This week’s episode is a mental health check. There’s a lot of not great things happening all around us and we thought it might be a good time to talk about boundaries. They’re not super fun to carry out, but in our opinion, they’re self care.

BOUNDARIES ARE SELF CARE

1. Setting boundaries for yourself and sticking with them can be tough, but they’re necessary for your mental health
2. Saying no is a boundary
   • Saying no, for me personally, has proven to be difficult throughout my life. I am a people pleaser, so this part of the equation is tough for me. But, as we’ve mentioned before, saying no is powerful. 
   • Becoming comfortable in saying no needs to be practiced. For some of us it just doesn’t come easy. Whether that be work, or family, or friends. Say no when you need to say no instead of saying yes when you’d be pouring from an empty cup. If there’s nothing to give, how will you perform at your best at a task? How will you be in the moment if you don’t have anything in the tank?
   • An example: I was burned out a couple weeks ago. I was just OVER it. I told someone that I didn’t have anything else to give that day and took the afternoon off and did nothing. This is self care, not selfISH
3. Cutting people off is a boundary
   • We could probably spend the majority of the episode on this aspect of boundaries.
   • Stop keeping shitty people in your life just because you’ve known them a long time or they’re family. 
     • Saying this out loud often elicits a negative response because of what most of us have experienced in society. Just because you share a blood line, does not mean that you have to tolerate being treated poorly. 
     • It also doesn’t mean that you have to remain in toxic situations with people you’ve called friends for a long time just because you’re “friends”. Friends don’t take advantage of you. Friends don’t often make excuses. There is a difference between being legitimately busy with life, and making excuses.

IT IS HEALTHY TO FOCUS ON YOURSELF AND YOUR GOALS

1. This one was a rough one for me to accept. 
   • How can you be present and actively participating in life if you don’t take care of yourself first?
   • Self care means adequately attending to your physical, emotional, and mental well being.
     • This means something different to every person.
2. This can be your fitness journey and the goals that go along with it. This can be seeking out help when you need it. This can be setting aside an hour of quiet time. This can be legitimately anything you feel you need to do to actively participate in your own life

BE CONSISTENT WITH THE BOUNDARIES YOU’VE SET

1. Once you decide to set a boundary, it’s pretty important to stick with that boundary.
   • We realize that it isn’t always that cut and dry.
2. Sometimes your boundaries evolve as you evolve, and at that point, you obviously reassess those boundaries.
   • According to psychology today dot com: Boundaries can be defined as “the limits we set with other people”, which indicate what we find acceptable and unacceptable in theirn behavior towards us. (you are entitled to your own feelings to a given situation, as are others)
3. A couple things that are important to keep in mind when talking about boundaries and mental health in general: 
   • Your expectations of others belong to YOU ONLY. Just like other’s expectations of you are their own. Just like you don’t ask for others to put expectations on you, other people don’t ask for yours either.
   • Keep your side of the street clean. Self inventory is important. What part of the situation or relationship are your responsibility? 
   • YOUR emotions, and YOUR reactions are only a couple of the things in this life that you have absolute control over. 

To summarize, boundaries are healthy. They’re necessary for your mental health and your growth.