Why Saying No And Setting Boundaries Is Important
“On sunday 23.59 we have to put op our blogposts, is that ok with you?” This sentence made me write my first post today. I have so many things to talk about, so many subjects I got to cover! But which one to choose? So I’ll just start.
My entire life my biggest issue has been my incapability of saying “no” or “I don’t want to do that” or “this made me feel uncomfortable”. I will always try to put someones else’s feelings before mine. Not once in my life, at least that I can remember off, I’ve chosen for myself. Rarely I have set boundaries with people in my life. I always admired people that just can easily say “no” or explain their feelings without being too scared that they may hurt someone else’s feelings.
Until one day. One particular day I just thought what the hell, what am I doing this for. Actually, I am the one who is making myself sad. I am the one who keeps having a relationships with people that make me feel uncomfortable. I keep making myself having uncomfortable conversations with these people. So from now on I’m just going to quit having a relationship with all these negative people in my life!
But easier said than done, obviously. I can’t change in one day, no one can. I can get a little bit better everyday though. I can make one conversation less with someone who makes me uncomfortable. Maybe instead of stressing all day about what they said, and making worst case scenarios in my head about the negative conversations, I can read a book (or write a blogpost about it). I’ll just pretend I havent seen their call, and call 15 minutes later, obviously to make a statement.
For me the most difficult part of this situation is that more often than not these people are not easily to cut off for one reason or another. The reason can be that often these people are family members, friends you know since high school, or maybe just a friend you don’t know for too long but still you feel obligated to keep being friends with. And often it can be unavoidable that you’ll keep seeing them. You just can’t get around the idea that one day or another you cut everything you had off. It feels wrong and actually quite impossible.
So I started reading books about how I could get the courage to say what I really think, or to not pick up the phone if I don’t feel like talking. For me the most important thing that helped other than the books and the endless conversations I had with the people I actually did want in my life, was to remember what I was doing this for. I did it because I felt sad, negative and sometimes even slightly depressed after the conversations or visits. And that is just not okay. See I can imagine people thinking if this is a real thing, a real problem individuals are dealing with. But believe me, it is.
Day by day you may think it’s just one uncomfortable conversation, I’ll make it quick and easy so I’m just over with it. But what happens then is that you will be thinking about it the whole entire day or sometimes even longer. You will feel the negative load in your body sitting there, breaking you from the inside little by little. Once you’ve come to the point where I am, and believe me I’m still not where I supposed to be. You’ll realize that you’ve spend so much time and energy on people who actually don’t give a damn about you.
And to be fair to the people who we (want to) cut off or set boundaries with in our lives. There is a very big chance that they don’t even know they make you feel like shit. They don’t even know you keep thinking about them, they don’t know you keep thinking about those 2 sentences they’ve said which made you feel sad all day. You know why? Because you’ve never set boundaries. So how should they know, right?
I’m not saying by any means that you should cut off every person in your life just because they did one thing wrong or made a couple of mistakes. I’m talking about the people who continuously make you feel bad, because that’s just who they are. Their personality’s are just not aligned with yours, or maybe after all they are just bad people. I’m talking about the people you know won’t bring more positivity than negativity in your life.
The point you’ve realized you have to take action, means you’re half way there.
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