E41: The Boundary Blueprint: Mastering Self-Care and Healthy Relationships

Welcome to Calm Talks, the podcast dedicated to helping you discover a life of peace and progression, one calm talk at a time. 

In this week's episode,  we delve into the essential topic of setting boundaries for self-care and cultivating healthy relationships. Join us as we uncover the four key principles of the Boundary Blueprint, equipping you with the tools to establish boundaries that honor your well-being and nurture meaningful connections.

• Don't Dance Around Your Deal Breakers

Learn the importance of recognizing and asserting your deal breakers – those non-negotiable values, needs, and boundaries that are vital for your emotional and mental well-being.

• Convey But Don't Compel

Explore the art of assertive communication, where you convey your boundaries without imposing them on others. Understand the power of expressing your needs and limits clearly, while respecting the autonomy and boundaries of others.

• Brace for Breaches

Anticipate and navigate boundary breaches in a mindful and constructive manner. Discover how to maintain self-care, assert your boundaries, and address breaches with compassion and assertiveness.

• Repair or Retreat

Learn the importance of evaluating relationships after boundary breaches and determining whether repair or retreat is the best course of action. Explore the significance of self-reflection, assessing the impact of breaches on your well-being, and making choices that prioritize your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Join us on this transformative episode of Calm Talks as we explore The Boundary Blueprint and empower you to master self-care and cultivate healthy relationships. Through insightful discussions and practical advice, we aim to provide you with the tools and knowledge to establish and maintain boundaries that nurture your well-being and support your growth.

Join us on Calm Talks as we explore the Boundary Blueprint and empower you to master self-care and cultivate healthy relationships. Tune in to Calm Talks on your favorite podcast platform and embark on your journey of self-discovery, self-care, and building healthy, fulfilling relationships.

Chapters
0:00 - Calm Talks Introduction
0:53 - Episode Introduction
5:18 - Blueprint 1. Don't Dance Around Your Deal Breakers
7:28 - Blueprint 2: Convey But Don't Compel
12:52 - Blueprint 3: Brace for Breaches
14:55 - Blueprint 4: Repair or Retreat
18:54 - Episode Summary

Transcript

Adeel  0:05  
Welcome to another episode of con talks. We're here to help you lead your life of peace and progression one column at a time. My name is a deal, I went from someone who barely passed high school growing up in box, a country that's infamous for sectarian violence and political instability, to now being a successful consultant who manages some of the biggest accounts at a multibillion dollar tech startup in Manhattan.

Ant  0:26  
And my name is and I have gone from growing up in one of London's most financially deprived and crime ridden areas to today working in New York City as management, and one of the world's largest consultancy practices, we have both turned our lives of chaos into calmness by focusing our minds on two main goals, achieving peace and progression. Today, we share our stories, our learnings, our mantras, and our guiding principles with you. So you too can build your own life of calm.

Adeel  0:53  
But today's episode, we're going to be sharing our boundary blueprint that will help you set boundaries in your own life so that you can create healthy relationships that also prioritize self care. For this episode, we looked at some studies, and one of them found that 37% of women struggle with setting boundaries, whereas 28% of men face a similar challenge. In fact, when you broke those numbers down, you found that the person that they struggled to set boundaries with the most is their friend, followed by their mother, followed by their partner. And then after that is their boss, and lastly, their father, which I found really interesting that it was in that order. But today's episode is going to be all about how do you set those boundaries in your life and in your relationships, so that you can cultivate healthy, long term relationships. So if you're someone who has struggled with this in the past, do stick till the very end.

Ant  1:52  
But before we get into that, I think it's really important to first define what a boundary is, when we talk about boundaries, we're not talking about physical boundaries, we're talking about a dealer's point, relationship boundaries, effectively determining what behavior you are and are not comfortable with boundaries effectively help you determine the behavior that you're not willing to tolerate, or the actions towards you. Which not willing to tolerate.

Adeel  2:15  
Yeah, I look at boundaries as certain guiding rule set that you have in your life of certain lines that you just won't accept as a person crossing. And these I think, represent the highest sense of self respect for a person, and also represent respect coming from the other person when they respect your boundaries. Yeah, completely

Ant  2:35  
agree. When you know your boundaries. And when you know your partner's boundaries, and you both respect each other's boundaries, you're able to cultivate a happy and healthy relationship, whilst also mastering and maintaining that self care for yourself, as well as your partner doing the same for themselves with their own boundaries.

Adeel  2:53  
So I'm going to ask you a question around that. What are some examples of boundaries, just so we make sure that anyone who's listening is on the same page as we are?

Ant  3:01  
That's a great question. And I think this answer is actually very individual for everyone. I can tell you, me personally, where my boundaries are, are one of them. For me, personally, I don't really like being spoken to in what I would regard as an abrasive way, or an abrasive tone. I don't really like somebody raising their voice at me or effectively just speaking to me in what I deem to be disrespectful, in a disrespectful way. That's a personal thing. Other common boundaries might be cheating in a relationship, or maybe, yeah, I think that's a fair one. I think that's a fairly common one, or you know, being the violence in a relationship. Or maybe it's even something like your partner has some sort of addiction that you're not willing to be around effectively. These are all kind of examples. But yeah, everyone has their own personal ones. And for me, one of them is how am I spoken to can be quite sensitive to that. What about you?

Adeel  3:56  
Yeah, I mean, I think you set some really good examples, which I think a lot of people listening, you must be resonating with that. There's some common ones right about loyalty disrespect, they certainly those which I think apply generally. And it's about a person understanding what's a boundary which they just don't want broken. For me. One that sticks out to me is not having someone smokes cigarettes, where that comes from is my late father who used to smoke a lot of cigarettes and his lungs kind of gave up eventually when he had a stroke. And that's something that is a boundary of mine, where I just won't accept that as someone else because I don't smoke myself, even though I've had plenty of friends of smoke when I've grown up. So that's something which I think is kind of specific to me. Another one, which you probably know about is just a person being punctual. I am pretty, pretty serious about when it comes to being on time. And I just appreciate when someone's communicates when they can't make a commitment or they can't make make it on time and That, to me is a sign of respect when somebody reaches out to me proactively, and just says, Hey, I'm going to be 10 minutes late, or whatever the case may be, right? If there's a change of plans to based on what we spoken about, I do appreciate someone reaching out for that. So that's another, I would say milder boundary of mine.

Ant  5:17  
I think this segues really nicely onto segment one of the episode, which is don't dance around your deal breakers. Yes, we will have boundaries or behaviors that we don't like towards us. But you do need to know what your deal breakers are, the ones that you absolutely will not tolerate are ones that you will not accept in your relationship.

Adeel  5:38  
I think what ends up happening is that people sometimes sort of dance around what is a deal breaker of them. And the reason they're doing that is because they are thinking about being flexible or compromising on certain things, which is absolutely a healthy trade in itself in attempt to to compromise in your life. But compromising on something which goes against your values goes against who you are, and what you believe in. That's where it's detrimental and coming at the cost of your own peace. So knowing your deal breakers, and knowing your boundaries is more about for you to identify, what is it that you're not willing to accept and, and also identifying what is negotiable. And what's a non negotiable.

Ant  6:28  
I think you hit the nail on the head there, your deal breakers is really embedded within your values, the things that are really important to you are equally things that you will not be willing to tolerate, if they're broken, or if they're affected in some way negatively. So you do need to know where your values are. And as a consequence of that, you need to know what your deal breakers are and to not dance around them. Yeah,

Adeel  6:51  
and I you know, there's some people who have certain boundaries around male and female friendships, others do not, we can't give you like generalized answers as to what your boundaries are. But what I can say generally is like, think about like, what agitates you what bothers you, what are certain actions that you've experienced in the past, which are really gotten under your skin, and probably had an emotional reaction that came out of you as a result of them, because those are probably a good place to start, if you don't know your boundaries today.

Ant  7:22  
And I think what's really important with knowing what your deal breakers are, is also how to convey them. And that leads us really nicely on to segment two, you have to convey your boundaries, but you cannot compel them. And as we say, Here convey but don't compel, effectively convey but don't compel. You have to be able to communicate what bothers you, and why where it comes from in a healthy manner. But ultimately, you cannot force someone you cannot compel them to respect them boundaries, you cannot make someone see things from your point of view, and you cannot make them behave in a way that is suitable for you, you can only hope that wants to communicate it, they respect it. And you obviously respect theirs back. And that therefore, forms a healthy bond between two people.

Adeel  8:11  
Absolutely, the foundation of a healthy relationship is a person having the self awareness is a person having a self awareness of their own boundaries, and having the skill set to communicate those boundaries to the other person. When it comes down to this particular tip. It's more about how you convey to the other person, you can never enforce your boundaries on someone else. And certainly, we're not going to recommend you do that. Although you can do whatever you want, what we're actually guiding you towards. But what we think that works is for you to have a bit of curiosity when you go to a person and be able to communicate your boundary to them. And also understand that communication to them is all you can control. You cannot control if they're going to follow it or not all you can control is how you communicate that. And it should come from a place of not a strict rule that they cannot break, but rather a boundary that you have and explain the reasons for why you have that boundary as well, because people do resonate that

Ant  9:21  
I would also say that if somebody has communicated that boundary to you, then it's up to you to decide whether or not that's okay for you. If they tried to force their boundary on you and compel you to it, that's something that you have to question and ask yourself, Hey, is that actually healthy? If somebody says, hey, for example, Mike case, I would say hey, I don't like the way I'm being spoken to. Right. It doesn't make me feel good. And if someone's basic continues doing that, well, you I cannot force them to speak in a different way. And therefore have to think about how I'm going to communicate. Therefore I have to think about what I'm going to do next given that cannot compel someone to do to respect that boundary,

Adeel  10:02  
you know, the communication of the boundary itself is such a big sign of respect in the relationship. Because if I see a future with a person, I would actually go out of my way to risk a conflict or a difficult conversation, to communicate something to them so that they understand me better. So that I can also understand their perspective in that moment and see if you and I disagree. Why is that happening? Is it because we have different values, because it because we had different experiences or completely different viewpoints, you can actually learn more about each other, which is what brings a closer connection to one another.

Ant  10:39  
Yeah, we discussed this on last week's episode, that when you're communicate your vulnerabilities, or in this case, your boundary to someone, you are the one that is in the honorable position, you're the one that could risking her. But ultimately, if you want to build that healthy relationship with someone, you have to be able to communicate that boundary in a very calm and complacent way, and hope that they respect it back equally you yourself, if some new tells you their boundary, you have to also respect it back if you want to cultivate that happy and healthy relationship with them.

Adeel  11:12  
So we're at halftime of the show. So a quick little intermission for everyone listening, we just want to say that at this point, we would encourage you to take a piece of paper and a pen, and write down three to five boundaries that you have, and go a step further and reflect on an instance or an experience you had about conveying that boundary with another person that you were in relationship with, and write down how that experience actually went.

Ant  11:41  
Yeah. Did you communicate that boundary? Clearly? Did you think you could have communicated that boundary better in a healthier way? A common way, a more approachable way, a softer way? If not, why not? If you did, did that person respect that boundary? Did they amend their behavior to be flexible to what was going to work for you? And counter to that, when you're writing this down, think of when somebody else told you that boundary? How did you react? Do you get defensive? Did you take that as a personal attack? Did you think that wasn't you being good enough? Was there some sort of fear in there, ask yourself these questions and say, Well, why didn't I respect that person's boundary.

Adeel  12:22  
And that's such a great point about self reflection, about just looking internally about how your experiences when, because when it comes to looking back and thinking about your experience of communicating your boundaries to another person that does come with a certain risk, maybe they don't receive it well. But furthermore, you could be in a scenario where you communicate that boundary to them. And in that moment, nothing is said or disagreed upon, yet, they go and break that boundary anyway. Which brings us on to the fourth point, which is to brace for breaches, breaches off that boundary are bound to happen in a long enough time horizon, it happens to the best of us. But what do you do when a boundary is broken? What do you do when a line is crossed? Well, as always, stay calm. Because when a boundary is broken, you cannot control the other person, neither can you enforce it on it, nor can you control them. So first of all, stay calm, even though that may make you emotional, because that's the point of you communicating that to them in the first place. So the most important step is for you to remain poise, and then start actually breaking down. why that happened. Be actually curious, be compassionate towards understanding their experience as to why they must have broken that boundary, even though this is a really difficult step, try to actually drill down into their experience and put yourself in their shoes, so that you can come from a place of curiosity, rather than criticism.

Ant  13:55  
I think you raised a great point here, when your boundaries broken, of course, your knee jerk reaction is probably going to be one that's emotional. You might be like, Why did they do that? How could they not know me? How could they not respect me? Things like that. We have to take yourself out of that mindset. And instead, ask yourself, what piece of information am I missing? Why would they break my boundary? Is it because I don't know what they are? Is because I never communicated them? Is it because of a misalignment of values? Or is it because they just don't care? These are all questions that you have to ask yourself. And also ask them. Like Dale said, approaching for a place of curiosity allows you to be open minded for the feedback that you're going to get. And once you receive that feedback, you have to know what you want to do with it. Do you want to proceed given what you figured out or what you found out? Or maybe you just don't want to proceed? Basically, are you going to look to repair or you're going to look to retreat? And that's our fourth point. Once you figured out where you stand and why you stand and why This happened. What do you want to do about it?

Adeel  15:03  
Yeah, this is the point where you have a really, really critical decision to make is, do you want to exert your energy? And your time to try to repair that with the other person? Are they someone who's important in your life, and you deem them worthy of giving that giving them that grace to work on that? Or instead, is this someone that you don't have a massive investment in? And you would rather walk away with? We can give you that answer. I can share though that in my experience, that I've been in those situations when certain boundaries have broken, and I'm personally guilty of walking away. That's one of my pet peeves. I'm not proud of it. But that is something that I am guilty of. And it's something that because I'm aware of it, I've actually tried to work towards it. And it's a conscious effort for me to say that, okay, don't walk away. Instead, slow down, think about the importance of that relationship. Think about long term, like you said earlier, not get emotionally charged by that situation. Instead, try to think about what is the value of that relationship in my life? And is it worth the time that I'm going to invest in next,

Ant  16:14  
you know, you've put up a great point here about walking away. And we're not saying to never walk away, because ultimately, if somebody keeps breaking your boundaries, if somebody tries to dismiss your boundaries, or minimize them, or say they shouldn't even exist, then obviously, you will reach a breaking point where you will walk away. So we're not saying Oh, never walk away, we are saying, lead of curiosity. And thereafter, you have to elect to repair or retreat given how that person has handled the communication whereby you say, I don't respect or like the way I was treated?

Adeel  16:51  
And what are some boundaries that can be broken that are beyond repair?

Ant  16:55  
That's a great question. And I will circle back to something I said originally, that everybody has their own individual boundaries. I think one that is more easily understood to be something that is irrepairable may be cheating. I think a lot of people that are in monogamous relationships would say that once you've cheated, there's no repair. But there are obviously cases where people have repaired after such an instance. Because ultimately, it's an individual assessment is the individual boundary. If you're asking me personally, I wouldn't be with somebody that has cheated on me. However, I'm not saying that that's not right. For someone else. You know, again, this is completely individual.

Adeel  17:38  
I think you said that'd beautiful. Because yeah, it is individual for everyone. I certainly know people who have forgiven others for infidelity for cheating. And to each their own, we're not here to tell others what to do or judge them. We're just here to give you the toolset and the skill set to manage and navigate those difficult conversations around boundaries, so that you can have healthy relationships.

Ant  18:02  
The one thing that I will say when regarding repairing or retreating is how often this happens, you may choose to repair because a boundary of yours is broken. And maybe you would ask someone to repair with you if you had broken their boundary. But if somebody continues to break your boundary, or you continue to break them as well, then there's a question to be asked there as well. Is each person practicing self love self care? And are they ultimately cultivating a happy and healthy relationship? So part of choosing to repair and retreat is number one to deal with point, assessing whether or not you want to invest any more energy in this person? And number two, how often? Or how willing, are you to potentially get this boundary broken again? How many times can this happen before you choose to walk away.

Adeel  18:54  
So that's all for today, let's wrap up this episode for you. When it comes to building healthy and long term relationships, a part of that is recognizing that everyone has boundaries, everyone has rules and lines that they don't wish to be crossed. What you want to do is be able to communicate that to the other person. So the first thing that everyone should do is not to dance around your deal breakers, know what your boundaries are, and why they exist, where are they coming from? So that when it comes to actually communicating that to the other person, you can go into that our second tip, which is to convey, but not to compel, you can communicate to the other person what your boundaries are, what your deal breakers are, but you can never enforce them on another person. However, the third tip that will give is that you must always brace for breaches. It is quite possible that even after you've communicated your boundaries, the other person may actually break it. That can happen certainly because no person is perfect. And the last tip that we have is for you you to now make a decision should you repair or retreat. This is the step where you can assess if this relationship is worth you to repair is the boundary that was broken is that beyond repair and at that point you must retreat because there are definitely situations and lines that can be crossed, where it would want for you to step away. So we hope that on today's episode, you found this blueprint to give you the tools that you need to communicate your boundaries that will create a healthy relationship in your life. And as always, stay calm

Thank you for listening to another episode of calm talks. And just as a reminder, if you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

Ant  20:54  
You can also find us on Instagram @calmtalks and join our mailing list by visiting our website at calmtalks.com. 

Adeel  21:01  
And as always, stay calm.