On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 5 Boundaries to Set in Relationships & 3 Ways to Use Them Effectively

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Today, I will be sharing about setting boundaries in our relationships. When we aren’t used to setting them, we may find it difficult to start setting one. Having one makes us value our self worth so much more and will help encourage others to treat us with respect.I start by talking about the consequences of breaking our boundaries, especially with the boundaries we had for our old self, how we should start becoming aware of them and build up new ones, and then start sharing these boundaries to our partner to let them understand where we stand. We also have the five types of boundaries we should start practicing.  Key Takeaways:00:00:00 Intro00:01:12 Setting boundaries in relationships00:06:42 What happens when we break our own boundaries00:07:14 Become aware of all your boundaries00:09:15 Set your past behind 00:10:07 Express your boundaries to your partner00:16:40 Type #1: Friendship boundary00:18:05 Type #2: Ideas boundary00:19:29 Type #3: Financial boundary00:21:18 Type #4: Alone time boundary00:23:00 Type #5: Purpose boundaryLike this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nunehm. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure

out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to give back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. When my daughter ran off to hop trains,

I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. And into the city of the rails, there I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there.

And if you want to play with the devil, you're going to find them down in the rail yard. Undenail Morton, come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. for us and the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Or, cityoftherails.com. The Vaders say when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you, most of us don't

protect our purpose, we give it away for a person. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Pur the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become the happier, healthier and more healed. I'm committed to those three things in my life and I'm so grateful that you're committed to them too. I have been loving the stories on Instagram, the posts on TikTok. So many of you are clipping the video episode off of YouTube.

And I also want to thank you for all the incredible pre-orders we've had. We've had thousands of pre-orders for eight rules of love, my new book, which is all about love and relationships and connection about chemistry and compatibility. And if you haven't ordered it already, it would mean the world to me. If you had to eight rules of love.com and pre-order the book because it makes a huge difference to authors, I would deeply, deeply appreciate it. And today's session is all about setting boundaries in relationships.

Now, I just wanna get a short hands. How many of you struggle or have struggled in the past to set boundaries in relationships? Raise your hand right now, unless you're driving. Not wherever you are right now, right? I'm guessing it's a lot of us How many of you have said yes when you actually wanted to say no You said yes to your partner you're in people pleasing mode You're in that phase where you just thought oh well. They'll like me more if I say yes

they'll Keep me around This won't end this way. They'll really be attracted to me. I'll just say yes, even when I really don't feel comfortable doing whatever it is, I'm going to see, yes, I want to avoid tension. I want to avoid stress, pressure or conflict. And so I will go against my natural inclination and intuition to do something I don't want to do.

Now the opposite can also be true as a sign of not setting a healthy boundary. How many of you have said no when you actually want to say yes. Now this is an interesting one because you're again, maybe potentially acting out of a place of making the other person feel uncomfortable, making the other person work hard, making the other person feel like they're not ready yet, they're not valued yet, you're playing again potentially. And again, remember I'm saying it's you're saying, no, and you want to say yes. So there's a misalignment in where you are.

Another way that we've all experienced or made the mistake of not setting boundaries is that we've expected our partners to know what we're thinking, to know what we want. We have not expressed what we would like. We have not been clear about what we're thinking, to know what we want. We have not expressed what we would like, we have not been clear about what we would like, and we just expect them to know. Another way that I think a lot of people, my friend, was just telling me this that I'm not one of her boyfriend right now. He doesn't like it if she's out with her friends

instead of being with him. Even if he's out of town or traveling, he expects her to be on the phone with him or be connected to him at all times and doesn't let her have her own independence or have her own life. Now, she's struggling to set a boundary there where the boundary is, well this is my

alone time, this is my friend time, this is what I want to do as well, this is my personal space. And so we can start to see that we've caved on our boundaries for a long, long time. We've made mistakes at either not even being aware of our boundaries and not even setting our boundaries, let alone expressing them. Right? So this is a three-step process. First, we have to become aware of what boundaries we want to set. And you'll find that 50% of the boundaries you want to set are because of mistakes in past relationships. You crossed a boundary, you broke a boundary of yours that you didn't have awareness around.

And now what I'd like you to do is reflect on some of your past relationships. Just like examples I shared a moment ago, what were the boundaries that you continue to cross break and not live up to because you weren't aware of them? I had an ex girlfriend a long, long time ago. And I remember that after we'd go out for some reason, even though we had a great night, she'd always be upset and she'd go quiet

and then she wouldn't talk to me all the way home. And I remember trying to figure it out and I'd be really understanding and be really loving. I'd be really supportive and I do this every night we went out. And I always thought it was me. I was very young at this time and I thought it was just completely me. And I gave thought it was me. I was very young at this time and I thought it was just completely me and I

gave up the boundary. I was just constantly being a supporting person. I was constantly being empathetic and I crossed my boundary where I wasn't having a good night anymore, but I was sacrificing having a good night when nothing had gone wrong because of how someone was behaving. Right, so now I'm aware of that. Right, that's an awareness point. Okay, Jay, that's a boundary that you've broken before. Let me think of another one, a boundary that I broke before was dating someone who always wanted me to travel up to them, but never wanted to come down to see me. Right, they never wanted to make the effort to travel in a long distance relationship to come and see me, right? They never wanted to make the effort to travel in a long distance relationship to come and see me always want to meet a see them. And at the time, because I was into them,

I would do that. I would take that long journey. I would make the effort. I would spend the money only to realize that this didn't feel fair, right? Now, what happens in this scenario, and I want you to reflect on your past relationships, I promise you it will save you a lot in your present relationship. And if you have to your future relationships, now how? Because what happens is when we're breaking our own boundaries, we often blame it on the other person. Now, we never got the opportunity to blame it on our X. But now we blame our current partner, but really the challenges we are not aware of our boundaries.

And so we are shifting our responsibility of that feeling, that emotion, how we want to be treated onto the other person. So first, I want you to just become aware of all your boundaries from the past and maybe some new ones that you've developed recently, and I'll be telling you the different areas, but I just want you to become aware of the ones from the past for now. What were boundaries that you broke, maybe in regards to how you were spoken to Maybe in regards to how people talk to you and communicated with you Maybe it was boundaries about what you were willing to do your physical boundaries What would things in the past that you know you've broken that need to be mended?

So I want you to become aware first. Once you're aware of your boundaries, you then set them. What I mean by set them is that you clarify and articulate to yourself what your boundary is. For example, if I don't want to do something, I will say no and explain why. And I think this is a really important part to the boundary that a boundary doesn't just stop at yes or no, it has a component to it, which is why or how or when or what. It doesn't just stop at no, I won't do that. Yes, I'll do that, right? Like that's not a boundary.

A boundary in a healthy relationship is setting a boundary that you know why it exists. So, for example, someone I know is aware that in the past, they have gone to their partner for everything. So now they've set a boundary for themselves which says, hey, I know who I go to advice for this thing. Right? So that's a great boundary, that's been set. Where it's like, okay, I'm not going to overburden or overwhelm my partner, but I know who I go to for this.

Let me be aware of that. And now let me set that boundary, right? Another boundary that I know someone in my life has is their desire to say, well, this is what happened before you. And so my past, while I'm happy to share that with you, I'm not going to be made to feel bad about it or I'm not going to be made to feel like I need to change it or that I need to become better because of it. It's what my past was and you either accept that or you don't, right?

And now they are aware of that boundary and they've set that boundary. So after you become aware of a boundary, we have to set it and articulate it to ourselves and why it exists. So you may say, I don't want my past put into question because I have left my past behind. I have changed my habits. I have grown and I don't want to be reminded of it. Right? Knowing that reasoning is healthy.

And then the third step is expressing it to your partner. Now, this is where a lot of mistakes are made also because often the way we express our boundaries is that it's done in one of two ways. It's either presented defensively, right? This is my boundary, this is just what I need. Like this is just my way of taking care of myself. Like you don't know on that and you don't understand

and you know't understand. And you are always trying to get me to break my boundaries and this is my boundary. So there's a sense of defense. One way of expressing your boundary is through defense. And what that does is that it assumes that your partner is malicious, controlling, or has that energy and it now makes them feel

defensive. So if you communicate something through the method of defense, it makes them feel like they need to attack because now they say, well, I'm not like that at all. Why are you assuming that about me? Right? So you going on the defense in your expression of your boundary, even though you're just trying to communicate how you feel has forced a sense of attack out of someone else.

You see this in sport all the time. So why am I raising this? Because your boundary may be perfectly important. It may be perfectly valuable, but if you express it incoherently, notice how I use the word incoherent and not incorrectly. There's no incorrect way when you're expressing a boundary, but there is an incoherent way in the sense that

the other person doesn't get the opportunity to truly digest it. You can have made the best food in the world, but if you force someone to eat it quickly, you force someone to eat it all at the same time. You force someone to eat it at a pace they're not comfortable with, what ends up happening? They can't digest the food. So when you're expressing your boundary, I want you to do it in a very aligned way. Now and I'll express what that is to you in a second. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day

or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that big moment or difficult conversation? You should try meditation and I know what you're thinking. Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing, but really, all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice

is seven minutes a day with the daily J, my daily guided meditations on the calm app. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat, you can try it while you brush your teeth, do the dishes or walk your dog. My goal in 7 minutes a day is to help you find calm and feel grounded in your busy world. Plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. He is what one of the listeners of the Daily J

had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my bosses comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm.com forward slash J to get 40% off a calm premium membership.

That's only $42 for the whole year for daily guided meditations. Experience the Daily J only on calm. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences

by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities, like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagelman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save your retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right, we're two best buds

who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list our questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about.

Our show is Chalk Full of the Personal Finance Knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If, let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income, no matter where you are on your financial journey, how to money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Mi'amla, and on my podcast, the R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need.

And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes, and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the art spot on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. The second method we often take is instead of being defences, we attack. Right, we attack the other person, and we say, you always make me break my boundaries. I've always had this boundary, and you don't let me live up to it. Right? So there's that blame. There's that finger pointing, but you go on the sense of attack.

Now, what does that do? It creates a sense of defense in that other person. The person now gets defensive. The person says, well, you don't understand me. I care about you. I just, I feel like you don't listen to me. And again, the point has been lost. How many times have you been in this situation where you have either communicated your boundaries based on defense or attack? So what I find here is so fascinating is that usually we go into attack or defense mode with our boundaries. But actually what a boundary is is a personal checking system of, is this aligned with me? So Gandhi said that harmony or peace has achieved when what we think,

when what we say and what we do is aligned. And a boundary is a boundary that you get to check with yourself of am I going or crossing this boundary? We think boundaries keep other people out. Boundaries keep us in check with ourselves. A boundary is not a barrier to keep someone far away. A boundary is a criteria that you check with yourself to not lose yourself, to not cross yourself.

We think a boundary is a barrier that stops someone else from crossing, but it actually stops us from letting anyone cross it. It stops us from crossing it ourselves. That's what we're trying not to allow. So it's a safe space of reflection. That's what a boundary is. It provides a pause to reflect. It allows you to

value who you currently are before you decide who you're ready to be or not becoming who someone wants you to be. So if someone's wanting you to become something, a boundary isn't a yes or a no. It's not accept or reject. It's a safe space where you get to ask the question, is this aligned for me? Is this right for me? And then we can make a healthy decision before we lose who we are or become who someone else wants us to be, we get to choose. Right, we get to choose. And what I want to talk to you about now is I want to talk to you about the five types of boundaries that I really think it's healthy for each person to be aware of, to set and to express. So we talked about the types of boundaries we've all broken.

We talked about becoming aware of boundaries. We talked about setting boundaries. We talked about expressing boundaries. And when we express, we don't want to be attack or defense. We actually want to make sure it's about us. And now I want to share with you the five types of boundaries that I genuinely believe you need to be aware of, set and express. And of course, there's more. So the first one is a friendship boundary.

What I mean by this is often what happens in a relationship is we lose our friends as we move towards love Right everyone has that person in their group who gets so loved up that you never see them anymore And you're like well, yeah, I think they're dating. I think they're happy like we just don't see them around anymore And what we find is that often that happens because one of the partners may be uncomfortable About you spending time with your friends. I used to have a friend who her boyfriend wasn't happy with her seeing other guy friends that she had from before she knew him. Now, you have to ask yourself and reflect and have a genuine conversation with yourself around whether there needs to be a boundary set with certain friends, whether

you are going to set them and how you express them to both people, or whether you're actually going to set a boundary for your newfound partner. And so, these are friends that are important in my life and I have to see them and I trust them and I respect them and I appreciate them. And I'd love for you to get to know them too when it's the right time. And so friendship is really critical because often we find that people get envious, they get jealous, they get insecure, they feel uncertain about their position in your life. And if you've thought about this before, if you've become aware of it, you're more likely just going to avoid a lot of the issues that naturally come up in this area.

The second one is what I call the ideas boundary. You may have said an ideas about life and when you start dating someone, it's natural for you to be introduced to their ideas. And I think we again make the mistake of attacking defense. We either think that life is all about defending our ideas or attacking someone else's. Again, what I find here is that you want to be able to be influenced. You want to be able to be open to someone else's ideas. But if there's an idea that you've reflected on of yours, you've checked with yourself and you can't seem to change your mind about it, you want to make that other person aware. But this goes both ways. You may also be with a partner who has an idea

or an intellectual perspective that you may not like and you have to respect their boundaries. So notice how boundaries work both ways. I think what we often want is a world where it's like, well, these are my boundaries, I hope we keep to them. But then when your partner subconsciously expresses their boundaries, we can't deal with them because we don't like them because they're not the same as ours.

And chances are your boundaries are never going to be the same as your partners. And so we're trying to create an environment where they're allowed to have their ideas on certain things that are different to you, you're allowed to have your ideas that are different to theirs. But just as you want respect for your boundaries, there has to be a respect for theirs. Now, the third is a financial boundary. A financial boundary is how you choose to spend money, how you save. And this is where we actually have to lead to more open, healthy conversations when we get into a relationship, especially a committed relationship about other people's relationship

with money. So first of all, I'm going to, you should be aware of your relationship with money and most people are not. We're not aware of how we wanna save, invest, or spend, or waste. And knowing, and these are the four areas, how much do you save every month? How much do you spend every month?

How much do you invest every month? And how much do you waste every month? It's really important to categorize that not to shame yourself not to guilt yourself But to gain awareness. So I want you to look at your bill this weekend And I know it's gonna be a painful activity and I want you to order Based on how much money you have coming in. How much did you save? How much did you spend how much did you invest, how much did you spend, how much did you invest, and how much did you waste? Now, when you do this activity, it's not to make you feel bad, it's to make you go, okay, well, what do I want those numbers to look like next month?

What do I want that to look like next year? If you do this activity by yourself, when you get into a relationship, you'll be able to show someone this, you'll be able to talk about it. Now, that person may not have a model, but they'll say, wow, that's amazing. I should be doing that too. So what I find often is that we have a financial boundary that isn't clear. And because it's not clear for us, it can't be clear to others. This is the same with ideas. If we don't have well thought through deeply meaningful understandings of why we do what we do and why we made that choice. It's very hard for someone else to also be able to understand that idea.

So setting financial boundaries. The fourth one is in a loan time boundary. How much a loan time do you need every week? Some of you will say none at all, right? You want to be around the other person, but it's so important that you have a loan time boundary set up. I know for me and my wife, I know that every week she loves spending time with her friends. I love spending time with my friends. She likes exercising with her friends. I like working out or playing sport with some of my friends, but recently I was talking to a friend and he was saying how his partner doesn't want to spend

on the loan. And she doesn't want him to have the time to spend alone either. And we start to see how that becomes extremely unhealthy. And at the start of a relationship, we kind of like it sometimes. That people like when someone's obsessed with them, people like when someone's really into them. And then after time, they're like, oh, I need a loan time, but that person got too used to it. And I think this is the biggest challenge I see is that

we allow our partners at the beginning of our relationships to get used to us in an abnormal way. They get used to us in a way that's not true to us because we position ourselves that way, or we're more open, or we say yes more, or we're more open or we say yes more or we're more available And then as time goes on I found this with me and Rady where when we first started dating I was very available and slowly slowly slowly I got busier and She was like well wait a minute. What's going on here?, you know, and that was busy because I was starting to work

and I had to build my life. It was all very natural, but if I now was switching in that way, I would make her aware that I'm going to be really available this month, but the next month, I'm really busy with work. And the fifth and final boundary is what I call a purpose boundary. The more you're aware of your purpose, the more you can set it and the more you can express it to your partner, the healthier it is because what I find is that when you're moving in line with your purpose, it can be very unsettling for someone else because they feel second best.

They don't fit as important. They maybe don't understand why it's so important to you. And when you don't set someone up with that insight early on, it just grates on them. Like it just really takes away from them. And so when you create your purpose to help them become aware and for you to protect your purpose, the Vedas say, when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you, most of us don't protect our purpose. We give it away for a person. It's really important to think about.

I wanna thank you for listening to today's episode. I appreciate you so deeply. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your ears. And right now, I am genuinely so grateful for all your amazing love for on purpose. The guests have been incredible. These solar has been awesome. Thank you for your support and love.

We're just getting started. Have an amazing day. I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajuan. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast. Hungry for History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture.

We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry for History on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet.

Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join the journey soon. I am Yom Le Van Zant and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Does y'all are just floppin' around like fish out of water? Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart video app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.