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Tag Archives: healthy boundaries

Protect Me Not!

I Need To Learn

Through most struggles positive change can occur but it may not if through the caring protection of another that you don’t go through the experience fully as needed.  It’s through struggle and success that we develop the tools to help us effectively deal with adversity or change and those tools help us to define who we are, what we are capable of and who we are to become.

Struggling to survive or to succeed, which are basically one in the same, are both characteristics we develop as a result of hardship and/or difficulty.  They build us into stronger people and usually help us to develop a stronger sense of respect, compassion, empathy, discretion, humility and integrity towards ourselves and others.  If you prevent someone from experiencing something, whether you are doing it out of love or not, while it is noble it may be of more harm than good because you may also be preventing them from experiencing the positive aspects that are also associated with those experiences.

For example, if you protect someone from the learning the consequences of how far they’ve pushed the boundaries you are preventing them from learning healthy limits.  Boundaries are the limits that are necessary to living a positive and productive life if one doesn’t learn that through trial and error than life ahead will likely feel like constant travel on a gravel road.

There are some experiences I’ve had that were far less than ideal and honestly I would have loved to have done without them but………if I had, I wouldn’t have learned how to make things right, how to adjust my position to accommodate and diffuse difficult change.

All lessons and experiences propel us into directions we may not have gone otherwise, if you protect someone from a learning experience you may also be preventing them from a growth experience and that will likely stunt their future potential.  Alternatively one could end up with an overdeveloped ego because they feel invincible and above consequence which would be a rather large awakening at the moment you aren’t around to deflect difficulty for them.

Another aspect to consider from not learning the healthy limits is that it may have an opposite effect and damage a one’s desire to succeed because adversity so far has been quite minimal.  It is through hardship and difficult times that the opportunity lies to further strengthen the desire to succeed.  If one doesn’t experience hardship or difficulty than their will to succeed suffers as a result, they become complacent and uninterested in doing more than what is required to get by.

You may as well be saying to them “I don’t think you can do this on your own, so I’m going to help” and in effect you’re creating a monster while lowering their self-confidence, self-worth and self-motivation all at the same time.  Chances are, after a while your own self-worth will start to diminish because the more complacent they become, the more you end up picking up the slack and feeling responsible for it.  Maybe your efforts have kept or are keeping that person from becoming the trail blazer they were meant to be, you will never know.

struggle quote

So imagine how different our world would be had we not had certain trail blazers like George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and even Noah ( he did build the Ark ).

Similar to the overbearing mother or father, you can’t prevent adversity in another person’s life because it is there to enhance them in some way and in your honest and caring efforts you are butting heads with the Universe.  I think a lot of people believe their personal karma affect is a certain way because of what they’ve done wrong but karma has more to do with the intention.  When you do something for another with positive intention it doesn’t create bad karma, I believe the adverse effect you may be suffering is the result of battling against personal destiny.  What you are experiencing is Resistance because you are going against the natural flow of the Universe.

 
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Posted by on February 19, 2014 in Blog

 

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Negativity Bites!

There are Definitely Side Effects

We develop a connection to everything that inhabits our thoughts (whether we intend to or not), any kind of conversation that is meant to reflect on another person in a negative light is something that I don’t have any desire to make connection to but there are times when we either consciously or unknowingly enter into that zone.

I have had instances where I am in a conversation with someone and somewhere around the middle that person begins to speak negatively about another person (sometimes someone I know and sometimes not).  Either way I find at that point I feel trapped because I am already engaged in the conversation and I don’t want to be rude but:

–          Do I stop them in mid-sentence and tell them I can’t continue because it feels too negative and degrading to that person?

–          Or do I allow them to continue because I’ll just tune it out and eventually they will be done because I don’t want the conflict or discomfort?

negativity breeds

It’s a sensitive decision because you don’t want to offend the person you are talking with and no one wants to hear that you don’t want to listen to what they have to say but at the same time why should you have to be subjected to the negativity and possibly be infected by it?

I’ve determined that there are 3 reasons people may choose to speak of others in a negative light.

  1. They get some sort of pleasure out of another’s misfortune
  2. They themselves are insecure and feel much more empowered about their own life
  3. There is some sort of payoff (whatever that may be)

Ultimately when you are speaking of anyone in a negative light you are creating a cycle of negativity within yourself that will continue to spin and not in a good way.

Negativity bites!  Once you start down that path it can spiral you into an even more negative place, a place that you never thought you’d be in and you may wonder how you got there to begin with.  I believe it starts with the thought, that thought connects to your emotion and then the words start to flow in that direction.

Disconnecting from that cycle is the best conscious decision you can make for yourself and finding a way that works best for you to enforce those boundaries needs to feel comfortable to be successful.

I think that the best solution for me is to relay to the person I am talking with that I do not feel comfortable talking about another person in a negative manner.  I am definitely sensitive in many different areas of my life and enforcing boundaries continues to be a challenge but one that I must persevere in so that I continue to live my life in way that doesn’t feel disloyal to my inner spirit.

live-without-pretending

 
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Posted by on March 20, 2013 in Blog

 

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It’s Not You!

Don’t Take It Personally

Even to this day I struggle to not internalize the shortcomings of others.  Those shortcomings do not belong to us in any way, shape or form.  People act out for many reasons and even though it’s difficult to do this you have to remind yourself constantly that what they are projecting at you comes from a place of their own insecurities and has absolutely nothing to do with you.

Regardless of this it can still be emotionally upsetting and hard to take.

I’ve found that one of my remedies for such a disheartening encounter is to think about and acknowledge the positive things I have in my life and how lucky and blessed I am because of it.

Even with this response there is still much anguish involved when others are harsh towards you.  It’s obviously not a desired encounter but sometimes the positive effect is that it might have helped you to establish healthy boundaries that should have been there to begin with. Boundaries you might not have otherwise invoked if such an encounter had not occurred.

In most relationships there are usually expectations, some are unrealistic and some are in keeping with the Golden Rules of Respect, Trust & Loyalty.  Regrettably some have higher expectations on others then they put on themselves when dealing with their relationship.

Not all relationships are meant to last forever, some are there to teach us lessons, build strength or develop a more balanced and healthy lifestyle.

Everything happens for a reason!

Trust in that, have faith that everything works out as it should.  We can’t always see the end of the tunnel but we need to keep walking towards the light.  Even when you can’t see it, have faith that it’s there.

 
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Posted by on December 13, 2011 in Blog

 

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