181. How *Not* To Set Boundaries
Last week, I totally f*cked up a boundaries conversation.
I messed it up sooooo bad, y’all.
It sucked.
But also, there was so much to learn from what went wrong.
As much as being perfect would be great, I’m not.
Ugh.
But even a big failure can be valuable when you’re willing to take a good look at it and see what there is to see.
And that’s exactly what we’re discussing on this week’s episode of Satisfied AF.
It’s easy to read all over the internet that you need to set boundaries.
It’s much harder to actually have those conversations and uphold the decisions you’ve made about what is and is not ok for you.
So that’s why this week, we’re diving into what can go wrong when you set boundaries. I’ll cover the mistake I made last week as well as some other common issues that can trip you up.
I’ll also talk about what you can do if you find yourself in a boundary-related conflict with a friend, partner, or colleague.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What a boundary is and what it’s not.
3 key boundary mistakes to watch out for.
How to set yourself up for success when it comes to boundaries.
What to do if you eff up a boundary.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how not to set boundaries.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday, I hope you’re having a gorgeous day. I’m having an okay day. It’s really beautiful here in Sacramento, but I’m feeling a little low energy. Alex and I traveled up to Seattle last week, which was super fun. I got to see some of my friends. I got to go dancing with a community that I love deeply. And also I slept like shit for three days in a row in the hotel and I’m still recovering from it. And that’s okay because satisfying AF lives are full of ebbs and flows.
We have a pretty cool topic that we’re discussing this week, and it’s what not to do when you’re setting boundaries. And this is brought to you by a boundary mistake I made in my own life recently that was super painful, extremely uncomfortable, and did not enjoy it at all. But as I often talk about on the podcast, you can learn so much from failure and from things going really, really wrong.
And so I wanted to share some of the learning that I got from that experience and just from spending some time since then thinking deeply about mistakes when setting boundaries and how to avoid them. So get a cup of tea, get a blanket, get cozy and let’s have a discussion about how not to set boundaries so that you can hopefully learn from my mistakes and have a much better experience a lot faster.
So there’s just so much encouragement everywhere to set boundaries. Therapists encourage it, but also just all kinds of people all over the internet are always like, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And on the one hand, I agree that boundaries are really helpful and really important for creating a wildly delicious life.
And on the other hand, I think for a lot of us it’s a muscle that we’re not used to using. Like it’s not well practiced, we don’t really have the skills. So I also think something that happens a lot when people set boundaries is that it goes badly. They struggle to set the boundary, they struggle to maintain the boundary, people get upset about the boundary and then they roll the boundary back. I think there’s all kinds of things that can go badly with boundaries, and again, I think a lot of us just don’t have sort of the skill.
It’s kind of like I’m right-handed, so when I try to do things with my left hand in my brain I know what I’m trying to do and I can imagine it working perfectly, but what my left hand is able to do does not match that at all, right? Like sometimes I brush my teeth for part of the time with my left hand and my right hand is so good at brushing my teeth and my left hand just really struggles, right? Struggles with the fine motor movement, kind of can’t get it together.
There’s lots of stuff like this where it’s really easy to do it with your dominant hand or whatever way you’re used to doing it, but trying to accomplish it a different way feels hard because you don’t have the practice, you don’t have the muscle, you don’t have the muscle memory of having done it over and over, which is what often makes things easy, right?
It’s kind of like if you know how to ride a bike, it’s really easy to ride a bike. But if you’ve never ridden a bike before and you get on a bike, you’re probably going to fall down because it takes a certain set of skills. Once you learn them, you’re like, oh yeah. But until you learn them, it can almost seem like impossible or like it’s magic that other people can do it.
And I think there’s something to really learn there with boundaries, because again, so many of us have never practiced this skill and then we expect ourselves to do it perfectly on the first try and it doesn’t work. And I think if you have any kind of people pleasing or perfectionism that you’re recovering from, setting boundaries may also feel yucky and uncomfortable because like other people don’t always like it when we set boundaries, it can be a difficult conversation. It’s a limit.
So I think for perfectionists, sometimes just a limit on what they’re willing to do can feel like, oh, am I allowed to have those? Yes, you are. And I highly encourage them. And if you don’t set them, your body will for sure set them for you. But again, if you’re out of practice, it’s probably going to feel terrible. And when it feels terrible and you don’t have any practice, that makes it much harder to do it well, to do it skillfully and to do it in a way that feels good for you and everyone else involved.
So in order to gain the skill, let’s talk this week about three common things that go wrong with boundaries, and then what we can do instead so that you can build the skill and have that muscle and the muscle memory, you can get the practice. And then this can be something that you can use on the regular to help you have more satisfaction and delight in your life and to keep you out of situations where you feel resentful or like you’re over giving or like things just aren’t going the way you want them to.
Okay, so what are the three mistakes that I see happen a lot with boundaries? Number one is we wait until we’re really upset to try to set a boundary. And then we don’t have any practice setting a boundary, so we just usually panic or explode.
It’s either like a burst of fear or a burst of anger or a burst of panic that kind of comes out and we just blurt something and we don’t set the boundary in a loving, considerate way that frames that we’re trying to have connection with the person or what we’re trying to create. And instead it’s kind of more just like a door slamming. And I think that that often makes the boundary conversation or situation not go the way that you might want it to.
Number two is trying to control other people’s behavior. A lot of times people think a boundary is something you do to make other people change, and that’s not correct. We can ask people to make changes, but it’s not an ultimatum that is going to magically change another person’s behavior. And I think if you go in expecting that, setting boundaries is probably going to feel really frustrating.
Number three is trying to force other people to accept or love or feel okay with your boundaries. Sometimes when you set a boundary, other people aren’t going to like it. And if everyone has to feel okay about it for you to feel okay about it, that’s not going to set you up to successfully be able to have boundaries because they need to be about what you need. And sometimes other people are going to be disappointed or they’re not going to prefer the boundaries that you have for what feels good and okay for you.
So like I was saying before, I had a situation recently where I set a boundary with someone and I did it really badly, and that’s kind of what kicked off me thinking about this topic. And for me in this situation, I think the number one mistake I made is the first one that I mentioned, which is I tried to set the boundary when I was already upset.
And the feeling that I had in that moment was panic. And I was so panicked about setting the boundary and asserting it and making it clear to the other person what was and wasn’t okay with me, that I forgot or wasn’t able to express to them how much I loved them, how much I cared about them, how much their wellbeing mattered to me and the things that I was willing to do to help them create an experience that would still feel really good for them.
So I think this is something that happens a lot when we set a boundary where we are freaking out. And so we only think about it like, no, here’s my hard limit. Like this can’t happen, it’s not okay. It’s not going to happen. And we kind of get almost defensive where we think like, I don’t know, in our heads maybe we fear that the other person is going to try to push the boundary.
Maybe we don’t even fear that, but we’re just so panicked we’re not able to be mindful, be thoughtful, be kind, be loving, bring our whole self to the situation. And so again, it’s like that slamming door. Like, no, that’s a no for me. And if you’ve done that before, first of all, I just want to say I totally get it. I did it recently and I am a coach. I’m a very thoughtful person. I talk and teach all the time about how to have kind and loving conflict conversations. And also we all fuck this up sometimes.
So I want to be really clear in modeling that for y’all. Like the things that I teach on the podcast, I am not doing them perfectly in my own life. I am trying to model them, and then a lot of times what I’m actually modeling is rupture and repair because I do get things wrong all the time.
You can ask Alex, like I think the thing I do the most is say like, oh, I don’t like the way I said that, can we have a do over? Or I didn’t really like how that conversation felt, can we try again? So I really want to impress upon y’all that this is not about being perfect. And none of us are perfect. We’re not getting there and that’s okay. And you don’t need to, to have awesome boundaries and wonderful relationships.
And also some people will be upset if you do it badly on the first try. And that’s okay because upsetness is something that can also exist inside of a loving relationship. And it’s okay for you to be upset, it’s okay for others to be upset.
But let’s dig a little bit more deeply into this. Not just what happened in my situation, but what I see happen in other people’s situations. So something I often see is that people do not set the boundary when something first begins to bother them. It’s like when something first begins to bother them in what I’m going to call a pebble in the shoe way. Like just a little uncomfortable, a little irritation.
I see a lot with my clients and friends and other people where they’re hesitant to say something because they’re like, oh, it’s not that big of a deal. This shouldn’t bother me. I can just work with it. But then it irritates them and irritates them and then they become tender, right? The same way. If you had a literal pebble in your shoe, you might get like an ouch from that. You might get a sore, you might have a cut.
And then this thing that seemed kind of bothersome but mostly innocuous, isn’t. And then I think that’s what gets you into the thing I was talking about before, where then you maybe have a big reaction, like that slamming door. Maybe you feel a big burst of panic, a big burst of anger. I think anger or like resentment, because you’re like, this hasn’t been okay and they’ve been taking advantage of me.
And so I think being able to set, I’m almost going to call them like really gentle, mild boundaries way earlier. And I think frame them in a way that’s like, it can be really chill how you frame them. Like, oh, thank you so much for inviting me to hang out, I’m available at these times. That might not even sound to you like I’m setting a boundary, but I am informing the other person about what I’m available for and what I’m not.
And I think the earlier and more calmly we can do this, the more it can just be very casual and very gentle and friendly like, here’s what I’m available for, here’s what I’m not. But what I see, I think, is that a lot of the time people don’t do that. And then they wait and then they wait and then they wait. And then it comes out more like, why do you expect me to be available for you at the drop of a hat?
Or like, why do you think I should be the one doing all the admin for our trip. Versus like, hey, I’m so excited to go on a trip with you. Here’s the admin work I can do for that ahead of time, but I would need you to do these things in order for us to make that work. And if you’re not available, that’s fine, but then we’re going to have to make a different plan.
So I think a lot of us don’t set boundaries ahead of time because we want to seem more chill than we actually are. But then that backfires because something was subtly bothering us and subtly bothering us and subtly bothering us. And then there’s this outburst later of like absolute unchill.
And I’ll just be clear, I’m not very chill. I’m one of the least chill people I know, but I have found that it feels better to me to gently tell people about things way ahead of time to not get in that situation where I feel panicked and overwhelmed by what’s being asked of me or what’s being presented.
And so if you’re not chill, no judgment at all. But if you want to be more chill, it’s actually more chill to say something the first time something bothers you, than to do fake chill until you’re absolutely enraged.
So to review, this one we’re talking about is trying to set a boundary when you’re really upset without previous practice. So the solution for this is to set the boundaries way earlier. If it feels more comfortable to you to set them really casually and gently, do that. If you prefer to be direct, do that. I think either one is fine.
I know for me and a lot of my clients, it feels more comfortable and more like a muscle that we already have to be gentle and friendly. And so that’s available. Like there’s no rule that says if you’re setting a boundary it has to be really harsh or direct. I think the earlier you do it, the easier it actually is just to be like, hey, here’s what’s up.
And then the second part of this is the practice bit. The more you set boundaries, the more you practice having boundary conversations, the better you’re going to get at it. So here’s the thing, if you’re setting boundaries and navigating them all the time and doing this all the time, then even if you did set one when you were super upset, you might actually have enough of that skill and that muscle memory to be able to do it in that heightened emotional space.
But if you are not setting boundaries ever and the only time you’re ever trying to is when you’re in the heightened emotional space, that is when it’s the hardest of all to do things in a calm, thoughtful manner, if you have no practice, especially. So I say set boundaries often and early and calmly and lovingly and practice. Like if you have a coach, say to your coach, like, hey, can we spend 10 minutes practicing boundary setting?
You can do it out loud. You can do it in writing. This is the kind of thing I do with my clients sometimes. I had a client once who I had her basically tell me no over and over again for like 10 or 20 minutes on a call because she was having a hard time saying no in a situation in her life.
I’ve actually done this with tons of clients. And the more you do it and then know the world doesn’t end, then the easier it becomes. And you realize like, okay, this is just words out of my face, I can do this, right? So that is one of the mistakes I see and that is how we address that mistake.
Okay, number two, trying to control their people’s behavior. So boundaries are what’s okay, like what you’re comfortable with, what you’re not comfortable with. Boundaries are if you do this, I’m going to do that. Boundaries can be like, hey, if you do that behavior, I’m going to leave the room, I’m going to hang up the phone, I’m not going to come over to your house anymore.
But when we try to make the boundaries like you’re not allowed to do that, that’s not a boundary. That can be a request. If you’re like, hey, please don’t do that when I’m around, that’s a request. You were requesting that the other person change their behavior, which you’re allowed to do. You can make any request you want, and then other people get to say yes or no.
So the boundary is not don’t do that when I’m here. The boundary is if you do that when I’m here, here is what I will do next. I will end the phone call. I will end the date. I will leave your house.
And I think this is really important to know because it’s so frustrating when we try to control other people and then they rudely do whatever they want. And I think it’s much easier to decide what we’re going to do and then follow through on it, but it’s much more rare.
It’s an interesting thing where people sometimes want to stick around and argue with the other person about whether or not they’re allowed to do the behavior. On the one hand, their behavior might be rude, it might be inappropriate, it might be against the law. But because they have free will, you can’t really necessarily stop them, right? Like you can report them, you can follow up, you can leave the room, but you can’t necessarily make them stop.
So if you think your job is to make them stop, that’s going to be super frustrating for you and probably not going to work. Whereas if you realize your job is to figure out what you do in response and then do it, that’s much easier, right?
Also, you may find that some behaviors that bother you stop bothering you when you do that. For example, I have clients all over the world. So I tell my clients, hey, Slack me whenever you want. Some of my clients are in like New Zealand or Australia or Germany or Amsterdam, right? So they are going to be awake when I’m asleep and I don’t want them to be over there doing the math of like, when’s Kori awake so I can Slack her? I’m like, Slack me whenever you want.
The way I manage the boundary is I don’t check the notifications. I can either turn the notifications off or like my phone is just literally always on silent. So instead of trying to say like, don’t Slack me at this time, which would be really hard for me to enforce because it’s someone else’s behavior, instead I just manage that by saying like, I only check the Slack between like 10 AM and 4 PM Pacific time. So they can Slack whenever they want, but here’s when I’m going to be available to reply.
And I think this can be really helpful in global workplaces too, because you know, I have a business that serves globally, but also I used to work at Expedia and so like my VP was in London and then a senior director that I sometimes work closely with was in – Where was she? I think maybe Hong Kong. And so I was kind of like getting email all kinds of times when I wouldn’t be online, and sometimes I was even going back to check if I was waiting on something important.
But my boundary couldn’t be, hey, person who lives in Hong Kong, you can only email me during my work hours. That was never going to work because those were not her work hours. So instead, the boundary needed to be something I had with myself of when I was going to and not going to be checking email and instant messenger.
Now, there are some countries in the world who’ve made it illegal to contact people during hours when they’re not working, and I can respect that as well. But for a lot of us, that’s not the reality of our workplace and so I think it’s really great to have this other layer of like here are my boundaries. Because we can’t control other people and we can’t always make the regulations in our country match what we would prefer for them to be.
So to review, this is boundary mistake number two, which is trying to control other people’s behavior. And the way we solve this boundary error is we realize that the boundary is something we’ve decided ahead of time that’s going to help us make the decision we want to make to protect ourselves in whatever way we need to.
Like if this person criticizes my weight or even just comments on it, I’m going to end the phone call or end the conversation. Or if this person asks when I’m having children, I’m going to say, hey, I told you I don’t want to talk about that and change the subject. So whatever you do next, that’s up to you. There’s no one right answer about what to do because the boundary is not like, they’re never allowed to do that. So if they do that, the boundary has been violated. The boundary is if then, right? If they do this, then I will do this. If they do this, then I will say this.
Now, I do think there can be benefits in noticing if you have communicated to someone that you have a boundary and they keep pressing on it, there may be benefits to thinking like, oh, this person, I have mentioned the boundary and they keep doing the thing. That might be something for you to evaluate about, like, if you want to continue to engage with that person and in what way.
But a lot of the time, I think it’s easier to just have the if/then for ourselves. And if you have that ahead of time, then it’s also easier to navigate these situations. Like the one where I recently fucked up the conversation really badly, I didn’t have a good if/then. I didn’t have a good, like, oh, if a person says this, I’m going to say this. And so, like I told you before, I panicked and then the thing that came out was not at all who I actually wanted to be or what I actually wanted to say in that moment.
So the more we can practice, the more we can think it through ahead of time and get clear on how we want to handle a situation, the better. And listen, sometimes something’s going to come up that you’re like, it never occurred to me that this could happen or I would need to have a boundary conversation about that.
So here’s what I wish I would have done. What I did do was a very poor job at a boundary conversation. What I wish I had done is take five minutes to get a notebook – This wasn’t live in-person, it was a phone thing so I could have done this. But I wish I had taken five minutes to get a notebook out and dump out all of my feelings of like panic and then think through like –
There’s this writer that I love that I follow, Alexandra Franzen and she has this writing activity called feel, know, do. And it’s, what do you want your audience to feel? What do you want them to know? And what do you want them to do? And I wish I had done something like that and thought through, okay, this person that I’m about to have this boundary conversation with, how do I want her to feel? What do I want her to know? And what do I want to have happen next, right? Like, what do I want her to do in this situation?
Because I think if I had given it thought I could have had such a more beautiful heart-centered, kind conversation. And instead I let my panic take the wheel and I just blurted out the things I was most concerned about without any concern for the other person’s feelings at all. Well, no, that’s not true. I did have concern for her feelings, but it was not at the forefront of my decision-making because I was trying so hard to avoid a situation that felt not okay for me.
And I wasn’t able, in that panic state, to balance all of that. I was able like a few hours later to send a text that was like, wow, I handled that really badly. Here’s what I wish I had said instead, and then express that. And I think that’s a beautiful skill to have up your sleeve. We’ve talked on the podcast before about do-overs.
I very rarely get things perfect on the first try. Sometimes I do pretty well, but I’m a human being, right? And the closer of a relationship you have with someone, like I have a partner that I live with, right? So she gets me when I’m tired, me when I’m hungry, me when I haven’t slept well. So she’s the person I have to do the most do-overs with because she sees those parts of me that are cranky or that didn’t think it through that are panicking. But that doesn’t have to mean the relationship is ruined or anything like that.
Do-overs and apologies are really valuable things. And I think it’s so important to know that even if you did a bad job at a conversation, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad partner. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad lover. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad communicator. It means you’re a person and you’re trying and you’re learning. And sometimes all of us need do-overs.
Okay, enough about that. Let’s talk about the third mistake I see, and that’s trying to force others to like, love, or feel okay with your boundaries. And, listen, I am definitely the kind of person that in my head, I’m like, ooh, if I say this perfectly, they’ll totally get it and they’ll be happy and they’ll feel okay. And I’m a big fan of saying things as artfully as I can so that they can feel good to everyone involved. And also sometimes it’s just not going to feel good.
Sometimes other people are going to be disappointed and then they’re going to be however they are when they’re disappointed. Just like sometimes I’m disappointed and I pop off before I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not who I want to be. That’s not how I want to respond. All of us sometimes are going to have negative emotions, and that doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong.
So it’s so important for you to know that sometimes when you set a boundary, other people will be upset. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s gone wrong.
Now, if other people are upset and they’re like, I don’t really like how you had that conversation with me, that’s feedback that you can take or leave. You can reflect on what you did. And that’s feedback I got about the thing that I just messed up. And when I got the feedback, I was like, absolutely. You are 100% correct. I fucked that up real bad. I fucked it up real bad.
And again, that’s okay, right? Now, that person gets to decide if it’s okay with them. But what I’m saying is it’s okay between me and me, because I know I can’t expect myself to be perfect and do everything beautifully on the first try, especially not when I’m also a person who’s really invested in growth and learning, because the more invested in growth and learning you are, the more you’re going to do things wrong because you’re branching out into things you don’t already know how to do.
And in a way that circles us back to like boundaries are something we’re all being told we need to do, and I agree they’re super useful. But if you don’t have the skills, yeah, the first few times you’ve set them or the first few hundred times you set them, maintain them, have a conversation about them, it might feel like brushing your teeth with your left hand. It might feel awkward. It might feel hard. It might feel like in your head, you’re like, oh, I have a vision for how this could go and it’s not working.
And that’s all part of it. That’s part of developing a new skill. That’s part of becoming the next version of you. It’s part of becoming a person who can set boundaries easily and with grace, is being a person who’s like trying so hard to set boundaries and kind of it up and loving yourself and keeping going.
And also, even if you do become a person who can set boundaries easily and with grace almost all the time, sometimes even when you love the way you set the boundary and you think it really matches your values, other people might not like it. Other people might really prefer you didn’t have that boundary. Other people might really prefer to be able to make the comments they want to make or make the requests they want to make or try to do whatever it is the things are that they want to do.
And then you may still have a desire to be like, hey, I don’t like that. If you do that, I’m going to do this. And then they may have thoughts and feelings about that. And so I think the question for this is like, how do you comfort yourself when that happens? And how do you clean up your side of it? Like, how do you make sure you’re showing up to the boundary conversation in a way that feels really good to you that aligns with your values and knowing that even when you do that, they may still hate it? They may pitch a fit. They may not want to be your friend.
I mean, I would love to say that if you, you know, take these boundary mistakes to heart and set boundaries beautifully, everyone will love them all the time. I wish that were true, but it’s not true. Sometimes when we set a boundary, a relationship ends. And I think it’s really interesting because I think that’s what people are scared of, right? Like I get this in coaching, people are like, but what if it ruins the relationship?
And I think sometimes they want me to be like, oh, it won’t. But the reality is it might. But I think that really brings up this thing of like, okay, what are you looking for in a relationship? Because if you need to not set any boundaries ever in order for the relationship to flourish, is that what you really want? Because I know I don’t.
I want to be able to have boundaries. I want to be able to have preferences. I want to be able to say like, here’s what I’m down for and here’s what I’m absolutely not down for. And if that ends a relationship, maybe it’s time for the relationship to end. You get to decide.
Now for me, like I had this situation where I set the boundary and I didn’t do it very well. I’m really going to hate it if that relationship ends, because if that relationship ends, it’s not going to be because I set a boundary. It’s going to be because I set the boundary so badly, right?
And so that is painful because I do wish I’d been able to do it better. I do wish I’d been able to be more thoughtful and caring and kind and loving in how I set the boundary. But also, I’m not going to be perfect. So all I can bring is my best and then my best apologies.
And sometimes our best isn’t going to be good enough, and I think that’s okay. It has to be okay because we’re imperfect humans and you can try as hard as you want to, but you’re not going to reach perfection, honey. I’m sorry, it’s not possible. If I thought you could, I’d be like, let’s fucking do it because I want to be perfect too. Who doesn’t?
But here’s the thing, I think this really relates to something I talk about on the podcast sometimes, which is like discomfort is part of life but you get to pick what your discomfort is doing. So if it is preferable to you, you can have the discomfort of never setting boundaries. You’re allowed to. There’s nothing that says you have to set boundaries. But I think boundaries are really great and they can really help me have the life I want, and so I would rather have the discomfort of setting them than the discomfort of not having any.
That feels better to me. It feels more like what I want. It feels like it’s going to help me create more of what’s satisfying to me. So for you, you get to decide, do you want the discomfort of setting boundaries, knowing that, yeah, it might be an uncomfortable conversation, it might be the end of a relationship? Or do you want the discomfort of not setting boundaries, which I think often is a lot of resentment and a lot of unhappiness?
And you know what’s interesting is I think a lot of times when people don’t set boundaries, relationships also end because we become so upset with other people for their behavior that we didn’t set any boundaries about, that then we kind of like subtly end the relationship anyways. So it’s not like never setting boundaries is actually a guarantee that the relationship will go on forever anyways. I mean, sadly there are no guarantees, right?
That’s the thing about life. There’s no guarantee that any relationship will last forever. So whether you set boundaries or not, it could end. And in fact, all relationships will end. That’s a real downer. I’m making this a really heavy podcast here, but I think it’s an important thing to remember.
And I think there can be a lightness in it too, that nothing’s guaranteed forever. And what decisions am I going to make here that are going to help me love the other person and love myself and care for both of us and set me up to have the best chance possible of having the kind of relationship I want?
And I’m not going to tell you that it’s super easy to set really great boundaries because I personally don’t think it is. But what I am going to tell you is you can do it, it’s possible. And practicing helps.
And to review, the earlier and more often you set boundaries and the more often you set them from a calm place before you’re upset, the easier it’s going to be, the better you’re going to get at it. The more you’re going to build that muscle and that skill. And when you remember that boundaries are about what you’re going to do, not trying to control other people, it’s also going to be a lot easier, less frustrating.
And when you develop the ability to let other people have their own feelings about it, then you’re also going to have an easier time setting boundaries and managing your own emotions afterwards when you know that it’s actually safe and okay if sometimes people are upset about something. And maybe the relationship is over, but a lot of times it’s actually not. It’s just something for us to move through and then have a deeper connection because we were able to move through it.
So, like I said, I really don’t think this is the easiest thing. I think it’s very easy to be on the internet and say like set boundaries, it makes things better. I think it’s so difficult actually to apply and learn this skill and you don’t have to do it alone. You can come and work with me and we can work together on what boundaries you want to set and how to set them.
We can spend your coaching calls talking them through and practicing setting the boundaries. You can find other resources that can also help you. You don’t have to go it alone. So either find a friend to practice with, come sign up for a consult call and let’s have a conversation about what kind of boundaries could help you be having more deliciousness in your life or find some other support that you need that’s going to help you with this skill if it’s something that you want to have.
All right, that’s what I’ve got through this week. I will talk to you next time, bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday, I hope you’re having a gorgeous day. I’m having an okay day. It’s really beautiful here in Sacramento, but I’m feeling a little low energy. Alex and I traveled up to Seattle last week, which was super fun. I got to see some of my friends. I got to go dancing with a community that I love deeply. And also I slept like shit for three days in a row in the hotel and I’m still recovering from it. And that’s okay because satisfying AF lives are full of ebbs and flows.
We have a pretty cool topic that we’re discussing this week, and it’s what not to do when you’re setting boundaries. And this is brought to you by a boundary mistake I made in my own life recently that was super painful, extremely uncomfortable, and did not enjoy it at all. But as I often talk about on the podcast, you can learn so much from failure and from things going really, really wrong.
And so I wanted to share some of the learning that I got from that experience and just from spending some time since then thinking deeply about mistakes when setting boundaries and how to avoid them. So get a cup of tea, get a blanket, get cozy and let’s have a discussion about how not to set boundaries so that you can hopefully learn from my mistakes and have a much better experience a lot faster.
So there’s just so much encouragement everywhere to set boundaries. Therapists encourage it, but also just all kinds of people all over the internet are always like, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And on the one hand, I agree that boundaries are really helpful and really important for creating a wildly delicious life.
And on the other hand, I think for a lot of us it’s a muscle that we’re not used to using. Like it’s not well practiced, we don’t really have the skills. So I also think something that happens a lot when people set boundaries is that it goes badly. They struggle to set the boundary, they struggle to maintain the boundary, people get upset about the boundary and then they roll the boundary back. I think there’s all kinds of things that can go badly with boundaries, and again, I think a lot of us just don’t have sort of the skill.
It’s kind of like I’m right-handed, so when I try to do things with my left hand in my brain I know what I’m trying to do and I can imagine it working perfectly, but what my left hand is able to do does not match that at all, right? Like sometimes I brush my teeth for part of the time with my left hand and my right hand is so good at brushing my teeth and my left hand just really struggles, right? Struggles with the fine motor movement, kind of can’t get it together.
There’s lots of stuff like this where it’s really easy to do it with your dominant hand or whatever way you’re used to doing it, but trying to accomplish it a different way feels hard because you don’t have the practice, you don’t have the muscle, you don’t have the muscle memory of having done it over and over, which is what often makes things easy, right?
It’s kind of like if you know how to ride a bike, it’s really easy to ride a bike. But if you’ve never ridden a bike before and you get on a bike, you’re probably going to fall down because it takes a certain set of skills. Once you learn them, you’re like, oh yeah. But until you learn them, it can almost seem like impossible or like it’s magic that other people can do it.
And I think there’s something to really learn there with boundaries, because again, so many of us have never practiced this skill and then we expect ourselves to do it perfectly on the first try and it doesn’t work. And I think if you have any kind of people pleasing or perfectionism that you’re recovering from, setting boundaries may also feel yucky and uncomfortable because like other people don’t always like it when we set boundaries, it can be a difficult conversation. It’s a limit.
So I think for perfectionists, sometimes just a limit on what they’re willing to do can feel like, oh, am I allowed to have those? Yes, you are. And I highly encourage them. And if you don’t set them, your body will for sure set them for you. But again, if you’re out of practice, it’s probably going to feel terrible. And when it feels terrible and you don’t have any practice, that makes it much harder to do it well, to do it skillfully and to do it in a way that feels good for you and everyone else involved.
So in order to gain the skill, let’s talk this week about three common things that go wrong with boundaries, and then what we can do instead so that you can build the skill and have that muscle and the muscle memory, you can get the practice. And then this can be something that you can use on the regular to help you have more satisfaction and delight in your life and to keep you out of situations where you feel resentful or like you’re over giving or like things just aren’t going the way you want them to.
Okay, so what are the three mistakes that I see happen a lot with boundaries? Number one is we wait until we’re really upset to try to set a boundary. And then we don’t have any practice setting a boundary, so we just usually panic or explode.
It’s either like a burst of fear or a burst of anger or a burst of panic that kind of comes out and we just blurt something and we don’t set the boundary in a loving, considerate way that frames that we’re trying to have connection with the person or what we’re trying to create. And instead it’s kind of more just like a door slamming. And I think that that often makes the boundary conversation or situation not go the way that you might want it to.
Number two is trying to control other people’s behavior. A lot of times people think a boundary is something you do to make other people change, and that’s not correct. We can ask people to make changes, but it’s not an ultimatum that is going to magically change another person’s behavior. And I think if you go in expecting that, setting boundaries is probably going to feel really frustrating.
Number three is trying to force other people to accept or love or feel okay with your boundaries. Sometimes when you set a boundary, other people aren’t going to like it. And if everyone has to feel okay about it for you to feel okay about it, that’s not going to set you up to successfully be able to have boundaries because they need to be about what you need. And sometimes other people are going to be disappointed or they’re not going to prefer the boundaries that you have for what feels good and okay for you.
So like I was saying before, I had a situation recently where I set a boundary with someone and I did it really badly, and that’s kind of what kicked off me thinking about this topic. And for me in this situation, I think the number one mistake I made is the first one that I mentioned, which is I tried to set the boundary when I was already upset.
And the feeling that I had in that moment was panic. And I was so panicked about setting the boundary and asserting it and making it clear to the other person what was and wasn’t okay with me, that I forgot or wasn’t able to express to them how much I loved them, how much I cared about them, how much their wellbeing mattered to me and the things that I was willing to do to help them create an experience that would still feel really good for them.
So I think this is something that happens a lot when we set a boundary where we are freaking out. And so we only think about it like, no, here’s my hard limit. Like this can’t happen, it’s not okay. It’s not going to happen. And we kind of get almost defensive where we think like, I don’t know, in our heads maybe we fear that the other person is going to try to push the boundary.
Maybe we don’t even fear that, but we’re just so panicked we’re not able to be mindful, be thoughtful, be kind, be loving, bring our whole self to the situation. And so again, it’s like that slamming door. Like, no, that’s a no for me. And if you’ve done that before, first of all, I just want to say I totally get it. I did it recently and I am a coach. I’m a very thoughtful person. I talk and teach all the time about how to have kind and loving conflict conversations. And also we all fuck this up sometimes.
So I want to be really clear in modeling that for y’all. Like the things that I teach on the podcast, I am not doing them perfectly in my own life. I am trying to model them, and then a lot of times what I’m actually modeling is rupture and repair because I do get things wrong all the time.
You can ask Alex, like I think the thing I do the most is say like, oh, I don’t like the way I said that, can we have a do over? Or I didn’t really like how that conversation felt, can we try again? So I really want to impress upon y’all that this is not about being perfect. And none of us are perfect. We’re not getting there and that’s okay. And you don’t need to, to have awesome boundaries and wonderful relationships.
And also some people will be upset if you do it badly on the first try. And that’s okay because upsetness is something that can also exist inside of a loving relationship. And it’s okay for you to be upset, it’s okay for others to be upset.
But let’s dig a little bit more deeply into this. Not just what happened in my situation, but what I see happen in other people’s situations. So something I often see is that people do not set the boundary when something first begins to bother them. It’s like when something first begins to bother them in what I’m going to call a pebble in the shoe way. Like just a little uncomfortable, a little irritation.
I see a lot with my clients and friends and other people where they’re hesitant to say something because they’re like, oh, it’s not that big of a deal. This shouldn’t bother me. I can just work with it. But then it irritates them and irritates them and then they become tender, right? The same way. If you had a literal pebble in your shoe, you might get like an ouch from that. You might get a sore, you might have a cut.
And then this thing that seemed kind of bothersome but mostly innocuous, isn’t. And then I think that’s what gets you into the thing I was talking about before, where then you maybe have a big reaction, like that slamming door. Maybe you feel a big burst of panic, a big burst of anger. I think anger or like resentment, because you’re like, this hasn’t been okay and they’ve been taking advantage of me.
And so I think being able to set, I’m almost going to call them like really gentle, mild boundaries way earlier. And I think frame them in a way that’s like, it can be really chill how you frame them. Like, oh, thank you so much for inviting me to hang out, I’m available at these times. That might not even sound to you like I’m setting a boundary, but I am informing the other person about what I’m available for and what I’m not.
And I think the earlier and more calmly we can do this, the more it can just be very casual and very gentle and friendly like, here’s what I’m available for, here’s what I’m not. But what I see, I think, is that a lot of the time people don’t do that. And then they wait and then they wait and then they wait. And then it comes out more like, why do you expect me to be available for you at the drop of a hat?
Or like, why do you think I should be the one doing all the admin for our trip. Versus like, hey, I’m so excited to go on a trip with you. Here’s the admin work I can do for that ahead of time, but I would need you to do these things in order for us to make that work. And if you’re not available, that’s fine, but then we’re going to have to make a different plan.
So I think a lot of us don’t set boundaries ahead of time because we want to seem more chill than we actually are. But then that backfires because something was subtly bothering us and subtly bothering us and subtly bothering us. And then there’s this outburst later of like absolute unchill.
And I’ll just be clear, I’m not very chill. I’m one of the least chill people I know, but I have found that it feels better to me to gently tell people about things way ahead of time to not get in that situation where I feel panicked and overwhelmed by what’s being asked of me or what’s being presented.
And so if you’re not chill, no judgment at all. But if you want to be more chill, it’s actually more chill to say something the first time something bothers you, than to do fake chill until you’re absolutely enraged.
So to review, this one we’re talking about is trying to set a boundary when you’re really upset without previous practice. So the solution for this is to set the boundaries way earlier. If it feels more comfortable to you to set them really casually and gently, do that. If you prefer to be direct, do that. I think either one is fine.
I know for me and a lot of my clients, it feels more comfortable and more like a muscle that we already have to be gentle and friendly. And so that’s available. Like there’s no rule that says if you’re setting a boundary it has to be really harsh or direct. I think the earlier you do it, the easier it actually is just to be like, hey, here’s what’s up.
And then the second part of this is the practice bit. The more you set boundaries, the more you practice having boundary conversations, the better you’re going to get at it. So here’s the thing, if you’re setting boundaries and navigating them all the time and doing this all the time, then even if you did set one when you were super upset, you might actually have enough of that skill and that muscle memory to be able to do it in that heightened emotional space.
But if you are not setting boundaries ever and the only time you’re ever trying to is when you’re in the heightened emotional space, that is when it’s the hardest of all to do things in a calm, thoughtful manner, if you have no practice, especially. So I say set boundaries often and early and calmly and lovingly and practice. Like if you have a coach, say to your coach, like, hey, can we spend 10 minutes practicing boundary setting?
You can do it out loud. You can do it in writing. This is the kind of thing I do with my clients sometimes. I had a client once who I had her basically tell me no over and over again for like 10 or 20 minutes on a call because she was having a hard time saying no in a situation in her life.
I’ve actually done this with tons of clients. And the more you do it and then know the world doesn’t end, then the easier it becomes. And you realize like, okay, this is just words out of my face, I can do this, right? So that is one of the mistakes I see and that is how we address that mistake.
Okay, number two, trying to control their people’s behavior. So boundaries are what’s okay, like what you’re comfortable with, what you’re not comfortable with. Boundaries are if you do this, I’m going to do that. Boundaries can be like, hey, if you do that behavior, I’m going to leave the room, I’m going to hang up the phone, I’m not going to come over to your house anymore.
But when we try to make the boundaries like you’re not allowed to do that, that’s not a boundary. That can be a request. If you’re like, hey, please don’t do that when I’m around, that’s a request. You were requesting that the other person change their behavior, which you’re allowed to do. You can make any request you want, and then other people get to say yes or no.
So the boundary is not don’t do that when I’m here. The boundary is if you do that when I’m here, here is what I will do next. I will end the phone call. I will end the date. I will leave your house.
And I think this is really important to know because it’s so frustrating when we try to control other people and then they rudely do whatever they want. And I think it’s much easier to decide what we’re going to do and then follow through on it, but it’s much more rare.
It’s an interesting thing where people sometimes want to stick around and argue with the other person about whether or not they’re allowed to do the behavior. On the one hand, their behavior might be rude, it might be inappropriate, it might be against the law. But because they have free will, you can’t really necessarily stop them, right? Like you can report them, you can follow up, you can leave the room, but you can’t necessarily make them stop.
So if you think your job is to make them stop, that’s going to be super frustrating for you and probably not going to work. Whereas if you realize your job is to figure out what you do in response and then do it, that’s much easier, right?
Also, you may find that some behaviors that bother you stop bothering you when you do that. For example, I have clients all over the world. So I tell my clients, hey, Slack me whenever you want. Some of my clients are in like New Zealand or Australia or Germany or Amsterdam, right? So they are going to be awake when I’m asleep and I don’t want them to be over there doing the math of like, when’s Kori awake so I can Slack her? I’m like, Slack me whenever you want.
The way I manage the boundary is I don’t check the notifications. I can either turn the notifications off or like my phone is just literally always on silent. So instead of trying to say like, don’t Slack me at this time, which would be really hard for me to enforce because it’s someone else’s behavior, instead I just manage that by saying like, I only check the Slack between like 10 AM and 4 PM Pacific time. So they can Slack whenever they want, but here’s when I’m going to be available to reply.
And I think this can be really helpful in global workplaces too, because you know, I have a business that serves globally, but also I used to work at Expedia and so like my VP was in London and then a senior director that I sometimes work closely with was in – Where was she? I think maybe Hong Kong. And so I was kind of like getting email all kinds of times when I wouldn’t be online, and sometimes I was even going back to check if I was waiting on something important.
But my boundary couldn’t be, hey, person who lives in Hong Kong, you can only email me during my work hours. That was never going to work because those were not her work hours. So instead, the boundary needed to be something I had with myself of when I was going to and not going to be checking email and instant messenger.
Now, there are some countries in the world who’ve made it illegal to contact people during hours when they’re not working, and I can respect that as well. But for a lot of us, that’s not the reality of our workplace and so I think it’s really great to have this other layer of like here are my boundaries. Because we can’t control other people and we can’t always make the regulations in our country match what we would prefer for them to be.
So to review, this is boundary mistake number two, which is trying to control other people’s behavior. And the way we solve this boundary error is we realize that the boundary is something we’ve decided ahead of time that’s going to help us make the decision we want to make to protect ourselves in whatever way we need to.
Like if this person criticizes my weight or even just comments on it, I’m going to end the phone call or end the conversation. Or if this person asks when I’m having children, I’m going to say, hey, I told you I don’t want to talk about that and change the subject. So whatever you do next, that’s up to you. There’s no one right answer about what to do because the boundary is not like, they’re never allowed to do that. So if they do that, the boundary has been violated. The boundary is if then, right? If they do this, then I will do this. If they do this, then I will say this.
Now, I do think there can be benefits in noticing if you have communicated to someone that you have a boundary and they keep pressing on it, there may be benefits to thinking like, oh, this person, I have mentioned the boundary and they keep doing the thing. That might be something for you to evaluate about, like, if you want to continue to engage with that person and in what way.
But a lot of the time, I think it’s easier to just have the if/then for ourselves. And if you have that ahead of time, then it’s also easier to navigate these situations. Like the one where I recently fucked up the conversation really badly, I didn’t have a good if/then. I didn’t have a good, like, oh, if a person says this, I’m going to say this. And so, like I told you before, I panicked and then the thing that came out was not at all who I actually wanted to be or what I actually wanted to say in that moment.
So the more we can practice, the more we can think it through ahead of time and get clear on how we want to handle a situation, the better. And listen, sometimes something’s going to come up that you’re like, it never occurred to me that this could happen or I would need to have a boundary conversation about that.
So here’s what I wish I would have done. What I did do was a very poor job at a boundary conversation. What I wish I had done is take five minutes to get a notebook – This wasn’t live in-person, it was a phone thing so I could have done this. But I wish I had taken five minutes to get a notebook out and dump out all of my feelings of like panic and then think through like –
There’s this writer that I love that I follow, Alexandra Franzen and she has this writing activity called feel, know, do. And it’s, what do you want your audience to feel? What do you want them to know? And what do you want them to do? And I wish I had done something like that and thought through, okay, this person that I’m about to have this boundary conversation with, how do I want her to feel? What do I want her to know? And what do I want to have happen next, right? Like, what do I want her to do in this situation?
Because I think if I had given it thought I could have had such a more beautiful heart-centered, kind conversation. And instead I let my panic take the wheel and I just blurted out the things I was most concerned about without any concern for the other person’s feelings at all. Well, no, that’s not true. I did have concern for her feelings, but it was not at the forefront of my decision-making because I was trying so hard to avoid a situation that felt not okay for me.
And I wasn’t able, in that panic state, to balance all of that. I was able like a few hours later to send a text that was like, wow, I handled that really badly. Here’s what I wish I had said instead, and then express that. And I think that’s a beautiful skill to have up your sleeve. We’ve talked on the podcast before about do-overs.
I very rarely get things perfect on the first try. Sometimes I do pretty well, but I’m a human being, right? And the closer of a relationship you have with someone, like I have a partner that I live with, right? So she gets me when I’m tired, me when I’m hungry, me when I haven’t slept well. So she’s the person I have to do the most do-overs with because she sees those parts of me that are cranky or that didn’t think it through that are panicking. But that doesn’t have to mean the relationship is ruined or anything like that.
Do-overs and apologies are really valuable things. And I think it’s so important to know that even if you did a bad job at a conversation, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad partner. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad lover. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad communicator. It means you’re a person and you’re trying and you’re learning. And sometimes all of us need do-overs.
Okay, enough about that. Let’s talk about the third mistake I see, and that’s trying to force others to like, love, or feel okay with your boundaries. And, listen, I am definitely the kind of person that in my head, I’m like, ooh, if I say this perfectly, they’ll totally get it and they’ll be happy and they’ll feel okay. And I’m a big fan of saying things as artfully as I can so that they can feel good to everyone involved. And also sometimes it’s just not going to feel good.
Sometimes other people are going to be disappointed and then they’re going to be however they are when they’re disappointed. Just like sometimes I’m disappointed and I pop off before I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not who I want to be. That’s not how I want to respond. All of us sometimes are going to have negative emotions, and that doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong.
So it’s so important for you to know that sometimes when you set a boundary, other people will be upset. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s gone wrong.
Now, if other people are upset and they’re like, I don’t really like how you had that conversation with me, that’s feedback that you can take or leave. You can reflect on what you did. And that’s feedback I got about the thing that I just messed up. And when I got the feedback, I was like, absolutely. You are 100% correct. I fucked that up real bad. I fucked it up real bad.
And again, that’s okay, right? Now, that person gets to decide if it’s okay with them. But what I’m saying is it’s okay between me and me, because I know I can’t expect myself to be perfect and do everything beautifully on the first try, especially not when I’m also a person who’s really invested in growth and learning, because the more invested in growth and learning you are, the more you’re going to do things wrong because you’re branching out into things you don’t already know how to do.
And in a way that circles us back to like boundaries are something we’re all being told we need to do, and I agree they’re super useful. But if you don’t have the skills, yeah, the first few times you’ve set them or the first few hundred times you set them, maintain them, have a conversation about them, it might feel like brushing your teeth with your left hand. It might feel awkward. It might feel hard. It might feel like in your head, you’re like, oh, I have a vision for how this could go and it’s not working.
And that’s all part of it. That’s part of developing a new skill. That’s part of becoming the next version of you. It’s part of becoming a person who can set boundaries easily and with grace, is being a person who’s like trying so hard to set boundaries and kind of it up and loving yourself and keeping going.
And also, even if you do become a person who can set boundaries easily and with grace almost all the time, sometimes even when you love the way you set the boundary and you think it really matches your values, other people might not like it. Other people might really prefer you didn’t have that boundary. Other people might really prefer to be able to make the comments they want to make or make the requests they want to make or try to do whatever it is the things are that they want to do.
And then you may still have a desire to be like, hey, I don’t like that. If you do that, I’m going to do this. And then they may have thoughts and feelings about that. And so I think the question for this is like, how do you comfort yourself when that happens? And how do you clean up your side of it? Like, how do you make sure you’re showing up to the boundary conversation in a way that feels really good to you that aligns with your values and knowing that even when you do that, they may still hate it? They may pitch a fit. They may not want to be your friend.
I mean, I would love to say that if you, you know, take these boundary mistakes to heart and set boundaries beautifully, everyone will love them all the time. I wish that were true, but it’s not true. Sometimes when we set a boundary, a relationship ends. And I think it’s really interesting because I think that’s what people are scared of, right? Like I get this in coaching, people are like, but what if it ruins the relationship?
And I think sometimes they want me to be like, oh, it won’t. But the reality is it might. But I think that really brings up this thing of like, okay, what are you looking for in a relationship? Because if you need to not set any boundaries ever in order for the relationship to flourish, is that what you really want? Because I know I don’t.
I want to be able to have boundaries. I want to be able to have preferences. I want to be able to say like, here’s what I’m down for and here’s what I’m absolutely not down for. And if that ends a relationship, maybe it’s time for the relationship to end. You get to decide.
Now for me, like I had this situation where I set the boundary and I didn’t do it very well. I’m really going to hate it if that relationship ends, because if that relationship ends, it’s not going to be because I set a boundary. It’s going to be because I set the boundary so badly, right?
And so that is painful because I do wish I’d been able to do it better. I do wish I’d been able to be more thoughtful and caring and kind and loving in how I set the boundary. But also, I’m not going to be perfect. So all I can bring is my best and then my best apologies.
And sometimes our best isn’t going to be good enough, and I think that’s okay. It has to be okay because we’re imperfect humans and you can try as hard as you want to, but you’re not going to reach perfection, honey. I’m sorry, it’s not possible. If I thought you could, I’d be like, let’s fucking do it because I want to be perfect too. Who doesn’t?
But here’s the thing, I think this really relates to something I talk about on the podcast sometimes, which is like discomfort is part of life but you get to pick what your discomfort is doing. So if it is preferable to you, you can have the discomfort of never setting boundaries. You’re allowed to. There’s nothing that says you have to set boundaries. But I think boundaries are really great and they can really help me have the life I want, and so I would rather have the discomfort of setting them than the discomfort of not having any.
That feels better to me. It feels more like what I want. It feels like it’s going to help me create more of what’s satisfying to me. So for you, you get to decide, do you want the discomfort of setting boundaries, knowing that, yeah, it might be an uncomfortable conversation, it might be the end of a relationship? Or do you want the discomfort of not setting boundaries, which I think often is a lot of resentment and a lot of unhappiness?
And you know what’s interesting is I think a lot of times when people don’t set boundaries, relationships also end because we become so upset with other people for their behavior that we didn’t set any boundaries about, that then we kind of like subtly end the relationship anyways. So it’s not like never setting boundaries is actually a guarantee that the relationship will go on forever anyways. I mean, sadly there are no guarantees, right?
That’s the thing about life. There’s no guarantee that any relationship will last forever. So whether you set boundaries or not, it could end. And in fact, all relationships will end. That’s a real downer. I’m making this a really heavy podcast here, but I think it’s an important thing to remember.
And I think there can be a lightness in it too, that nothing’s guaranteed forever. And what decisions am I going to make here that are going to help me love the other person and love myself and care for both of us and set me up to have the best chance possible of having the kind of relationship I want?
And I’m not going to tell you that it’s super easy to set really great boundaries because I personally don’t think it is. But what I am going to tell you is you can do it, it’s possible. And practicing helps.
And to review, the earlier and more often you set boundaries and the more often you set them from a calm place before you’re upset, the easier it’s going to be, the better you’re going to get at it. The more you’re going to build that muscle and that skill. And when you remember that boundaries are about what you’re going to do, not trying to control other people, it’s also going to be a lot easier, less frustrating.
And when you develop the ability to let other people have their own feelings about it, then you’re also going to have an easier time setting boundaries and managing your own emotions afterwards when you know that it’s actually safe and okay if sometimes people are upset about something. And maybe the relationship is over, but a lot of times it’s actually not. It’s just something for us to move through and then have a deeper connection because we were able to move through it.
So, like I said, I really don’t think this is the easiest thing. I think it’s very easy to be on the internet and say like set boundaries, it makes things better. I think it’s so difficult actually to apply and learn this skill and you don’t have to do it alone. You can come and work with me and we can work together on what boundaries you want to set and how to set them.
We can spend your coaching calls talking them through and practicing setting the boundaries. You can find other resources that can also help you. You don’t have to go it alone. So either find a friend to practice with, come sign up for a consult call and let’s have a conversation about what kind of boundaries could help you be having more deliciousness in your life or find some other support that you need that’s going to help you with this skill if it’s something that you want to have.
All right, that’s what I’ve got through this week. I will talk to you next time, bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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182. When You Disappoint Yourself
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