In my last post, I talked about the need to take responsibility for our own ‘stuff’ and to get clear on what is my stuff and what is your stuff (emotional stuff).  Today, I want to look at how others may try to violate your boundaries by trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do.  Or how you do the same to others.

Me?  No way!  I don’t try to manipulate others!  You may not realize it, but lets look at how you do.

Here’s an example.  I’ll call her Patty.  Patty’s boyfriend told her that he was going to take her on a trip to a warm climate for her birthday.  He suggested a few places and told her to pick.  Patty was concerned that he might not keep his word because he had let her down before.  Patty had a few days off work and some free time so she researched some online travel deals and found a great one to the destination she most wanted to go.  She gave the information to her boyfriend and expected he would make the reservations.  When he did not follow through after a couple of weeks, she was naturally disappointed.   She came up with several ideas to “make him” keep his word.

So what’s the problem?

First, she cannot make him do anything.

Second, if her plan works, he will ultimately resent her manipulation.

But doesn’t she have a right to receive the gift she was promised?  The answer may surprise you.

No.  She is not entitled to the gift.

She is entitled to feel any way she does about it.  She is entitled to express how she feels.  She is even entitled to leave the relationship if she chooses.  But it is his choice to decide how he is going to act.  Even if he promised.

Now I’m not saying his behavior is admirable.  It actually sucks.  But I am saying that his behavior is HIS.  And when she tries to get him to act differently, she is in HIS business.  And that means poor boundaries.  Healthy boundaries mean I stay in my business.  So what I’m really saying here, is that most of the time when we are trying to get a person to behave differently than they choose to, we are being manipulative.

Can you think of some ways you have been manipulative?  Is there another way you could have handled the situation?

My November 15 blog outlined the Four Most Powerful Relationship Tools and committed to discussing each one in further detail.  Today’s topic is healthy boundaries.

There are many definitions for the word boundary.  Webster says, “Something that indicates or fixes a limit”.  So how does that apply to relationships?  And why

is it so important in relationships?

The answers are closely related to something I’ve been talking about here for awhile.  But to answer these questions, I have to ask a few more…

• What is mine and what is yours?
• Where do I begin and you end?

You see, one of the biggest obstacles that derails relationships is the belief that another person is responsible for making me feel a certain way (happy, fulfilled, safe, etc).  It is actually my responsibility to make me feel happy, fulfilled and safe.  When I take responsibility for that, then I create the space for someone else in my life to add to my happiness, add to my fulfillment, and add to my feelings of safety.  But no one can do it for me if I haven’t done my own work.

And that’s where the problems start.  I want you to do it!  You did it before!  But I don’t like the way you are doing it/not doing it now and I’m pissed!

So back to Webster. The definition is saying that there is a limit; a starting and stopping point.  If we sat in a row of cubicles that provided two feet on both sides of each desk until the divider wall, we would know exactly what is mine and what is yours based on the divider wall.  This is a good way to think about boundaries in your relationships.  When someone tosses their ‘garbage’ over that wall and into your cubicle, they have violated your boundary.  You can say ‘no thank you’ and put it back on the other side.  You do not have to be the garbage container.  You also don’t have to scream or throw it back in anger.

We can set good boundaries by paying attention to where we want those ‘walls’ in our life and let the people we are in a relationship with know where the dividers are. When someone pushes on your wall, or violates your boundary, you calmly let them know what action you will take if the violation continues.  Sometimes you build a higher wall.  Sometimes you move your cubicle.  Sometimes you renegotiate the wall.  The best part is that it can all be done from love.

Is there somewhere in your life that your boundaries are not clear?  Do you ever feel like someone is taking their ‘garbage’ and throwing it over that wall into your cubicle?  Are you being the container for that garbage?  Are you ready to change that?

Post your comments and let’s get a discussion going!

This was written by a friend of mine who wants to remain anonymous.  It really says something about relationships today.

Today, I took away texting. It was very painful, mostly for me but I realized that my daughter’s approval was far less important than her future and since it is my job to help her realize her potential and not enhance the muscles that strengthen the use of her thumbs….I thought it was time.

I don’t know about you, but I want to experience love now.  Right here in this moment.  Not next week or last week.

So if that’s true, then why does it matter what someone else did last week?  Why do we gauge our love based on measures of the past?  Or how we think something will be in the future.  Comments I hear:

I can’t love someone today because I was hurt before

I can’t love someone now because of how they might make me feel in the future

It’s all about trying to keep ourselves safe.  Keeping a sense of control.  Well guess what?  That’s not love!

And guess what again?  If staying safe means never getting hurt, well that’s not possible!  Nor is it possible to be ‘in control’.  You are fooling yourself if you think you can do either one.

So if you can’t live without getting hurt or staying in control, then why are you not loving right this minute?

There is so much to love in addition to each other.  Start with non-people  Right now, you can love your pet, you can love nature, the smell of fresh baked bread, a warm, cozy bed on a cold night, great wine…. Make a list right now of all the things you can love if you pay attention.  Then pay attention to these things.  The more you feel that love in the present moment, the more you will create love in your interpersonal relationships.  It just works that way.

The only thing stopping you from loving is fear.  So start with what feels easy to love and work your way forward to what feels scary with small steps.  But don’t wait.  Do it now.  Because love is the strongest force in the Universe (check out The Power).

I want to go back to love in our relationships for a minute.  Again, the only thing stopping you is fear.  And what is the worst thing that could happen?  Someone might reject you?  But even if they do, you still got to have the experience of loving.  No one can take that away from you!  Except you.  You can be too afraid.

Do one little experiment for me:

Close your eyes, take 3 slow deep breaths and imagine someone you really love in a moment that feels amazing.  Stay there for a minute or two and take in the detail, but really notice how you FEEL.

Next, close your eyes and again and take 3 slow deep breaths and see yourself thinking about moving toward someone that you want to love you but you are unsure if they will love you back.  So you just sit and think about it and maybe decide it’s too risky.  So you decide to stay safe and stay by yourself and just shut down that desire to love.  Now really notice how you FEEL.

Each time you chose feeling ‘safe’ and not loving, you give up the opportunity to feel as you did in the first visualization.  The strongest message I am trying to convey is that you have the ability to create that feeling in you by choosing to love, regardless of how others respond.

In closing, I just read Martha Beck’s ‘quote of the day’ for today and thought it was apropos:

When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you. But if you can avoid avoidance – if you can choose to embrace experiences out of passion, enthusiasm, and a readiness to feel whatever arises – then nothing, nothing in all this dangerous world, can keep you from feeling safe.—Martha Beck, O Magazine- February, 2006

In my last post, I shared my four favorite tools for improving your relationships.  Here’s a few more thoughts about ACCEPTANCE…

Why is it so hard to accept people exactly the way they are?  Why do we keep wanting and waiting and hoping for others to change?  Especially in our partner relationships.

I think that the reason has to do with not wanting to look at ourselves.  We want our partner to make us happy and meet our needs.  And when they are acting in a way that does not make us happy (or makes us very unhappy), we insist they must change.

He doesn’t do anything to help around the house!

We believe that is simply not okay!  But who are we to say what is okay for another person to do?  I can certainly say that I do not like having a partner who doesn’t contribute to maintaining our home.  But I can’t make him (in the example) change.  I have to accept him exactly as he is today at this very minute.

Now here is an interesting piece of the equation:  I do this for me, not for him.  You see, when I want him to change, I suffer.  I am in conflict with reality.  I resent him.  I tell him what I want him to do.  I tell him how much he is upsetting me.  I REALLY resent doing the extra work around the house.  I feel sorry for myself because my partner is such a (insert favorite word here).  Plus these thoughts and feelings affect my actions.  So now I am cold to him and push him away.  And what is my result?  I can pretty much assure you that it is not a better relationship!

So let’s go back to I do this for me.  By accepting that this is how he is choosing to act, I am accepting what it.  I can decide how I want to deal with it.  I have choices.  I can do more and ask him to take over one of my responsibilities.  I can hire someone to help.  I can bribe one of my children.  I can live in a messier house.  The options are less important than the point I am trying to make here.  More important is that I can choose to feel good about my life and my day and maybe even my relationship.

But when I believe that my partner is responsible for making me happy, it’s hard to feel good about my relationship most of the time.  What if he is having a bad day?  Or going through a difficult time that lasts much longer than a day?  I have to be clear that I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MY HAPPINESS EVERYDAY!

When we take on that responsibility fully, it is much easier to see our relationship for what it is and not what we want it to be.

Now here comes the big trap:

If he loved me he would do this for me!

I used to believe that one myself.  But then I learned that he can love me in any way that he chooses.  I don’t want a person to have to change for me because then their love isn’t free.  It feels like shackles to him.  Remember I have choices.  I can choose how I want to love too.  And I can choose not to live with someone if I cannot tolerate their living habits.

So when we accept our partner (this also works for children, coworkers, friends and just about everything) exactly the way they are today, right this minute, we find freedom for ourselves and for those we love.  And we get to look more closely inside ourselves to make a change if something doesn’t feel right.

When you spend 20 years as a marriage counselor and relationship coach, you come in contact with a lot of different theories about what makes relationships work better.  I have been collecting these ideas for most of my career.

These are my four favorite relationship ‘tools’.  There are really concepts that create the foundation of a healthy relationship.  Although I present them in alphabetical order, the first one is my favorite because it may very well be the most important thing you can do in your relationships that is 100% guaranteed to improve your relationships.

ACCEPTANCE – Most problems in relationships stem from wanting people to be or act differently than they currently are. How successful have you been at getting your partner to change or do things the way you want them to?  Sometimes we can get our partner (or child or boss or friend, etc.) to change but at what cost?  When you ask someone to change, you are telling them, “I don’t accept you the way you are”.  Even if you don’t say it that way, the person will feel some level of rejection and there is often a price for that.  Sometimes the price is damage to trust or closeness; sometimes it is resentment.

BOUNDARIES – When we are clear on what is MY business and what is YOUR business, we have healthier relationships.  And after we get clear, we take responsibility for what is our business.  We have to be willing to clean up our own messes and stop blaming.  If people spent half the energy taking care of their own stuff that they spend blaming their partner, they would be much better off.  The final (but extremely important) component of boundaries is effectively communicating ‘what I am not willing to tolerate’ and ‘this is what I will do if it continues’.  Notice that there is nothing in there about what ‘you’ need to change.  For example:

I will not tolerate being yelled at and if you continue to yell, I will not continue this discussion

versus

YOU better stop yelling at me!

LISTENING – Men and women both want to be heard, but did you know that it is the single most important way that a woman feels loved?  When you love someone, you often want to meet their needs and contribute to making them feel good.  You cannot do this if you don’t take the time and make the effort to really listen to them.  Most people practice Level One Listening, where you tune in and out, are more focused on yourself and what you are going to say next.  At Level Two Listening, you are deeply paying attention.  You are focusing effort on understanding the other person.

SUPPORT – The fourth powerful tool in having awesome relationships is to be supportive of the other person.  Make it clear that you are on ‘their side’.  Not by passively agreeing all the time, but by showing your support.  One way to do this is to send the message “I believe in you”.  What are some ways you can deliver that message to someone you love?

Why would I want to explore my anger?  It sucks and I feel crappy when I am angry!

When you have that perspective about your anger, you are telling yourself that you don’t want to feel something.  And what happens when you try not to feel a feeling?  You push it down with something.  You overeat, overspend, drink too much, etc.

Or you displace it onto someone or something else. You yell at your kids, you kick your dog (you better not!), you break things.  I once accidentally broke 8 crystal wine glasses by tossing a box out of my way when I was a teeny bit upset!

The other consequence of not feeling something is that this practice continues to disconnect you from your essential self.  The more you disconnect from what you really feel, the more you lose touch with how you really feel about…well everything!  And as you become more disconnected from yourself, others have a harder time connecting to you.

So that’s my case against not feeling your anger.  Now I want to make my case for why it’s great to feel it.  Your anger is a signal.  It has a message for you. Sometimes that message is that you don’t like what someone else is doing and you need to set a boundary on what you will tolerate (more on boundaries in my next article).

Sometimes the most valuable signal that your anger is sending you is to look in the mirror.  If you are angry at someone else because, “he should not do that!”, take a look at where in your life you do that. Last month one of my clients was upset with a friend who constantly complained about being alone but did not really do anything to put herself out there or create a relationship for herself.  I asked my client to ‘hold up the mirror’ and ask herself where in her life is she complaining or not taking responsibility for her relationships.  She contacted me a few days later to say that opened up a big door for her to look into and she realized that she was relying on her boyfriend for her social life and getting angry at him for going on with his friends when she had not cultivated a local circle of friends.

My last point about owning and even embracing our anger is that it’s much easier than you might think.  When you stop resisting anything, you will find that it will flow through you with ease.  Remember, feeling your anger does not mean that you ARE your anger.  It’s just a feeling.  We are never our feelings.  They are just vibrations in our body that we temporarily experience.  So go ahead… I personally guarantee that it won’t kill you!  And feeling your anger doesn’t mean you are going to act on it.  Those are two completely different concepts.  You can feel it and chose not to act.  Or you can feel it and choose how you WANT to act.  Feeling strong emotion does not mean you will be out of control.  Just notice it, feel it, breathe and sit with it until it passes. Don’t get caught up in thoughts about your anger, just focus on the feeling.  If you do this, it will pass pretty quickly.

I see a lot of people struggle with the idea that they are ‘in control’.  The problem is that they are confused about what they have control over.  Barely a day goes by that I do not see someone trying to control another person or a situation that is out of their control.  I have certainly been there myself.  Perhaps living through a 7.7 earthquake in 1994 really helped me get it that I’m not in control of many things.  Trying to control another person’s behavior is a sure way to learn that we really can’t and a sure way to cause ourselves to suffer.

It is really quite simple.  We have total control over our own thoughts, feelings and behaviors and nothing else.  Byron Katie says it best when she states that there are three kinds of business:  my business, your business and God’s business.  And unless I stay in my business, I’m going to suffer.

So why do we try so hard to control other people or situations instead of focusing on how to control ourselves?

Because it looks easier.  We don’t have to take responsibility for working on ourselves.  Just focus on someone else.  To look at one’s self takes maturity.  And sometimes courage.

I used to believe that I had no control over my emotions which made it very difficult to exercise control over my behavior at times that I was very emotional (upset, scared, sad, etc.).  It felt like these strong feelings just came over me and no matter how hard I tried to ingore them or talk myself out of them, I thought they controlled me.

Until I learned that every single feeling is caused by a thought.  We may not always be conscious of the thought, but it is there. Sometimes it’s even a deeply held belief that we thought we had overcome.  For example, a person may think he has overcome old fears and beliefs about money because he has been prosperous and built up savings.  But then a crisis occurs such as a job loss or stock market crash and suddenly he feels complete panic and fear because his deeply held belief system, formed in the family he grew up in, tells him that there is not  enough and he will be left with nothing.

But that is just a thought.  It is not a proven fact.  And even if he doesn’t find work for a while and goes through his savings, that still doesn’t mean he will have NOTHING.  But that thought can fuel enough fear to really affect the quality of his life.

So how do you control what you can control?

By paying attention to your thoughts and feelings.  By noticing when you feel bad and asking yourself, “What is the thought causing this feeling?”  Then keep digging and asking why to get to the belief that is causing you to suffer.  Then learn how to change your thinking.  And if you don’t know how, hire a coach!

In September, I will be releasing a free audio demonstrating some thought changing techniques.  Stay tuned!