#287 – What are your boundaries trying to guard?

When we take the view that "Hell is other people," as one of the characters in Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit puts it, we are creating our own hell.

By determining that other people's behaviors or mere presence have the ability to destroy our inner peace, we're in fact preventing it. Because there's always something potentially bothersome about others––they speak too much, or not enough, or they look at you funny...

To avoid being bothered by others, we put up barriers, which we qualify as "healthy."

Towards the end of my tenure at the communication consulting firm in New York, while completing my coaching certification, I learned the question, "What are you tolerating?"

It hit home––what was I tolerating? A boss that didn't see my potential? A macho culture of steak and booze or else you're a wuss? Clients who proved their worth with the size of their wrist watches or engagement rings?

Why was I tolerating all that? For the money? The prestige? The fancy travel? Not worthy, I thought. And so I set up my boundaries and left.

But what if, instead, I'd learned to be okay with everything outside, including other people?

What if I'd learned to have compassion for beings so scared that they believed their worth was tied to the size of the things they owned, or what they ate and drank? To see my potential regardless of what my boss saw?

Enduring the emotional discomfort could've made me stronger, more resilient. But I decided not to tolerate it.

The alternative was to protect my integrity by not falling into Ego trappings. By not comparing myself with my wealthy clients, by letting comments about my no-animal, no-alcohol lifestyle slide, by detaching my sense of self-competence from what I believed my boss thought.

A lesson from A Course In Miracles comes to mind: "In my defenselessness my safety lies."

What boundary may be protecting your emotional comfort and with that, stunting your growth?

Love,

Carolina

PS: Book II in the series, Going Deeper Into Your Power, is available to purchase in e-book and paperback formats. Thank you.