Setting Boundaries

Many people feel that they are “people persons,” able to attract others and connect with them. At the same time, however, people persons often feel overwhelmed, anxious and frustrated about the obligations and responsibilities that their bonded relationships demand.  

Setting boundaries is the primary tool for strengthening your separateness and developing an accurate sense of responsibility.  The essence of boundaries is determining where you end and someone else begins, realizing your own person apart from others, and knowing your limits.  

A good way to understand this is to compare our lives to a house. Houses have certain maintenance needs, such as painting, terminate control and roof repairs. If, however, we’re spending all our time putting roofs on our neighbor’s houses while neglecting our own roof or we run the risk of a leaky roof or worse by the time we get back home.  

Think of all the different caring acts you performed over the last 24 hours. How many did you do grudgingly because you were under the threat of someone’s criticism or abandonment?  How many did you do under compulsion because you feel guilty if you don’t keep people happy?  And how many were from a cheerful heart, from the overflow caused by knowing you are loved by God and people in your life?   

John Townsend

Creating your own misery

As long as you live in a society with other fallible humans you will be frustrated and hassled - not merely occasionally - all of your life. The best way to avoid feeling miserable about virtually anything that will ever occur in your lifetime is to admit that you create your own misery.

(Irrational beliefs that interfere with emotional health include..)

• I must do well... win the approval of others... or else I will rate as a rotten person.

• Others must treat me with considerately and kindly... Other people must not behave incompetently or stupidly.

• The world (and the people in it) must arrange the conditions under which I live so that I get what I want when I want it.

Albert Ellis

Stop Limping

To utilize the ability you have you must start by getting rid of any loser’s limp you might have. A typical Loser’s Limp is, “I’m not a born salesman, or a born doctor, lawyer, artist, architect, engineer, etc.” In my travels, I have picked up newspapers from the rural villages of Australia, to the bulging metropolises of North American and Europe. I’ve read where women have given birth to boys and girls, but thus far I have never read where a woman has given birth to a salesman, or a doctor, lawyer, artist, engineer, etc. However, I do read where doctors, lawyers, salesman, etc., die. Since they are not “born.” But they do “die,” obviously, somewhere between birth and death, by choice and by training, they become what they wish to become. I’ve never seen where a woman has given birth to a success or to a failure. It’s always either a boy or a girl.

Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top