No one can set boundaries for you. It’s like work: your boss is not going to call you one day and tell you you’re working too hard and you should take a vacation.
No one in your life is going to say, “You really go above and beyond, you need to start taking care of yourself.”
Yet we get upset when people ask us for things. Things we don’t want to give. But it’s not their fault we are upset.
Adults get to make requests of each other. We each get to decide if we say, “yes,” or “no.”
Telling ourselves we don’t have a choice is a lie that doesn’t serve us.
Anyone can ask anything of us and we can say “yes,” or we can say, “no.” What they choose to think and feel as a result of the “yes,” or the “no,” is not our responsibility.
Because, as adults, we are responsible for our own emotions.
A friend recently asked me to attend a lecture in Cambridge with her. I wasn’t interested in the lecture, and it was during prime family time, so I said, “no, thank you.”
“Oh, but I’m not comfortable driving in Boston and I know you are, so I was hoping you’d drive,” she said.
“I am pretty comfortable driving in Boston,” I replied, “but I’m not interested in the lecture.”
She looked at me, wide-eyed, and then said, “Oh, okay. I guess I can’t go, then.”
“You can go,” I said, “You could take the train or the subway…or an Uber.”
“Yeah, no,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and we moved on to other topics.
I think my friend probably has an opinion about my not driving her to the lecture, but that is her business. When I’m centered, I know I can’t control other people’s opinions of me. I can only stay true to my values and my boundaries.
There are times when I’ve driven to the lecture I didn’t want to attend (or did something else I really didn’t want to do,) and that didn’t work out well, either. I was resentful that I wasn’t home with my family and wanted to blame whoever had asked me to do whatever it was I didn’t want to do.
But I was responsible. I said, “yes,” when I really wanted to say, “no.”
It’s not that we don’t do things for others, or that we aren’t flexible. It’s that we always have a choice, and we need to take responsibility for our choices.
The more I remember that truth, the less resentment I feel and the more I stay true to my own values.
And then, when I do say, “yes,” it’s a for-sure, by choice, straight-forward “yes!” Which feels good all around.