Once we’ve established a boundary, (see Boundaries, Part 1,) how do we honor it? For some people, this is not difficult, but for many of us, it is very hard to do in the moment.
For example, if you are raising children and working, you may have decided to set a boundary around family time during the week. You are committed to family time after work.
And then…your co-worker asks you to join her and a few others for an after-work drink. You think about your boundary and you respectfully decline the invitation.
That’s when your co-worker says one of any number of phrases to get you to change your mind:
- Oh, are you too good for us?
- Well, I can see where I fall on your list of priorities!
Or the ever-popular,
- Everyone’s going to be there!
So what do you do now?
Many of us cave.
Why? Because we don’t want our coworker to think badly of us. We might say it’s because we want to be seen as a team player, or because it’s a good opportunity to network, but the reality is we have a really hard time letting people think whatever they want about us.
And that’s what it takes to hold to our boundaries.
We have to give other people permission to think whatever they want to about us.
- They can think we’re no fun.
- They can think we’re all work and no play.
- They can think we don’t care about them.
What “they” think is none of our business.
If we are not okay with letting others think whatever they want to about us–and they will, no matter what we do or say–then we are at the mercy of everyone around us, from the checkout clerk at the grocery store to our coworkers to every extended family member.
In the example above, our hero (you, me) realizes she can’t control what anyone else thinks about her, so when her co-worker passive-aggressively says, “Oh, are you too good for us?” she says, “Of course not. Have fun and I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
She heads home to her top priority, her family, having lived her values, even though her co-worker thinks she’s a stick-in-the-mud.
How do you honor your boundaries?