Nailing Boundaries

Welcome to Street Lights, a weekly dose of leadership insights that doesn’t dismiss or shy away from power, identity, or belonging, created by Aiko Bethea and the RARE Coaching & Consulting team. This is the place to disrupt your default thinking and status quo approach to leadership. This is where we say the quiet part out loud. Everyone’s invited to this party, just bring your curiosity and generosity with you! Let’s dive in.

Thank you for joining us for the first installment of our series on boundaries. 

Setting and holding boundaries is a vital practice that impacts our overall quality of life, both at work and at home.   Setting and holding boundaries doesn’t merely require a few transactional steps. It begins with internal work.  But let’s begin with defining what a boundary is. 

What is a boundary?

The best description of a boundary I’ve ever seen is one offered by a dear friend, Prentis Hemphill. Prentis is a writer and cartographer of emotions, an embodiment facilitator, political organizer and therapist. They are  also the Founder and Director of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative, and the host of the acclaimed podcast, Finding Our Way. Their definition:

Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. 

Inherent in this definition is the recognition that boundaries enable healthy relationships, and also signify care for others as well as care of self. This is critical to highlight when we consider the reasons we often do not set and hold boundaries. Based on insight from thousands of executives and team members I’ve worked with, here are the most common reasons they've shared for why they don’t set and hold boundaries:

• We believe boundaries are hurtful to others and can even be cruel; We don’t want to be mean or to hurt others. 
• We want to be liked; We don’t want others to dislike us.
• We don’t believe that we have a right to have boundaries; we haven’t given ourselves permission to set and hold boundaries.
• We believe it takes too much time to communicate boundaries and hold them; We’re too busy. 
• We want to be connected to others; we don’t want to be cast aside or cut off by others.
• Fear. Fear that several of the things we don’t want to happen (see above), will happen.

Ohhhhhhh, but if we believed Prentis’s definition of boundaries, we would embrace all of the good that comes from setting and holding boundaries: caring for others, honoring ourselves and our own worth, the resulting connection from setting boundaries, the relief, and the ease that results in time and emotional energy returned to us. That alone would counter several of the fears and barriers  listed above- which prevent us from holding boundaries.

Then there is the most simple and concise definition of boundaries that is also aligned with Prentis’s definition, which comes from another friend, Brené Brown:

Boundaries are what’s okay and what isn’t okay.

Do you have a few things that you would immediately place on the what isn’t okay list? If you don't, I invite you to pause and dig deep. Give yourself space and permission to recognize what isn't working for you.

These are a few reflection questions to consider before the next edition on boundaries. They may spark some insights for you, we call these Flickering Lights.

1. Consider instances when you have not (or currently are not) setting and holding boundaries.  Write down the god’s-honest-truth for why you have not/are not setting and holding a boundary.
2. Write down the cost of not setting and holding that boundary. What price are you paying? Is there a price others are paying as well? Write that down too.
3. What will it take for you to set/name that boundary you’re not holding? What will it take for you to hold that boundary? (Setting and holding a boundary are two different things.)
4. What support do you need to set and hold this/these boundaries?

Here’s a quick note about next week’s edition, or what we call our Heads Up.

Next week we’ll explore the anchor point for boundaries, values. Before next week, identify your top two values and write down the behaviors that reflect when you are exemplifying those values.

Community Talk: Add in the comments any of the insights you've gotten from contemplating the reflection points in the Flickering Lights. I'll plan to share responses to your comments.

Until the next episode…