Enter your search terms Submit search form

Web www.prestonvineyard.org

Some Musings on Setting & Keeping Boundaries (1227 total words in this text) (483 Reads)    Keeping Boundaries When establishing boundaries with others or communicating your boundaries to others it often helps to use the negotiation skills process: 1. Prepare 2. Propose 3. Debate & Clarify 4. Bargain or Negotiate 5. Agree and Close Keeping Boundaries Involves the Following Steps: 1. Prepare Know your own mind, be clear o­n what you will and will not do / say etc. Be prepared to negotiate but not water down what is fundamental. Expect the un-expected, someone may ask you something that totally floors you – have a response prepared for those occasions. 2. Propose Do not veil what you have to say or do in waffle and shadows, be clear and precise. Misunderstandings often come from mis-communication. Body language – verbal and non-verbal is an important method of judging your audience (that is why email, instant chat & text messages are not good ways of enforcing a boundary or important issue). 3. Debate & Clarify Allow people to question you o­n a boundary and be prepared to explain your reasoning for your decision. If you cannot explain why you do or say something, often it is because you don’t really know yourself. 4. Bargain or Negotiate Sometimes it may take a few attempts before we have finally honed what the boundary is. Therefore be prepared to negotiate and see every angle before finally setting the boundary in stone (so to speak) remember circumstances change and so to must our boundaries at times. “Seek first to understand and then to be understoodâ€? – someone may have a different and possibly better perspective than you or I. We may not be seeing the whole picture! Equally do not be swayed by the whims of others, if you know what you know to be true stick to your guns. 5. Agree & Close Once you are sure of your footing and that you have made a decision about a boundary then inform those who need to know and stick to it, until a time comes when it’s right to review it. If it is not a boundary that others are to decide upon then make the decision yourself, if it is a decision for others as well, seek an agreement and close the debate clearly so everyone knows the debate is over and the decision stands. Question: Are boundaries the same as ethics? Ethics is about moral choices, about values, reasons, principles, rules of conduct and the language we use to describe them. In which case what are boundaries? A boundary is described as: “a barrier, border, a borderline, a brink a confine, edge or extremity. A boundary is a limit a frontier, verge and a termination. Therefore is it our ethics that determine our boundaries. o­ne would suggest yes. Ethos (character) Ethics - the study of the concepts involved in practical reasoning. If we therefore set our boundaries by way of knowing our ethics (our moral standpoint o­n a given subject) then we must discern the difference between what to us is: 1. Moral – reflects a person’s values and those of society 2. Immoral – go against the person’s or societies values 3. Amoral – they are not based o­n values or social norms (Of course an individual may think that something is moral, even if the rest of society thinks it immoral. Doing something immoral is not the same thing as breaking the law. Actions can be moral but illegal or immoral and legal). Setting and keeping boundaries is often difficult for people who suffer from low confidence and low self esteem. They often have a perception that they do not have the right to (in their words) inflict their view and opinion o­n others. Listen to the vocabulary it immediately alerts you to their feelings of low self worth. Many people will be able to see the benefit of having boundaries and will have many of them. A point where people’s ability to set and keep boundaries often begins to let them down is when they: 1. Do not really have a conviction or clear idea of why they have that boundary in the first place. Their resolve to keep it or establish it is diminished by their lack of clarity about it. 2. Others may have persuasive arguments for and against the boundary. 3. Situations and circumstances change and people may react to this change by re-assessing their boundaries and principles. 4. Sin 5. Personal agenda’s begin to overtake the need to keep the boundary. (I choose to let this person make this mistake as I want them to feel the same hurt I did when they let it happen to me). A useful exercise in identifying your boundaries and standards is to think of a hero or someone you admire (alive or dead, famous or not). Write down why you admire that person, what is that they have done, said, not done that you admire about them? Now make those aspects of that person into a list of principles, standards for living or boundaries and think of how you could incorporate these boundaries into your life more. To have clear boundaries you need to know what your values and ethics are. o­nce you have these you can pull the boundaries into place to maintain your integrity and protect your values. Boundaries are imaginary lines that you establish around yourself to protect yourself from unhealthy and damaging behaviour of others. Once you have boundaries you are able to say no to behaviour that you find uncomfortable or offensive, often people do not even know what really offends them as there is too much grey area and they have not spent enough time really getting to know themselves. Fyodor Dostoyevsky “The secret of man’s being, is not o­nly to live but to have something to live forâ€? Anon “A single moment of understanding can flood a whole life with meaning.â€? Confucius 551-479 BC “Virtue is never left to stand alone. He who has it will have neighbours.â€? Henry Alfred Kissinger “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously.â€? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet, novelist & playwright 1749-1832) “Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.â€? William Shakespeare (1564-1616) “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.â€? William James (1842-1910 American psychologist & philosopher) “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.â€? Anon “There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility lies in being superior to your previous self.â€? Anon “The o­nly time you realise you have a reputation is when you fail to live up to it.â€? Psalm 19 verses 7 – 14 Psalm 119 verses 2, - 24, 36, and 99,111,125,129,138,152,167 Boundaries – can be helpful and unhelpful, they can separate us from others and God – inner vows can me made to protect ourselves from hurt but may actually become barriers between us and God. God calls us to repent of our unhealthy inner vows and trust him, some vows are not even conscious and so the Holy Spirit needs to reveal these to us. Just some thoughts I had o­ne day! Sources: Teach Yourself Ethics - Mel Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton, 1994. Transform Your Life - Carole Gaskell, Thorsons, 2000. Priscilla Coates    [ Back to General | Sections index ]

All logos and trademarks in this site are the property of their respective owner(s).
The comments are the property of their posters, all the rest © 2005-7 by Preston Vineyard
You can syndicate our news using the news feed: 
Hosting provided by Co-Comp Ltd