3 Tips To Communicating Your Boundaries

Being able to communicate your boundaries is an essential skill when communicating personally, socially, and professionally.

Here's the interesting bit:

Without this skill, it'll be tremendously difficult to navigate through social, professional and sexual relationships.

With the skill, managing your relationships becomes so easy.

You've now heard me refer to it as a skill.

It is.

And here are three pointers to be able to navigate through communicating your boundaries:

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1 - Recognize what a boundary is and what they are for you.

Boundaries are the things which you'll neither accept nor tolerate.

This is important: "neither accept nor tolerate." What I'm saying here is if you don't accept it, don't tolerate it.

Toleration is having something about the person which you don't accept and can't stand, but giving it a pass.

Having relationships like that in your life makes things tremendously difficult, and why would you want that?

Discover for yourself what things you accept and what things you will not accept and therefore will not tolerate.

THIS IS CRITICAL.

It's okay your not having it completely laid out.

As you gain experience, with refinement, your boundaries and they will expand or contract.

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2 - Communicate your boundaries at the beginning of any relationship.

This is key to expectation management.

When you manage your expectations well, it's hard to become disappointed in you!

There are 3 aspects to expectation management: (1), you must manage what you can expect of yourself. (2), you must manage what you expect of others - because remember, they're not you and have radically different ethical and moral codes. (3), you must manage what others expect of you.

3 - Delivering your boundaries, often you'll find it's something that could disappoint the other person. You can use this 3-step strategy of delivery: (1) Affirm them and communicate your appreciation of them. (2) Deliver your boundary/s. Present a strong logical reasoning for it. (3) Affirm them and end on a positive appreciating tone.

I'll give you some examples of how you can deliver this on a next post.