*** This is a taste of the spiciness from How to Work Less & Get More Done on 4/29—you absolutely want to be there for the whole package! ***

Forget everything you understand about boundaries. All that stuff about them being walls or limitations or borders, which means they can be porous—or, wait, is it that they shouldn't be porous? "Walls aren't porous, right? But gates are? But walls can be changed? Do walls change? I mean, they can, but it sounds kinda arduous." Yes, that. All that noise. Shake it out of your head.

Literally: Take a sec to stand up and shake your body from head to toe like a wet dog, all the way out to ankles and wrists and finger tips. Then come back totally fresh.

You've never heard of "boundaries" in a relationship before. And I'm going to explain them to you in way that gives you total power and ease in how you apply them to your life.

Ready? Here it is:

Your boundaries are like a physical address where someone can find you. They communicate the ways you're available for a relationship; the more someone is interested in being close to you, the more they rely on your boundaries to get there.

Like an address, boundaries are a statement of where we're at. The relationship equivalents of saying, "I'm at 123 Main Street for another hour," might be "I won't stay in a room where Fox News is on," or "I'm not available for work past 6PM," or "This is my safe word."

And like an address, while you can ask someone to meet you there, the request is separate from the neutral fact of where there is.

Let's run a few scenarios to expand on this—

See, in the first scenario your friend who wanted to be with you met you where you were most comfortable and grounded: the address of the coffee shop. This is like when someone asks to be in contact with us and is happy to meet our needs and comfort as they're expressed through our boundaries—emotionally/mentally/physically meeting us where we're at. Having the address to the coffee shop in this case is what made closeness and intimacy possible. In this same way, boundaries form the foundation for meaningful connection. Without the address to the coffee shop, connecting would have been really hard, if not impossible; the same is true of boundaries.

But what about the other scenario, where you left the coffee shop to accommodate your friend B? It started out as one request to modify your location (i.e. your boundaries) but then spiraled into something unrecognizable and destabilizing. This is an example of how relationships predicated on foregoing boundaries to accommodate someone never work. Maybe there are situation where you could leave the coffee shop to meet someone and it'd be fine, but the reason this scenario goes all to shit here is because friend B had no intentions of ever meeting you where you were in the first place. So when you changed locations at their request, it made no difference their willingness to connect. After all that effort, it didn't bring you two any closer together.

This is how we can understand a lack of clear of boundaries. When we agree to forego boundaries for people in our lives who we believe are diametrically opposed to the idea of having boundaries, we justify it by saying we couldn't have a relationship with them any other way. What this example is meant to show, is that without boundaries there is no relationship anyway. Again, no address means no place to meet. You run yourself ragged and you don't get little to no closeness for it.

Before you go wondering if that means relationships like the one with friend B are doomed, let's run that scenario back one more time—

Does friend C come to meet you in the end? I don't know. I really hope so. In any case, compared to friend B who you chased all over town, the difference is that you've still given friend C the chance to meet you where you are. You've accepted control over the only thing you can control—where the other person can find YOU.

If friend C doesn't come, you'll probably feel disappointed and sad. Maybe the first time you do this, you even feel guilty like you could have tried to chase them all over town, like you did for friend B. But then you remind yourself that that's never worked because you can't actually control anyone else's willingness to meet you, even if you go way out of your way. Staying at the coffee shop (i.e. holding to your boundaries) means that you're taking care of yourself, though. Whatever big feelings might be coming up, you're able to feel through and self-care through them, exactly because you're not exhausted from trying to chase this person down.

Of course, there's also the equally good chance that friend C does come to meet you. Take a moment to imagine how happy and relieved you would feel seeing them come through the door—imagine feeling yourself overflowing with all that spontaneous love and care and security. What closeness becomes possible when you guys are able to interact in that situation? How does your trust in that person change? Go further and imagine your relationship in the following months: Now that you have evidence that your boundaries will be cared for and respected by this friend, how much easier is it asking for what you need? And—since boundaries are the path of least resentment—how will it change how it feels to be generous with this friend, knowing you won't be taken advantage of or abandoned?

In this example, all of the closeness and mutual respect and care are only made possible because of boundaries that were communicated by one party and met by the other.

TWO giant take-aways here: The first, is that boundaries aren't a constraint—they're the platform that allows for meaningful connections to take place. Just because they exist inside a container, like a coffee shop, doesn't mean they're about limitations. Like, you usually aren't walking into a coffee shop complaining that you can't watch a movie or take a shower there. Especially if you're there because you want coffee, you're not seeing the coffee shop serving coffee as a flaw or drawback.

The second, is that NOT having boundaries, isn't actually doing anyone any favors AND makes it impossible for the people who want to find you, to do so. Imagine if, to "not stress" friend B, you never told anyone where to meet you? How would friend C or even friend A ever find you? How much of those rich loving relationships would you miss out on?

Boundaries are not hard—the hard part is accepting that someone we love may not be willing to keep us in their life by respecting them. So, proceed gently with yourself. And trust that the rewards are more fulfilling and beautiful than you might be able to see from here.

What do healthy boundaries have to do with not overworking?? ✨ Be at How to Work Less & Get More Done on April 29th to get the full story. ✨ It will absolutely slap.

Love + Solidarity,

Sam

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