Tag Archives: boundaries

The Merry-Go-Round of Self-Respect and Selfishness

This week was chalk full (where did that saying come from?) of stuff coming up for me. All of it I’ve looked at before and delved into it, but this time I knew it wasn’t a reminder. It was an invitation to go deeper, go through another layer, take another ride on the Merry Go Round.

The horses that I would ride on my beautiful red with gold gild carousel would be called Selfishness and Self-Respect. If I could give my love to both horses at the same time I would, however, I can only fully focus on one at a time. Thus I will do so:

Self-Respect

The class I’m in right now focuses on helping women gain employment skills and increase self-confidence and self-esteem. A common theme became evident in a classroom conversation when the teachers were out of class: All of us had met and dated men that did not respect women.

Many of us agreed that there definitely are men out there that respect women. Just how do we meet one?

I explained what we had noticed and put the following question to one of my good friends and sometimes mentor. “Why is it that we all seem to be  experiencing men who don’t respect women?”

Her response was a question: “How many of the women in your group respect themselves?”

Thinking about it, not many of us do. We are in the process of learning to respect ourselves. It shows through the significant differences that have emerged among all the women from our first day to now from the way we act, speak, and are taking care of ourselves.

On the flip side, how can I expect others to respect me if I don’t respect myself?

I began evaluating my life. How am I not respecting myself? What does it look like to respect myself? How would I define respect?

Here are some of the things that came to mind for me:

Boundaries. Trusting myself. Following my heart and my intuition. Giving myself what I need: space to contemplate and process, silence. Taking care of myself first.

What would it look like to respect myself? In all honesty, I’m not sure. I imagine I would feel empowered and strong. Guarding my boundaries would be second nature. I would know how I am feeling and how to respectfully state it. My voice would be used appropriately and be heard.

How am I not respecting myself? Boundaries are huge for me and learning what it is that I am feeling.

Its so important that to know what I am emotionally feeling. Often times I need a while to identify and process what I feel. As much as I would like to rush this process I need to allow it to flow. This will make my life easier, and when I am in relationships I will be able to better handle myself. It will become clearer to me why I am making the choices I choose.

Following my heart and intuition I feel I’m doing okay on. It is usually easier for me to follow my intuition but it gets cloudy when I don’t have the space that I need to allow my heart and intuition to speak.

Selfishness

It seems that we are programmed in Western Society to believe that taking care of ourselves first is selfish, and that selfishness is bad bad bad! I believe this to be a faulty thought pattern. As a healer I often hear, witness and fall victim to the thought that I must be selfless and therefore all that I possibly can to others. This is not true.

It came to my awareness last year that taking care of myself leads to me taking even better care of others. It made it okay for me to do what I need to do and not drop everything I was doing for other people. It was okay to ensure that I had a bit of time for myself each day.

I have noticed that still to this day I will allow other people to have more presence in my life than what I would personally like. For me one of the biggest acts of selfishness is taking myself away from others in time and in presence. This is also one of the healthiest things that I can do for myself.

Selfishness is a behavior that is trained out of us though that can benefit many. It allows us to clarify what we desire and want. It allows us to create and to be. It allows us to know ourselves.

Selfishness is not bad when it is not in the egotistical extreme. It is a good thing in many cases. We are living on this planet for ourselves, not for others. Yes, we may help others a long our way which is an experience that can create sensations of goodness, but ultimately our life needs to be lived for us. If we let others rule our life will we truly find happiness, contentment or joy?

Is it selfish that as a healer I will reschedule a session with a client if I do not feel that I can be fully present? A year ago I wouldn’t have, but now it is simply that I cannot give them a quality session when I am in a poor emotional, mental or physical state. This action takes care of myself and provides my client a better quality service.

As much as I have grown in this regard I still take better care of other people than I do myself.

Often I treat people in my life how I want to be treated, however I don’t treat myself nearly as well. Rarely do I spoil myself in ways that make my soul sing. It is easy for my boundaries to become mucky and my voice go unheard. Often experiences of silence that soothe my soul more than anything else disappear. Space that I require to process and contemplate I choose to relinquish because I want to spend time with others.

I love them more than I love me it seems.

Taking care of myself will automatically create self-respect and trust.

By being “selfish” I know that no matter what is happening in my life I will consistently take care of myself. Therefore I can trust that my needs are being met. Self-respect will grow.

The act of sacrificing a part of me because its “right” or because it will help someone no longer exists. I will stay whole, and I will stay me.

My horses seem to be brother and sister. Perhaps they are the beautiful chestnut horses that pull the carriage on my Merry Go Round. When I work with one the other becomes stronger, and vice versa. I love that they are so inter-related!

What do you think self-respect is? Thoughts on selfishness?

Boundaries and the Solar Plexus

I was looking for fences, and I found this stone fence sticking out from between two wood fences. When I took the picture I discovered the face... and contemplate more...

This is something that I have personally have a lot of trouble with, though I am far better now than I ever have been. It has taken a long time for

me to understand exactly what a boundary is, what it feels like (which is can be a necessity to me in understanding things fully) and how I encounter them.

When I left Winnipeg I recall Grams telling me that I have no boundaries. At the time I was slightly miffed to hear that, insulted even. Of course I had boundaries! Everyone has boundaries! That statement brought into my awareness boundaries and boundary setting and began my attempts of understanding what she was talking back.

Now I look back and I can see that I really didn’t have boundaries. I barely have boundaries today – though they are formulating and shaping themselves as I become more aware of what I want, like and need.

Not working the last few months I’ve floated along with life as everyone else – aka people who I love and are very close to me – deals with their busy schedules and lives. I’ve gotten bored, unmotivated, tired of working, and also found it very easy to schedule my activities around their lives.

So I’ve been around and very available.

My close friends have gotten used to me being available, and I love interacting with them. Lately, I’ve been highly motivated to finish up the projects that I’m working on by the end of March at the latest. This creates a crossroads for me – set my boundary and restrict my time with these people, or “float”.

Now they are the perfect people to practice setting boundaries with! Sometimes I fail, and sometimes I succeed, but my successes are becoming greater than the fails. Here are some things that I noticed about boundaries as I contemplated them this past week.

I fear creating and setting boundaries. Deep down inside I am scared that if I set one the other person will never want to speak to me again. It’s unrealistic and not true. I counter this fear with the belief that people like people who have boundaries – it makes you less passive and people feel comfortable because decisions are made mutually by taking into account both people’s needs, wants and likes.

Boundaries require awareness of who I am in the physical. A lot of the cues that I get that a boundary is being violated by me or another person is given in my physical body. There’s an intuitive thought or “alarm” followed by dissociating from my body. As I practice staying in my body, it’s becoming more obvious to me when I’ve disassociated. At those times I need to reach back into my body and focus on my breath.

Energetically, boundaries have a lot to do with taking back my power and controlling my life. This stems from an imbalance in the Solar Plexus chakra or energy center (you can read a post on here on MommyMystics website about what the chakras are), and most likely accounts for the pains and shifts that occur in my digestive/solar plexus area.

This is also coincides with the guidance I’ve been feeling and receiving messages of: Its time to take the power back in my life, to stand up for what

Stepping up into my power.

my needs and wants are. By setting boundaries I take control of my life and what happens instead of passively letting the river take me wherever it wants to go. Now I see this and understand it.

When my boundaries are set and stay in place I feel centered and grounded. Overall generally more at ease with life and what is going on with me. I feel like myself, and in my body. My stress level remains low because I feel that I am accomplishing everything that I need and want to do, plus experiencing what I want out of life.

I’ve learned that when I have set healthy boundaries on an energetic level the world around me does not drive me half as crazy. By shielding (imagining I am in a bubble of sorts), sometimes in multiple layers and colors, I am able to enter a Future Shop without getting a headache within ten minutes, or go to Walmart without becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of energy.

With healthy boundaries I am able to speak with people inside and outside of sessions without taking on their energy, emotions or feelings. I can feel my little bubble reflecting off the little bullets of emotions and thoughts. This makes me feel good about myself, which in turn increases my self-esteem. Aha, I think I’m getting it now how self-esteem works and is created… A to-do list doesn’t cut it for me.

Now that I have identified what it feels like to have boundaries and what I feel like when I don’t, reflection brings forth the next question: How am I going to better implement healthy boundaries in my life, and step further into my power?

My answer at this point: Improve communication skills. Awareness. Practice. Your suggestions are welcome.