Setting Personal Boundaries with Michael Henri

0:00 These are things that you may have experienced or you're currently experiencing that would highlight that your boundaries need to be assessed or re evaluated. So if you're mad or resentful at someone, if you're trying to avoid someone, you're worried about running into somebody, or someone makes you feel anxious, you're blaming someone for your problems or things like you are frustrated with someone.

0:33 You feel like you can't be yourself, you're not getting your needs met, you're feeling lonely, and you feel like you are doing everything yourself. Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you.

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1:32 Hello and good morning. Welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga podcast Michael here and bear with me, it's early in the morning here and my voice is going to take a little bit of time to wake up, but I got motivated this morning when I woke up. It's about 6:00 in the morning and it's a new year. It's 2024 and every year it's always nice to set intentions. Some people call them New Year's resolutions for the year ahead. And I wanted to talk a little bit about not necessarily about my intentions, but more So what

2:12 I've learned the last year. And it's going to center more about personal boundaries or creating boundaries for yourself. And that's stemmed because last year, 2023, my intention for the year was to create more balance in my life, more balance with my personal life, my work life, my relationships, time with myself, things like this.

2:37 And so this year, 2024, which is fresh and new, my intention is to continue that journey of creating more balance, but more so with cultivating strength within my boundaries and communicating my boundaries. Now, before we get into all of that, I'll just explain that over the year of 2023, I've had many moments where I was basically overworked or did so much that I didn't give enough to myself.

3:12 And you know, the context of how that all worked is basically during COVID, there wasn't a lot of work for people like me, yoga teachers, people who are living in Bali. Not a lot of opportunity was around. And then as things started to wind down and, you know, the world started to open back up again and opportunities started to come my way, I was saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. To everything, right.

3:37 And wanting to do all the things, thinking, financial, thinking, oh, purpose, I want to be able to do things for myself that makes me feel like I'm helping the world. It's kind of like a job now. Oh, this is really exciting.

3:48 I have so many things that are coming my way. But what ended up happening is I said I said yes to so many things that by the time I was rolling out 2023, I was realizing how overwhelmed I was and I didn't set enough time to cultivate my own needs. And it resulted in, I want to say three to four moments of burnout throughout 2023 where I I basically have worked so much to the point that, you know, working. When I say working, I'm talking doing yoga, teacher trainings, teaching yoga, you know, seeing

4:29 physiotherapy clients, recording podcast episodes, working on the Going pro yoga platform and then that's just the work related stuff, you know. Then there's obviously my needs of like exercise and relationships and friendships and my personal relationship with Christina who's been on the podcast before. And as a result of the imbalance between all of those elements in my life, I have not been able to actually cultivate enough for myself.

4:59 And that's kind of what this episode is dedicated towards, this kind of initiating my solidification of what's going to be most important for me in 2024, and that is to cultivate more personal boundaries. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So personal boundaries, first of all, what is a boundary? Now I have a few little things written down here, but what I have written is a boundary is where you end and I begin. And it's very simple terms.

5:33 Personal boundaries are the limits and rules we set for ourselves within relationships. And these relationships can be personal relationships or they can be professional relationships. A person who has good boundaries says no when they need to, and is also comfortable opening up when they want to. This type of person feels comfortable being vulnerable because they also feel comfortable drawing a line or asserting themselves when necessary. So if you have an excellent

6:06 boundaries, great. Very proud of you. This is something that is challenging for a lot of people, but if you do have excellent boundaries already, you will also be very powerful in yourself. Expression basically saying what you need when you need it and cultivating more of the truth inside you of you know in certain moments. And if you're these examples, when opportunities come your way, whether it be just social opportunities or work related opportunities, actually taking a

6:37 moment to think about it, like is this something that is going to be good for me? Is this something that I can handle right now? Is this something that is going to be too much and overfill my plate? Is this something that I'm doing because I want to do it or is this something that I'm doing because I feel obligated to do it right now? There's a there's a spectrum here of of a porous versus a rigid boundary.

7:07 So if you're thinking like a spectrum of like one side to the other, if you look at one side, porous, meaning you know, so open that everything gets in, there are no boundaries, it's basically completely permeable. Everything passes through and then on the other side would be rigid, meaning so many boundaries that nothing gets through, right?

7:27 And there's walls and blocks put up. So the types of boundaries we want are, are in between those two. We don't want to be completely open and porous and everything that's let in. And we also don't want to be completely rigid and stop anything from flowing through. So this is what we'll be considering healthy boundaries, right Boundaries that are appropriate for the actual thing.

7:48 And now boundaries exist in multiple different areas of our life. So let's just talk about a few of those places. The first one is the physical space around you. So when and how you allow people to enter your body space and what are you willing to do for others physically? Something to just meddle over?

8:10 Think about do you need more time to recharge within your own physical space? It's a question that I would ask. So this would also be related to the rules for how you lend or treat your physical possessions as well. So lending things out or letting people borrow things, stuff like that.

8:31 Do you have boundaries on that? If someone says, oh, can I use this, can I borrow this? Or is it easy for you to just be like yes? Or do you need to actually say like no? Because at least in my world, I've lent things out where they were not treated very well and now it's easier for me to say no and create a boundary there because I don't want my stuff to get ruined.

8:52 But I had to learn the hardware hard way because a lot of my things got ruined what I let them out, regardless if I trust the person or not. Because sometimes people just. I mean not even sometimes people don't value your possessions as much as you do, assuming that the possession is something that you value. So that's one The physical space boundaries also exist in your mental space.

9:17 How much you allow others to occupy your attention and how much are you willing to lend your mind to someone as a service? Well, this is, this can, this is multifaceted, this one mental mental space. I mean, you could think about it.

9:37 First thing that came to mind was social media and the attention that is given towards that and not to go down that road, this is not what this podcast episode is about, but that's a big one, right? Your mental energy, your mental space, your attention reels. You know, scrolling on all this stuff like, man, oh man, what are the boundaries there, right?

9:57 Especially considering a lot of that stuff is addictive. In fact, I actually saw a recent lawsuit against Meta, which is, or at least I don't know if it's it's it started or the process has started from high up where they're actually going to be having conversations, let's say, about how the impact of social media has affected the mental health of young people, which I think is a great thing that is finally happening.

10:25 But even us adults, assuming most adults are listening to this podcast episode, are also exposed to, right, Myself included. You know, I find myself sometimes on social media getting caught up and that's kind of what these platforms are designed for, us to steal or take our attention. Energy vampires if you will.

10:47 But even in the physical space of the world, like, you know, interactions with people, how much are you willing to give your mental space to conversation wise? You know, are you completely tapped out and do you need to like exit the conversation or exit that social gathering to be able to recharge again mentally, right.

11:07 Maybe you're tapped out and your brain's not working as well or maybe this isn't a work related situation. You know, yoga teaching aside, where you are part of generating ideas or strategy and or creation would be a big one because if you are creating something in your mental space, your mental energy is basically drained and fatigued.

11:27 Then you know, drinking a coffee isn't always necessarily the best way to restore that right And creating a boundary of maybe I need to take a break right? So a personal boundary with yourself to take a break to recharge for that mental space.

11:46 Let's move on to emotional space when and how you share your feelings with others. So depending on your relationship with emotions, your relationship with expressing your emotions, this can vary for many people. But yeah, basically if you are someone who is very empathetic and is often giving and sharing. But let's just say yeah, giving and sharing how they feel, sometimes I can feel very exhausting and can drain you. And there's also receiving or

12:20 listening can also be very draining and would require boundaries as well. So, emotional space, how much emotional energy do you have to give or to receive for someone or for many people, depending on your working relationship?

12:38 Especially in yoga classes, in yoga teaching world, right. The emotional space is not always but sometimes required to hold that emotional space for someone, especially if they're experiencing something meaningful. And as a yoga teacher, as a leader, we are, I don't want to say obligated, but I would say we are responsible to, we don't care for that person in a small way.

13:06 And that can be exhausting, especially if there's a lot of teaching going on, a lot of students, let's just say this is, you know, the context for myself, just in trainings, lots of emotions going on and then yoga teacher trainings.

13:19 And my emotional space gets kind of drained very quickly and I'm holding space for other people. Next one we have home. Home houndages exist in your home. This is with regards to how you parent, if you are a parent, how you allow people to treat your family members.

13:42 So that's an interesting one. One that I can relate to a little bit as someone who has family members, but I don't have children myself. But I can imagine if Paul was here and we were to be talking about how people treat his son or his wife, something that he would create boundaries for in a protection almost kind of way. I would imagine from his perspective, but even from a mother or a female's perspective, it also be about protecting your own, protecting

14:11 your family and not requiring boundaries. I would imagine that would be a little bit more easy for the majority of people. Next one we have is boundaries existing in your community. So what you will and won't accept from our government, school teachers, the police businesses and in your community, So that can be tricky. We all live in different communities throughout the world.

14:37 For myself, living in Bali, there are certain things that are happening that are very different from what I'm used to living and growing up in Canada and also living in Australia for a period of time. So boundaries there are important to evaluate with regards to, yeah, what are you willing to tolerate? What are you willing to allow in and what do you feel like you need to push back on I would say or stand up to or express yourself about and then now the

15:08 last two, which are the ones that were probably more related to what I was experiencing or at least I started this podcast on. And that is boundaries existing in your work life overall and then your social life would be the last one.

15:22 So work life, how much you will agree to work and for what compensation, what kind of treatment you expect from your superiors or the colleagues and any of your team members that you work with. So that's a big one, especially depending on your personality type.

15:43 You're a giver. You're a generator in the human design, A workhorse, someone who likes to, you know, really show their worth by putting in strong work hours, Let's just say depending on your relationship with your, like I said, your superiors or your team members or your colleagues, sometimes that can be a situation where it feels like it's being taken a lot of taking take, take, take. And not that there's anything wrong with that, because businesses are businesses, you

16:13 know, they're meant to operate in order to basically get the bottom line right, to be profitable, to to stay in business, to succeed as a business. And it is our responsibilities as individuals to set our work life boundaries and hold up to the limitations of what we can or can't do or what our capacity might be.

16:39 And I'm saying this in the podcast microphone, but I'm saying it to myself as well. And then the last one, the social life boundaries existing in your social life, how much time, energy space are you willing to devote to each friend and to your group activities or people in your life?

17:01 So this one's pretty self-explanatory as well. I would say being able to know when to say no for social engagements or feeling like you know you're going to miss out fear of missing out FOMO or, you know, wanting to connect with other people and cultivate some of that sense of belonging within a community socially. Which is all very good, but not when your boundary, your your your energies are drained or your capacity for those social interactions are no longer

17:40 available to you. So yeah, personal boundaries, lots there. We talked about the physical space, mental space, emotional space, home, your community, your work life and your social life. So boundaries are something that could be cultivated from many different sources right? Where.

18:05 If we were to go back in time, where do we learn our boundaries from? Well, usually our family systems and our dynamics for the 1st place, but we don't necessarily learn them explicitly, usually not in a lot of cases, right.

18:20 It's something that we need to learn through trial and error. Kind of like myself with this year in 2023, I actually always thought I was pretty good at setting boundaries and creating space. But, you know, there's quote, UN quote leaks. Or as I was describing before, there was some porous openness within boundaries that needed to be recognized, acknowledged and then patched up so porous and rigid boundaries that are shown or modeled to us.

18:50 So if you see someone who has very strong boundaries and you can see them saying no in certain situations, sometimes it's admirable, you're like, wow, how are they able to do that so well? Or they they seem so firm or so assertive with their boundaries. It's like, can I do that?

19:07 Yes, yes, we can do that. But sometimes it feels really difficult, right. But setting the intention to cultivating boundaries and figuring out where I need to be more balanced within my porous or rigid boundaries to find more healthy boundaries. And often times we need to kind of swing along the pendulum, if you will, if we're more open with these boundaries and we need to create more boundaries.

19:31 So sometimes we're creating rigid boundaries to start, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because you know from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other end. We need to create those strong boundaries and then eventually, hopefully balances back out again to find, you know, a point where we can say no to many things and say yes to the other things that we want. And that can also fluctuate over time. Sometimes we might be more porous, sometimes we might be more rigid.

19:56 And also there's other things like your heritage and your culture, the region in which you live and of course your life experiences is where all we learn these types of boundaries. But why are boundaries so important? Why are they so important? It seems obvious, but knowing your boundaries defines who you are, what you will and will not do or allow. It guards and upholds your standards, organizes and brings order to your life.

20:32 It instills trustworthiness through structure, protects your purpose and mission, improves the quality of your relationships, which is a huge one and I'll pause there before continuing on. But the quality of your relationships this year with 2023 having been overworked and having several burns that burnouts.

20:57 The thing is, is the quality for relationships is first of all your relationship with yourself is already being burned because you're not giving yourself your needs. So you, the relationship with yourself is the first one to go.

21:08 And then for me and my romantic relationship, that was being affected as well, because I didn't have enough energy in my own space, my own cup, if you will, to be able to give to my partner Christina. And then of course, you know, my working relationships and other social relationships were also kind of not getting as much as well because there just wasn't enough to give because that's, you know, there wasn't enough boundaries there. So why are boundaries important

21:40 as we continue through? Because it improves the quality of your relationships, right, Defends you from being controlled or manipulated by others, which is something that unfortunately happens a lot is subtle manipulations, subtle influence, subtle control. So rigid boundaries at first can sometimes be very empowering. To counter that, that results in developing better self esteem and trust in yourself ends up conserving more emotional energy and probably physical energy as

22:17 well. Mental energy, all of that stuff. Emotional energy is probably the big one. And then it creates independence and sovereignty for yourself. Having more autonomy to be able to know what you need, when you need it and just being able to have more time to enjoy life and not needing to live up to people's expectations because no boundaries were actually set and you know, being uncertain of what you do want or what you don't want and saying yes to everything.

22:48 And I probably should have started with these ones, but you know I'm just kind of going through has the information is flowing through my brain in ways to in ways that we can indicate whether or not our boundaries are out of alignment.

23:03 So these are things that you may have experienced or you're currently experiencing that would highlight that your boundaries need to be assessed or re evaluated. So if you're mad or resentful at someone, if you're trying to avoid someone, you're worried about running into somebody, or someone makes you feel anxious, you're blaming someone for your problems or things like you are frustrated with someone.

23:45 You feel like you can't be yourself, you're not getting your needs met, you're feeling lonely, and you feel like you're not doing every sorry, you feel like you are doing everything yourself. This would be indicators that your boundaries out of alignment.

24:04 So the big ones for me were the first few. So you're mad or resentful at someone, you're trying to avoid someone, you're worried about running into someone. So those ones to me in the social world that we live in, I would say the most potent for myself, but maybe you can relate with some other ones. Now finally, before we close off this episode, let's talk about the boundary for repairing or repairing your boundaries. So what we can do to actually

24:36 start to heal and create more healthy walls or boundaries surrounding our life. And I think the first one, which is related back to the indicators, related to being out of alignment with our boundaries, is just like identifying your feelings, which is not always the easiest thing to do for people. So actually sitting and meditating with that and identify whatever feeling that may be. You know, maybe there's a particular feeling in the moment that you don't even know if it's

25:06 related to boundaries or not. But if you can identify that feeling, then you can possibly move on to identifying the source of that feeling from people or things or activities or something that happened very emotionally intelligent process.

25:27 And then after we can identify the source, then you identify the specific boundary that is being violated, perhaps the boundary that was not clearly established or clearly expressed, right, something that you didn't want or you did want and wasn't actually announced or expressed.

25:49 And then the next step would be to clearly establish that boundary, what you need in a positive context with yourself writing it down and then from there possibly taking it out into the world where it needs to be applied.

26:05 And often times with setting boundaries or, you know, taking action or having conversations for establishing those boundaries that we've identified have been broken. No fault of anybody. It's just the fact that, you know, it was overlooked and then there's a fear or a worry of the consequences of that boundary now being put up, right.

26:32 And just knowing that, OK, well, what does this mean? Does this boundary going to possibly close doors or close opportunities or people are going to, you know, think differently of me or judge me and you know, I've had these thoughts and that's something to be sitting with as well.

26:51 But at the end of the day, there are consequences for your boundaries not being met, which is what should be more of the focus and that is the pain or the the suffering or the imbalance or the burnout or overwhelm that has been experienced without the boundaries in the 1st place.

27:10 So is that the lesser of two evils? I would say often times it is not. And whatever story it is of the consequences that might happen as a result of sharing boundaries is usually inflated, meaning they're not going to be as bad as you might think they will be. You know, opportunities are always going to come in different ways and people often respect boundaries more than we think they will.

27:39 So taking action and following through with not only establishing boundaries, expressing those boundaries, but then actually adhering to them and sticking with them. So this is what my 2024 alignment, goals, intention, New Year's resolution is going to be, is to be better with my boundaries. And I've always felt like I was pretty good at it. But you know, the evidence proves otherwise with my year of I had a great year, don't get me wrong, but just a lot of moments of feeling fatigued and burnt

28:14 out and needing more time for myself. And it all just stemmed back to boundaries. So I'll leave you with a few questions to contemplate on, and then we'll end today's episode. So a way that you can evaluate some of the boundaries in your life is asking yourself these questions. Is there someone that you're mad at? Who are you mad at?

28:42 There's someone who gives you anxiety, makes you feel anxious, someone who you're frustrated with, someone that you resent, someone who you are avoiding. Is there someone that you are avoiding, someone who you can't be yourself around, and possibly someone who you might be blaming your problems on?

29:20 So that's a good place to start. And if there are some answers that are coming to you, then I would go back to that process again to evaluate. Not necessarily like it's their fault, right? It's more so about how do you feel about it? What is the source?

29:36 Specifically identify the boundary that hasn't been established and is being quote, UN quote, violated or broken. And then actually clearly defined that boundary and then put it into action, recognizing the consequences of not following through with that boundary and what would happen if it continues to be broken over time.

30:03 OK. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I appreciate you. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to these episodes. If you haven't already, we'd love for you to share your love for this podcast. Not necessarily this episode in particular, but any of the episodes that we've released over the last several years through a star review on either Spotify or Apple podcast. You can write something if you'd like, or you can just give us the star review very quick and

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30:52 Thank you so much again and have a beautiful. Day. All right. Before you go, let me just tell you about the Going proyoga.com platform. So right now you can go to goingproyoga.com and check it out for free for seven days where you can actually learn more about.

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