Stop Giving Away Your Power: Mastering the Art of Unbreakable Boundaries

There is a moment when you find yourself on the floor, clawing your way up to your feet, and you say to yourself, “I can’t do this anymore.” At that moment, on a visceral level, you earn your PhD in boundary setting, and your life will never be the same. Because at that moment, you realize boundaries are not rules set up to control anyone else’s behavior. Boundaries, instead, are the structure of your relationship with yourself—and if your boundaries are weak, your relationship with yourself will be a hot mess.

In that moment, when you realize you cannot take it anymore, whatever “it” is no longer matters. The only things that matter are your integrity, your peace, and your value as a human being. In that moment, what someone else does or doesn’t do is eclipsed by what you will and will not tolerate, and you reclaim every ounce of your power.

When you set boundaries that are intended to mandate how other people behave, you are setting them up to fail, and they will probably disappoint you. When you decide how you want people to treat you and make policing those standards the responsibility of someone else, you are handing off your personal power to anyone who will take it in the name of boundary setting. It’s a cheap shortcut, and that system will break.

Every time you want to try to negotiate for your happiness by setting a rule for someone else and following it up with a threat, you need to point that clarity back towards yourself. “If you don’t treat me like a priority, I will leave” is not a boundary. It is a plea. It is a sidestep of your personal responsibility. That should read: “I will treat myself like a priority and walk away from situations where others should and do not.”

Every time you want to tell someone they need to treat you better or differently, the chances are extremely high that you need to do the hard work of valuing yourself with more integrity and protecting yourself and your energy more fiercely.

The only boundaries that matter are the standards you set for yourself.

So, on that day, when you claw your way back to your feet and say, “I can’t do this anymore,” what you are really saying is, “I can’t keep giving away my self and my peace.” As new expectations take root, the boundaries you set with yourself become the framework of a life lived with others in emotional safety—and none of it depends on the compliance of anyone else.

Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the hit books, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan. Lisa also trains the world’s best coaches at www.thecoachingguild.com.