Boundaries are an important tool for helping you structure your life and relationships. They give you a way to protect yourself from forces, people, and dynamics that will push you off track from achieving your goals, and they can reduce the likelihood you’ll become so rundown and depleted that you’re running on fumes. Boundaries help keep your relationships nourishing for you instead of draining.

That all sounds nice, but if you’ve never actually sat down and thought about what boundaries you want to set and enforce, it might seem confusing, overwhelming, or totally vague.

For one thing, there’s not really any discussion of boundaries in school, particularly how to distinguish between good and bad boundaries. It’s not a topic most people cover outside of school, either. We like this definition of healthy boundaries from the University of Kentucky, which explains that, among other things, healthy boundaries enable you to:

• Have high self-esteem and self-respect. 

• Be assertive. Confidently and truthfully say “yes” or “no” and be okay when others say “no” to you. 

• Separate your needs, thoughts, feelings, and desires from others. Recognize that your boundaries and needs are different from others. 

• Empower yourself to make healthy choices and take responsibility for yourself 

In other words, setting boundaries is about healthy relationships: relationships with yourself and with people around you. You can set all sorts of boundaries: for what you will and won’t do, what you will and won’t accept from others, what you will and won’t tolerate in a community. These boundaries help us have relationships that are based in clear communication and mutual trust.

So we’re here today with a little how-to guide for setting and enforcing healthy boundaries. This is a broad overview that’s meant to apply to all sorts of boundaries, both the sorts of boundaries we set for ourselves and our own behavior, and the boundaries we sometimes have to set for the ways other people behave toward us. 

Here are our five steps to set and enforce healthy boundaries.

1. Know what your limits are. You can't know where to set your boundaries if you don't know your breaking point. Spend some time jotting down notes about the things that really get you off-kilter. Take sleep as an example. Does one late night throw off your whole sleep routine? Can you do three nights in a row but the fourth is a killer? Are you a night owl who is fine being out late every night but absolutely cannot do meetings before 9:00? Whatever your limits are, just make note of them. This is a no-judgment zone, so don't compare your limits to someone else's and berate yourself for having limits that are different.

2. Set your boundary before you hit your limit. Once you've hit your limits, you've exhausted your resources. Let's use sleep as our example here, again. If you're the sort of person who is exhausted after four late nights in a row, then four late nights is your limit - but by that point, you're exhausted, right? And it takes time to rebuild after letting yourself get to that point. That means you need to set your boundary at a point that protects you before you reach exhaustion. A person who breaks after four late nights in a row might decide to set their boundary at three nights or even two, as a preventative measure.

3. Practice enforcing those boundaries. This is where having scripts and a little bit of rehearsing in the mirror can be helpful. Think about the situations where you’ve been pushed to your limits. In the case of the late nights, what might have been driving that? For some people, it’s a boss who insists on staying late and wants the rest of the team to stay late, too. For others, it’s a friend who is constantly arranging social events and pressuring everybody else to come out for them. For still others, it’s the irresistible pull of the internet or a good book. Once you know what gets you past your limits, you can devise a strategy for how to enforce your boundaries. Practice explaining to your boss or your friend that you cannot be out late for a fourth night in a row. Practice telling yourself that, too. This is a relationship-focused part of the process that will be most successful when you make sure to have healthy, nourishing relationships in your life.

4. Enlist a buddy. We love enlisting the help of buddies here at Myrth, and this is a great strategy for enforcing your boundaries when you’re just starting out or are in a vulnerable time where you might not be able to enforce your boundaries yourself. A trusted friend can help you push back on somebody else who is not respecting your boundaries and can remind you of the boundaries you’ve set for yourself when you’re tempted to ignore them. When you trust somebody to help you enforce your boundaries, you nourish your relationship with that person, too, as well as with the people you need to enforce your boundaries. 

5. Forgive yourself. As with any new habit, setting and enforcing boundaries isn't always going to go 100% smoothly. That's okay. After all, nobody's perfect, not even the people who are boundary-setting pros. If you can start the process and renew your commitment to it whenever you hit bumps in the road, you'll continually improve over time.

Bonus: respect others' boundaries. Even though this step isn't a part of creating your own boundaries, it's an important part of enforcing them. When you respect the boundaries that the people around you have put in place, it sets an example for how you'd like your boundaries to be respected, too. It also gives you a foothold in case they don't treat you with the same respect. You can explain that, just as you've respected their boundaries, they need to respect yours as well.

With these steps, you can start to give your life the sort of structure that will help set you up to achieve your goals. When you are well rested, energized, and focused on the things that truly matter to you, it's easier to move forward with purpose.

Have you had to set and enforce boundaries in your daily life? What tips and tricks have worked for you? We'd love to hear more in the comments below.

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