Self-Esteem: Are Your Personal Boundaries Helping Or Harming Your Self-Esteem?
Self-esteem plays a vital role in every communication and relationship in our lives, especially the communication and relationship we have with ourselves! Personal boundaries have a great deal to do with our self-esteem. Would you like to continue establishing unhealthy boundaries by default or would you like to purposely establish and enforce some that will positively impact your self-esteem?
Let me explain…
Self Esteem
Self-Esteem
We are all born with high self-esteem. While we are young, negative things are said and done to us by others and ourselves, sometimes inadvertently and push our self-esteem down, in essence, covering it up with junk. Visualize a balloon bouquet underneath a blanket. The happy balloons are still there but they cannot be floaty and bouncy because the blanket holds them down, preventing them from being free. Have you ever felt like one of those balloons? I know I have.
Personal Boundaries
Personal boundaries must be established and enforced and we normally do that unconsciously instead of consciously. People may not always treat us the way we would like or deserve to be treated but whose fault is that? Could it be ours? Our human nature is often to do whatever we can get away with. When we allow others to treat us poorly (especially verbal, mental, emotional and physical attacker types), we establish and enforce our boundaries through the acceptance of that behavior.
Here are 3 questions to ask yourself to determine if your personal boundaries are helping or hurting your self-esteem:
Do the people in your life treat you the way you want and deserve to be treated?
Do you criticize yourself frequently?
Do you feel good about yourself when you around the people you’re with most often?
If your answer to any of those questions is “no,” you have probably established your personal boundaries unconsciously, without thinking. If so, you are in good company although that is not necessarily a good thing, since they are most likely lowering your self-esteem (picture the balloons beneath the blanket). Most people don’t know where “the line” people sometimes cross is or where their “personal space” people sometimes (or more often) invade stops and starts. The fact that there really IS a line and space may surprise you and it is the simplest way I have found to show people how to intentionally establish and enforce personal boundaries.
Here are 3 questions to get you started on creating boundaries that help build healthy self-esteem:
How do you want and deserve to be treated by others?
What positive self-talk can you replace your negative self-talk with?
Who do you know who you feel great about yourself around?
Now you know if your personal boundaries are helping or hurting your self-esteem. Having more clarity feels better already, doesn’t it?
Self-Esteem: Are Your Personal Boundaries Helping Or Harming Your Self-Esteem?
To be more positive, empowered, successful, and have greater peace of mind, I invite you to visit http://PositiveWomenRock.com/gift where you will receive audio and pdf versions of “3 Reasons Positive Women Excel at Everything” and invitations to TeleWomenars – empowering conversations for women.
Submitted by Kelly Rudolph, Creator of PositiveWomenRock
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