3 Tips to Keep Your Boundaries in Check

Setting Boundaries can be uncomfortable.  But not setting them can create havoc.

Hold onto your Boundaries because 2022 is Yang Tiger Water Energy!

My friend, Karen Alber Carrasco, wrote this great article and I had to share it!  It’s called, 2022 Tiger Wave: Surfing with the Yang Water Tiger. What struck me was the importance of keeping our boundaries in place, especially after the past two years of up-leveling our lives as we created, and re-created, ourselves to be in alignment with our values.

The past two years were ruled by the metal element, and metal represents details, the fine print, analysis of what is working, and what isn’t. Think of really getting inside the box and critiquing every detail.  That requires metal energy.

This year’s element is water. And with water, things can become dark and murky, confusing, or uncertain. Think about decisions you made when you weren’t clear, when your choices weren’t an absolute yes.  I imagine those particular choices might have brought about an unwanted result.  Yes?

That’s why being clear on our boundaries becomes critical.  The thing is, a lot of us may not even know what our boundaries are, let alone being able to hold them in place.

3 Tips to Keep Your Boundaries In Check:

  • First, Have a self-honoring practice or ritual in place – this is for you and only you.  Whether it’s meditating, writing, exercising, knitting, taking a hot bath once a week, etc. Find what connects you to you.
    • When you take the time to self-connect, your choices will be in alignment with what feels true and right for you, in each moment.
  • Second, before making a choice – any choice – check in with yourself and ask yourself these questions:  
    • What do I want? 
    • What do I need?  
    • How do I feel? 
    • What do I think? 
    • Because when we are coming from a place of knowing how we feel, and what we need, we are more likely to have our needs met, which allows us to make clear requests of someone else.   Its when we haven’t taken the time to figure out what we want and need that things get murky.
    • And this year’s Yang Tiger Water energy will be powerful and passionate, and has the potential to uproot us if we’re not firmly planted in our own boundary foundation.
  • Third, and this might be hard to hear, but I’m going to invite you to embrace being ‘selfish.’  I know selfish gets a bad wrap because of old programming of what not to be.  However, when we put everyone else’s needs before our own, we swing to the other side of the pendulum to self-less, and end up feeling obligated and resentful.  This reminds me of Marshall Rosenberg’s poem, The Hungry Duck, where the intention is strive to give from a place of willingness, vs. obligation.


As the first month of 2022 is almost behind us, and this new water energy is upon us, I encourage you to pay attention to your needs, your wants, your desires, and make sure you feet are planted firmly in your own personal boundaries.

Have a question or comment?   Reach out to me here.

You can find upcoming events here.  There are only a few spots left for the Feb 5th Grok Party, where we play games with Grok Cards to connect more deeply to our own emotions and needs.   And, registration for my group boundary coaching program will be opening soon.  🙂

Wishing you clarity and courage to choose YOU!

Love,
Chris

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By |2022-01-28T13:52:12-05:00January 28th, 2022|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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What’s your New Year’s Eve Ritual? Instead of [Resolutions], try this!

The past few days, I’ve been thinking about how we can enhance our family’s “reflection rituals” for New Year’s Eve.  In the past, we’ve done vision boards at our dining room table, each equipped with magazines, poster board, scissors and glue. We play music we love, we chat, and we enjoy the creation process.  Additions for this year are:  reading through all the messages of thanks from 2017 from our gratitude jar (shown below), and answering a new series of questions I created as we exit 2017 and welcome in 2018’s peaceful energy.

If you’re tired of making resolutions and not following through, join me in reflective ritual by asking yourself the questions below. (If you need to pull your 2017 calendar off your wall, or look in your phone’s calendar to recall how you spent your time, by all means, do it!)  Pour a cup of tea, light some candles, put on some quiet music and enter 2018 with awareness around our choices.  (Here’s just one of my favorite CD’s for reflection):  The Essential Snatam Kaur: Sacred Chants.

Grab a journal, or some paper and answer these reflective questions:

  1. What worked in 2017? What didn’t?  Make a list.
  2. What do you want more of in 2018? What do you want less of?  Make a list.
  3. What activities did you do, what actions did you take, or what choices did you make that drained you, leaving you feeling depleted?   Write them down.
  4. Which activities or actions lit you up, excited you, leaving you feeling inspired, motivated and unstoppable?
  5. Looking at your list for what excited you, what’s the common theme or feeling that’s present?  Next to each activity, just make a note of the feeling that was present from doing that activity.  Was it happiness? Confidence? Freedom?  Look for the most common theme for 2017.  Choose the feeling that’s the strongest from your list. This is what you want to create more of in 2018.
  6. Knowing that in order to feel those feelings, there’s likely an action you’ll need to take or a structure you’ll need in place in order to feel inspired and create change.  What’s one thing you could do this week, and potentially continue, so you could feel those feelings now, instead of in the future?
  7. Lastly, what kind of support do you need in place to accomplish this? Is there something you need to let go of?  Something you need to add?  Someone you need to help hold you accountable?

My hope is these questions bring you closer to your dreams for 2018!   If you’d like a list of feelings to help you tap into your desires, you can find that here.  If you liked this exercise and would like some deeper introspection, I’ve included a PDF of Debbie Ford’s, “A New Year’s Ritual here.

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I’d love to hear if this helped you.  What did you love?  What did you resist?  What are you creating more of (or taking away) as a result of doing this exercise?

Sending you wishes for a powerful and healthy 2018!

Chris

xo

By |2018-01-07T01:46:11-05:00December 31st, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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