Boundaries and Standards

Part of creating a life we love will often be met with disappointment and disapproval from the people in your life. Especially if your intentions are to get different results than you have been getting.  It will become necessary for you to be deliberate about identifying and declaring what is important to you. With that consciousness your actions and conversations are more likely to be in alignment with what matters instead of at the mercy of what others want or need you to do for them. To help you create a structure to maintain your integrity, it would serve you to set standards and boundaries.

Standards— Can be seen as the guidelines by which you live your life. Standards are for and with yourself. They are your value system, your code of ethics, the level of required action on your part for your authentic expression to emerge. The choices you make are in alignment with your truth, integrity, and what you say is important to you. Standards are your daily or ongoing practices that you engage in—because you say it matters. It is where you choose to spend your time, energy, money, and resources.

For now, let’s just say setting standards provides the consciousness, support, and ability for you to discern and make choices in alignment with what is meaningful and important in your life in the midst of any situation.

The trap is to set unrealistic standards which set you up for disappointment, sabotage, or failure. This will only serve to feed the negative internal chatter of how you are wrong, bad, or a failure. Besides the lofty expectations you have of yourself—you will want to also be mindful that the tendency to adopt other people’s standards will be at play here. Do your own work in
identifying and declaring your authentic standards.

Keep in mind that the people in your life may or may not be aware that you are transitioning and you may be required to set boundaries as you integrate new actions into these relationships.

Boundaries— are for and with others. They provide structure as we live and work in communities. We set boundaries with others on what we will and will not tolerate, associate with, or deem acceptable. This allows for creating a clean space to coordinate action—these are the spoken and implied rules of the game.

If you are setting boundaries, then the question becomes, are you enforcing them?

_______Yes      ______No

What agreements do you have with other people? If you don’t have agreements and boundaries, don’t expect anything to change.  Now is not the time to think everyone will know or care that you are up to creating a life you love. You will have to be rigorous to not fall into the trap of old habits and patterns.

The trap with boundaries is we may use them as a way to shut ourselves off, stay safe, isolate, or distance ourselves from people while maintaining the illusion of taking a stand or bringing
forth dignity. Maintaining boundaries invites opportunity to continue to take a stand even at the risk of disappointment and disapproval.

Standards and boundaries are crucial in taking responsibility for living a life you love.