Love Skill #9 – Set Boundaries

 

Love Skill #9

Set Boundaries

By Dr. Scott Peck & Shannon Peck 

 

Setting boundaries
honors your needs as just as valuable
as the needs of others

Setting boundaries gives you the opportunity to know and honor yourself without interference from others.

Setting boundaries is an opportunity to check in with yourself, without outside intrusion, to consider your own feelings, needs, desires, and choices. Are you free to feel your own feelings? Make your own decisions? Act in a way that honors your needs?

Here are some of the ways we fail to set boundaries.

You know you are allowing someone to infringe on your boundary line when you are feeling controlled through manipulation, domination, condemnation, or anger. Rather than your own needs or feelings being considered, these are being discounted and overlooked in favor of another person’s wishes.

You also may be feeling pressured or rushed into something before you have had a chance to think it through.

Sometimes we willingly give away our power in our efforts to please others so they will love us in return.

Or, giving away our power may be a way we try to keep peace in a relationship. We need to consider the price we pay when we allow our feelings, thoughts, or needs to be buried. Is numbing ourselves worth it?

Setting boundaries for yourself means that your needs are just as important as another’s needs. As you reflect on your own needs or feelings in any given area of your life, you can then speak up in a loving and effective way.

Can you say “Yes” and mean it? Can you also say “No” and make it stick without feeling guilty? Can you set boundaries in a loving, kind way – even when you feel pressured? These are the refinements of a Love Master.

What if someone tried to sing your life’s song for you? Or someone tried to drown out your song? Or by someone’s insistence, you were never able to sing your song?

Each of these instances requires setting your boundaries. Look at it as a process of standing in your own light, not cowering, but prevailing with who you are and without dominating someone else’s boundaries.

Maintaining a strong sense of identity and walking in your own shoes, you live in the love awareness that you are the only one who can best represent your unique self on earth.

Our diversity is beautiful! Each of our songs can be sung in infinitely unique ways and still be beautiful.

Setting boundaries creates the freedom we all need to sing our life songs.

How will you sing your song?

Affirmation

I am worthy of treating myself
with respect & dignity

Action Step

Ask divine Love,
“Where do I need to more more honest
in setting boundaries?”
Then ask Love again,
“OK, Love, help me do it”


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Copyright (c) 2006-2017 by Scott & Shannon Peck