Ep. 34 - Boundaries

Boundaries. 
 
 The topic of "Boundaries" is challenging in that it is often a topic of discussion that is generally had when our own boundaries are being infringed upon. 
 
 Luckily, I've had a pretty good framework for exploring what's required in life to better understand my own boundaries and the boundaries of others...
 
 ...as well as the ability to effectively communicate about them with others.
 
 On this day, Wednesday 11/04/2020, Ep. 34 we are going to dig into this topic.
 
 Show Sponsorship - At some point this will probably be a fill - so explore rapping freely about Instacart for 30 seconds or so.
 
 Boundaries:
 
 From article on www.mindbodygreen.com: 6 Types Of Boundaries You Deserve To Have (And How To Maintain Them)

• Physical Boundaries 
  • Physical boundaries include your needs for personal space, your comfort with touch, and your physical needs like needing to rest, eat food, and drink water. 
• Emotional Boundaries 
  • Emotional boundaries are all about respecting and honoring feelings and energy. Setting emotional boundaries means recognizing how much emotional energy you are capable of taking in, knowing when to share and when not to share, and limiting emotional sharing with people who respond poorly. 
• Time Boundaries 
  • Your time is valuable, and it is important to protect how it is utilized. Setting time boundaries is incredibly important at work, home, and socially. Setting time boundaries means understanding your priorities and setting aside enough time for the many areas of your life without over committing. 
• Sexual Boundaries 
  • Healthy sexual boundaries include consent, agreement, respect, understanding of preferences and desires, and privacy. 
• Intellectual Boundaries 
  • Intellectual boundaries refer to your thoughts, ideas, and curiosity...
• Material Boundaries 
  • Material boundaries refer to items and possessions like your home, car, clothing, jewelry, furniture, money, etc. 

Rob's Personal Experience with Boundaries

• 12 step program (AA) 
  • Late Teens / Early 20s 
  • Also revisited in Mid 20s after DUI 
• Relationships 
  • Roommates 
  • Living with parents again in 20s 
  • Girlfriends / Partners 
    • Memory - dated a girl from New York used to ridicule me on being sensitive.  "Ok sensi - why you so sensitive?" 
  • Money 
    • Bankruptcy taught me lesson on Boundaries 
    • Dave Ramsey Show 
      • Book: 
        • Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life 
          • Strong Christian Lean 
          • Get over it, read it and take away the positive 
          • Leave what you don't like in the book 
  • Employer / Employee relationships - especially when you're the boss 
  • Customer / Client relationships 
    • My recent experience with sales 

Boundaries most challenged with / by interpersonal relationships.
 
 Boundaries most challenged by ourselves.

Transcript

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As well as the ability to effectively communicate about them with others. So today, on this day, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020, we are going to dig into the topic of boundaries. Morning, everybody. Today is, like I said, Wednesday, November 4th. This is episode number 34 of the All Around Growth Podcast. And I am your host, Rob Kaiser. The topic of boundaries was suggested to me by you, the audience. And I love talking about topics that are suggested by you know by you guys because it means that there's an actual community here. There's something really going on. And uh we really are supporting one another and getting getting through this life together. So keep the suggestions coming. I really do appreciate it, and I really do appreciate all of your support on this podcast for making it what it is. Now, I to sort of prime the pump, the mental pump, to get talking about boundaries, I simply searched for that word boundaries in my search engine of choice. And I pulled up an article from Mind Body Green titled Six Types of Boundaries You Deserve to Have and How to Maintain Them. Now this is interesting because I was already thinking along these lines of how familiar I was from a young age with physical boundaries, but not in the way that I was thinking. So let's explore what Mind Body Green has to say about these six different types of boundaries that we all deserve to have. Physical boundaries. Now physical boundaries include your needs for personal space, your comfort with touch, and your physical needs like needing to rest, eat food, and drink water. Speaking of which, I've got a lot to cover on this topic today, and I brought some water for the road, some lemon sparkling water, which I have grown accustomed to drinking uh over the past year or so. I'm enjoying it. So, in addition, in addition to physical boundaries, we've also got emotional boundaries. And emotional boundaries are all about respecting and honoring feelings and energy. Setting emotional boundaries means recognizing how much emotional energy. Uh bear with me one sec, please. Setting emotional boundaries means recognizing how much emotional energy you are capable of taking in, knowing when to share and when not to share, and limiting emotional sharing with people who respond poorly. Setting time boundaries is incredibly important at work, home, and socially. Setting time boundaries means understanding your priorities and setting aside enough time for the many areas of your life without overcommitting. And we have sexual boundaries. Healthy sexual boundaries include consent, agreement, respect, understanding of preferences and desires, and privacy. We've got intellectual boundaries. Intellectual boundaries refer to your thoughts, ideas, and curiosity. Healthy intellectual boundaries include respect for the ideas of other people, and they can be violated when your thoughts and curiosity are shut down, dismissed, or belittled. Then we've got material boundaries. Material boundaries refer to items and possessions like your home, car, clothing, jewelry, furniture, money, etc. It is healthy to understand what you can and cannot share and how you expect your items and materials to be treated by the people you share them with. Okay, so that is a brief snapshot of the six types of boundaries that we all deserve to have, and you can read more about how to maintain them in that article from Mind Body Green, which is linked to in the show notes. Now, my personal experience with boundaries is as follows, and I'm going to talk about this for the duration of the podcast. I learned about boundaries from a 12-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous, in my late teens, my early 20s, and then revisited again for Alcoholics Anonymous 2.0 in my mid-20s. I learned a lot about boundaries from relationships. And I would say the I I learned a lot about boundaries from a book. And that book was called Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No, to Take Control of Your Life. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that book in a minute, but before I even do so or talk about anything else, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind when you read and take in information about boundaries. There's a lot of content on boundaries out there, and a lot of it is biased. And this book in particular, Boundaries, When to Say Yes, How to Say No, to Take Control of Your Life. It is a fantastic, fantastic book, but uh it is biased towards Christianity because it's written by a Christian uh person and co-written by someone else who is uh Christian as well. And for some people, it's it's it's got a pretty strong Christian lean. And for some people who can't get over that, that can be a roadblock to this particular book. So if you're that person, um, you know, be warned. And and moreover, if you are that person, this is probably why you may be experiencing some challenges with boundaries because you find it difficult to engage in the consumption of content that doesn't fit your particular ideological narrative. So keep an open mind. I had some preconceived notions about that book when I first read it, and that book broke every kind of mental boundary that I had in the best way possible. So um basically, what it comes down to for me is learning about boundaries through the 12-step program and all the relationships that I've had in life, including relationships with roommates, you know, living with my parents in my 20s during some times of hardship, and then later on in life as an adult, as and actually still doing it to this day. As we build this homestead together, and you know, talk about boundaries with girlfriends and partners. Had experience with boundaries come up with my money and my personal financial situation. Boundaries have come up with employer-employee relationships, especially when you're the boss. And then on top of that, you've got boundaries that come up with customer and client relationships, and especially my own recent experience working in sales specifically, and then getting transferred for lack of a better term, and um I feel like boundaries are most challenged with and by interpersonal relationships, but most of all, boundaries are challenged by ourselves. We, like everything else in life, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to boundaries, the violation of boundaries, how we respond, and then actions that we take moving forward to communicate about boundaries and learn what we can do to prevent those boundaries from being infringed upon again, moving forward. So, you know, when we look back at the six types of boundaries, we've got physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, time boundaries, sexual boundaries, intellectual boundaries, and material boundaries. And material boundaries are pretty straightforward, you know. If you're letting people borrow things, the expectation is that they should return them to you in as good or better condition than when they took them from you. Intellectual boundaries just means kind of giving where credit is due, I believe. And but also, you know, the the idea of healthy intellectual boundaries include respect for the ideas of other people, and they can be violated when your thoughts and curiosity are shut down, dismissed, or belittled. I remember dating someone who was uh different than me, and she accused me of being sensitive, why I'm so sensitive. And um that has stuck with me to this day, and it's something, you know, ideas were challenged, so it's sort of an intellectual boundary. It was a you know certainly an emotional boundary, and I I just I don't even know what to say or what to get into because I feel like I haven't even touched on boundaries, but at the same time, that's all I've spoken about during the entire commute for the past 12 minutes. So as I collected these notes and talking points this morning, I ended them with saying something that I'd already said before, which was boundaries are most challenged with and by interpersonal relationships. And boundaries are most challenged by ourselves, the relationship that we have with ourselves. Now, it's it's you know, that's my understanding, that's my perspective. And accordingly, I've done and continue to do a lot of work with interpersonal relationships, understanding them, and learning how to navigate them as effectively as possible. And I've been able to do so over in a wide variety of ways over the course of my life with the life and career experiences that I've had to date. Luckily, I've been able to have all of those experiences for more than half of my life, and also do so within the same industry, which happened to be the same industry I went to school for, which was a trade school. And all of this is coming together as I continue to write my autobiography through the self-authoring program. And boundaries surfaced a little bit today, and has over the past couple of um sessions as I write. So, you know, through 12-step programs, counselors, talking with people, and most of all self-reflection through the form of writing, I have been able to better understand interpersonal relationships and most of all the relationship I have with myself. That has led to a better comprehension of the challenges I've had with boundaries in the past. But most of all, I want to kind of close with that book that I previously mentioned, Boundaries, When to Say Yes, How to Say No, to take control of your life. Now, that book came up as a suggestion by Dave Ramsey. And that I was listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey when I was experiencing some relationship challenges with my girlfriend at that time. And the long and short of it is um I had some feelings about the church at that time as well, and I was very put off by talk of God and religion and spirituality as seen through the lens of people who navigated it in the manner of traditional Western religion. But that book gave me the tools and the understanding necessary to grow myself and my knowledge base and my understanding so that I could make progress and in the way necessary to go about communicating healthy boundaries with myself and with other people. So definitely check out that book. That has been of the most help to me. And also just surrounding myself with people who live a healthy, positive, and beneficial life. Surrounding myself with role models so that I can be one myself down the road.