Navigating Life's Boundaries: The Art of Saying No

In the intricate tapestry of our lives, one thread stands out: boundaries. They're the invisible lines that delineate where we end and others begin, guiding our interactions and shaping our experiences. Yet, for many of us, navigating these boundaries can be a daunting task, fraught with uncertainty and discomfort. In this blog, we'll delve into the art of setting boundaries, exploring why it's crucial and how it can lead to a more fulfilling life.

Understanding Boundaries:

At its core, setting boundaries is about asserting our needs and values, even when it means saying no. Think of it as drawing a line in the sand, establishing what is acceptable and what isn't in our interactions and relationships. This fundamental concept resonates deeply with many of us, myself included, as I've grappled with this aspect of self-care and self-preservation throughout my life.

The Importance of Saying No:

Saying no is often viewed as a negative act, synonymous with rejection or selfishness. However, it's essential to recognize that every yes is accompanied by a corresponding no. When we say yes to one thing, we inevitably say no to something else—whether it's our time, energy, or resources. Understanding this dynamic is key to prioritizing our commitments and ensuring that we're investing in what truly matters to us.

The Influence of Upbringing:

Our attitudes towards boundaries are shaped by our upbringing and societal conditioning. From a young age, we're taught to comply with authority figures and prioritize the needs of others over our own. This pattern can persist into adulthood, leading us to overlook our own boundaries and prioritize external demands. Recognizing this influence is the first step towards reclaiming control over our boundaries.

Internal and External Boundaries:

Boundaries manifest in both internal and external realms, encompassing our thoughts, emotions, relationships, and lifestyle choices. Internally, we must be vigilant about the content we expose our minds to, filtering out negativity and fostering positivity. Externally, we must assert our limits in terms of time, energy, and personal space, ensuring that we're not overextending ourselves to accommodate others.

The Role of Identity:

Central to the concept of boundaries is our sense of identity—the vision we hold for ourselves and the values we aspire to embody. By aligning our boundaries with our identity, we create a framework for living authentically and intentionally. Refusing to be defined by past versions of ourselves, we open ourselves up to growth and evolution, continually striving towards our ideal selves.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, setting boundaries is not merely about drawing lines or saying no—it's about honoring ourselves and our values, even in the face of external pressures. By embracing the art of saying no, we pave the way for a more authentic and fulfilling life, where our actions align with our truest selves. So let's embrace our boundaries, navigate them with grace, and cultivate a life that reflects our deepest aspirations.

our topic today is no, which another way of putting that is boundaries.

[00:00:10] And this is interesting for me because let me close this. I'll come back to this. That's the other cool feature for zoom is that you can keep coming back to the whiteboard. You couldn't do that before. So I love this topic for a couple of reasons. 1 reason is that this has been a struggle for me personally.

[00:00:26] It's this is an area that I've struggled with most of my life boundaries and saying no. And I had to find all sorts of creative ways to, to understand how I can say no. And then what, why is it important to set boundaries? Why is it important to say no? Well, the most important thing is that whenever you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

[00:00:49] And here's why, because as a human being living in your day to day life, you have limited time. You have limited energy. You have limited resources that you need to allocate in two different places. For example, if you say yes to a personal relationship in the beginning of your day or any relationship, you're saying no to your alone time.

[00:01:12] If you're saying yes to a business thing, you're saying no to your personal side, a part of your personal side, maybe relationships. Everything has a given take in the process. Now, we all go into one extreme or another. And if you track this stuff back, it doesn't really matter that much. But if you really are interested in tracking this stuff, It goes back to your story and usually we get trained to, to say yes or no a certain way in the environment that we live in.

[00:01:38] Generally speaking, I think all human beings will retaliate around when their boundaries are affected and, and kind of psychologically or emotionally, if somebody crosses your boundary psychologically or emotionally, you will get angry. So we feel angry, that's our boundary saying that something internally has been violated.

[00:01:58] So what that means to us [00:02:00] we, we learn as we grow. So for for example, as a kid, when I grew up wherever I grew up in like I went to school in Pakistan and I used to get beat up in school.

[00:02:09] It was a very common thing, like our teachers would hit us. So that was that's a huge violation of your your physical space. And not to mention that it's hurtful and not to mention that we've learned at this point that hitting doesn't actually work. It works short term, but long term, it doesn't work. It creates other challenges internally.

[00:02:29] So we were trained to obey. Basically, I was trained to obey authority. A lot of us were trained one way or another. I'm not saying all of it is negative. There are positive aspects to it. But the reason why we're open to other people violating our boundary, whether it be mental, emotional, physical or spiritual and boundaries can be in different ways.

[00:02:51] is because we've been trained to be that way. And my first assumption is that as human beings, we actually understand boundary. We understand boundary in the sense that we don't want people hurting us physically or harming us emotionally or anything because our body reacts to it. Over time, when we live in this world, we learn how to navigate that.

[00:03:12] And the people that are around us, they're supposed to teach us how to navigate that by, by modeling that for us. So, for example, as a parent, I need to model to my kids what boundaries are. So if they want private space, I give them private space. If they need the time to process something, I give them that.

[00:03:30] Or if they violate my boundary and need to teach them that, no, you cannot do that. You cannot hit me or you cannot yell at me or something like that, or you cannot come to the space when I'm working. That's a boundary. The parents model that and teach that and the children understand that there are boundaries because they feel it in their own physical existence.

[00:03:50] So it goes wrong when the modeling breaks down. And when something happens, we're all sort of a victim of that process, unless we have really good [00:04:00] role models. Even in that case, there will be areas you need to improve. So that's what I want to discuss. And like I said, the reason why it's so important is because everything you do, whenever you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

[00:04:13] So you need to be very clear about what you're saying yes to. And yes, we should say yes to a lot of things that matter to us, but ideally we should say no to things that don't matter to us. And the reason why it's important is. Because there are more things we need to say no to than yes to. There are only a few things we need to say yes to.

[00:04:31] And I want to go through that a little bit as we kind of work through this So going back to the board. So I talked about boundaries, why it's important.

[00:04:43] Now, the next step is what kind of boundaries do you need to do you need to be aware of? This is very important for you to think through. And let me just Add this in. So let's go down and I want you to think of boundaries in two ways, whether it's towards one person or more than one person. You have internal boundaries and external boundaries.

[00:05:14] Internal ones or your thoughts, emotions, spiritual experience. I'll go more into thoughts and emotion. External could be your time, body, lifestyle opportunities and opportunities could also be internal in the case of spiritual experience, but I want to go a little bit deeper into this because this will be important for you to think through.

[00:05:54] So let's talk about thoughts.

[00:05:56] And this is really important because we don't think of boundary as [00:06:00] internal a lot of times because , easily, you can see this in terms of relationships and that's a difficult area. And we'll talk about what, what how that would come up. So body lifestyle opportunities can all come into relationships.

[00:06:11] Time can be in relationships, but I want to talk internally a little bit. So thoughts. Emotions and spiritual experience so the reason why these are important is . I've met some really smart people and, and usually people judge other people being smart or not based on the content of the information that they have.

[00:06:36] That's not actually, that's not what makes people. smart them. There are people who know a lot, but they're not very bright. Like they're walking, talking encyclopedias. They know a lot about the subject matter theoretically, but they don't know how to apply anything experientially. They don't know anything.

[00:06:55] So a easy way to differentiate this is like book smart versus street smart. Book smart is that, you know, a lot of theoretical. So for example, if I take the professor of finance or professor of business, They've never opened a business and I hand them over a startup. They will struggle no matter how much they know.

[00:07:11] Theoretically, they will struggle, which means that they don't know how to apply their knowledge. So here's how it happens in this part is really important. So , there are people who know life a lot, but they don't, their content and their head, they don't know how to express it properly.

[00:07:26] So for you to one be smart you need to put your intelligent. You need to put yourself in experiences that teach you now. Life can teach us a lot of things. But then when you're putting yourself out there, you need to also have the language to describe it because what makes you a leader is the communication of that.

[00:07:44] So a lot of people, they're smart. They're very they understand the world a lot. They're very intelligent, but they don't know how to communicate it. So they're not really good leaders. And this is an important, why am I bringing this in boundary? Because a lot of people put in the wrong information in their head.[00:08:00] 

[00:08:00] So they don't have boundaries as to what's coming inside their mind. And what's not to the extent that you look intelligent and smart is because you, you allow important information to come in. And how do you decide what's important information what's not, I'm going to talk about that in a bit, but one of the first boundaries is the thoughts that you think you don't have control over it.

[00:08:20] Thoughts will randomly appear in your mind. You have control over which thoughts to pay attention to which you don't. So where do you get the thoughts that you get? Well, the thoughts and emotions that you get are based on your experiences. A lot of it is based on your experiences that you grew up in, but it's also dependent, dependent on recent experiences.

[00:08:38] So if you spend a lot of your time and kind of watching a bunch of junk news or junk information Or reading a bunch of junk news and information. Guess what? Your mind is filled with that kind of information, and that's the content and raw material you use to communicate. But let's say you spend a bunch of time reading books, listening to great podcasts or communicating with people who are smart and intelligent.

[00:09:03] Guess what? Now you're taking your smart experience, your intelligent experience. You are now learning the language to communicate with that. So one of your first boundaries is what kind of input do you have in your mind? Because. Keep in mind, whatever you expose yourself to, that's the thing that your mind will randomly bring up in your mind.

[00:09:23] You, I mean, think about it. If you, if you listen to like if you go to a concert, what happens the next day? Your mind is repeating songs. If you listen to a book, guess what? You're getting thoughts and you're noticing things related to that. So it shifts your perception as well. If you go have, if you go to a conference or a networking event, talk to a bunch of people and they connect you with certain things.

[00:09:42] They give you certain thoughts. That's the, those are the thoughts that would seemingly randomly appear in your mind. So your first boundary is actually what you're going to expose your mind and eyes and your perception to. And I'll talk about how do you decide that, but you need [00:10:00] to be very selective around that.

[00:10:01] Same thing with emotion. So now this is where a relationship comes in and this is where external boundary comes in. The people that you expose yourself to. Whether they're close people to you or far people who are distant, their relationship is not as strong with you. You need to be very careful what kind of thoughts they have.

[00:10:20] And you need to filter that through because a lot of people in your life might not have the right thoughts for you to listen to all the time. So what does that mean? Whether it's your relationship with your brothers, sisters, your family, bigger family, whoever it is, pay very close attention to what they say.

[00:10:39] For example, if somebody is very negative consistently, no matter how aware you are, at some level that's affecting you. Now that could be your kid or that could be your spouse. So what does that mean? What can you do? If you have an influence in that area, you can challenge that person and say, why do you, why do you think it helps you to talk like that?

[00:10:59] And that's that's a hard thing to confront because this is very that could create conflict. But if that person is not in your spheres of influence, that means that they don't you don't have a bearing or saying how they run their life. That could be a friend or somebody. You could say that. You know what

[00:11:14] That stuff affects me negatively. You could express that. Or if they don't if they continue to be like that, that's their choice. But you can create a boundary around that. You can minimize your exposure to them because I can guarantee you that affects you more. One of the reasons why in my life, I've chosen to spend a lot of time with certain people that give me positive input in my mind, positive input in the way in terms of ideas in terms of whether those are my mentors, my colleagues, my business partners, some of my friends, some of my growth friends is because I know how much of an effect it has.

[00:11:48] And I know even though I'm aware of certain people that can be very negative, it still has an effect on me. So when I can, I'll remove people who are, who want to be a certain way. They're not open to grow, [00:12:00] but, but when I don't, when I cannot, then what I do is I minimize my exposure because guess what? It affects my mind.

[00:12:08] It affects my perception. What happens there that affects my connection with my. Communication with my wife, with my kids, with my business partners. So what kind of people are around you? What kind of boundary are you setting with people around you? And I want to go back to this.

[00:12:25] These are a couple of other points I want to bring up here. So on the external side, We talked about time, body, lifestyle, opportunity. So how do you know what thoughts to pick and what thoughts to not pick? How, what kind of people you expose yourself? What kind of people not? Where should I put, spend my time in?

[00:12:46] Where should I not? Where should I go spend my time in your body? What kind of lifestyle should I set? What kind of opportunities should I go through? These are very complex questions. So how do you answer them? This is why we do the work that we do in our community. And that's where I will go to. The next slide.

[00:13:05] This is why we work a lot on your vision. Think about this. If you don't have an outcome in mind, how do you know what to say yes to and what to say no to? So I have a vision for my growth. I have a vision for my life that I'm building. I have a vision for the kind of people that I want around me. I have a vision, the kind of businesses I want to build.

[00:13:26] Based on that, I say yes or no to people. And there's also strategy. Vision is one thing to understand. But if you don't have a strategy, which means that in your day to day life, you don't know what to focus on. You don't have a calendar system. You don't have a long term strategy. You know, this year I'm going to focus on this next year.

[00:13:46] I'm going to focus on that this quarter. This that if you don't have that predefined ahead of time, you Then how do you know what opportunity to say yes to and what opportunity to say no to? And have you put enough thought to do this? And do you [00:14:00] consistently refine that? That's one of the main reasons.

[00:14:03] The reason I know we've talked about this before. The reason why this is important to look at it from the lens of boundaries is the only way you know how to set boundaries is if you're clear on what you're doing and what outcomes you want from your life. for your experience, for who you are, for your strategy.

[00:14:17] And the important thing here is this piece. Within your vision, there's this thing called identity.

[00:14:26] Identity is the defining thing for you. So whatever you are right now, you know that you have potential for more. So when you look towards your vision five years, 10 years from now on, you see an improved version of yourself. Everybody aspires towards an improved version of themselves. So when you're looking towards that.

[00:14:46] What kind of person do you see? Do you see somebody who is more calm? Do you see somebody who is more confident? Do you see somebody who is more energetic? Do you see somebody who is more healthier? My wife kind of makes fun of me with this. She looks at it in a funny way because she's like, well, in 20 years, we're going to be, older and this I'm like, what are you talking about?

[00:15:06] I'm planning to become younger in 20 years, not older. And she kind of laughs at that, but I'm, I'm dead serious. I'm planning to become younger, not older. I'm setting up systems. So my health improves, my cognition improves, my memory improves, my my social circuit improves. all that stuff. So why would I?

[00:15:23] Now, of course, I know biologically there's a certain point where you're, you're kind of health declines, but that's much later. That's more like around 80 years, maybe 90. But the point is in 20 years, I'm planning to become younger, not older. And the reason why I say this sounds ridiculous, but from what we understand about aging, aging is not determined by years is actually determined by your cellular makeup, your bodily makeup, what's the raw material.

[00:15:47] What's, what are your thoughts? What are your emotions? What's your social, those things determine your aging. You can actually measure this. Doctors and are actually scientists can measure it. Whether your skin is 20 years old, [00:16:00] 30 years old or 40 years old, they can measure based on the regeneration, degeneration of the cells in the body.

[00:16:06] How can they do that? Because that's how our body works. Now, the body does have this kind of kill switch that at some point it goes down. We don't fully understand that yet and some scientists say that it doesn't even have to be like that. It's just a program in it. But the, for example, when I look at my identity, I'm getting I'm somebody who's going to be stronger, who's going to be more confident, who's going to be more energetic, not less somebody who's going to be more positive.

[00:16:30] Somebody who's going to be, have more ideas. Somebody who's going to build bigger businesses. Now, when I look at other people who don't have that expansive vision about their life, their identity is not like that. I don't judge them, but I'm saying, do I want to be surrounded with this person? So that clarifies my identity.

[00:16:46] Now, I look at my day to day activities, I look at my calendars, the activities that I'm involved in, would that, would that take me towards that identity or not? And this is an important piece in relationships to understand, even with my close relationships, and I was really horrible about this. I'm still learning to get better and better at this.

[00:17:05] I'm learning to stop people when they define who I am. So even somebody closest to me, like my wife, if she says that this is how you, you generally are, or you were, I'm like, that's not who I am anymore. Don't, don't define me as that because I'm growing as a person. Even if it leads to conflict, I will say it.

[00:17:23] If somebody tries to define, Oh, that's you've been like that since childhood, relatives are really good at doing this where they will tell you, Oh, this is how you've been since childhood. So that's not the kind of person I am anymore. Why are you defining me as that? And it sounds defensive. I'd rather be defensive and tell people.

[00:17:39] No, that's not who I am. Don't define that I would. And of course, you can say it in a kind way. You can say that. Hey, I'm, I'm putting an effort to grow. So I would appreciate it if I'm not defined by what I was 10 years ago. That, that is a powerful way of maintaining a boundary towards that identity.

[00:17:58] Because if [00:18:00] your identity is based on that vision that you're going towards, and that's based on your potential, you cannot be stuck in the way you were because human mind is malleable. We understand that we have neuroplasticity, our identity is malleable. Think back to who you were 10 years ago. You, you were not the same person.

[00:18:17] You're not the same person you were 10 years ago. So why, why do you think you'd be the same person 10 years from now on, especially if you're conscious about growing and the more you allow people around you to define you based on the past, the more you limit yourself. So and, and there's a lot we can get into and, and next week, we're going to have our session on advancing in your life forward.

[00:18:39] And this is one of those areas that where do you need to set boundaries? Do you need to look at your vision? You need to look at your strategy and look at what are you exposing your mind to? What kind of thoughts? What kind of emotions are the people triggering in you? Are they challenging you?

[00:18:54] Are they supporting you to grow? Are they Constantly putting you down. What? What kind of people around you are the people around you consistently negative or the optimistic, pessimistic that determines what affects you. Look at your vision. Look at your strategy. The kind of person you're becoming. What is that?

[00:19:10] If that's not clear, if your strategy is not clear, there's no way to say no to one opportunity versus another. For example, I've said no to a lot of business opportunities. Why? Because it doesn't align with my vision. It looks like it's a great opportunity for now, but I don't see myself doing that 10 years, 20 years from now on.

[00:19:26] So why am I putting effort into it? If I see that even with my clients, if I don't see that I could potentially work with this person for at least 10 years, I don't even entertain the thought of working with this person because it's a short term payout for something that's not going to stick. , and really a lot of people talk about boundaries, but it has to be based on something.

[00:19:46] So what is that for for you. And how have you created that internally for yourself where you're limiting your exposure to certain opportunities, certain content, certain thoughts, certain people, protecting your time, your mental [00:20:00] space, your emotional space. How are you doing that?