Have any of you ever noticed that when you began to make a more healthy lifestyle change it seemed to become threatening to those around us? Especially this time of year we are all hearing...on just this one time won't hurt. And, as a rule, we do give in due to we do not want to hurt anyone's feelings. We even tolerate rude comments, which by the people voicing the comment may not deem the rude at all, but here is one of my favorite one...she can't eat that, she's still on that diet kick.
We continue to spread ourselves too thin, agreeing to do things that we really and truly just do not want to do. Why are we afraid to say, ''no, just cannot fit that into my schedule today or tomorrow." Are we afraid people won't like us? We tend to always have that feeling of being overextended and running on empty. And we begin to take things as a personal attack. We all have at least one or two manipulators in our lives, could be an aging parent, could be a sibling, hey it could very well be our spouse, but we won't go there today.
And God forbid if we ever put our needs first. The few occasions we have done that, I would bet money the guilt came rolling in, so we could not enjoy the time.
If any of the things I have mentioned ring a bell, or the ole light bulb comes one, then you know what we have to do? Draw a line in the sand. We have to not only understand our own limits, but we have to let others know that , enough is enough.
A boundary is a limit we set. We have to do this to protect our relationships, our time, our health everything about ourselves. They are not brick walls to isolate us or alienate other, but messages that keep the unwelcome behaviors of other from invading our space.
So during this stressful time, maybe it is time to think about setting some boundaries just to act as a filter, permitting what's acceptable into our lives and keeping what's not out. Just remember, the first step to setting boundaries, is we must accept the idea that our wants and needs are not only important enough to define and defend, but are essential to our happiness.
We all need some boundaries, and its not something that can happen overnight, but I do believe it is something worth working on.
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