NOvember: Establishing healthy boundaries

Find yourself saying ‘yes’ a lot? Over-extending yourself regularly? Maybe you write it off as just trying to be helpful, but it could mean that you actually lack boundaries. After all, we are all only human.

Boundaries are healthy limits we place on ourselves. Without boundaries, our lives have no limits for others, our time is not our own, and that combination is the fast track to burnout.

Boundaries help us to be more self-aware, allow us the time and space we need to recharge, helps us to prioritize ourselves, and helps us to set our limits so that we are not over-extended.

This month launches us into the holiday season and there will be plenty of opportunities to overwork and overdo. Why not, instead, take the time to establish our boundaries and saying ‘No’ to the things outside of our values and time commitments now. That way, instead of being wrapped up in the details of the season, you can prioritize the things that truly matter.


Here are 3 ways to start developing boundaries:

Know Yourself: Simply taking the time to get to know yourself is the first set in establishing boundaries because it establishes self-intimacy. This intimacy will make you more comfortable in expressing your own thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. You need to know your likes/dislikes in order to establish your own personal barometer of what is personally acceptable and what is not.

Respect Yourself: Your life is comprised of all of your experiences, including both your highest and lowest moments. Knowing all of that and seeing yourself in a healthy light allows for you to accept your faults and embrace your strengths. This will help you develop a healthy respect for yourself.

Be Responsible for Yourself: When you have a healthy respect for yourself, it shows in how you treat yourself. After all, how you treat you teaches others how to treat you. means limiting or avoiding altogether negative self-talk. If you show yourself patience, kindness, and understanding, you set the playing field for what you will accept and what you will not.

Once you reach this point, you can start establishing boundaries for yourself. Those may include the times in which its ok for someone to call you, the hours when you are working, a bedtime, ways you would like to be addressed, etc. Let’s get comfortable saying NO this November to the things outside of our boundaries.