bring up with them how you can set boundaries and expectations.
Speaker 1:There's a million books out there you can go read from people who are much smarter than I am, but this is just something that I have looked back on for the past five years. That has been very, very helpful with me in seeing how I am managing my relationships, how I am wanting certain events to play out and how I feel about myself after I walk away from certain time with people or events with people or conversations with people, how I can protect my confidence in myself and my love for that person. I hope this was helpful. If you found this helpful, share it with somebody that maybe you can talk to about it, and if you want to continue this conversation, my DMs are always open and I would love to hear from you on Instagram so you can always reach out to me there. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram at confidently beautiful podcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.