Speaker #0Hi everyone, Malu speaking. I'm the author of Life's Notebook. Welcome to the Elevation Grid. I speak about career, science and well-being. Okay, enough. Let's stop. So, today we're talking about setting healthy boundaries in all relationships. Why is setting healthy boundaries in all relationships so essential? Because it's a form of self-care. It gives us control over our life, our time, our energy. It's really important. So, what does it mean, setting boundaries? Actually, it's to convey clearly and transparently on how you want others to behave towards you. That's very important. Not only how you expect others to behave towards you, but also what they can expect from you. It's a two-way street. So it's always very important. And we will take a couple examples to see why it is so important. Even so, we all know it's hard to set boundaries and to implement them because we have all the wrong perceptions that healthy relationships actually are happy relationships and don't need any boundaries. They are problem-free, so why care? But that's not always true. So what is the purpose of setting healthy boundaries? In a healthy relationship, I'm really wanting to take responsibility for my actions and my emotions, but I'm not agreeing to take responsibilities for your actions and your emotions. So that means that everyone should take action, should take responsibility. for his own action and his own emotion, not to have the burden on his shoulder from other people's action and emotion. If that's clear, then chances are that you will be having healthy relationships. Let's take a practical example, for example at work or with your partner or even with aging parents, it's important to set healthy boundaries from the outset and then the trick is to frame them in terms of the common good. So what does it look like in a work environment, for example? And in a work environment it can be difficult a little bit to set boundaries because you know your boss, he has expectations and setting boundaries might not please him very much. But it's important nevertheless with your boss and with your co-workers to set the right boundaries from the start because having poor boundaries means that you often have to accommodate the expectations and the needs of others at your expense, which means that you can be interrupted in your work all the time and others don't care. But on the other hand, you cannot make progress in your work because you cannot also not contribute to the objectives of the team because you can't do your work. So you have to tell them that in the common good of everyone, of the team's good, it's important to set boundaries so that you can do your job properly. And if you explain, as I mentioned, that it's in the common good, then people usually accept it. And even your boss will be happy to accommodate your needs because the performance of the team will be improved accordingly. With an aging parent, for example, I had the experience recently of my mother-in-law. who was 98 and who had very strange expectations. She would call at 11 o'clock with panic attacks and say, I need you to come over to drive 40 miles. And so I set the boundaries clear from the beginning. You know, this is what you can expect me to do. But I'm not driving every day 40 miles for a panic attack, which we can eventually address on the phone or in a different way. So it's important that you set the expectations early because it will also prevent you from having guilt at the end once the people are gone. You will be feeling guilty if you have not done certain things according to the wishes of your parent. And so it's important to avoid guilt. With a romantic partner is also important. You are a partnership but you are also two different entities with different expectations and different needs. So it's particularly important that everyone keeps his autonomy and can do the activities he needs to do on his behalf. That's very critical. And often it's difficult to tell the partner that you want some freedom to do your work and your activities because It might be perceived with a certain difficulty, but it's better to set boundaries straight because it avoids misunderstandings and conflicts. And you don't want to be in a situation where you have the impression that you sacrifice your own needs and desires to keep the peace. So you really want to make that clear. And if you want to have a relationship, which is long lasting, I think it's important to make certain things clear from the get-go. So that's a couple of examples I wanted to discuss with you about boundaries, which took me some time in my own life to realize that it is important to have some and to also make sure that they are enforced. You need to make sure that your boundaries are enforced if you want to be. credible if you want to keep credibility and so that's important.
