The Art Of Using Boundaries To Relieve Stress
If you don't have clear boundaries with yourself or with others
, that can turn into a consistent, subtle yet pervasive sense of stress in your life.
Most people have guidelines for how they want to be treated and how they want to act in their lives. However, very rarely do they actually define what these guidelines are.
As a result, it becomes very easy to violate your own internal guidelines for how you want to act. You compromise your own integrity in little ways without even knowing it.
The same can happen with others. Other people may interact with you in ways that don't honor your internal code. But since others don't actually know how you want to be interacted with, they're violating your unspoken boundaries without knowing it.
These can all lead to a lot of built up stress.
How do you reduce and remove the stress that comes from unwittingly violating boundaries?
==> Learning to Say No
Whenever you agree to do something that you really didn't want to do, or allow someone to push something onto you that you really didn't want to take on, your integrity will feel violated.
It won't feel like a big deal. In fact, it's small enough that you can just let it slide. But these mini-violations can very quickly add up.
If you don't develop the habit and skill of saying no and establishing boundaries with others with the little things, you'll almost definitely find yourself perpetually stressed in your life.
Start by saying no to tasks that really aren't a very big deal. If someone asks you if you could drop something off in the mail for them, tell them "no, I'm in a rush." If someone asks if you could get them a cup of coffee, tell them you're in the middle of a project.
Saying no to these little things can help you find and establish your boundaries around bigger things. Saying no is a skill, just like any other.
==> Setting Your Internal Boundaries
In addition to setting external boundaries, you also need to learn how to set internal boundaries.
Internal boundaries are essentially guidelines for how you will and won't act in your everyday life.
For example, let's say that you know eating chocolate isn't healthy for you, but you still eat one chocolate bar every day or two.
Every time you do, you feel a little guilty for eating that chocolate bar. You're violating a small guideline that you've set for yourself.
So long as you don't consciously choose where your boundaries really are with eating, you'll always feel mildly stressed around your eating habits.
Make a decision: Either make eating chocolate completely outside your boundaries, or change your boundaries. Perhaps you can make an agreement with yourself that you can eat 3 chocolate bars a week; then very gradually pull that back.
Once you have clear agreements with yourself and others, rather than vague ones, you can work towards consistently keeping and maintaining those agreements. This will remove a lot of the subtle stress in your life that comes from regularly compromising your integrity in small ways.
by: Angel Noyal
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