Boundaries

Boundaries and Borders and Limits are a fundamental feature of our world. You are an individual because you have boundaries. You are you! The space between you and someone else is one important thing that defines you.

There are also inner boundaries. The structures within you also define you. The relative quantities of separate qualities within you describe your personality. Are you very energetic? Are you strong? fast? Are you sensual? Efficient? Are you possessive or generous? Do you appreciate being smart? What kinds of smarts do you have? How do you use your intelligence? Do you seek to learn what is true? Can you teach others and share what you know? Are you friendly? Are you emotionally pleasant or rough? Can you enjoy life? Can you enjoy your relationships with others? Do your fears rule you without reason, terrorizing yourself and others? Alternatively, are your fears more reasonable? Do they keep you safe by guiding you away from bad things? How much emotion do you feel, and how much do you express?

Structure and limits are of fundamental importance for you to be you and not someone else. How well do you know your structure and your limits? How well do you work within your limits? Do you work to know your own inner world? Do you gradually expand your borders, or do you try to ignore them? Do you understand and respect other people's boundaries and borders, or do you disregard them?

Mastery of anything in life is only possible because there are boundaries, structure and limits. Mastery over your own life is only possible when you understand your structures and limits well. Borders are fundamentally important for us to make our lives work.

"Psychological integration is important."
What do you think of that statement?

An important feature of your inner structure is communication and connections. How well connected are you within yourself? How well do your various desires communicate with each other? Does your proverbial "right side know what your left is doing"? Can you understand your own behaviors well? This is a very important skill.
• When people have regions, voices and actions that are not well connected inside, they may say one thing, do another, and then say something else that may contradict what they said before, and they may not even know that they do this! When people are in this condition they seem to be programmed or unreasonable. They don't seem to be aware that what they are doing doesn't make sense.
• On the other hand, when people are well connected inside, they coordinate between their various voices and desires. They organize themselves for consistency, and seem to be highly aware and awake. They are reasonable and understandable.

Quotes

“Boundaries are to protect life, not to limit pleasures.”
Edwin Louis Cole

“We can trust ourselves to know when our boundaries are being violated.”
Melody Beattie

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
Brene Brown

“And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.”
A. B. Yehoshua

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

“If people work together in an open way with porous boundaries - that is, if they listen to each other and really talk to each other - then they are bound to trade ideas that are mutual to each other and be influenced by each other. That mutual influence and open system of working creates collaboration.”
Richard Thomas

“A self-definition that is based on other’s perspective is untrue and deceptive.”
Rabbi Zev Pomeranz

“If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.”
Joyce Maynard

“Guilt can prevent us from setting the boundaries that would be in our best interests, and in other people's best interests.”
Melody Beattie

“Much of the time, the things we feel guilty about are not our issues. Another person behaves inappropriately or in some way violates our boundaries. We challenge the behavior, and the person gets angry and defensive. Then we feel guilty.”
Melody Beattie

“To me there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're gonna write a sonnet, it's 14 lines, so it's solving the problem within the container.”
Lorne Michaels

“Normally, he liked boundaries. Boundaries were the safety net. Boundaries kept people on the right path. But right now, he felt like rules were made to be broken and consequences were miles and miles away.”
Heather Burch, Halflings

“I’m a guy who respects boundaries. I require a passport for interpersonal travel.”
Jarod Kintz

“Many dogs grow up without rules or boundaries. They need exercise, discipline and affection in that order.”
Cesar Millan

“Children are becoming disobedient... why, because of the lack of rules boundaries and limitations.”
Cesar Millan

“I'm very realistic. I know my boundaries - I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.”
Victoria Beckham

“People with bipolar disorder have difficulty with boundaries.”
Claire Danes

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.”
Henry Cloud

“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Tolerance is nothing more than patience with boundaries.”
Shannon L. Alder