Capsule #4: The Power of Boundaries in Achieving True Happiness

Boundaries go two ways. There's bilateral boundaries, as I say. Side one is classic idea of boundaries, which is you don't let people mess with your shit, you don't let people cross your line. The other side of boundaries is you have to stop yourself from crossing other people's line. I think there's no greater culmination of your experiences in your 20s, especially than learning, which always happens around this age. Right, I'm currently in my early 30s. By this time in your life, you've you know who you are, you know what you like, you know what you don't like. You get to a point where it's you don't have that openness you had in your 20s anymore. You need your limitations and your boundaries respected, right? So number one how do we define boundaries? Boundaries is essentially, you should be allowed to be yourself as fuck, without shame. That's it. And if somebody is trying to mess with your expression of being yourself as fuck, then they are messing with your boundaries. They're trying to knock you out of the things that make you comfortable, where your mental health stays the healthiest in that box. So, for me, what I've learned in my life, having grown up in a family where I've always felt I had to help and contribute, with pleasure, but you know it's something that not every kid experiences. I know you have a similar experience. Yeah, you feel a sense of duty to your family and to the people in your life. So when you build that as part of your personality right helping and making sure that you are always being useful you tend to seek out people's problems so that you are always being useful. You tend to seek out people's problems so that you can help them with those problems. You tend to make people feel that they can rely on you and if they don't rely on you, you think to yourself hey, I don't think you understand. Like I'm trying to help, so that's the boundaries go two ways. You understand Like I'm trying to help, so that's the boundaries. Go two ways. There's bilateral boundaries, as I say. Side one is classic idea of boundaries, which is you don't let people mess with your shit. You don't let people cross your line. The other side of boundaries is you have to stop yourself from crossing other people's line because just because you think you're going to help them doesn't mean they want that help right, and it doesn't mean that you can't help them, even if you think you can, even if you know you can. That's very hard for me in my life. It's been hard for me to drop the idea that I can't help this person because they don't want my help. It's like the superhero syndrome Very much. So I need to help this person, but you have to learn to stop yourself right. Overall, I would say that boundaries are the shortcut to mental health, uh, to maintaining your mental health, and I think that honesty is the only way to express your boundaries, and cultivating bravery is the only way that you're going to be able to be honest across the board in your life.

Why do you think people are not honest anymore, or why does it feel like it? Yeah, it's a classic case of taking the safest possible route. So if you grow up in a home, let's not say everything is related to your upbringing. But you know, I'm of the classic school of thought that you spend the first maybe 12, 11 years of your life getting shaped by your environmental factors. You're not really in charge of who you want to become. Right, you have quite a few, relatively limited amount of years in adolescence where you choose who you want to become.

But I would say that the reason people learn the habit of trying to hide their true feelings is because in their upbringing they were met with consequences for being honest, for expressing their needs. So imagine you grew up in an abusive home where if you express your needs to your mother or your father and your mother or father doesn't meet those needs. One, you learn that the pain of expressing the need and not getting it is so bad that you stop expressing any need. You convince yourself that you don't need anything because it's safer that way. And two, you learn that when you are honest to your parents hey mom, I don't like the way you're behaving. Or hey, bro, I don't like the way you're behaving If they hit you or they yell at you or they, you know, if in any way you're just met with anything other than an understanding halfway point of, let's say, calm discussion, you're just going to learn that being honest means getting met with really bad feelings, really bad feelings. So when you grow up in a home where you don't know how to express yourself, because you don't know which expression leads to which consequences, you take the safest possible route, which is always people-pleasing. That's the safest possible route. So then this is a real pandemic, especially in Anglo cultures right In the US, in England for sure. I know that it's a common trope in the UK that people just generally put on a polite face and express politeness, even if they're kind of, you know, holding something in. I will say that Poland is wonderful at being very openly expressive. So why aren't people honest at being very openly expressive? So why aren't people honest? They don't feel safe expressing their true feelings and their true needs because historically they've been met with resistance or backlash for that reason.

So what led you to be a boundaries advocate? It's my official title. Exactly what led me to be an advocate for boundaries is my own personal realization that I was martyring myself far too often to please others. Because that's how I was raised, that's how I grew up. I grew up feeling like my duty in this life is to be useful, to be helpful. But that's a toxic way of being. Eventually you lose concern for yourself, right, or at least you put it second or even third. Um, I mean, if you're asking about my personal journey yeah, it's, it's a long one I mean any story that you can share regarding that boundaries. Sure, there was a key, there were a few key moments, I would say, that were the uh kind of the catalysts for the catharsis that led me to go from somebody who thought life was kind of just easy so I could just breeze through it, to then being somebody who has to put up boundaries and defend myself.

Uh, I call these moments like the loss of innocence moments, because when you're innocent, because when you're young, you don't realize that the world consists of individuals that share different paradigms on life. The bliss of youth is an ignorance of everyone's, the differences that people have toward morality or ethics or just behavior. So, when you're a young person, why do young, why do kids fall for predators, right, strangers? They come, they don't know, they don't know that there are people that are bad. They just assume that everybody is the same giggly, innocent individual that they are. So, even as an adult, even in your early 20s, that's why your 20s feel like bliss. You have this autonomy, you are sexually mature, you're physically mature, you have some money, a little bit to do things, but you also still have that, that beautiful naivety, yeah, beautiful naivety of youth, where you think that the rest of the world is in on the same joke as you. Right, it takes, uh, unfortunately for a lot of people it takes tragedy, it takes a monster on their journey to really expose them to the darker side. Yeah, yeah, and in those moments you lose innocence and those are incredibly destructive to to people who, um are typically trusting and open.

I would say I was one of those people Up until around 2014,. I had maintained that sense of optimism and naivety and innocence. The series of ups and downs and the peaks and valleys and the experiences that I had have taught me now when I'm supposed to activate the boundaries Because when you first get boundaries, it's like a kid with a new toy. It feels powerful. You're like Frodo with the ring, you know. You're like whoa. I'm losing my shyness, I'm no longer timid to tell people nope, sorry, you're crossing my line. And when, when that happens, it's it's like a power trip and you also don't know. You start to doubt everything. It's like wait a minute. Am I supposed to let that person say that to me? Is it nice to let them or is it, you know, mean to let them get away with that? It's hard, you know boundaries are something you need to calibrate for time.

But I think I'm at a point now where I can balance connection with boundaries, because I've made my boundary setting a habit. It's almost built into my personality now. So when I meet somebody, I don't feel this need to put on a smile so that if I'm not enjoying the conversation I can't hide it. I'm almost too authentic with this. I can't just be like I can't hide it. You know, I'm almost too authentic with this. I can't just be like my face starts to hurt. So I don't want my face to hurt, I don't want it to hurt. That's my boundary. I'm just going to do let it do what it has to do. Right, and so that's the end game.

With boundaries, you make them a habit so that they don't take energy from you anymore, because when is a habit you have energy? Uh, you optimally made that. Energy efficient habits are things that you do without expelling energy anymore, because they're just like processes. You push the button yeah, speed, dial, whatever. When you make boundaries a habit, you become a much more mentally healthy person, because now your mind is your monastery, your mind is fort. It's like a border for a country. There's a border patrol. You choose who comes in and out. You always act with diplomacy first. But if somebody storms the border, what do you do? You reluctantly have to shoot them or push them away or whatever I see.

So would you say that boundaries is the key to happiness? I believe it's the foundation of a journey toward happiness. Yeah, I think that until you are, you feel that you have fortified your mind from outside influence. You are always going to be you, you know, working in a system with a leak in it, so to make your mind as much of a closed system as possible, in the sense that you are, you know the border patrol and the defense and the constitution writer and the.

You know you're the founding fathers and you're the military of everything of your mind. You're the founding fathers and you're the military of everything of your mind. Yeah, I would say that I had not been able to get to a point of true contentedness in the moment until I recognized that I need to respect my limits. My limits are different than other people. Some people are extremely good at just dealing with hardships and stresses and whatever. I'm relatively good at those, but for the most part, I'm incredibly sensitive. So I need to just like I need to put these boundaries up or I'm going to be drained to the bone and end up in a mental health crisis again, you know.