Strengthen Your Boundries

How To Strengthen Your Boundaries
By Margot Zaher and Jafree Ozwald

How strong are your boundaries with others? Do you let people walk all over you? Do you know what behaviors are unacceptable to you, and how to take a stance to protect yourself? A boundary is an imaginary fence or border that you construct between yourself and other people that they may not penetrate. Boundaries are a healthy way of protecting yourself from other people's actions or behaviors. Once you set a boundary, it is your role to guard against trespassers, those that attempt to violate your boundary.

Why are boundaries so important?

Having strong healthy boundaries is key to attracting success into your life! People are strongly attracted to those that know their boundaries and demand that other people respect them. This is because people enjoy knowing where they stand with somebody, and what the other person desires. Also, if you respect yourself by establishing strong boundaries, other people will naturally respect you. As a result, you will attract more people to you that can support you, and your business.

Strong boundaries will make you more effective, increasing your levels of productivity. Most people waste tons of time due to weak boundaries. For instance, they spend time doing things for other people out of resentment because they do not know how to say "no". Or they may get hooked into wasting time chit-chatting with their clients because they do not have any boundaries set with regards their time. You are in charge of how you manage your time, and you are responsible for telling other people that you are busy and need to move on. So I challenge you to set strong time boundaries with your clients. My boundary is that clients cannot work with me after 6pm in the evening. Another good time boundary could be "I do not spend more than 2 hours with each of my clients." The more you set your boundaries, the more people will respect your time. As a result, you will have more time in which to accomplish desired tasks.

Reinforcing boundaries will improve your emotional state. Many people's level of effectiveness is eroded by anger and rage against others. How many times have you worked for a boss that has yelled at you at the drop of a hat? Anger keeps people from effectively functioning around you because they become afraid of you, and want to run away. Some of this anger is caused by weak boundaries. Anger is a natural reaction to a boundary being crossed because it stems from the primal instinct of self preservation. When we are in danger, we either fight or run. So, when somebody has crossed our boundaries or entered into a zone that feels psychologically or physically dangerous, a typical reaction may be anger. Therefore, feelings of anger often signal that a boundary has been crossed. So whom are you angry at? This person has undoubtedly crossed your boundaries and you may not even be aware of it. I encourage you to use anger as a guide to discovering where your boundaries may need reinforcing. Once you reinforce your boundaries with others, you can shift from anger and frustration to feelings of peace and self-assurance. When you stand up for yourself, you feel good about who you are being in the world, making it easier to interact with your fellow human beings.

Importantly, setting strong boundaries is a way of loving and caring for yourself. If you do not take a stand for yourself, nobody else will. Without boundaries you are prone to everybody else's whims and desires, and your identity and needs can get lost. So creating boundaries is vital for creating a strong sense of self, and a life you love!!

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Action Steps to Success

1. Choose one area of your life where you would like to strengthen your boundaries. Perhaps it is in the area of romance, work, community service, family, etc...

2. Make a list of 5 boundaries that you would like to enforce in this area of your life. Be sure to use wording that is strong such as require, must, cannot, no one may do X, etc. Some good examples include, "no one may play practical jokes on me", "you cannot yell at me", and "I require that you give me at least 24 hours notice if you cancel our appointment together".

3. Determine what you will say or do if someone challenges your boundaries. You need a plan of action to reinforce your boundaries or you will let them slide. Some possible options are to inform the person that your boundary has been crossed, request that your boundary be respected, demand that they stop that behavior, or leave if the person is not respecting your boundary.

4. Sit down and share with each person involved your new boundaries, and how you will enforce these boundaries. Remember to share your new boundaries in a loving and caring way, and not with anger. Some people may be tempted to use boundaries as a way to get even with someone. This attitude will only get you into a power struggle, and will not help you create more success.

5. Be mentally prepared for someone that may push back and ask you to change back to your previous weaker boundaries. Watch out for people who are testing your commitment to your boundaries. If you hold strong despite the provocation of others, people will soon accept and even begin to appreciate your new boundaries.

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Fire the Grid - Shelley Yates

Remain Curious

I wonder what would happen...
if you simply remained curious.

When fear creeps in...
instead of believing in it
you watch it...and remain curious.

When worry arises...
you stop focusing on it,
become very quiet inside...and remain curious.

When negative thinking and contracted feelings
take over your whole body and mind,
and you don't react by participating in the drama and act it out.
You simply breathe deeply, feel it,
be present to the energy arising...and remain curious.

I wonder what kind of week you would have
if this was how you responded to every challenging
person, thought and experience that you encounter.

I wonder what would happen to your life
if you got into the habit of remaining curious
before reacting to anything that upsets you?

What kind of world would this be
if this was how we all responded to each other?
It feels like a more peaceful planet already...

You Are Amazing!!!

Written by Margot Zaher and Jafree Ozwald


The real truth is that you are utterly and completely amazing just as you are. Just because you exist you fit into this amazing category. Yes, you don't even have to do a thing. You are naturally awe-inspiring and astonishing on every level of your being. How is this so? Just ponder how awesome your body, mind, and soul truly are for 60 seconds. Your mind has the power of a magical magnet! Everything you focus on something, in some miraculous way it is attracted to you, and ends up showing up in your life! You are intimately connected to an all powerful God-Source so you have the ability to manifest anything that you want! And what your physical body does to keep you alive everyday is flabbergasting. It breathes for you, fights off viruses, circulates your blood, cleanses your blood, swallows, heals, grows hair, nails, and so much more without you even thinking about it.& nbsp; And don't forget the most amazing thing about you which is your true spiritual nature. You are an eternal energy filled with boundless love and light. Just touch your soul, it feels like sky-like spaciousness, eternal presence, and pure love. Wow!

"Everybody is extraordinary! This is how it should be. God never creates ordinary persons. ~ Osho
The more amazing you can perceive yourself to be, the more you will naturally tap into your true state as a super powerful manifestor. When you think small thoughts about yourself, you short-circuit your manifesting power so that only a fraction of your natural manifesting energy can pour through. When you consciously celebrate the amazingness of your body, mind and being, you automatically open up the manifesting values and the higher vibrations magnetize more of what you want, need, and desire. Right now, just relax and allow yourself to truly marvel about how amazing your sweet existence is. Let that knowingness wash over that skeptical part that says you're not amazing at all, and let this awesome natural reverence for yourself seep into every cell of your body! Spend just a few minutes each morning bathing in this thinking. It will transform your day completely! Make sure you bring special loving attention to those aspects of yourself that you have judged, criticized, or blamed. Realize that YOU are beyond these old beliefs and ideas now. Notice how amazing your journey in life has been so far, and how transformational it is to simply be alive!

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." ~Emily Dickinson

If for some reason you simply cannot believe that you are amazing, it's good to know that your ego is efforting to uphold the contracted illusion of its belief system about who you are. This is how we play it safe in life and do not evolve. The ego is terrified of taking risks and does anything it can NOT to become disappointed. Your ego is always living in the "land of make believe", pretending that something is horribly wrong. Perhaps you need fixing, or they need this or that. It totally forgets that each of us is already an all-powerful being who can manifest anything. This is the real blessed truth. So you can relax now and stop trying so hard. Imagine how much extra energy you will create by letting go of beating yourself up or trying to improve yourself all the time. All this efforting to become someone different is such a waste of your energy. It's just a game that your ego has been playing, thinking it will become someone better than the God-Being it already is now. So stop pretending, stop believing in your ego, and relax into being the magnificent AMAZING divine being you already are.

"See the perfection in the seeming imperfection that seems to be." ~ Lester Levinson

Even if you tried, you can't stop being amazing in every moment. No matter what you do or don't follow through with, you will be amazing. Sure sometimes things may not always go the way your ego wants them to go, yet this has no reflection on who you truly are. Whether things turn out the so called "right" way or the "wrong" way, you are still such an amazing and perfect being at the core. Even if you make a "mistake", that "mistake" was also perfect! You are not your actions, thoughts, or behavior. You are the divine presence behind it all. Just because something happened that you deemed inappropriate or "bad" does not negate the divinity inside you. Every "mistake" is the soul saying, "I'm ready for a massive jump in my evolution!" There truly is no such thing as a mistake in this Universe. Ever ything is a miracle and a blessing in disguise. You are the miracle you've been waiting for! We are all here on this planet now to be blessed by your presence. Yes, YOUR PRESENCE! You are more profound than your mind can dare imagine. So just let go of all this ridiculous normal ordinary boring self and celebrate yourself today!

Inspirational quotes of Swami Vivekananda

1.We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the
blame, none has the praise.

2.Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot,
fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

3.You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

4.When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is
meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.

5.External nature is only internal nature writ large.

6.The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

7.Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will
be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality,
without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

8.The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but
there is something behind the will which is free.

9.The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be
purified, and God will be in them.

10.There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply
something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better
things.

11.The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body,
the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in
him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes,
and I am free.

12.Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own
highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as
possible to the Truth.

13.That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

14.You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make
you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

15.The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in
man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man
“knows,” should, in strict psychological language, be what he “discovers” or
“unveils”; what man “learns” is really what he discovers by taking the cover
off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

16.If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if
not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the
better.

17.All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because
oneness is the secret of everything.

18.To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is
religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

19.The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in
yourselves!

20.The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and
everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of
cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to
everything.

21.It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us.
Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole
world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First,
believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything
in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil,
think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on
yourselves!

22.In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

23.All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put
our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

24.If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I
am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would
have vanished.

25.Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in
every living being.

26.The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do
not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the
Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again
can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.

27.The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest
error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner,
a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and
that.

28.Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest
heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you
are weak, or others are weak.

30.Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be
true.

31.Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone,
you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself,
if you have the privilege.

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
• “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
• “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
• “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
• “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
• “I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
• “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
• “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
• “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
• “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
• “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
• “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
• “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
• “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
• “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
• “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
• “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
• “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
• “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
• “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
• “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
• “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
• “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
• “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
• “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
• “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
• “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
• “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.”
• “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
• “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
• “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
• “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
• “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
• “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
• “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
• “Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
• “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
• “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
• “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
• “Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.”
• “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
• “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
• “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
• “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
• “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
• “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
• “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
• “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
• “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
• “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)