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Russell and this is social skills coaching brought to you by Newton Media Group and
Patrick King stick around and learn to be more likable more charismatic and more productive
today is January 31st 2023.
if you're the kind of person who's derived much of their self-identity from being nice
kind accommodating or charitable then Patrick King has some advice for you to set up some boundaries
this from his book stand up for yourself set boundaries and stop pleasing others foreign
When you people-please, you often deny your own needs.
You take the hit and quietly resent it, or bite your tongue when you desperately need to speak up.
Poor boundaries dent your self-esteem, weaken your genuine connections to others,
and sometimes force you to try to meet your needs indirectly, with bad results.
If all of this is true, then why do people continue to have poor
boundaries and choose people-pleasing instead?
The reason is because there are benefits to being a people-pleaser.
It actually does pay off—at least in the short term.
In the moment, you may feel popular and in demand.
People may approve of you, and you may even get the addictive ego-stroking that comes
with people openly acknowledging that you are sacrificing yourself.
“Oh, you’re a saint!
Thank you so much.
I don’t know what I’d do without you!”
“He’s such a great guy.
He’d give you the shirt off his back.”
“You’re my star employee.
You’re ultra-productive and nothing is ever too much trouble.”
This high is momentary, though.
What’s more, it’s usually quite superficial—i.e.,
the approval you garner seems to rest entirely and exclusively on your doing what others wanted.
How genuine could someone’s approval and respect have really been if it shatters
the moment you dare to have your own opinion, limits, or priorities?
If you’re the kind of person who has derived much of their self-identity from being nice,
kind, accommodating, and charitable, this role can be hard to give up.
That’s why you need to remind yourself of how expensive it is; i.e., what it costs you:
your self-esteem, your sense of calm and balance, your dignity, your time and resources,
and the opportunity to pursue your own life on your own terms according to your own values.
That’s a big price to pay!
People-pleasing has some benefits, but it has far, far more drawbacks.
Setting appropriate boundaries is an adult life skill that everyone needs to master.
Many people-pleasers unconsciously think, “Oh, setting boundaries is something other
people do ... ” and they create a special exception for themselves.
But it doesn’t matter if you’re a busy parent or an employee in a
high-powered career ... everyone needs boundaries, including you.
Before we look at how to set and maintain boundaries,
let’s consider a few deeper core beliefs that may be standing in the way.
You may say, “Oh, I couldn’t take a day off.
The place would be a circus without me,” but deep down,
your reason for not setting boundaries at work is not really because you are needed.
Beneath this excuse may be beliefs like:
I don’t deserve to get what I want or need.
My needs aren’t that important, or not as important as other people’s.
Having boundaries shows I’m weak and can’t cope.
Having boundaries means I’m selfish and indulgent.
I may not want to do things, but I have to if I want approval/safety/attention/love/validation.
We’ve encountered these very same limiting and self-defeating beliefs before!
And we’ve also seen that they’re just not accurate.
If we want a happier, healthier life for ourselves, we need to
seriously challenge these underlying assumptions, or nothing will change.
Here are five tips to help you make that mindset shift one day at a time:
Reframe What You Are Keeping OUT with Your Boundary
When you erect a boundary, it’s to keep away things you don’t want in your life.
You are not punishing anyone or pushing away something that is good for you.
If you’re worried that having a boundary will offend or alienate people,
consider this: anyone who doesn’t respect a natural and reasonable
boundary is not someone you want in your life in the first place!
It is no prize to figure out how to manipulate yourself
in order to keep such a person in your world.
If you have poor boundaries, you actually end
up attracting precisely the kind of people who like pushing boundaries.
If you forfeit your own needs, you will find plenty of people around
you who are happy to follow your lead and do the same.
A boundary keeps out anyone or anything that will make never-ending demands on you.
That’s a good thing.
The next time you’re hesitant about saying no or drawing a limit
because you worry that you’re putting someone on the other side of the line,
remind yourself that this is behavior you want to put on the other side of the line.
Draw a line and put stress, obligation, guilt, and fear on the other side of it.
Mindset shift: “If I turn him down, he’ll be offended,” could be, “If I turn him down,
I’ll feel less pressured and won’t have to deal with that feeling of guilt/obligation anymore,
and I’ll feel more confident in myself and what I really want."
You’re not keeping a good thing out (this man’s approval) but keeping a good thing
in (your own self-confidence) and a bad thing out (his potential offense).
Trust Your Feelings
People-pleasers love dismissing their intuition, downplaying their emotions,
and assuming that their reactions are silly, inaccurate, or disproportionate.
It’s all just a way of saying, “My feelings don’t matter."
They do matter!
Your feelings matter because they allow you to recognize your own wants, needs, and limitations.
They alert you to the fact of a potential boundary
violation and let you know when you are pushing yourself too far.
Your habit may be to quickly squash down any feelings of anger, fear,
exhaustion, or disappointment.
But instead, you could welcome these feelings and choose to listen to what they’re telling you.
No, this doesn’t mean you lose control and let your feelings flood you;
it just means you respect them.
This teaches others to respect them, too.
Trusting and naming your feelings is work nobody else can do for you.
Mindset shift: After someone invades your privacy, for example, and you feel a pang
of anger, instead of swallowing this anger and saying, “Oh, it’s nothing, don’t worry,”
you acknowledge your feelings and calmly say, “Actually, I’m not happy that you did that.”
Your feeling of anger is the foundation on which you build your boundary.
Without it, you are left floundering, trying to be “polite” and getting nowhere.
Respect Other People’s Boundaries
It may not be nice to hear, but people-pleasers can often
be the worst offenders when it comes to walking over the boundaries of others.
If we routinely dismiss our own needs, it’s actually easier to do the same to other peoples’.
Our relationship with ourselves is always mirrored in the relationships we have with others.
Person A could fail to establish a clear and solid boundary by not properly communicating their
limits—for example, they fail to say, “I don’t like you dumping your emotional baggage on me.”
Person B then violates that boundary, i.e., dumps a whole lot of emotional baggage on Person A.
Person A is upset but, again, doesn’t communicate this feeling.
They lash out at Person B—and in doing so, they break Person B’s boundary, in turn.
Person A gets so frustrated that they share details of Person B’s life with someone else,
encouraging gossip and violating Person B’s trust.
Having poor boundaries is not just a private matter.
The way we conduct ourselves is reflected in our relationships with others, and our
attitude ripples out to influence our broader workplace cultures, families, and communities.
Work at respecting and being grateful for other people’s clear and healthy boundaries.
Practice what you preach.
Mindset shift: Instead of quietly thinking, “They always push me around, so they owe me,
and that means I don’t really have to respect their boundaries,” think,
“Respect is not a transaction or a bargaining chip.
I accept other people’s boundaries gladly because it’s nothing less than I would expect for myself.”
Give up Explaining
People-pleasers, at their core,
secretly feel that they don’t quite deserve to take up as much space as everyone else.
For this, they apologize, and their apologies take the form
of “explaining” and justifying their feelings, their actions, their choices.
To whom?
To the people they believe do deserve it.
In other words, people-pleasers may make the unconscious assumption
that the default is for them to put others first, and any time they don’t,
they better explain themselves and have a good reason for doing so!
“I can’t help out with the fundraiser, I’m so sorry.
I’ve been having an awful time with my mental health lately,
and really, it’s because I’ve taken too much on.
I ordinarily would have said yes, but I’m pretty exhausted,
and I think it might have something to do with the cold I caught two weeks back ... ”
When you first start setting healthier boundaries,
you may discover that there are lots of genuine reasons to have them.
But then you may have another insight: you also deserve to have a boundary for no reason at all!
And even if you do have a reason, you’re not required to offer it to the other person.
You can say no just because you want to say no, and you don’t owe anyone a long justification.
You especially don’t want to get trapped into inappropriate oversharing.
Say no, then stop talking.
Assert your boundary, and just hold that boundary.
Justifications often sound like excuses to other people, anyway,
because unconsciously they will hear the hidden apology.
Mindset shift: “I have to tell them all the reasons I’m not doing what they want me to do”
becomes “Is there any reason to do it?”
Acquiescing endlessly to other people’s demands is not your default setting.
Follow up with Action
It can be scary asserting a boundary.
Let’s say you have a demanding friend who always invites you out but pushes
you to come on inconvenient days to places you don’t really like,
and where half the time, you end up paying because they “forget” their wallet at home.
This friend is constantly using you as free therapy, and you’re frankly a
little fed up with the endless “emotion dumps” (hello, it’s Person B again).
You decide to set some boundaries.
For example:
“I have work in the morning so I can’t do a late night, I’m afraid!”
“I’ve been overspending on nights out lately.
Would you like to do something that doesn’t cost anything, instead?
Let’s do that hike we keep talking about.”
“I’m sorry, can we talk about something else?”
Most people mean well.
If you set a reasonable and valid boundary with calm conviction,
most people will respect it, even if it does take a few tries.
But that’s most people—some people will see your boundary and walk right past it.
What then?
Implicit in any boundary is a soft ultimatum.
You are announcing your limits, your desires, and the terms of engagement,
i.e., the rules you have in place for how you interact with others.
There is nothing wrong with this—we all have conditions on which we’ll engage with others.
If those conditions aren’t met, we stop engaging, end of story.
It can be helpful to literally sit down and draw up a list of “dealbreakers” for engaging with you.
For example:
I won’t tolerate lying.
I won’t spend too much time on people who have no genuine interest in me as a person.
I will never allow someone to belittle me or call me names.
You don’t have to communicate these rules.
You just have to know what they are, set your boundaries,
and then, if those boundaries are violated, act.
And yes, acting may mean reducing contact with that person.
It may even mean permanently ending a relationship.
For a people-pleaser, this can look like a scary outcome,
but remind yourself that if someone repeatedly violates a clearly communicated boundary,
then it is not you who is de-valuing your relationship, but them.
Mindset shift: You could say,
“It will be a disaster if I have to put my foot down or end a relationship."
Or you could say, “I don’t have to continue engaging with people who don’t respect me.
The disaster would be to know I deserve respect ... and continue to
tolerate a situation where I know I won’t get it.”
Boundary-setting seems hard when you’re not used to it, but it’s actually really simple.
1.
Identify your need or limit
2.
Communicate it clearly in terms of that need (not
in terms of the other’s behavior, just in terms of your own need)
3.
Behave accordingly (i.e., if the boundary is not respected, take action)
For example:
1.
“I need to have enough rest and free time.”
2.
“I don’t check my emails in the evenings or during weekends, as that’s when I’m off work.”
3.
Set an automatic reply for your out-of-office hours,
and commit to only replying to emails or answering calls during work hours.
A boundary is easy to understand when you think of it as a rule you have for yourself
and the “rules” on which your world runs.
It’s not a demand on others’ behavior, a threat, a justification, a plea, or a punishment.
It’s an assertion about the standards you hold for yourself.
Once you realize this, things become so much simpler.
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