#2 - How Boundaries Improve Your Life

If you haven’t yet explored what boundaries are, you might have a lot of misconceptions about how they work. People often think boundaries are “mean,” “harsh,” or “rigid,” but the truth is that when you understand the principles of good boundary work, they’re freeing, healthy, and protective, both for you and the people around you.

Since you’re listening to this podcast, you're probably already on a journey of understanding that boundaries aren’t a bad thing! The truth is that boundaries improve your life in endless ways, but I’ve distilled them down to six important points. In future episodes, I’ll talk more specifically about different types of boundaries (specifically the four primary types of boundaries), but for now let's look at the amazing ways boundaries improve your life.

Biggest Takeaways From Episode #2: Six Ways Boundaries Improve Your Life

1. Boundaries create order. Think of waiting in line, for example, or your decisions around managing your time, energy, and finances. 
2. Boundaries protect you from other people. You make decisions and create limits around other people’s access to you (how close they can get, whether they can touch you, how much you want to share about yourself, and so on).
3. Boundaries protect other people from you. Part of being relational* is protecting other people from the worst parts of your own humanity.
4. Boundaries help you gain clarity in all your relationships by giving you information about people’s ability to respect your limits.
5. Boundaries are indispensable for practicing pleasurable self-care by creating space and limiting access to you so that you can engage in enjoyable activities.
6. Boundaries improve your communication. They help you become less reactive and less defensive, and help you make effective requests and create agreements.

Highlights from Episode #2:

• Victoria welcomes listeners to this episode, which explores how boundaries improve your life. [00:31]
• Boundaries often get a bad rap, but the reasons are more often related to the manner in which boundaries are created or set. Boundaries are working for your benefit all day every day. [03:00]
• We learn about the first way that boundaries can improve your life. [04:19]
• Boundaries can protect you from other people in a range of ways—and they can protect other people from you, too. [06:15]
• The fourth benefit of boundaries revolves around clarity. Victoria offers a specific example. [07:39]
• Victoria explains how boundaries relate to self-care. [08:56]
• The last of the six benefits of boundaries discussed in this episode revolves around communication. [10:55]
• Victoria recaps what she covered in this episode. [12:27]
• If you’re listening to this episode before May 7, 2024, you can still take advantage of the preorder bonuses for Personal Boundaries For Dummies. [13:45]

Links and Resources:

• Preorder bonuses for Personal Boundaries For Dummies
• Personal Boundaries For Dummies on Amazon
• Victoria Priya
• Beyond Bitchy Podcast

*Relational means having a set of healthy relationship skills that includes being respectful and transparent (open), using healthy personal boundaries, and demonstrating through your behavior that no person is better than or less than another person.