Is this you?
You want to be generous and kind, yet find that you are giving yourself away. You say “yes” when you really want to say “no.” You find that you have no time to yourself or that you have gone along with ideas or activities that aren’t really right for you.
Or, perhaps you want to be closer to others and find yourself feeling distant and disconnected regardless of your hope to be close. You are not sure how to interact in a way that creates a connection you would enjoy.
Or, perhaps you find yourself hanging out for toxic interactions wishing you could rely on yourself to either shift or end the interaction. You want to find composure and confidence and let others know what works for you and what doesn’t.
What are Life-Serving Boundaries?
Setting boundaries is about being firmly grounded in what works for you. It's about knowing and honoring your own choices, how to meet your needs, and where to put your attention.
From the framework of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue, a life-serving boundary means making a conscious decision about how you will relate to another or behave in a particular situation. This means having clarity about what meets needs and what doesn’t relative to incoming contact and expression – physical, verbal, mental, emotional, and energetic. Such clarity allows you to put your attention and energy where you want it to go by consciously welcoming more contact or expression or consciously shifting the level, direction, and type of contact or expression with others. You learn to make these shifts without getting reactive. You find you can set a boundary while staying self-connected and respectful of the other person.
Course curriculum
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1
Welcome to the course!
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Welcome and Benefits
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Introduction to the Course
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Course Handout
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2
Life-serving boundaries protect universal needs
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The Importance of Identifying Needs - Lecture 1
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Introduction to Exercise 1 - Living from Integrity and Building a Universal Needs Vocabulary
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3
Identify the Context of a Given Relationship
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How to Describe Context - Lecture 2
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Introduction to Exercise 2 - Describing Context and Needs Met or Unmet
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4
Nonverbal Communication and Life-serving Boundaries
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Identify Specific Aspects of Nonverbal Communication and the Message They Send - Lecture 3
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Introduction to Exercise 3 - Examining Nonverbal Communication and if You are Sending the Message You Intend
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5
Next Steps...
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Ways to keep your practice going
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What to expect
For this mini-course you will be introduced to three simple strategies for setting life-serving boundaries:
1) Identify the universal needs that a particular boundary is meant to protect.
2) Learn to describe the context of a relationship.
3) Learn to use nonverbal communication to set boundaries.
Universal Needs
When you are grounded in the need you want to protect, you gain a whole new sense of clarity and confidence about making relationship decisions. Rather than shrinking away from a situation or trying to control it, you can stand calmly in yourself and choose to negotiate or not. You are less vulnerable to pressure from others. You are clear that you can express caring for another while taking care of yourself.
Context
Because relationships are so complex, knowing exactly how to intervene to change a relationship can be confusing. Identifying specific measurable aspects of a relationship, gives you a place to start. There are many lenses through which you might reflect on a relationship, having a concrete place to start gives you confidence to make a change.
Nonverbal Communication
Regardless of the words you use, people naturally take your body language and behavior more seriously. Becoming conscious of nonverbal communication allows you to change habits that aren’t serving you. When verbal and nonverabal communication are congruent and consistent, people are more likely to understand the boundaries you are attempting to set and respect them.
You will learn these strategies for life-serving boundaries through three video lectures, three exercises with video demonstrations, and a handout to download so that you can follow along with written material.
What you get:
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Access to the course for 6 weeks
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Experiential exercises to do at home
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Demonstrations for each exercise
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Content spaced over three weeks to optimize learning
