[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide, and I absolutely love helping people to heal from within so that they can create a life that they love, a life that they enjoy. We weren't meant to just tolerate and get through life. We were meant to thrive and enjoy the life we're living.

Of course, we will have seasons and moments that are difficult and challenging, and the beauty of it is that we can be supported in those moments.

I am here to be an aid and a guide to support you, and I hope that you will enjoy not only today's episode, but some of the past episodes if you haven't heard them yet.

On this podcast, I talk about all things inner wellness. We also sprinkle in some spirituality and parenting. Because, as a mom to three kids, parenting is a big part of my life.

I hope that you enjoy the episode and that there's at least one thing you'll pull from it and start to implement into your own life.

If you want to follow me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram, @corinne_changeradically, or on Facebook, Change Radically.

Would you do me a favor and share this podcast with your friends if you hear an episode that resonates with you? And would you also go ahead and give me a rating and review my podcast? It would mean so much to me, and I would appreciate it. 

I hope that you enjoy the episode and that we connect.

Today, I want to discuss with you boundaries, why it's important to set boundaries, what it looks like to set boundaries, and how it can benefit your life.

To begin, I... I think of boundaries as a way to honor your needs, to honor yourself, and as a way of taking care of yourself. I want to avoid the word protecting yourself, but only because I want to make sure you're not misunderstanding what I'm trying to convey. 

So, yes, boundaries are a way to protect yourself. But sometimes self-protection is a way of keeping ourself in a toxic pattern. Other times, self-protection is because we've learned we don't need to be abused. We don't need to be a doormat. We need to honor ourself. We need to take care of ourself.

Perhaps the inner child, the little girl or boy that you once were, wasn't well taken care of, wasn't offered parental protection. And it could be that as a grown adult, you don't actually know how to protect yourself well. So boundaries are a way of protecting yourself. But I'm not looking to really… I'm not really wanting to say at all that boundaries should be a way of kind of hiding yourself, hiding yourself from everyone, from the pain of what might come, even though sometimes it is true. 

You will be hiding yourself from the pain. You will be keeping yourself from being hurt further. And sometimes that's very necessary. So with all that being said, let's jump into what boundaries can practically look like. Boundaries could be as simple as saying, I'm not going to do this. I am going to do this. And sticking with it. 

It could mean... It could mean you're going to stretch yourself. Say there's a family member or a person that you really know it doesn't benefit you to spend much time around this person. And when you do spend too much time around them, you're worse off for it.

But you think it's important to spend some time around them or to maintain some sort of relationship.

In that case, a boundary could look like saying, I'm going to spend time with them, but I'm going to have a time limit. I'm going to spend 15 minutes with them or 30 minutes with them.

Or if we have them come into town to visit or we go to where they live to visit, we don't stay together, but we get a hotel or they get a hotel, but we can still visit.

That would be one example of a boundary. But boundaries look and are different for different people, and you're going to evolve and change. Some of the boundaries you may need to have now, you won't need to have in the future because they will become a lifestyle, a pattern, and you won't even think of them as a boundary.

But initially, you're going to need to hold yourself to whatever commitment, whatever promise you make. And that's actually really good for your mind and your body to be able to depend on you. Say...In the past, you felt like, you know what? This is what I need to do for myself. I need to say no to this invitation. But for whatever reason, you said yes at your own expense.

It's actually going to benefit you in numerous ways to hold true to the reality that, you know what? It's best for me to say no, and I'm going to say no. It doesn't matter who it's going to disappoint. It doesn't matter what repercussions. I need to say no. Your body, your psyche is going to start to feel safer and more settled because when we can depend on our own self, when we can trust ourself, when we know that we are actually going to show up for ourself, not everybody else first, but we're going to show up for ourself. We're going to do what we need to do. And we will take other people into account, but not at our own expense. 

And I hope you hear my heart. There are...There are going to be times that you put yourself on a back burner, and that's necessary. But when it's become a pattern, a lifestyle, it is very important. And I'm speaking to people who are much like myself, who have learned to self-sabotage, to people-please, to live codependently, where we're doing things to make sure everyone else is okay, and we're not even thinking of what we need. 

So then in the end, we become resentful. We become burned out. Our bodies start shutting. We become down, because we weren't even paying attention to our own needs. So I'm coming from that place, okay? I'm coming from the place of speaking to people who are already stuck in a pattern of not taking care of themselves.

This is where it's super important to be true to yourself, to honor your promises to yourself, to stand up for yourself, and to take good care of you. And a lot of times this can begin from our earliest years, when a parental figure was either self-consumed, it could have been from an addiction, from a physical limitation, from emotional needs, but they were not able to pay attention to the things that you needed, physically, emotionally, whatever way.  

And you learn to start taking care of yourself. You also likely learned how to try to keep the peace within you and around you by helping those adults to be okay, which is never a child's job. A child is not supposed to have to be the parental figure.

They're supposed to be able to be taken care of well by a loving and safe parental figure. So boundaries become a way for our bodies and our psyches to know that we will actually be there to advocate, to protect, and to ensure the wellness of our own self. Boundaries are also a way for other people to understand us and to know what to expect from us. 

People become very accustomed to whatever it is we do and how we show up, how we live out life. If you feel like I'm often taken advantage of, I encourage you to start evaluating your what it is in your own life that you're doing, the way that you're living, the patterns that you're keeping that allow people to take advantage of you. 

I'm interrupting the episode because there's something I want to tell you about. I'm starting up another round of group coaching. It'll begin September 27th and I will host four meetings. We'll end October 25th. They will be held on Tuesday evenings at 7h15 eastern time.

Now this is for you if you're looking to create internal or external change. And yes, that sounds broad, so let me help you understand what we'll be talking about during those meetings.

We'll be touching on mindset, why you think the way you do, why you function the way you do. We'll touch on how you view yourself, what do you think of your body, are you taking care of yourself in the way you need to? Are you compassionate enough towards yourself? We will also talk about your inner child. How did your experiences as a kid and how are those experiences impacting you even to this present day. 

But we will not just talk. I will give you actionable steps that you can run with to create change in your life. And I will speak to your inner self so that you find healing. And transformation at a deep level. And this is not me trying to promise you something that you're not going to get. This is me speaking from a place of experiencing it myself and observing those that I work with experiencing it as well. 

So I hope that you'll reach out and connect with me or go to my website, changeradically.com and sign yourself up. This is going to be a fabulous opportunity. And I am looking forward to having each one of you join me on those Tuesday evenings. Now back to the episode.

I'm a big proponent of shining the spotlight back on ourself to discover what it is within us that we can change that will then in turn change the reality around us. I'm not going to encourage you to look at the other person and just say, well, you know what, they should just stop taking advantage of me. 

I'm going to sit here and encourage you to look at yourself and to say, what is it that I can do differently? Or what have I been doing? That's really encouraging this person to take advantage of me. 

I understand that some people will take advantage of anyone and it's not all about what I've done. They're just going to take advantage. And then there are lots of other situations where people, we feel like we're taken advantage of. And it's really because we allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of.

We go the extra mile. We do all the things. We say yes. We host the events. We don't let people in to help us out. Or we say, no, thanks, I'm okay. Or yes, I'll do that for you. Over and over again. And we have, in that case, allowed people to take advantage of us. They are just doing what they think is acceptable and okay with us.

Now, certain people, we'll say, you know what, that's, that's, I shouldn't ask that of them. And they won't. They'll limit themselves. But a lot of people, they're going to ask and they're just going to wait for your answer. If your answer is yes, okay. But when you learn to start saying, you know what, no, I can't do that. No, sorry, not today. Or whatever it might be, you're going to actually show them, help them learn and understand what they can expect from you.

And it will be a shock to some people who have been very familiar with you always bending over backwards and doing all the things for them to start saying no, not today, whatever, whatever, whatever. But over time, if they still want to be your friend, they'll learn. They'll learn that, okay, all right. And you know what, if they can't handle it, and they don't want to be in relationship with you any longer, then it's for your best because you deserve to be respected. You deserve to be treated in a way that is good for you. And you deserve to have your voice honored. 

So when you say, this is what I need, this is what I'm not able to do, it's actually important that the people in your life, the people closest to you, are those that respect that and honor that. That's the type of relationship that you want. Those are the friendships that you need. And I say these are the type of relationships you want. I'm talking about from an emotionally well, a regulated spot, a resilient place. I'm not actually meaning to say this is what you should do or shouldn't do.

If we want to live in this place of being emotionally well, then the type of people we're going to want in our life are going to be the people that respect us and respect our voice and recognize we have needs. And they're going to be people that care enough about us that it's a give and take. It's not just us being for them. It's them also reciprocating. 

So that's just a little snippet about boundaries, what they are, why they're important, how you can start to implement them. Hopefully, I touched enough on how you can start to implement them. I think it's really just determining what's a few of the most important things.

I like to say start with two, one or two new boundaries and start getting into practice with those until you get really good at sticking with those, honoring yourself in that, then bring in another that you know is something you need to also implement.

And the consistency is key. Just repeating it, continuing to do it in all sorts of arenas with all different relationships. You'll prove to yourself that I can stick to my word, that I can honor myself. And you know what? If two boundaries is too much, just start with one. Start small. Be consistent in that area. When you're seeing that you're staying consistent in that area, that's when you bring in something else. It's not going to be helpful in the long term to overwhelm yourself and to try to change too much at one time.

So if you have further questions, you want to dig into this more deeply personally, like with what it is in your life, let's talk. Set up a session, reach out to me via email or over social media, and I can certainly be a more specific support to you in whatever your situation is.

[Ending] We’ve come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about. You have the opportunity to transform your life, and I'm ready to link arms with you and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live. 

If you resonated with what you heard today, and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast and write a written review? It would mean so much to me. I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people. You can find me on Instagram, @corinne_changeradically, or on Facebook, Change Radically.

You can also always email me, corinne@changeradically.com. If you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an email.

I hope that you have a wonderful week, but no matter what your week is like, in the moments that are quiet, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children or the craziness of work. I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I, for one, am so glad that you're alive. 

Catch you again next week.