People come into our lives, some stay and some go, but some others play this game of “access granted”. What do I mean by “access granted”? There are some people that come and leave your life, but in certain instances they come back in just to see if they still have access to you. That my friends is what you call a test on how well your boundaries are set up and how well you implement them in your life.
Boundaries, I have come to find, are a big part of finding your peace of mind and essentially some form of sanity. This peace of mind stems from the fact that you have set a bar that you do not intend to lower, because at the end of the day you have to show up for yourself. I consider myself an ambivert, meaning that I have both extrovert and introvert tendencies.
The extroverted side of me is one that has a bubbly nature to it and in turn, I am drawn to people as people are drawn to me. The extroverted side of me enjoys meeting new people and essentially making new friends but this has also come at a cost. Learning about my boundaries, especially when it comes to the connections I have with people, was a bit of a harsher lesson. I had to quickly adapt the way that I had set up my boundaries because I found myself in sub-par relationships whereby my kindness was taken for weakness or there was a lack of effort/consistency. I found myself self-critical and thinking about whether I may have been the issue in the relationships or if I had something about me that pushed people away.
The truth of the matter is that our boundaries open and close the door for many of the behaviors that we allow and see manifest. What we allow stays, who we allow stays. I quickly learned that there are people who come in to take up space and enjoy the beauties of friendship, without even putting an ounce of the same effort into you. In any relationship there has to be a level of reciprocity, respect and effort but when people come in as they please, they are essentially showing the esteem at which they hold you. The more I saw this, the more I realized that the boundaries I had set for myself were weak and needed a complete 180 in order for me to find the peace of mind I sought for. I had to create boundaries that I would live by and essentially free my mind.
In setting these boundaries, I was able to weed out the people who truly were there to stay. There were some people who would come in and out of my life and sometimes it is easier to make excuses for others, simply because we do not want to address the issue within ourselves. Setting boundaries also means being brutally honest with yourself and realizing that sometimes you do indeed let yourself down, with the single aim of accommodating others. But at what point do you accommodate yourself?
So I say this to say what?
Learning to set boundaries and living by them is more about you than them. More often than not, we have the keys to simplifying our lives but we tend to not want to address ourselves and the things we allow in our lives. How well are your boundaries set up?
If you feel like you give too much access to people, take a keen look at the people who pour the same energy, love and reciprocity as you do. If you feel like you are too tight on your boundaries, take a keen look at why you feel the need to have some form of distance. It all starts with being real with yourself.
Be real. Set your boundaries. Live by them. Enjoy some peace of mind.
Love and light
~ Zuba
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