101. Inner Boundaries

Transcript

“Creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and consideration for boundaries. Can you lead you to the path of personal happiness” This quote by Nancy Urbach starts us off today's conversation about how inner boundaries can set you up for happiness. 

Welcome to the Modern Creative Woman podcast. I'm Dr. Amy Backos. Your host is on this audio creativity journey. If you have yet to listen to last week's episode on boundaries, go back and start there, because we are picking up on a month of inner and outer boundaries. Today is all about the inner boundaries, and it is the agreement that we set up with ourselves that allows us to maintain Self-respect, happiness, and of course, well-being. Let's get into this and talk about how those inner boundaries can play out in our happiness and our success in life. And then I want to go a little bit deeper and talk about an internal and external locus of control. So an inner boundary is, I think, much less often talked about than those outer boundaries. An inner boundary really is a limit or rule or an expectation that you have of yourself. It's about your life, your behavior. And this inner boundary acts as a filter to sort through your emotions, your responses, and your actions. Part of an inner boundary is learning to set limits with others on the outside, but the inner boundary comes first. We may need to say no to extra commitments, but if we say yes, it can cause a whole host of problems. Now, if someone asks you to volunteer at an event. When just the night before, you were thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so busy. I'm doing so many things I need to pull back. Someone asks you for a help and out of guilt, out of old habit, out of not wanting to look bad or wanting to. People, please. We say yes. We go do the volunteering and end up doing more and staying longer. And all of a sudden we're mad that that person is taking advantage of our kindness and they're using us because they know we will say, yes, we will help. It's not the other person's fault for asking. It's our fault for saying yes when the reality is we should have said no so that we could be more refreshed, have a loan time, have downtime, catch up on our laundry. Anything that is important to us needs to have time plus to exist. We need to have downtime. We are performing poorly when we overscheduled ourselves. There's just no way around it. Our performance suffers. The more we do, the less we do it well. So I hope that part is clear that it's not the other person's fault for asking. It's not their job to say, oh, I bet you're busy. You shouldn't take this on. It's their job to ask for help at the event, and it's your job to say thank you for thinking of me. I'm unavailable for this project and that we get mad at them instead of at ourselves, or violating our own inner boundary. Let me give you some more examples around how inner boundaries work. They offer self-protection. It's not just that barrier that we filter things through, but they they work as a like a little barrier to protect us. And it protects all of us from ourselves and others. It protects us from our own bad decisions, our own overextending ourselves as self commitment is self-preservation. Internal boundaries are also an essential part of self-care. They allow you to prioritize your needs and your well-being. It is part of everybody's wellness plan to follow through with what they know is important to them. Sometimes college students show up at college. There's so many things to do. There's an event every evening. There's friends calling and asking to go out, and they discover that they don't have any clean laundry, and they are not doing so well in their classes because they failed to set that inner boundary. The the self-discipline of I'm here to learn and have fun. And so I need to balance those two things. Setting aside a day where nothing is scheduled became necessary for me when I was in college, and I've always tried to keep that a day that's just at home and allowing me to putter around the house, take care of things that have been, um, neglected. It might be cleaning or laundry, but it also might be finishing that book that I started two weeks ago. And why have I yet to finish it? That kind of inner boundary for me is around self-care, self-preservation, finding time to get a little, um, under stimulated where there's nothing pressing. Let me give you some more examples. You may not find that you need a whole day, or that's not your problem. You already have a day to yourself. But here's some examples of when we fail to hold our own inner boundary. When we say yes to too many things. When we take on someone else's negative emotions, we kind of absorb the feelings of others. When we say things like, I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's a terrible inner boundary. When self-criticism is dictating our decisions, you have to do. This is a sure sign that we need a little more inner boundary. Minimizing our emotions and minimizing our need for time or space or privacy. Not forgiving ourselves when we make a mistake is a terrible lack of boundary. Sacrificing really important things. Time spent somewhere else means we have to give up time doing other things that we love. And when we give up things that we love to please someone else, it's time for a boundary. And just being too lackadaisical with yourself. I'll try tomorrow. I'll start my exercise tomorrow. I'll call that person tomorrow. I'll follow up on that tomorrow. Forever. Forever is tomorrow means you need a boundary. So on the flip side, let me tell you some examples of excellent inner boundaries. I have seven powerful ways that you can start to cultivate your inner boundaries with a little bit of ease and a little bit of peace. So first, saying no to extra activities or commitments that extend you past what you have planned for is really a great inner boundary. If you commit to going to do something for two hours, then go home after two hours, don't keep staying. Another great example of an inner boundary is not taking on someone else's negative energy. Somebody's in a bad mood at work. You can figure out ways to develop a barrier so that you're not absorbing their negative vibe. Third one. Setting limits on your time and your energy. Listen, our best is not what we can do if we sacrifice our mental health and our sleep and our free time and our social life, that is not the best we can do. The best we do for other people, such as at work, is what we can do. While we have not sacrificed our peace of mind and our well-being. Next one is challenging negative thoughts and self-criticism. Don't just sit there and take it when your mind starts spinning in a negative spiral. Pause. Stop and figure out strategies that allow you to speak kindly to yourself. Kindness is an essential aspect of both inner boundaries and mindful contact with the present moment. Next, validate your emotions without minimizing them. You don't have to catastrophize them, but certainly don't minimize them. You're allowed to want what you want. If you have a desire to do something, or if something makes you feel uncomfortable and you think you might do it anyway, it's time for a boundary. Another inner boundary that is so important is learning to forgive yourself. And that means accepting the past. And as Lily Tomlin says, giving up all hope that we can have a different past, accepting what is and allowing ourselves to forgive ourselves. And when we know better, we can do better. First, we have to figure out how to forgive. And finally, upholding your values is an essential component to inner boundaries. If you find yourself in a situation where you compromise on your values just a little bit, it's a slippery slope to a spot where we're not living our values at all. As I mentioned in the last episode, internal and external boundaries are interrelated, but they're different. The inner ones are about how we relate to these interactions. With ourselves and how we connect to ourselves and commit to ourselves. There's a couple of ways that we can do this, and the first one, naturally, is around awareness. Making contact with the present means identifying your needs and values. What's important to you? Are you taking the steps that you need to take to feel happy, safe, fulfilled? Next is doing a little bit of a deep dive so that you recognize your emotional triggers and it becomes an inner boundary when you're able to say, gosh, that always pushes my button, that I'm triggering myself every time this person says that thing. Oh, when they say that, that's a trigger to me. And the more you know about your triggers in an emotional situation, the better. And I want to differentiate between a psychological trauma trigger, where someone is feeling as if things are happening to them in the same way that the trauma happened to them. That's a psychological trigger. We can have emotional reactions, kind of like a knee jerk reaction, say, every time someone does something. And I think of that more as like it pushes our buttons or we allow our buttons to be pushed by that behavior. Trigger really is a psychological symptom. And the third aspect of self-awareness, then, is paying attention to your body. What is happening when you're feeling an emotion? Where do you notice it? In your body? Is your chest tightening up? Paying attention to your body can give you vital clues to how you can start to adjust your inner boundaries. If your chest is tightening up when you have certain thoughts, then it's time to breathe. If your fists are clenching up when you're feeling angry and it's time to relax and go for a walk. The way your body responds can give you important clues and point you in the direction of what you need to do to get back to that inner boundary. Let's have a conversation about internal and external locus of control, and it is one of the more widely studied concepts in personality psychology. And locus of control is each individual's belief about the cause of his or her experiences and the factors that that person is looking at to attribute success or failure. For example, if you fail a test when you're in school, you might say, boy, that test was hard. Or you might say, oh no, I'm such an idiot, I can't believe I failed. If you lean towards one or the other too much, it's not good. We want to have a balanced perspective. We want to understand both that the test was probably difficult and perhaps we were underprepared is when we're able to be independent. If our parents encouraged us to be independent, learn the connection between actions and consequences. We start to develop a stronger internal locus of control. So someone who has this external locus of control, and that means that they're viewing what happens to them. They're attributing what what they succeed at or fail at to outside factors. And what happens when people adopt that stance is they feel constantly victimized. They blame others. Blame other people for the amount of money they make for the promotion they did or did not get. Blame the neighbors for something that happens in the neighborhood. They think pessimistically. They don't believe that what they do could change anything anyway. It's probably not going to get better. It's kind of like a depressed spot. Someone with this external locus of control often focuses on what if. Well, what if that happens? And I'm not ready. I better be ready. They have difficulty just bouncing back from life's challenges and failures, which are normal. Like the things that just happen to us. Um, a frustration, a loss, a breakup. That wasn't what we wanted. A person with that external locus of control blames others and can't get past that loss. These are people that get stuck. They don't believe they can change anything. And finally, it's a depression can set in. People with this external locus of control are often sapped of resiliency. They might say, why bother? It doesn't matter anyway. Now individuals with a strong internal locus of control think in a completely different way. And I want to help you get into You. That internal locus of control for your decisions. And let me give you some examples about individuals who have a strong internal locus of control. They tend to think more optimistically. Of course, the glass is half full. They see potential opportunities. They are mindful of cultivating gratitude. And if you need a little help in that area, do check out my gratitude workbook. It's absolutely free. You can find it in the show notes. A woman with an internal locus of control is able to expect and anticipate and respond flexibly to life's natural. UPS and downs. A woman with this kind of control locus also demonstrates resilience. And they can, you know, just recover a little more quickly when there's a setback, that there's no brushing of emotions under the rug, there's no resentment towards themselves. There's no poor me. It's being able to acknowledge, respond to what's happening and move through setbacks. They also have the ability to accept responsibility for their own happiness. If you remember my interview with Doctor Amy, we talk all about this. If you want to know a little bit more about happiness, go back to episode 99 and listen to Doctor Amy Kosgei, who's a happiness expert. Talk about what that means to be responsible for your own inner experience. A woman with a strong internal locus of control is able to explore many possible solutions. You've heard me talk about this in terms of divergent thinking, where we imagine all the possible options. We talk about pragmatism, like what will function here? What will be a pragmatic solution? And then to think of a few more past what might work. And a woman with an internal locus of control also believes that outcomes are influenced by their own actions and effort. And there are certainly a number of things in the world that are extremely unfair circumstances, injustices, things that are way beyond our control. But there are many ways that our attitude can have an influence on our inner experience. And that's what I'm talking about. The idea that we can be in control of our reactions is an example of an internal locus of control. So how do you get from this external locus to an internal locus of control? One really simple strategy is consider your language. If you say things like, oh, there's nothing I can do. I had no choice. You're telling your brain to keep thinking from that external locus of hopelessness. Shifting your language is a very powerful and important tool in shifting your psychology. When I was a client of Doctor Amy in her happiness makeover, there were words that she banned from my vocabulary that were so focused on negativity and pessimism, and I had to rethink every time I wanted to say things like don't, can't, won't, shouldn't. And she each time would ask me to rephrase what I was saying. So this idea that language has a big influence over what we do and what we believe is absolutely true. There's decades and decades and decades of research on this. And as human beings, we tend to over rely on the language centers of our brain. And so changing our language, just listening to what we're saying, and adopting language that is more open or acknowledges alternatives, is a really important part of cultivating a greater sense of internal locus. Another thing you can do is take on some planned risk taking. One really important factor in shifting locus of control is if you're willing to take risks. And the research shows that if you're willing to take a little risk through something like an adventure, you can start to learn to regulate your own behavior and begin to see uncertainty or unpredictability as a challenge, as interesting and no longer a threat. You could schedule a day to yourself where you don't have anything planned, and you'll do whatever you feel like it and it. It's not planned, but you know you're going to do something that you want to do. Enjoyable. That's a little bit of a risk. It's unstructured. So if you're struggling with too much structure, that's an option we've all heard about or gone on high adventure teambuilding activities. And an adventure doesn't have to be climbing the ropes or doing some kind of trust fall. It's not that complicated. And adventure is hopping on the train and heading downtown. It's doing something that's just not so structured. Another thing you can do is learn to fail gracefully. We're all human. We're all going to fail at something sometimes, and probably a lot. It's the fear of failure that stops us. The fear of taking on a risk. We worry we might lose our ability to recover. We worry that we'll be embarrassed or ashamed that we'll never figure it out. And when women are too concerned, we stop ourselves from starting a business, taking a trip, and just know that failing is part of it and we can decide how we want to feel about it in advance. That healthy internal locus of control means accepting that not everything is within our control. Failure is inherent. And most of the time it's completely survivable and we can always learn something from it. Another way is being accountable. There's a great book called Uncommon Accountability. And the idea that we can take responsibility for ourselves, regardless of what's happening around us, and allowing ourselves to experience that accountability for ourselves increases our authenticity. It strengthens our relationship. It helps us see that being vulnerable is okay and good. Being accountable means that old phrase, doing what you say you're going to do and saying what you mean. There's also a lot of great research that you can cultivate more of an interlocks of control through inspiration. Compelling research shows that creativity and inspiration will help you feel that inner locus of control, and ultimately be happier and have a better sense of well-being. And there are so many people all around the world that are overcoming adversity, doing amazing things. And they're not different than us. They're they're human beings. You can be inspired from their stories, and that's a wonderful way to use creativity. You can have a look at movies or books or even just YouTube videos. The idea is to open up your world by saying yes. To surrounding yourself with people who are doing things that you might want to do yourself. Your mind might say, oh, I could never do that. I can't do that. But if you see someone else do it and you receive that inspiration, it's huge. And it's really one of the reasons that inside the modern creative woman, it's such a supportive community and you can see women doing amazing things, making beautiful art, and they took the opportunity to have an inner locus of control that says, yeah, joining this group would help me, or being in a community of women is really inspiring. It's those little thoughts that talk us out of taking action that throw us right back into that external locus of control. The pessimism. I wanted to share an example. It took me a while to think of a few things for you about my own struggle with external or internal locus of control. When I first moved to California, I was a little confused. Just going to the grocery store is different, right? Like to walk to the grocery means I have to go to the grocery store a little more often. I can't like stock up for the week. And I remember feeling sorry for myself walking home from the grocery one time. I had so many bags and just feeling terrible. And why me? And why did I do this? And all of a sudden I thought, wait a minute, I chose to move here. I chose to walk to this grocery store. I chose to buy way more bags than I should probably be trying to carry. I created this situation literally out of my mind and in my actions. I created a situation where I was carrying too many bags and my mind also created like, oh poor me, why is it like this? That's an example of an external locus of control. Like it didn't just happen to me. And so in that moment, I realized, oh, I'm like not doing this the way I want to do this. I want to be happy. Going to the grocery store and walking home. And it was a simple enough solution. I just I can go more often. It's right on the way home from work. I can pop in twice a week instead of trying to do one time a week. And it was great. It's actually better the food is fresher throughout the week. Another example that I thought of, I felt really hopeless about a financial situation that I found myself in, and I was even using that kind of language. Oh, what's happened to me? How did I find myself here? As if it wasn't my own doing to take out a student loan and go to school and figure out how to pay it back. I felt like a victim of the circumstance. And I thought, well, I'm just going to die with this loan. And one day I thought, oh, wait, I'm like, thinking about this in the worst possible way and it's not going to get any better. The more I position myself as a victim of some circumstance, nothing's going to change. I won't take any action to make anything different. That was really helpful because then I did take action to pay it off. It's a really self-fulfilling kind of experience to have these extreme examples where it really was almost from one day to the next, where I were in the grocery example, one moment to the next, where I was able to assume that personal responsibility aspect for my reaction. I'm responsible for my reaction. I'm responsible for the choices that I made. And again, I don't want anyone to apply this to injustices or social situations where they were victimized. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that inner experience in how you want to think And that inner locus of control. That is about how you want to respond to the current circumstance. Now, more than ever, it's imperative that we respond to our current circumstances in a way of our choosing that we can take action. We can be responsible for our action. We can be responsible for our attitude. There are circumstances beyond our control, and yet we have the ability to be responsible for what we show up with, how we talk to other people, etc., and then how we think about solving our problems. I hope this episode helped you take some interest in eliminating those external pessimistic strategies, and really learn to look for opportunities where you can use your internal locus of control each time you practice that internal locus of control. That muscle gets stronger and stronger. Have a wonderful rest of. Of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free and it comes out once a month. And I know you can get a lot out of the podcast and the digital magazine. Yet when you're ready to take it to the next level, I want you to know you have options inside the membership. And if you're interested in a private consultation, please feel free to book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come find me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at Dr. Amy Backos. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You can be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You can be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. If you think it's worth the five stars, and you can become a Gold Star supporter for as little as $3 a month. All those links are in the show notes. Remember to grab your free copy of the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge. The link is in the show notes and you can find it at ModernCreativeWoman.com. Have a wonderful week and I cannot wait to talk with you in the next episode.