How Creating Boundaries Supports Self-Control
And Why Self-Control is Essential to the Intentional Life
“Boundaries keep the things you want in your life IN, like: love, joy, hope or peace. Boundaries will also keep OUT of your life what you do not want, like: disrespect, fear, hopelessness or anxiety. And Boundaries help protect your priorities. Boundaries communicate value.” — Danny Silk
We all have things we cannot say ‘no’ too. Sometimes its family. Other times it’s that donut box at the office. Or the coworker who trusts your advice and comes to you first for questions. We all have someone who is asking something of us, or something we cannot refuse.
But what if we found a way to do it? What if the things we want to say ‘yes’ too is so strong we can easily turn down the things we do not want or need in our lives?
Why We Need to Have Boundaries in Our Lives
Boundaries in our lives allow us to say ‘no’ when we need to say no. And say ‘yes’ when we want to say yes. There is a great freedom in having boundaries. It allows us to have some control of ourselves and to chase after the things we want in life.
A while back, I wrote an article about How to Control Others in One Easy Step. What I learned while writing the article and what I believe is helpful to others is the understanding that our personal self-control is essential to living our lives intentionally. I have learned a lot in the meantime about Self-Control. And it comes down to this:
We cannot control others, we can only control ourselves. However, we can allow others to control us.
In order to have self-control in our lives, we must be living lives with boundaries. Healthy, pre-established boundaries. Like Danny Silk says above, boundaries are to keep good things and keep out bad things in our lives. If we use them correctly.
We need boundaries to help us protect our priorities and it helps us assign value in our lives.
Priorities
Our priorities are the most important things in our lives. It is our faith, family, selves, and the important relationships in life. Every year, I reevaluate my priorities in my life plan. Learn more about the benefits of a life plan below:
If we keep boundaries around our priorities, we can insure their place in our lives and that we are always building into them.
Value
This is a two-way street. We assign value to things and relationship in our lives to be sure we are focusing on them. We also communicate value to others due to our boundaries. If we keep our boundaries well, those relationships we value will help the other people feel valued by us.
If we put work before our family, our family will feel devalued. Which is never good! Our value on our priorities is what helps point us in the direction of an intentional life. And we can only really strive for an intentional life with self-control.
Bring it Altogether: What are Your Priorities? How are you Going to Create Boundaries to Protect and Value those Priorities?
A great first place to start is to understand your priorities and purpose. Then to establish what you desire those to look like in the future. Then it is time to create your boundaries, create direction, and take action.
My Free eBook, The True North Manifesto helps us launch into our priorities. You can download it below and sign up to get my weekly updates straight to your inbox.
Respond
If this struck a chord for you or has started getting you thinking about the boundaries in your life, share in the responses below. You can also share some of the boundaries in your life?
