Boundaries – Personal, Part 1: What are they, and (how) do we understand them?

As promised in last week’s post, this week I will begin to dig into the first of the four areas of Boundaries as I outlined them under the BASE model: Personal Boundaries. In keeping with what is often the natural emergence of things as we begin the conceptualization process, we will begin with ourselves. What are our Personal Boundaries, and how consistently do we recognize and adhere to them? As we consider this key question together, I will offer some guiding questions to help us along in the reflection/discovery process. In part 1, we will examine and interrogate the first two of four aspects of Personal Boundaries: Temporal and Kinetic. Later this week, in part 2, we will dig in to the Cognitive and Interpersonal aspects of Personal Boundaries. Toward the end of each part, I will close with an invitation to engage in some ongoing work over the course of the rest of the week, and also provide resource recommendations where I have them to offer. Without further preamble, let’s begin.

Temporal Personal Boundaries are concerned with how we organize and manage time for ourselves and those around us. Before we can properly understand this, however, it is necessary to better define our own relationship to time. We can begin by simply assessing our level of attunement to the passing of time. Consider your responses to the following questions in the context of not relying on a timepiece: How often are you confidently aware of what time of day it is? To what extent are you able to keep track of the duration of activities in which you engage? For instance, do you frequently feel misaligned, in terms of either mindset or activity/energy level, to the time of day in which you find yourself, whether late morning, mid-afternoon, or early evening? What about the passing of time? If you begin an activity, say sitting down to read a book or getting engrossed in preparing a meal, are you able to stop yourself in the midst of it and accurately assess for how long you have been engaged (in minutes or fractions of an hour, not seconds)? No particular answer is more or less valuable or important, but it is good to have a sense of this for yourself, as it can help you have a more faithful frame of how you personally interact and engage with time in your day to day life.

What about your sense of time as it relates to others? How often do you feel impatient when you are expected, or obliged, to passively observe and/or wait while someone else engages in an activity, whether it be thinking, talking, cooking, working, or getting ready to go out? How do your expectations vary between the time you can patiently allot yourself to do something versus what you can graciously offer to another? You don’t need to answer these questions with judgment. Just take a moment to reflect and see what arises for you in response, possibly jotting a thought or two down, or even taking a more full five to ten minutes to journal on it.

Kinetic Personal Boundaries have to do with our movements and physicality or, worded a simpler way, what activities we do and do not engage in. The central question here pertains to what and who determines the activities in which you do, and do not, engage? This may seem like a very simplistic question, to which the answer can only be some version of one of three major types:

“only I decide what I will do”

“I live to serve and match my actions accordingly”

“it depends.”

The relative valuation given to each of those response types will vary, of course, according to the cultural norms with which you were raised, those that are in place where you currently live, or those you have integrated into your personal worldview. In any case, what matters most is to be mindful and aware of what most often drives you to, or keeps you from, taking action and if those factors change under different circumstances (that do not rise to the level of the extreme – almost everyone’s motivations change in extreme situations).

The purpose here is to accept that we will struggle to reliably understand and evaluate, much less consciously moderate or modify, our own actions and tendencies unless we understand where they come from. Here you may find it helpful to reflect on things like your activity levels in terms of socializing, down/alone time, physical and mental wellbeing (nutrition, fitness, meditation, sleep, etc.), personal development (reading, journaling, ongoing education), and service to others. Of course, you also need to examine the activities you engage in that are the unhealthy opposites of the favorable ones I have just listed. What routines and/or patterns emerge when you ask these questions? Whatever your answers about the amount and/or quality of activity you engage in any and all of those domains, it is at least as important to understand whether the catalyst for your Kinetic Boundaries comes from within, without, or a mix of both. Spend enough time in honest dialogue with these questions, meditating and/or journaling according to what works best for you, and I am confident that you will have moments of surprise and discovery.

Resource recommendations:

Insight Timer – A freemium meditation and personal improvement app for iOS and Android. Plenty of great free content for beginning and building on meditation and mindfulness practices, and paid courses and additional content to boot!

7-minute workout – A great, free resource for getting your fitness fix, no matter your current fitness level or exercise habits! Shows how to perform all movements, requiring only body weight and some personal drive.

The Miracle Morning – A wonderful book, not free, with ample web resources, by Hal Elrod. This book will help you reconsider the extent to which a lack of time and energy are really what stand between you and pursuing your life goals.

That’s it for today! Be sure to check back for part 2, focusing on Personal Cognitive and Interpersonal Boundaries, in the next few days.