Boundaries, Solved: How to Set (And Keep) Your Boundaries This Year - SOLVED with Mark Manson

Introduction I'm Mark Manson number one New York Times bestselling author and this is Drew. Bernie, my Intrepid co-host lead researcher and the boundary Zen master and this is solved the most over research to overanalyze ridiculously comprehensive podcast that sometimes tries to be funny. And for the next few hours we're gonna break down everything you need to know about boundaries, the goal of this podcast, the reason it's called solved is that if you can get through the whole fucking thing, you should have no problem implementing and maintaining boundaries in your life. So with that, let's cue the music. So just a quick reminder before we get started, these episodes are very large very comprehensive. So if you want a full episode summary along with all of our citations and references, as well as practical exercises that you can use to implement boundaries into your life today, you can go to solve podcast.com slash boundaries and download a free pdf guide there. Also, if you want to implement the lessons of this episode into your life and get accountability while doing it and do it with a bunch of like-minded, people, check out the solved membership community at membership, dot solve podcast.com every single month. We create a 30-day course, version of the podcast episode, and it's designed to help people Implement each and every single thing that we talked about. So that by the end of the 30 days, you have solved this Speaker 2 in your life. CHAPTER 1: Foundations of Boundaries without further Ado, Drew Why don't we talk about? What the hell are boundaries? Speaker 2 Yeah. What Speaker 1 are we going on about? Speaker 2 What are boundaries? I think a lot of people think they know what they are but I am not so sure about that. Speaker 1 I from my observation a lot of people don't know from my personal. Speaker 2 Well they think they do they think? Yeah yeah I think we're gonna get through this section here and you're gonna find out. Okay, there's there's a lot of confusion going on here. And so let's let's just start out like, what are boundaries? Yeah, Speaker 1 I Speaker 2 think I came up with a pretty succinct, definition that you can take. Wherever you go. Okay, a boundaries, are they're self-defined? The Breakdown: What boundaries actually are (and aren’t) Okay, self-defined limits. Okay. That protect core needs and values across the domains of your life. I like that. That's pretty good one, isn't it? I like that. Yeah, Speaker 1 I should reference just for the audience that like boundaries is actually a very modern term. So yes, you know what? We're gonna talk about philosophy and psychology later but like Boundaries as as a part of our daily vernacular or part of like what we associate with life advice or relationship advice. It's really only emerged in the last 20, 25 years probably I believe the there was a pretty major self-help book in the 90s written by a pastor called boundaries. But yeah I mean if you go digging into Psychology from 670 80 years ago like you don't really see any talk about this. This is a very modern concept. Although it does have very old philosophical Roots which we'll talk about in a minute. Alright. Speaker 2 Yeah. We had infer a lot of what they were talking about about boundaries from, but I bring that up just because it's like Speaker 1 it's not unreasonable for you to Define it yourself, right? Speaker 2 Because Speaker 1 usually, what we do is we come in here and we're like, the APA defines. This is that, right? Or it's like this philosopher Aristotle defined this as XYZ. But it's like with boundaries it's a pretty new thing. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah and there's a lot of great area as we'll see here but boundaries can be almost any part of your life, right. There's so many different areas of boundaries that that come into play. There's physical boundaries, there's emotional boundaries. There's an intellectual time, boundaries digital boundaries. We're going to get into all of that. That core definition again, self-defined limits that protect core needs and values across domains, okay? So all those domains that just mentioned, love it that you're gonna have that. Okay, so that's kind of the definition we're going to be working with. You know you might have a partner that sets a temporal boundary like a Time boundary on you. I need an hour after work before we kind of reconnect, right? Communication boundaries, I need you to tell me directly and you're upset about something rather than hinting at it, right? That's a boundary. You could say and emotional boundary, you might you might tell somebody you look. I'm not responsible for your happy happiness, even though I'm like really, I care about that, but I'm at there's a boundary there. I'm not responsible for your happiness, right? So that's just kind of like a quick and dirty example. The thing is is that like without kind of naming these limits and without kind of defining these you can really you end up drifting kind of on autopilot and as we see you get into a lot of power struggles with people too. Yeah. If you don't Define what your particular boundaries are in Speaker 1 all the areas of your life, really? Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 2 there's different kind of flavors of boundaries though, too. The Spectrum: Porous, Rigid, Healthy And by that I mean there's there's the kind of exists on a Continuum, Speaker 3 okay, Speaker 2 you have porous boundaries You can all the way up to rigid boundaries, too, and somewhere in the middle is healthy boundaries. Okay. So, what are we? What are we talking about here? Porous boundaries. This is when you for example you're over disclosing or you have this difficulty saying no. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 these are people with like really poorest boundaries are there. They're really trying to you're trying to please. A lot of other people a lot of times and so you get enmeshed with them and you don't have very good boundaries between who you are. What you do, what you do for them, how you show up for them? Speaker 1 I would think of it as like a boundaries with way too many exceptions. Yes, right. So it's like it's like I expect people to treat me with respect and then as each person disrespects you you're like well they had a bad day at work or well, you know, I probably deserve that or well you know you start making excuses right? Everything right Speaker 2 now. Flexibility is important but when you're you know, you're too flexible that becomes an issue. It's not really about boundary right Speaker 3 right. Yeah. Speaker 2 On the other end of the spectrum you have a rigid boundaries people who you know they they're overprotective they keep everybody at arm's. Length maybe you're inflexible, you shut. Others out this Can really lead to. Like a lot of isolation missed opportunities for intimacy or you get just getting to know somebody even to the point like even when you're overwhelmed you refuse help. Speaker 3 Yeah. Right. Speaker 2 Because you have a boundary like I'm independent I'm going to do this sort of thing that can be an issue. That's a rigid boundary. Yeah. Speaker 1 We've talked you know on the old podcast we I think we did a couple episodes about you know, people ghosting people in their life in the name of boundaries, right. And I think what you see kind of a phenomenon that's happened maybe the last couple years on tiktok and Instagram is that there's a lot of Life advice aimed towards people with a lack of boundaries. Encouraging them to have overly rigid boundaries, right? So it's like you see a lot of advice out there of like Set this boundary and then if the person doesn't respect it, cut them out of your life, right? And so, it's like, oh, if your mom doesn't call you back. Well then, fuck her. No one's talking to Mom anymore, right? And so you you've actually seen, there's a, like, a bit of an epidemic going on of, I think, in that episode, we talked about a bunch of crazy statistics of the amount of young people who are, like, not speaking to their parents anymore or like the people who are ending friendships over, like really minor transgressions. And so, there is, I think, the point here is that, there's a way to take this way too far and with a lot of personal growth advice, when you lack something, the excess of something can look like a solution, even though it's not Speaker 2 a special Brown boundaries, I think people. Well, they'll take it to the extreme because when you are somebody who has these, like Ultra porous boundaries for a long time, the Tendencies the react way, overcompensate the other way. Speaker 1 Yeah, and Speaker 2 that's a special true I think in boundaries because people, oh, I About boundaries. I can assert myself again. Yeah. And it's like yeah you can and maybe there is like a period where you need to do some overcompensation to realize that you need to come back to you know that. That golden mean. Yeah. That Aristotle talks about a lot, right? Yep. And well he never talked about boundaries like we said he does I wouldn't say that. That's kind of the goal here which brings me to the healthy boundaries they're clear? They're Flex their clear yet. Flexible you you stayed a boundary, you have an idea that protects a value or a need of yours, right? Speaker 3 And Speaker 2 yet you adjust it for the context, too, right. Like the one I already kind of said was you know, with a partner. You like I'm not responsible for your happiness. Yeah I do care about your happiness. That's a flexibility around your boundaries too, right. Like I'm gonna be interested in investing in your happiness, but ultimately I'm not responsible for it, right? So that's a, that's a one example. Again, they protect your values and they protect your needs. While adjusting to the situation that you're in the whole episode, we're going to go through tons and tons of examples of that. Okay. So I won't get too far in the weeds but I think one thing you were kind of just getting at was I think people confuse Boundaries for a lot of other things. Because, again, this is kind of a newer concept and there is there's a lot of different definitions, I think, floating around out there, so I wanted to distinguish it between a few other things before we get going, okay, we've already stated values, we had a whole episode on value too. Boundaries vs. Values, Rules, Preferences, and Requests Okay. So if you haven't watched that one, I think that's a really good one to Speaker 1 go. Yeah, go Speaker 2 listen to watch. Before you watch this one or Speaker 1 after whatever it will definitely inform and help this one quite a bit because I will add to that. If you are, if you have a shity value that you're trying to protect you, you're gonna have a shity boundary, right? Speaker 2 Right, yeah. And we'll definitely get into that values though. They they are, they're kind of like, the those enduring principles that matter to you. Maybe it's honesty, maybe it's helping others, maybe it's taken care of yourself and your family. Whatever that is, They they're related to boundaries but they're not the same thing. They're kind of the why behind the boundaries, Speaker 3 right? Speaker 2 I don't know. Let's say you Value Health. That's your value. You set a boundary around. I don't eat this certain type of food or whatever. Yes, right. Okay. So that's that's just one example, we have to just this thing which between rules as well, this one I think, is where people get tripped up a lot. A rule is actually an attempt to kind of it's an attempt to control others, right? You're setting a rule. You may not do this or I don't don't do this around me that kind of, that's not really a boundary. That's your you're putting up a rule and you're you're forcing other people to follow it, right? Whereas a boundary is more. Internal it's more. This is what I do. I can't control what other people do. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Right. Speaker 1 I tend to think of boundaries as like if then statements, right? So it's a good way to think about it, you know. Yeah. Like it's it's if you get angry with me, Speaker 3 this Speaker 1 is how I'm gonna respond, Speaker 2 right? Like Speaker 1 if you throw a tantrum and start yelling at me, I'm gonna leave and go home like that you said, that's, that's a boundary because it's like a clear. If this occurs, this is my action and you were like letting the person, know what the consequences are going to be. Where's the rule? We just be like, you're not allowed to get angry and throw a tantrum, right? Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. Again, I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up. They're like, why I said a boundary by telling this person not to do that? Yeah, that's how it works. That's not about Works. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 1 In fact you're probably violating their about. Speaker 2 Exactly exactly. It's it's bumping up against their own autonomy. And so that's, that's a rule, not a boundary, okay? Speaker 3 Then Speaker 2 you have like preferences lower Stakes. Obviously, right negotiable wants like, I like Italian food. I prefer Italian food or Thai food, or whatever. That's a preference stated Thai. Food is Speaker 1 a pretty strong boundary in my life, Speaker 2 as a new donor, you know, if you don't eat Thai food, I want nothing to do with you. Okay, well, hey, that's fine because that's just the boundary, that's not fuck you. Speaker 3 Yeah. Otherwise, you have Speaker 1 sorry, I should be derailing this this early, but Speaker 2 your preferences like Thai food, like I prefer Thai food over like, I don't eat dessert. Speaker 1 Yes, right. Speaker 2 That's a boundary. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 Or or I don't eat dairy because of my health or, you know, I whatever it is. That's a boundary versus just stating a preference. I don't think people would confuse these as much, but they can. There's subtle or examples. I think more subtle examples that will. Speaker 1 I think it gets confusing because some boundaries are self-enforced. Right? So it's it's like I don't like I don't drink anymore. Yeah. Like that's a boundary I've set for myself like that and again kind of like the rule thing. It looks like the same thing from the outside but it's the experience is different or like the I guess the kind of logical mechanics of it are different internally Speaker 3 because Speaker 1 honestly there are many moments where my preferences is absolutely to drink but because I have set a boundary with myself that I am a person who doesn't drink. Then you know, there's significant overlap with A preference, but it's not always the same thing similar to like an external boundary Speaker 2 being like there's significant overlap, but it is all these subtleties that we get into, where you start pumping up against like, inner personal problems and conflicts and all that. Yeah, well, we'll get into that here in just a second, but the last one I want to go over requests, okay? Um, this is when you go out and you ask somebody hey can you do this, you know, can you whatever it is? Pick me up at the airport. Can you please pick up after yourself, right? Those are requests right? As opposed to a boundary which isn't requesting? Again, it's not requesting anything of anyone else. It's how it's, it's determining, it's a self-determining Act of your own behavior, right? Okay, keep those in mind because I think a lot of times when you're not clear on your boundaries you're using rules or using preferences or using requests, instead of boundaries. Yeah. And that's where like a lot of the a lot of conflict comes in a lot of our relationships that way. What happens when boundaries erode? Okay, Speaker 3 so Speaker 2 what happens then when boundaries, Start to erode or they won't set up in the first place even too. I think these is kind of the telltale signs that you're not doing very well at your boundaries. Speaker 1 You Speaker 2 don't do boundaries good, Speaker 1 right? Oh man, you're you're Midwestern. Southern Miss coming out through were, we've worked so hard, you Speaker 2 don't boundary good, you know, boundary good. And this is, this is this is red signs. These are the Red Flags, red flags. Okay. So the first one is like, chronic resentment, right? You're resenting, the people around you, right? This is this is you don't, you don't set boundaries around your work, or a relationship or emotions, whatever it is and you start to resent other people because they're like, coming at you, a voice in all this, upon you, right? That really is just a sign that you haven't set a clear boundary around, right? Okay. Do you have exhaustion and burnout, right? So, like, you're taking on too much at work and it's like, oh, this kind of scope Creek comes. And it's like, well, it's not really my job, but it's just one little thing, and I'm gonna take it on. You have exhaustion and burnout through that. So, without clear limits on your time, your work or emotional labor. Even to You get overextended and that leads to like exhaustion and burnout. Then you have overwhelm and time debt. Okay? Saying yes, to everything. All right, Creates this big backlog of things. You have to do obligations that creep up this year. You said, yes, to this thing three weeks ago. And now, here we are. Now you have to do it. So now you're in time. Debt. Now you're over now. You feel like you're getting pulled in seven different directions. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 blurred roles and relationships. So it like when you have a close bond with someone, A boundary collapse. It feels like you're like a meshed with that person to the point where you can't even like make decisions on your own without consulting them, or even thinking about them or some of, that's okay. Sure. But there's got to be a flexibility to it too. By the way, there's a very interesting statistic Speaker 1 that finds that couples that split home, responsibilities 50/50 across the board are like some of the most miserable couples in the most likely to break up. And I think it's because of this. Imagine everything has to be split 50/50. So it's like all the things I'm terrible at. I still have to do half of it all the things you're terrible at, you still have to do half of it. And and then we just get pissed off at each other because we're terrible at the things that we're terrible at, whereas, it makes sense to divide and conquer in terms of like, each person's skill, set or whatever. But anyway, I do think it's this ideal of this kind of idealistic view of equality within a relationship that like, oh, we should both manage the finances, and we should both clean the house, and we should both Drive the kids to school, and we should both bring in the same paycheck and we should both. Call visit each other's parents the exact same amount like that. It's just you're living in Fairytale Land. Those Speaker 2 are rules. Those are boundaries, you know, all those things, you just said we should do this, we should do like this, we should do it, there's a Speaker 1 rule that's true and then you end up in meshed there's no boundary there. Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. Highly related to this is identity confusion at some point you just lose who you are. Speaker 1 Yes, right. Speaker 2 Because you're, you're at the whims of opinions of other people. You look to the outside world for everything from your job, to who you date to your leisure time, whatever it Speaker 1 is. I think that will you just said, is really applicable to caregivers, right? So I think you see this a lot with stay-at-home moms, right? So it's like the, they're taking care of the kids all day and and then the husband comes home and he's exhausted from work. And so then she's taking care of him. And it's basically like weeks or months even years ago by were, she's just giving giving giving and she's never like stopping the thing about what she needs or what she Wants or what's going to make her happy and you end up getting this kind of just loss of identity, right? Through constant caregiving if you're the breadwinner in a family. The professional World kind of forces you to get good at boundaries, like if you don't get good at boundaries, you're probably not going to climb very high and your career ladder, simply because you're not going to be reliable or accountable enough. So, you have to, like, learn how to say, no to people. You need to learn how to negotiate and all that stuff. Where is it? Yeah, if you're kind of in more of a caregiver role in your family, You're actually incentivized to not have boundaries, you're incentivized to always be available and always take on the burden of others and and that's just it's a recipe for Burnout as you said and and a lot of like simmering resentment under the surface. Yeah Speaker 2 that's what you see like empty nesters right. Yeah like when that happens there you empty nest. Like now what do I do? Speaker 1 The second most common point of divorce. Yeah. Speaker 2 Is Speaker 1 empty nesters right? Speaker 2 What's the first? Right after the first child. Okay, yeah. All right. Okay. So those are kind of our red flags. What you see that? Like the boundaries? They're not really luxuries, right? They're actually like survival mechanisms that I use because if you don't, that's what ends up happening. The Solution: Boundaries as structure and freedom Lose Yourself. You Lose Yourself. Speaker 2 Let's take the opposite side. When you have really good clear, healthy boundaries, what does that kind of look like right? Boundaries? Well, they're going to reduce conflict. I mean, probably already see that. From what we've mentioned, they're going to reduce conflict in your relationships because people have their expectations, they're clear expectations. When people know even if they don't like about boundary, if they know you have it and you're going to stick to it, they're probably going to at least respect it, right? Yeah. Speaker 1 To some degree and this is very paradoxical because I feel like a lot of people don't set boundaries because they're afraid of the conflict. Yes. Right. They don't want to say that. They don't like something or that they don't want to do something because they're like well I don't want to upset them or like fight about it where is it's actually the opposite when you state that you don't want to do it. Like maybe you have a little argument then but you're preventing like 20 arguments in the future. Yes, Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 I had this, this actually happened to me recently. Somebody treated me in a way I didn't really like, and I was like, I don't I'm not gonna rock the boat, and then I came back later and I was like, look, hey Speaker 1 go fuck yourself. Speaker 2 No, no, no, no, no, no. I took the time I actually did, I was proud of myself. Okay, I'm gonna take time, like, I'm upset, I'm gonna Speaker 3 hold Speaker 2 off. Speaker 1 I'm gonna cool off Speaker 2 back to them. Speaker 3 Okay. Speaker 2 And I'm gonna stay like hey the way you treated me like I you can be frustrated with me. This is what I said that I left the autonomy. It was definitely a boundary it wasn't a rule. It's like right I never said don't talk to me like that ever again I said I understand if you're going to get upset and frustrated with me I just I would prefer you do it in a different way. Next time, find a Kinder way to express that to me and then we can talk about it and Speaker 3 it Speaker 2 was uncomfortable. Yeah, uncomfortable. But like, at actually led to a better like understanding with each other. It's stuff like that. That generates respect Speaker 3 for other people. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think what you see another red flag, I would say like is If you feel constantly Speaker 3 disrespected by others. Yeah, Speaker 2 it's that only to the resentment too. Yeah, Speaker 1 right. Like, if you're not being respected by others, it's because you're not standing for anything and you're not standing up for anything Speaker 3 and Speaker 1 paradoxical, it's by standing up for something and being willing to have conflict about it, that people start to, to actually respect you like, okay? Like Drew's got his thing about that. Like, I'm gonna I'm not going to bother him, right? Speaker 2 The next one. Boundaries help you regulate your emotions too. And that this is what we go back to the emotions episode. We did too, if you can kind of like run the simulation in your head, this is what boundaries kind of do is that if then statement, right, if this happens then I'm going to act like this. This gives you kind of a template for emotional regulation in the moment when these kinds of things happen. If you're clear about your boundaries, when somebody has a boundary violation, they come at you, Speaker 3 you Speaker 2 have a template right there that you can be like, okay, this is this is how I'm going to do it and it, that helps you. You're still going to get emotional in the moment. I'm sure. Right? But you're like, okay, no, this is how I react. And so, I'm drawing Speaker 3 the boundary there, Speaker 1 like a little mini plan. It's Speaker 2 a little mini. It's a little mini script for you to follow. So that's boundaries. Really help with that. And then last putting limits on yourself, or putting limits on your relationships, too. That actually has a freeing aspect to it, so when you say no to something, you're also saying, yes, to something else, right and vice versa as well. Speaker 3 You're Speaker 2 saying yes to say, well you're values really, whether that's like health or rest, whether that Focus your saying, no, I'm not gonna do that because I am doing this other thing over here that is it's freeing you up to live more and alignment with the way you want to live by setting up the boundary by limiting yourself by putting yourself in this box even too. A good healthy boundaries going to help you do that. Those are kind of the foundations of boundaries, that's kind of set the tone. So, when we're going forward here, this is what we're talking about different aspects of boundaries. So we go back to that definition. There's self limits, right? That help you maintain your needs and Speaker 1 your values across all the domains of your life. I guess we will get into later to kind of what the the Tactical components of a boundary is like, you know, the What a good statement. Looks like what what the if then should look like right and then the enforcement of that as Speaker 3 well? Yes. Speaker 1 Well we'll come back to that in the latter half of the episode. This episode is brought to you by our friends at brain FM. CHAPTER 2: Boundaries: Freedom Through Limitation So here's what happened. I sat down, they get some writing done, I was feeling good, focused motivated and ten minutes later. I am on YouTube watching a guy explained how to fold a fitted sheet with military Precision, why? Obviously, because I'm terrible with fitted sheets. I mean, have you ever tried to fold these things? Like why don't, they put arrows telling you, which side of the bed it should be on like is just the most obvious Innovation. Anyway, what was I talking about? See this is where brain FM comes in now. I know what you're thinking, you're like, oh great, another Lo-Fi beats playlist. But no, my friends. This is not your chill coffee shop. 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All right, so now that we have like a basic understanding of what boundaries are what, it feels like to not have them, what some of the repercussions of not having them are in our lives. I want to take a minute and go very deep on. Why this matters like why are boundaries so important? Why do they seem to have such an outsize, the fact on our mental well-being, our the quality of our relationships, the success in our careers. And it turns out that they like when you dig into the philosophy and psychology of it, they are very significant. I would dare say underrated and a lot of ways I would say philosophically underrated. I think they're probably Instagram overrated but just in terms of how core they are to our identity and our general psychological well-being, they're definitely underrated. Creativity with Limitations Yeah, I would say the cartoon version of them are overrated. Yes. Speaker 2 Yes, Speaker 1 absolutely. So I want to start out by talking about creativity. Speaker 3 So Speaker 1 there's kind of a cliche in the Arts that it's actually limitation that breeds Innovation that it's only when you put constraints on somebody that you get the best work out of them. And this is very counterintuitive, especially for most artists most artists and creatives. I include myself in this, you know, we just Our natural disposition is to tell everybody to fuck off and just let me make whatever I want to make. Speaker 3 And Speaker 1 that's great to a certain extent like you do want some of that energy going on, but If I'm being honest, like when I look at say my relationship with my editor or my relationship with, you know, with you guys on my team, like a lot of the benefit is that you guys set guardrails Speaker 2 for Speaker 1 me, right? And Speaker 2 that's at least half my job is to Corral you Speaker 1 just keep me in the corner. Speaker 2 Yeah, no Mark. Yeah, Speaker 3 it's Speaker 2 yeah, yeah. I get it. Yeah. No, Speaker 1 no more parties. So creativity. And it turns out you see this all across the Arts, right? So I I dug up a couple interesting examples here Johann, Sebastian Bach, who In the music world is. Often considered the goat in a lot of ways I've heard of them. Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah Speaker 1 I think non-musicians, don't realize like, how like okay, it's just this guy is miles above anybody else but he produced over 1100 Works in his life. I think. If you averaged out how many pieces of music, he composed, throughout his life, it ended up being like around one every five or six days. Like it's just an absolute prodigious output, especially back in the in a period that like western music wasn't completely developed yet and it wasn't standardized in formalized and a lot of that was due to box work. Like he, he had tons of musical Innovations. He redefined created and redefined genres. But what's fascinating about him is that everything was existed within a formulaic framework, right? So everything would be composed by a set of rules and somehow by limiting himself, To a set of rules or a certain system or framework. It would Define the parameters, by which he could innovate, right? If you don't have those framework and rules, then Innovation is just kind of non-existent conversely. If you look at say, Modern music contemporary music and I mean, modern classical music. So a tonal no Melody, lots of weird sounds like John Cage type shyt, you know, wind blowing weird Chimes. There's, there's you, your brain has nothing to latch on to and so there's no in a way because everything is free and new And untethered. There is no innovation because like for something to be Innovative, it needs to be defined against something else that's like expected, right? And so if there's nothing that's expected, there's no innovation. So this phenomenon of gaining from limitation or gaining from constraint, you see, in the business world all the time. So there's a hugely popular Business book, maybe 10 years ago called the one thing. And can you guess what? The advice was. Focus on one thing. Focus on one fucking thing. Yes, if you just focus on the most important thing, everything else will kind of take care of itself. But sure enough, you see this, you know, all across multiple businesses. There's tons of case studies, and different examples of businesses that branched out way too far, started trying to be create products in every vertical and just ended up generating a bunch of crap and failing as a result. Interestingly, like, for example, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the second time when he was rehired, I think Apple had something like 34 lines of computers that they put out Mental Health and Limitations tons of products. Yeah. Speaker 1 Tons and they were all poorly differentiated like half of them were designed the fit like some specific Enterprise. Customer that they were trying to woo away from IBM and what was the first thing that Steve Jobs did when he came in? He like, Slacked he cut like 90% of those products down to? I think it was four. Yeah. Within the first couple of years you all. So see this happen within your personal life within your relationships, right? When you try to be liked by everybody, Your Love by not, that's the cliche. When you try to get along all the time. When you try to be pleasant all the time, when you try to say the right thing that everybody's going to like all the time, What happens? You become forgettable. There's no interesting opinions. There's no unique personality. There's no like personal take because there's nothing to Hate About You. There's also nothing to love about you. And so, what we see consistently is the more that you kind of narrowly Define yourself within your social life and know what you stand for, and know what you care about and know what you like to do. Sure, most of the people you meet, you may not connect with or resonate with, but the ones that you do, it's a very strong impactful, meaningful connection. So, these are just a few examples of things that gain from constraints, or gain from limitation, and it turns out that our, our mental health and our psychological well-being also gains from constraint and self-limitation. It's very paradoxical, but there is a, there is a logical explanation for this. See, we often assume that freedom means removing our limitations having access to whatever we want being able to indulge in any impulse or any desire or Hang out with anybody or meet anybody or go anywhere. Anytime we want. And sure there's like a part of our brain that that is very exciting and sexy and appealing. But What we don't realize is that there is a very silent and subtle cost that comes with that. That is if you set, No Boundaries for yourself, that is if you sent no prioritization, no decision of, I'm this type of person and not that type of person. Then, pretty much all of your decisions are going to be dictated by impulse and desire. And what do we call? Somebody who's whole life is dictated by impulse and desire? We call him a selfish piece of shit. It doesn't, it doesn't turn out very well. True. I don't recommend dictating your life by by impulse and designer. Now, interestingly, there's there's a very powerful philosophical basis for this idea. So a manual, con who's my philosophical homeboy. I have a son had issues, but, like, man, I have such a soft spot for him. I'm a, I'm a fanboy. He wrote something extremely powerful. And it was very powerful, and powerful, and impactful on me as well, which is he believes very strongly that freedom is only exercise when you choose limitations for yourself, so, the only put it another way, like the only Freedom we really have in our lives is choosing what Boundaries we set up for ourselves. Choosing who were not going to be choosing which impulses were not going to indulge. Choosing which paths in life were not going to take choosing. The people were not going to hang out with. basically putting those limitations on ourselves because what that does is it frees us up to what remains It frees us to focus and go deep and get extremely good at the few things that we do care about. And he argued that that's where true Freedom was found. and, Even though he was riding all this stuff, 100s of years, before the Advent of modern psychology, we know today that there is a very real cycle basis for this idea. So my second book, I wrote that there's two brains the thinking brain and the feeling brain. And the feeling brain is that the core of all of our impulses and wants and desires, and yearnings, and cravings. And the thinking brain is basically the logical reasoning brain that stops and analyzes and things. You know, that really good idea. You know, maybe maybe we shouldn't smoke crack this weekend and we should, I don't know. Go do a sauna and meditate for a while and Most of us spend most of our lives. In this kind of constant tension between the two brains resisting, the cravings and desires, and trying to lean on our higher reason and understanding to make good decisions. Now I think our default assumption is that freedom is the freedom to indulge the feeling brain to indulge whatever impulses we have or whatever Cravings we want to fulfill or whatever desires we want. Kant, argued that true Freedom, resided within the thinking brain, that it was living up to the standards that we Define for ourselves embodying. The person that we wished ourselves to be now to do those things, you're thinking, brain has to decide which impulses are okay to indulge, which Cravings are okay to pursue and which ones are not and to do that. You have to set limitations around yourself. You have to decide. Okay? These sets of impulses and desires are okay because these match the person that I want to become or the the best version of myself that I can live up to and embody and these other impulses and desires. I can't I have to set a boundary, I can't indulge them I can't pursue them blindly and for con this was not like a question of just Getting rid of anxiety or stress or whatever like caught, this was actually the fundamental basis of morality itself. Kant's moral system was really based on the idea that reason and rationality is the most scarce in unique, thing in the known universe. And so, everything else should be Downstream of protecting and maximizing that reason and rationality. And so to Conant indulging, your Cravings or succumbing to your impulses and compromising that the person you want to become, you want just hurting yourself. You were actually committing a moral infraction on the universe. Speaker 2 You it's hardcore. Speaker 1 He's real hardcore content, not fuck around. Speaker 2 So Speaker 1 it's from that we get this idea that self-limitation is that the route of self-definition and self-definition is just necessary for the moral order. Freud would take this baton and run with it. So in Freud's framework, Freud, Freud, kind of divided the human mind up into the three parts, you had the ID which is the kind of animalistic impulses and desires. You had the super ego which was the social conscience, the feelings of guilt and obligation to society, the concerns about reputation and like what do what are people going to think about me? And then you had the ego and in Freud's framework, the ego emerged as a negotiation between the ID and the superego essentially. The negotiation between the feeling brain and the thinking brain. Like, okay, I want to do all these fun sexy, exciting things but I also don't want to be a horrible person and piss everybody off and cause a bunch of problems for myself. So I need to find a balance in here. I need to create rules guidelines or boundaries for myself of like what kind of person I'm going to be in each situation. What are the things that I'm going to prioritize and care about who are the people that I'm going to associate with? And how am I going to treat them? And essentially, how am I going to view myself? Now it's funny because that last part how am I going to view myself? That's I think if you, if you grab the random person off the street and asked them to Define what an ego is, they would say that it's a view of yourself and if you ask them what a a big ego is or a strong ego is they would say that. It's somebody who's very full of themselves who overestimates their own capabilities or how important they are now. Ironically, this, this is just one of those things that's kind of gotten bastardized throughout history, is that what we colloquially Define as a big ego. Freud would have defined as a weak ego, Speaker 3 see Speaker 1 for Freud. If you are constantly overestimating yourself, if you are not setting limitations around yourself, if you think you are should, and are capable of doing everything and deserve everything that is not the result of a strong ego. That is a result of a weak ego. That is a result of somebody who is not clearly defined themselves and who is not aware of the compromises that must be made between their impulses and desires and their social obligations and their Higher rationality. So if Kant saw, self-definition and self-limitation is kind of the root of the moral Universe, Freud came along and really defined it as as kind of the core of the psychological Universe. Like, this is the route of mental health is like somebody who has a well-defined and properly size. The ego, in relation to the other aspects of their consciousness. and for Freud, anybody who's suffered intensely from mental health issues, it was largely because either their ego was poorly defined or underdeveloped, or it was defined in the wrong way earlier, you talked about internal boundaries boundaries as a form of self-definition, you know, if I decide I'm an author and I write books for a living that definition of self. Example In a ways of boundary like I am defining which actions and behaviors are appropriate for myself and wished which actions and behaviors are not appropriate for myself if I decide to Define myself as a husband to my wife. I'm creating a boundary. I am deciding that I'm not going to do certain things or have sex with certain people and that I have certain Social and familial obligations to my wife, right? So self-definition is a form of boundary setting and it is the form of boundary setting with ourselves. The boundary setting that happens with others is a side effect or kind of the reverse side of the coin of that self-definition and what we'll find throughout this episode. We've already alluded to it a little bit but we'll continue to find throughout this episode. Is that generally speaking people who are poor at defining boundaries for others are proportionally bad at defining boundaries from the cells. Like if you really know yourself and you know who you are, and you know what you want out of life, That's going to be reflected in your ability to set boundaries with others. The more you fail to set boundaries with others. The more you're going to fail to set those boundaries with yourself and vice versa, Speaker 2 give me an example of that. So let's say that, I don't know how I feel about Speaker 1 recreational drug use. Okay, I've never really thought about it. I don't really have any strong opinions about it. I have certain people in my life who are big fans of it and other people who are not, but I like both of those people. And I want both those people to like me and let's say I go to a party this weekend and everybody's I Speaker 3 don't know Speaker 1 like taking a bunch of mushrooms or MDMA or something and they somebody sticks out their hand and hands it to me. I'm probably gonna have no boundaries in that situation. I'm probably gonna take it just because I don't know how I feel about this situation. And so I'm just like, well, this is what's in front of me. And this is exactly what continent by a lack of boundaries is a lack of Freedom, a lack of self-limitation is a lack of Freedom. If I don't have the knowledge of myself to know that like Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 don't do drugs and I don't I definitely don't do them recreationally, only do them professionally. Then I'm not gonna know, I'm not gonna have the freedom in that moment to say no Speaker 2 and Define who you are and Speaker 1 Define who I am and know what I want and all those other things. Whereas if I have decided, which I have in my own life, I've decided I've done enough drugs to know, I don't really want to do this anymore. I know. especially that if I'm out on a Friday night and somebody puts a bunch of drugs in front of me, that That's just not something I do I have that self-definition I have that boundary Within Myself and I've enforced it repeatedly. So I built up that that Mountain of evidence of like this is who I am. Now when somebody Sticks out their hand and offers me something to take. It's going to be an easy now. Okay. It's like I'm not gonna think about it. I'm not gonna worry about it. I'm not gonna be like, oh well what if this person gets mad at me, like it's just it's a clearly it's a clearly defined boundary Within Myself, which means it's an easy boundary to Define with others. Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah and then you could apply, that's it. Oh there's a marriage or your work or whatever. Right? Okay, anything Speaker 1 I'll give you another example, so it's funny. I don't know how many Bachelor parties you've been on Speaker 2 a few? Yeah Speaker 1 I would, I would argue there's two types of Bachelor parties and the first type is like kind of the cliche. Guys guy like oh ball and chains come better. Get in while you can bro ball and chain is coming, you know, and all that Speaker 3 stuff. Speaker 1 I've only been on a couple Bachelor parties like that and it's funny because like every single one of them like, dude, you're gonna end up, you're gonna be divorced in like three years because it if that's your mentality going into marriage, that this is a A you are having to subvert your own desires and like you're about to do something that. Boundaries and Maturity Doesn't match yourself, definition like if you see marriage is as a sacrifice, that you are having to, like, give up a part of your identity or your life. Yeah, it's not good because like what most Bachelor parties are like, including my own is a all, the single buddies are like having a great time. And then like, The dude who's getting married is like just sitting there texting his fiance being like, come on, go Speaker 2 home. Yeah, Speaker 3 right. Speaker 1 And and like, those are the guys that that stick it out, right? Because, They've already defined a boundary within themselves of like, I'm committed to this person. Like this, this is this is my partner for the rest of my life. They've already decided that internally they've already set that boundary with themselves. Therefore it's like not even the thought to set it externally, right. Where is like the guys who haven't really set that boundary with themselves? They're like, well, I guess I'm getting married because that's what I'm supposed to do. But I still want to go bang all these other chicks, right? They're the ones who are like. Oh man. Like last days of freedom. We better have fun with my boys while I still can you know, and Speaker 2 or they don't even understand why somebody wouldn't think that way, right? Yeah, Speaker 1 exactly. Speaker 3 Yeah. And Speaker 1 and so then those are the guys that end up, yeah, Speaker 2 right. Okay. Speaker 1 Cheating. And paying alimony for the rest of their life, right? I also think this is why ultimately boundaries in many ways are not only indicative of a person's identity, but they're also indicative of a person's maturity. You could even argue that boundaries are the lagging indicator of how mature somebody is, let me explain why. So if I identity formation is a process of setting boundaries within yourself. When you look at young children, you know the difference between say a child and an adolescent and an adult is the child is going to have like no sense of identity. No, self-definition and no self-limitation which tracks an adolescent is going to have Some self-definition some self-limitation but it's going to be chaotic. It's going to be inconsistent. They're like, it's very experimental. Like they're kind of testing a bunch of different things and seen which boundaries work for them and which ones don't also tracks and then an adult should have a clear idea of who they are, what they want, what they care about, what they're committed to and their actions should follow suit, right? If you think about like what an immature adult, Looks like how they behave. CHAPTER 3: Why Boundaries Matter They probably have no strong or clear opinions, they're probably very impulsive. They probably indulge their urges, they probably don't follow through on their commitments. They probably lack self-discipline. They're probably often sell like disrespectful or rude towards others. They probably don't communicate their feelings very well. They probably don't empathize with other people's feelings, very well. Like all of these things are We, we associate them with immaturity, but at their core. they are rooted in a lack of boundary definition like they it stems from a lack of understanding in in commitment to This is the type of person I want to be. This is the boundary I'm going to enforce on myself. And therefore, these are the bound my expectations that I'm going to have going into the relationships with others. Got Speaker 2 it. Speaker 1 Yeah. Where's a mature person, right? It's like, you know, exactly where you stand with them, you know exactly what they care about, what they like. What they dislike, you can empathize with them because you know what they care about, they probably communicate. Well they're probably discipline than accountable, they probably like they're probably reliable. They Speaker 2 don't tolerate bulshit, Speaker 1 they don't tolerate bulshit you know all of those things are Downstream of boundaries having good boundaries. Let's talk about the Business of boundary formation. Like how do you know how to define yourself? How do you know what's worth committing to or what's worth sticking up for, or what, what's worth saying? No to write ultimately Comes back to values. So there was actually a very famous Harvard. Business School. Professor named Clayton, Christianson and wrote a bunch of very famous business books, like extremely well-regarded in the business world, and he was diagnosed with cancer and 2010. Now facing mortality, he did something very admirable which is he decided to teach to the end and and one of his last lectures he got up in front of all of his students and he said, you know, instead of talking about business strategy, I just want to ask you all simple question. How are you going to measure your life? Because he said that throughout his life, you know, he had met so many powerful CEOs and presidents and board members and billionaires and all these like incredibly successful and impressive people. and he said, The majority of them were. Neurotic depressed. Divorced. Had a strange children, horrible relationships. Addictions, like all sorts of issues and problems. they climb the career ladder to all the way to the top, but On a personal and emotional basis. They were, they were just total messes. Now, the Insight that he pulled from this is that while they had boundaries like, obviously you have to have strong boundaries if you're going to work like 80 hours, 100 hours a week. If you're gonna become CEO, if you're gonna, you know, climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top. Those boundaries weren't actually connected to the most important things in their lives. Like they would say that family mattered more than anything else, but they would work through the weekend or they would say that integrity was super important to them but then they would get caught for billions of dollars tax fraud. Like it just there was like example. After example, after example of people saying that they value one thing, but their behavior was clearly demonstrating something else. And we talked about this when we did the values episode while back, which is that it's, it's often not our words or our thoughts that demonstrate what we actually care about. Like, it's actually very easy for us to lie to ourselves about what we care about. It's our actions that actually demonstrate what we Care about, you know, I can tell you that I value family, until I'm blue in the face. But if I'm like here at the studio until 11:00 at night, and I'm not going home that tells you something, right? So, Christiansen shared a practice that he had come up with. And he said that for, every major life decision that he came up against, he would filter the decision through three separate questions. First one was, is this going to help me become the person? I want to be very content. Number two was, will this strengthen the relationships that matter to me? Number three was, will this create value Beyond Myself? Now, these decision filters, he ran everything through them. So like when McKinsey came to him and offered him like a massive consultancy, it was going to require him to miss tons of weekends and time with his kids and so he passed up on it because ultimately He felt like being around for his daughter's childhood was more important than, you know, making a couple million dollars. The Basis of Boundary Formation: Values So obviously the cancer progressed, who needs another couple million dollars when you're like a famous Harvard business. Professor anyway, I mean and you have cancer. Do you have cancer? I mean, like how many of your daughter's soccer games? Are you really with willing to miss? Yeah, so I think that's just that's like a very nice. Example, or an anecdote of what we're talking about. Now, I think again, just a reminder to the listener, if you're unclear, what values are how to figure out what your values are, how to decide your prioritize, your values. I highly highly recommend going back and listening to our values episode. It's over four hours long. It's super thorough. It's actually probably like maybe our most popular episode that we've ever done. It's up there. Yeah. It's it's hugely Illuminating for people and and also if you want to like really go through the surveys and questionnaires that help you deduce, what your values are. We also in the solved Community, we have a course of five version of that episode that can help you do that. So you can go to solve podcast Comm slash values or membership. Dot solve. Podcast.com, but we're gonna proceed here. As if everybody listening has a rough idea, what values are or how you find them, you know, what their values are Etc. So if you're like me, you don't really have the time or the interest to research. Stupid supplement on the planet and optimize every little pill that you ever take, that's why it became interested in a new product called im8. It's a daily all-in-one Wellness. Drink that supports Health without juggling 16 different bottles. Like you're running a vitamin cartel. I made is my go-to these days for getting the benefits from 16 supplements in one simple, tasty drink. It's co-founded by David Beckham. Yes that dreamy, David back home and developed with experts from the Mayo Clinic, Cedar Sinai and even a former NASA Chief scientist and it's great because I get to feel like I'm doing something good for my body without having to put a ton of thought or work into it. 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So, the first and most crucial mistake, that people make when they are setting boundaries around their values is that they set the boundaries reactively that is. They wait until the dramas are already happened, right? Something happens. They wait until they're already burnt out. They wait until they are already or pissed off at their boss or their co-worker or their sister or whatever then they decide to set the boundary and this is dangerous because there's a very high likelihood that you're going to overcompensate because you're emotional in that moment. You're probably not going to see the situation clearly and you're probably gonna overestimate either how rigid the boundary needs to be like how uncompromising you need to be, or you're just going to be misaligned. Like you're just gonna in that moment when you're really upset about something, you probably gonna read the situation incorrectly? Yeah, definitely Speaker 2 missed. For the trees, a lot of time. Yeah, it's something. Something terrible happens and you get so hyper fixated on that one thing. Speaker 3 Yes. And Speaker 2 then that becomes the thing. You said a boundary around when actually you need to step back. Speaker 3 Yeah and Speaker 1 really I think in these situations it's like time that tells because this is the funny thing is like bad boundaries. I think they just they don't have longevity. Like they start to look ridiculous after a certain amount of time. So like I like there's somebody in my life that I know who had some drama around the holidays with with their parents. And you know, it was it was a fight. It was like a argument with with their mother and and it Got a little bit dramatic and a little bit heated, or whatever, but this person is, you know, an avid consumer of Instagram life advice and so they decided to cut off their mother Speaker 3 and Speaker 1 basically not talk to him anymore. And it was funny because at the time this person, like, felt very empowered and they were like, I'm sick of it. I'm not gonna stand for this anymore, I deserve respect and I I don't have to listen to these things and blah blah blah. It's my boundary. And here's my boundary. I'm never talking to her again and It as the months went on, it just started to feel a little bit silly and and and and and then about a year later by like, you know, after the next holiday season from the outside, it just looked absolutely ridiculous. And I think it's everybody involved. Just kind of reached the point where, like this is absurd like, why are we doing this right? And, and then sure enough they started talking to their mother again and everything's fine. And I think this gets into actually, like, probably the most important Point around this, which is that effective boundaries, Are designed to protect your values. They're not designed to protect your feelings. I think most people who don't know what they're doing with boundaries. They set boundaries to protect their feelings. They're like you made me feel bad, Speaker 2 not talking to you. That's the reactivity, right? Yeah, Speaker 1 it's like, that's not what you're trying to protect here. In fact, if you're trying to protect your feelings, you're actually just allowing yourself to indulge more into the feeling brain to become more impulsive to become more desired driven, right? You're not living up to your higher self. So it's not about feelings, it's about the values. And again, in the values, episode, one of the things we talked about constantly is that the one of the ways that, you know what your values are is, you know, what you're willing to suffer for, right? Like, if I value my kids, it means that I'm willing to suffer for that. That's how I know that I value them. If I said I value my kids, but, like, I spent no time with them. I had like a fleet of A dozen nannies and I refused to get up in the middle of the night. Would you say that I actually value my kids know, I'd be a fucking selfish deadbeat dad, you know, so it's you see this everywhere and and it's ultimately The way, you know that you actually value care about something, is that you're willing to sacrifice for it. And If you're not willing to sacrifice for it, then you're not really protecting a value. You're protecting Indulgence. This is where it gets crucially important with relationships. This is where you get that paradoxical effect, where the more you're willing to fight about something, the less likely you are to fight about it. Because people see that you really fucking care and they're like, oh, okay, don't mess with Drew about that thing their Stakes. Yes, there's Stakes involved and it's just people know it. And like, I don't want to get in the geopolitics, but there's probably some analogy here of like the willingness to go to war Speaker 2 is what prevents War. I like that framing the that their boundaries are protect your values, not your feelings. The example I brought up earlier that happened to me recently. Initially I wanted it was very reactive like if somebody the way they treated me that somebody said something, there was like they got upset cursed at me. I didn't like that, it felt bad and I wanted to react and I did to some extent. And when I first came to them, I was like, Hey, that makes me feel this way. Blah, blah, blah blah. And they were kind of, they were pushing back a little bit. Yeah, on me and they're like, it's not about your feelings here, you know. Speaker 1 Yeah. And Speaker 2 I was like, fuck you. Yes, it is. More feelings are hurt. And then it took us some time. Okay? Let me get away from this and what it came down to. Was I value this fret. This, this relationship. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 more than I value my feelings right now. And so can we talk about that? Yeah, that's what opened up that this, this whole situation that you're talking about is like, I'm gonna fight over that. Yeah, I'll fight over that. Not about my, my feelings, which come and go and all of that, Speaker 1 it's funny. The feelings thing, I think in relationships, the feelings thing is, Funny because it's not about the feelings itself. Translating Values into Boundaries It's they're like a proxy for respect. Yes. Yeah, Speaker 3 right. Speaker 2 So yeah. So I came to yeah. Speaker 1 It's one of those things. It reminds me of the line from The Big Lebowski it's like you're not wrong, Walter you're just an asshole. Like Speaker 2 yeah. Speaker 3 Like Speaker 1 it's I run into that quite a bit. You know, in my marriage where it's it's like in both my wife and I do it to each other where it's like we'll be right. But we're just kind of being a dick about it and the issue isn't like it's like, okay, you're right. Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 should take out the trash but like, Speaker 3 Can Speaker 2 you just say, please? Write Speaker 3 like you. Speaker 2 That's nice nicely. You Speaker 1 know, I'm happy to do it but like just ask nicely you know, and it's the language is a signal for a respect of each other's values. There's a lot of subtlety on the relationship side of this. I mean there's subtlety too was setting boundaries for yourself but like all in all, I think it's way more straightforward than Navigating boundaries with other people, you know, and I think there's a reason why probably two thirds of this episode is gonna be about relationship related boundaries just because there is so much. Nuance and detail and like different factors that go into it. Obviously, this point, ties into like, you know, my main point in the subtle or not giving a fuk, which is that like, It's easy to want the benefit of something, but like what are you willing to suffer for what's the cost that you enjoy? Was the thing that you like, you kind of secretly the pain that you kind of secretly, like having when I give live talks, like one of the things I always say to the audience is I say, like, I believe that every person is a masochist about one thing in their life. The question is like what are you a mask against about? Like what's the pain that you kind of secretly? Yeah, Daddy hit me again. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, like that. Speaker 1 Was promotion for your live shows. Yes, I'm available for children. I mean, every meaningful Pursuit does have an inherent component of suffering. So, you know, defining, your values is a way of defining what you're willing to suffer for. I think this is also important because, you know, behavioral economics, if you look at like all the famous work of Kahneman tversky and in others you see, consistently that we have a tendency to overestimate the joy that the benefits of a sacrifice is going to bring us. And we underestimate the costs of the sacrifice itself and so our brains are just kind of naturally wired to Distort. The way we perceive any sort of cost or sacrifice, we always assume that the benefits are going to be way better than they are. So I just think that thinking in terms of like what is the pain that I'm willing to sustain? What is the pain that I actually kind of like having is a way to hack that that flaw on our own psychology. All right, so let's talk about like let's say you you know what you care about, you know what your your values are, you know, what is this actually look like? So I'm gonna run through a handful of examples of Kind of translating personal value into both internal boundary something that I defined for myself and then an external boundaries something that I Define for the world. So another useful test to kind of figure out what you value or what you care about is the death bed test. So think about yourself on your deathbed, ask yourself, like, what would you regret not doing? What would you regret doing? What did you spend too much time on? This is kind of the momentum Maury practiced from stoicism that we've talked about quite a bit. You know, if I was to die in a year like what would I change about my life? Is there anything that's been left? Unsaid. Is there anything that I have been too afraid to do that? I wish I would have done. Those are all very useful exercises and then of course there's the energy audit. What challenges energize you versus what? Challenges drain you? I think This is a question that's not discussed enough. I think we we tend to assume that every challenge just drains us and socks. But the truth is is that some challenges are very invigorating and exciting and we become more alive and we rise to the occasion. So I think it's it's useful to think in those terms. Another way that I've often framed this to myself is like what is something that sucks that Feels kind of easy to me but seems very very difficult to other people. Like I remember when I first started blogging, I was writing these super long articles and I just thought that. That's what every blogger did, you know, it was like a 3000 word article every three days and it wasn't until I went to my first blogging conference and everybody, I met was just like, dude, how do you write so much? How do you post so often? And I was like, I don't know what? It Speaker 3 never occurred to Speaker 2 me that I do it. Yeah. You just Speaker 1 like, you just put the words in your head, onto a paper and like, then you hit publish like, it never occurred to me. That that was a difficult thing. I actually had to go meet a lot of other bloggers and writers to realize that they were like just getting a single post out each week was like a huge struggle for them. And so that was a that was actually an indicator to me of like oh maybe I should be a writer. All right, so we thought through what are the things that we care about? What are the challenges that enliven us? What does this look like in terms of boundaries well without boundaries, it's just wishful thinking whereas boundaries With values actually make the values. Real, they like manifest the values in your life. The Application: Living Your Valued Boundaries Can we use that word Drew manifest? Speaker 2 I'll allow it. Speaker 1 You'll allow it. Yeah. Speaker 2 And that context. And okay. Speaker 1 No, the woo. Woo, police have not been alerted. So, a few simple examples, like let's say, I value my health, right? Internal boundary I might set for myself, is that? I don't stay out past midnight except for extremely special occasions Speaker 3 that's Speaker 1 actually a real boundary I have for myself right? Yeah I'm just I'm in bed by midnight these days unless it's like a birthday or a Speaker 2 holiday or something. Speaker 3 No Speaker 2 the flexibility in there. Yes. Speaker 3 Yes Speaker 1 the external boundary around that would be like let's say I get invited to I don't know party or a concert or whatever and it starts at 11 p.m. The boundary is I say no. Speaker 3 And Speaker 1 if I'm worried about hurting that person's feelings or upsetting somebody or whatever, just send them a quick explanation be like, hey man, I'm an early bird, I really like my sleep. I don't really party much. Would love to get together for coffee sometime, sure, shoot that text off so just to make sure that they know it's not about them. I've got this boundary in my life on my hearing to it. Another example is let's say a Top Value mine is family. Well and internal boundary that I can set is that as soon as I walk in the door and I get home. No work allowed, not on my phone at dinner. Not taking calls from my boss, not checking email in bed. It's like when I'm at home, it's family time, no exceptions. Now, an external boundary, you know to enforce that. Would be to tell my co-workers. Hey, when I go home, I don't answer emails. Or. Yeah, if you message me at 9 p.m. you're not going to get a response I wake up like period. So the first step is defining the personal value. The second step is to operationalize, the value in the form of a boundary. But defining it for yourself, but also defining it for others. And by the way, like this is a super useful exercise, like actually write these things out, like, write out these things, these definitions for yourself, like I don't work at home, or I don't stay out past 12 p.m. that way when you are put in the situation with other people, you already know what to say. You're like, Hey, I don't do this or this isn't my thing or that's not a priority for me. Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think, you know, in the, in the values episode, we talked about how values and you've mentioned this too, here values are acted out there. There is the way you behave. That's really where they come in. We didn't get into as much of like, the real. Like boundaries are kind of the, they're the verbs and the values are the nouns, right? Yeah. Speaker 1 And Speaker 2 the boundaries are the ones that give your values some weight actually. We didn't get as much into that in the values episode, but I think that's an important Point you're making right now. Speaker 1 Yes, is Speaker 2 that, you know, translating values into real life? Real life values that manifest in your life that's through the boundaries that you said. Yeah. Speaker 1 So once you've done that step three and this is like, this is almost just like a check, which is make sure that they're flexible affirm, right? Like you don't want to be a zealot, you don't want to be like I will never ever go to bed past 10 p.m. ever again. Like that's just that's insanity. And by the way, you can't control things, so, like it's probably gonna happen at some point. Anyway, you also don't want to be wishy-washy about it though. You don't want to be like, oh, I need to sleep more. I'm gonna go to bed early. Like, if you don't Define what early is, you don't Define what the cutoff is. You don't Define what the circumstances that you do it, or you don't do. It are You're not going to adhere to it, it's very similar to goals and that like you know it's like if you don't if you don't Define what your goal is or if you don't decide how you're going to measure your goal, like you're you're just not not gonna hit it. It's the same with boundaries if there's not a clear definition around it and if you know, if the exceptions are not also clearly defined Then you're just going to be back in that wishy-washy ambiguous State. It's like every episode Speaker 2 we do we find it's like there's got to be a balance. Yeah. And I used to think that was a really kind of like a cop-out answer for a lot of things, but if you think about it, finding that balance is actually really, really hard. Yeah, Speaker 1 that's Speaker 2 like actually the most difficult thing taking it to an extreme having very poorest boundaries is easy. Having very rigid, boundaries is very easy finding that balance where you do have that situational flexibility. That's actually really hard. It Speaker 1 is Speaker 2 and so there's like there's a practice to it that you have to kind of engage in over and over again. That I think it only comes with practice, Speaker 1 there's a self-correction. Yeah. That, you know, and it's like you're probably gonna miss the mark the first time you Speaker 2 try it and Speaker 1 then, you know, you can realize like, oh I was really too rigid or like oh I didn't I need to tighten things up. I don't I can't really be trusted in these situations is so it's, it does come back to the Aristotle in Golden Speaker 2 me, right? Speaker 1 Like you never hit the perfect. Balance. You're just always adjusting and readjusting and readjusting right. Speaker 2 Right. Yes. I just want to like it's not it's not actually a cop-out answer. We're like oh you just need to find balance. I mean people use it as a cop out a lot of times but it's like okay what does that actually look like? Yeah, Speaker 1 that's the hard part. It's probably a useful reminder as well at this point too. That like Boundaries are super important. They are they matter a lot but they're not gospel. Like this should is not being chiseled into stone tablets and being brought down from the Speaker 3 mountain right Speaker 1 by God. Like this is stuff. It's you you're creating it for yourself like you're human personal? Speaker 2 Yeah, Speaker 1 it's very personal and all. So the boundaries that you set today may not be appropriate for you, two or three years from now, right? Like your life's gonna change. Your values are going to change your situations. Going to change, your relationships are going to change. So, again, there's just like a constant adjustment that has to be made, otherwise, you end up becoming too rigid. Right? So, just round. I'm just gonna round this at this section out with a few more examples. You know. Again, the the value is the why And the boundaries, the how, right? So, you know, in my relationships, I value authenticity authenticity, is the why behind my relationships? CHAPTER 4: Why We Fail to Set and Maintain Boundaries You know, my friendships and my, my good family, like the people I make time for. It's why do I make time time for him? Because I feel very they feel very authentic. It feels very like the connection is very honest and pure How is the boundary right? Which is I decide for myself, first that I'm going to be authentic in my relationships. I'm not going to hide who I am. I'm not going to be pretend to be somebody. I'm not I'm not going to people, please? Or play Kate. If somebody doesn't like me that I'm just gonna allow that to happen. And then of course the practice is holding to that boundary, right? So if I'm out with a friend and I find out that he's kind of been bullshiting, me or lied to me about something. I don't let it go. I don't I don't pretend it didn't happen, you know I say like what the fuck dude like Why do you say that you know and and hash it out with them? Another example, let's say in work, I value Excellence over volume of output. Developmental Origins I would operationalize that internally by saying My value is that I take on fewer projects so I can do them extremely well. That means that I don't take on any projects that. I think it's gonna sacrifice the quality of my work. And then in practice externally, that means being able to look co-workers or my boss in the face and be like, hey I don't have the bandwidth for that, you know, unless You want me to compromise on something and finally, in personal development, let's say I have a value of being open to try anything, right? I said a boundary Within Myself of like not judging or criticizing something in less, I've like giving it a fair shake or giving it a fair try. And then externally, that means that if somebody is talking to me about some whacked out Spirit Crystal or, you know, Yoga Retreat, that involves a bunch of like naked. Gurus humping me. I don't necessarily discount it at first glance, like I withhold my skepticism at sign of maturity. How far? Yeah, Speaker 2 look at you Speaker 1 how far I've come so ultimately, I mean, this is kind of the philosophical encyclical. Underpinning of boundaries. This is why they matter so much. This is how they function, in the depths of our minds. You know, they really are values manifested through our actions and You know, as you and I like we bang the values drum. Every fucking chance we get Speaker 2 first episode for a reason. Yes foundational. Speaker 1 Exactly. So it's in that sense boundaries are also foundational. Like it's you can spend all the time in the world staring at your navel figuring out what you care about or what matters to you. But if you're not actually out there living it and you're not enforcing those values in your own life then like what the fuck does it Speaker 2 matter. We've talked a little bit about you know what boundaries are where they come from? Why they're so important? Yeah Speaker 1 we've Speaker 2 mentioned. Some of the difficulties tube and I want to kind of want to get into the nitty-gritty of like why we so often fail to set and kind of maintain these boundaries people think it's like oh it's you you're a weakness or you have no self-discipline and maybe that's part of it. Sure I'm a coward or you're a coward. Yes. Maybe that's it and sure. Maybe those are like surface level explanations for it. But actually, it's, when I dug into this. It's a little bit deeper than that. So There are really kind of I found three areas anyway, that kind of explains some of this. There's developmental reasons, right? For a lack of boundaries there are personality in an individual differences that we have. So we'll talk about some of the personality factors and then there's just like, emotion regulation and emotional skills that all factor into this. I'm going to go through each one of those. Okay, let's start with the developmental stuff. Now if you think about it the first boundary you ever had wasn't really like a rule based boundary. It was a relationship. I was probably with your caregiver set you had and for a lot of people that didn't really go so well, right? Speaker 3 And Speaker 2 then you carry that forward into your adult life. Yeah. Speaker 3 So Speaker 2 Here's this idea in developmental psychology, it's called developmental Fusion, okay? So when you're really young like zero to maybe one and a half two years old somewhere in there, you really don't have an identity. You've already mentioned, this actually, you really don't have an identity separate from your parents or your caregivers whatever's going on the people around you, you're just kind of this. Well you have no abstract sense of self know, you're just theory of pure sensation. Yeah, you're just pure Consciousness basically right at that point. Speaker 3 That's Speaker 2 called developmental Fusion, it's very normal. It's, that's how we all start out, but at a certain point you have to start doing what they call individuation. Okay, there was this a famous psychologist, back in the 70s Margaret Mahler and she came up with this idea of individuation, and this is where you like the terrible twos. Come around, you know, you know, any parents have a two or three year old, they're starting to assert their independence. They find out how to say, no and what it means in the power of Speaker 1 no, right. Speaker 3 You Speaker 2 start to realize, like, Oh, I'm a separate being a separate entity from all the way other. Things around me. I have feelings that are my own and not everybody else's experience in that same thing. At the same time as I am, I have desires and opinions that are outside of everybody else's as well. There's there's starts to be a sense of Independence and individuation during that period. That's very normal too. However, if that gets disrupted, then you don't go through that full individuation process, Speaker 3 and Speaker 2 you don't develop a sense of self that's separate from others. You don't develop that first boundary, Speaker 3 right, right? Speaker 2 And you can carry that all the way that, that will show up later in your life as well. Donald when it caught back in the in the 60s and 70s, he called this the Good Enough mother and say, the good enough caregiver, right? It's this is a secure caregiver who they let there's enough autonomy. They give them autonomy. They give the child enough to me. But at the same time they put those constraints around that time again that kind of balance that we find. Okay, healthy care. Giving really isn't about like rescuing the child. It's from every discomfort. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 it's really about teaching them that they can survive those discomforts and that's where individuation starts, its kind of like, okay something bad happens. You're feeling this but not everybody else is feeling it and you have Speaker 1 to you have to deal with it. Can I say something? This is this is a connection. I just made right now. Listen to you. Talk. Coming back to that question. Like what are you willing to suffer for? You need to suffer from things to know what's worth suffering. That's Speaker 2 true. Yeah, Speaker 3 like you can't Speaker 1 Figure out what you value in life, until you've suffered a certain amount of hardship, or pain or struggle. And so, if you have parents that are constantly protecting you from all hardship and struggle, then, you know, value formation happens in the first place, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 1 No identity formation happens in the first place. I just made that connection. Yeah, yeah. No, that's absolutely true. Just being able to Speaker 2 face and handle those types of like tough situations when you're younger and you carry that skill on with you, that's a huge part of individuation. Yeah, you're talking about and so it's a huge part of like, establishing yourself and then you're saying, yes, I can deal with this and I choose to deal with this too. So that's a big part of it, individuation, for sure. Another area though that came up with this is you've heard a scheme of therapy? Yeah, yes. So scheme of therapy, it was originally developed by Jeffrey Young. I think there's Jeffrey Young back in the 60s, 70s. And there's been a lot of work done since then and they found that like childhood traumas and unmet emotional needs during that critical period during those early years like that that can lead to what they call early maladaptive. Schemas EMS is what they call not to get too jargony here. Schemas are kind of like their mind maps kind of or maps of the world maps of life that you have and you develop these from an early age, how to interact with other people, how to interact with the world, that's a schema. Okay. If you go through some sort of childhood trauma, or even Speaker 3 just Speaker 2 consistently, don't get your needs met during those early critical periods. When you're very, very dependent on your caregivers, then you can develop some of these more maladaptive. Speaker 3 So Speaker 1 basically, Speaker 2 like inaccurate Speaker 3 schemas and Speaker 2 accuracy was right now, they serve an Adaptive function, you know, it's called maladaptive, they served adaptive function early on but later on as you get older. So an example that would be like I don't say somebody grew up in a dramatic Speaker 1 household and they grow up believing that everybody is threatening. Right, every person is threatening, you have to protect yourself at all times, like that, that would be a maladaptive Speaker 2 schema, right? And then you would probably develop very rigid, boundaries around that, keeping people at arm's length, putting up walls, not letting people in not accepting help. Speaker 1 Yep. Speaker 2 The other side is, if you have like a helicopter parents or somebody, who's always taking care of everything for you, then you, then you you come up with very porous boundaries and probably you project that on other people, you start wanting to just help them all the time, and forget your own values and Speaker 1 boundaries, and all of that or you become Eric Cartman who believes you're entitled to everything. Speaker 2 That is Cartman's mow. It is. Speaker 1 I mean, it's funny when you're just driving a helicopter gives you everything. Yeah. Immediately thought a Cartman. Yeah, he's a fucking demon because He just he's like, boiled. He's the most spoiled entitled role little prick. And, but, I mean, it's funny because that, that narcissism is also a lack of boundaries, it's all so a weak ego, right? It's like believing that everything is yours, it should be yours, you deserve everything. You're entitled to everything that is a lack of boundaries, right? Right. All of this, I kind Speaker 2 of points in the direction though of like developing your attachment system which just comes up a lot and in our episodes too. But you attachment just real briefly you can have a secure attachment or an insecure attachment securely attached people. They navigate relationships. Well that boundaries for them are like threatening. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 And nor are they nor are they completely not negotiable to like now this is a boundary but let me like we can negotiate this right? Yeah. Speaker 1 Sorry, I just got really excited. I was like thinking about attachment Theory through the lens of boundaries. It's wild. Speaker 2 It is like, you know, there's so many lenses. You can play through like an anxious attachment person is like somebody who like Speaker 1 has extremely porous boundaries and then avoidant is probably somebody who has too rigid of boundaries. Speaker 3 Absolutely. Speaker 2 You were just want to do the rest of this section. I'm sorry Drew. I know. That's exactly where I was going. I'm getting nerd. Excited know, maybe I'm just too predictable. I don't know. Speaker 1 maybe we've been working together, just does though it Speaker 2 It all kind of leads to that, though you through all of this through the early unmet needs that you have or even traumas that you have, the schemas that you develop from that, the parenting style, you are subjected to it leads up to this attachment style, that and that has a huge influence on the way you set and maintain your boundaries. So as a cure person again, they're going to see boundaries as a useful tool. They don't see them as threatening, they don't use them to threaten other people, either, they don't use them as a wall to keep people out. They don't, they don't use them as, you know, carrots and sticks to get people to come closer to them or not. Whereas insecure attachments, if you're anxious, like you said, you're going to have more porous boundaries. If you're more often, you're probably going to be more rigid in your boundaries. Yeah. So that's kind of the, that's a real quick survey of the developmental side of how, you know, if you are a person who has issues with boundaries, maybe take a look at some of the take a look at some of that therapies. Good for this, kind of Stuff too. Because a lot of times you don't realize what you went through and how it is. Now, affecting the way you set up boundaries in your life or just relate navigate relationships in general, too. Yeah, Speaker 3 we're Speaker 1 gonna get to this a little bit later when we talk a bit more about romantic relationships but you know, boundaries is one of those things that it's It's kind of there's like a social contagion of it. Like the best way to learn boundaries is to be around somebody who has a good boundaries and feel what it feels like to be friends with somebody with good boundaries or be in a be like a partner of somebody with good boundaries like it. It's not that it rubs off on you but like you by experiencing what a good boundary feels like you start to get a sense of like oh this is how I should be behaving and I think just on a very practical, like obvious level, if you have parents who are terrible boundaries, you're never gonna learn that, right? Personality and Individual Differences Just just because you're never going to experience it with them. They're gonna constantly be you know, holding you responsible for their feelings and intermingling in your life and messing with things and messing themselves with different things that you're doing. And so like if that's where you come from, you're just gonna Speaker 2 assume that that's that's normal and everybody should behave. That way a Nuance I would put on that is yes, being around healthy boundaries is the best way to learn them and to exercise I'm sure I think at first though those first few times you are like say you are I'll give you a very personal example. Okay, Speaker 1 let's go Speaker 2 yeah. So for the longest time I like I've just my avoidance, I was avoidantly attached. Put up the walls, keep people out arms length, like all of that. Then when I got into some relationships that were more secure, I was like well this is what it felt weird. It felt weird because it was I was in the class usually in the classic kind of like I was the avoidant with an anxious Speaker 3 the Speaker 2 chassis and Chaser you know. And then when I got into with if I wasn't a relationship with somebody who was more secure, it was like oh what like the she like me or is this boring? Yeah you know so I think you really got to watch out a little bit for that. The self-awareness has to kick in at some point being like, Oh, okay, this is, it's okay. That there's not some weird toxic tiny. Yeah, going on, right? Yeah. Speaker 1 So Speaker 2 again, yes, it is. That's the best way to learn boundaries and secure attachment. And all of that is the b in one of those relationships with someone, or friendship, or whatever it is, you do, you gotta like have the self-awareness though didn't know that. Yeah. Speaker 3 When Speaker 2 you're, when you're going down the wrong side of it, Speaker 1 it's funny. I I've personally found as somebody who's like very insecure when he was younger When I think back to when I was insecure like somebody saying no to me felt like death, right? Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 It just it was brutal like it's super personally I would like ruminate for days like well what's wrong with me? Why isn't what isn't she want to hang out with me? As I've gotten older and gotten more secure. Now, when I meet people who are really good at saying, no, like I love them. Like if I if I if I'm hanging out with a new person or a new friend and they're able to like very gracefully decline things or reject people for things or reject me, like say no to me for certain things. I'm just like this person's awesome. Yeah, I want to be friends with this person like it's just such a rare skill and in an admirable it's it's a green flag. Yeah essentially 100%. I have Speaker 2 I have a real good friend of mine who's like that who's just very much like well tell, you know. Yeah. And not apologize. You know, not be like not dance around it and not make you feel bad and not make you feel bad about it. He's like, no, I'm not doing this. And this is why, and I'm good with it. Yeah. And at first, I was a little bit like, oh, you know what, I want to hang out, you don't want to. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 you know, any of that. And now I just get and I really respect him for him because then when he does want to come and join, you Speaker 1 know, it's real, you Speaker 2 know, it's Speaker 3 real Speaker 2 yeah another benefit about boundaries. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that's kind of, that's the developmental side. The next area I want to get into is just like personality Traits. Right. There's individual differences. Obviously within personality. If you take like the big five, let's say the Big Five personality traits, somebody who's highly agreeable tends to have more porous boundaries, Speaker 3 right? They Speaker 2 tend to want to please other people more. Go with the flow. Not really assert themselves. This isn't. I mean, that's not I feel like whenever I bring up agreeableness, like, especially I think in like the culture in the United States or whatever seems like you're a big pushover, but it's just people who like they're more. They want to be more communal. They're more compassionate and they want other people to enjoy themselves around them too. And so don't like, don't think I'm trashing you if you just because you're agreeable but it it can very quickly go. And if you're high in agreeableness it can very quickly go down to like some porous boundaries or non-existent boundaries whatsoever. You contrast that with like highly conscientious people. If you're highly conscientious and you're low in agreeable minutes, even maybe disagreeable you probably gonna have very, very rigid boundaries just to maintain that structure in your life because conscience people, they, they find a lot of control and structure and organization just to define a couple terms for people listening who aren't familiar Speaker 1 with the big five. You know, agreeableness is generally people who are prone the seek out positive feelings, in their relationships, so they they like Good Vibes. They like good energy. They like to make People happy. They like to feel good all the time and coincidentally a person extremely high in agreeableness, is probably somebody who's going to tiptoe around. Something uncomfortable not want to bring up a potential conflict, you know, want to say anything controversial and so on. Conscientiousness is generally people who like things to be very organized rigid structured and like well-maintained. So I have extremely high conscientious person would make a great tax accountant. They keep their space is super tidy and clean. They love organization, they love order, they love systems. So yeah, what you're describing is somebody very high in conscientiousness which means basically, they have extremely high standards right for the environment around them and other people around them. And then low agreeableness, which means that they are will totally call you out if you are pissing them off. Yeah, those people can have very rigid boundaries, Speaker 2 right. And then let's get into like another dimension neurotic individual. So neurotic The Mention Of neuroses is your tendency towards negative emotion. Yeah Speaker 1 right. Speaker 2 So if you're And neuroticism, you tend to like have bigger negative emotions. You, you they're more, they're more intense for you generally speaking. Whereas, if you're low in neuroticism, you have more towards maybe positive affect but at least not negative effect, right? Okay. Neurotic people actually can be have very rigid boundaries as well, because there again they're trying to protect them protect themselves, right? Usually what it is. There's a it's a survival mechanism almost for them. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay. Extroversion introversion. So, if you're extroverted more so than introverted extroverted, people tend to have a little bit more porous, boundaries little looser, surprise me. Yeah, because that they want to connect with people. That's how they get. A lot of, they get a lot of satisfaction out of the relationships in their lives and, and with connecting people there and energized by it. Even. Yeah. And so they might go out of their way and kind of loosen up their boundaries or for them completely. If it means that they get a connect with someone or you know, the drugs example, you were saying too, like people people. Extroverted people who are high in openness, which is the next one tend to do a lot more drugs. You know, judgment here. Yeah, it's just that's a fact, right? Which brings me to openness. So openness to new experience, that's another dimension of the big five. If you're open to new experience you're open to experience. Emotional Regulation and Mental Health Yes. Right. You you like novelty you're high in. This you're all open. Yes for sure. And those they tend to have Flexible more exploratory boundaries which has a more porous as well. And so from the outside, if you're not as high in that and sometimes look like it can, sometimes look like a little bit of a Lack of compass Speaker 3 to Speaker 2 other people which I'm, there's maybe a kernel of Truth to that. Yeah, I think so. I Speaker 1 mean have been extremely high in openness, just means that you're able to you're curious about a lot of things and you're open to a lot of different perspectives and and so I I can, this is something I run into my own relationships where I think it's very easy for me to see the other person's perspective. And so I kind of become very malleable, right? You change your mind, yeah. Like oh well, that's how you feel. Okay. Yeah, we'll do it your way and I think at a certain point that can start to backfire if you're not careful, if you're if you're overly suggestible and that if Speaker 2 you're if you're open in highly suggestible. Yeah, then yeah, yeah. You gonna have a problem. Defining boundaries, because you're open to so many things you're like, oh let's let's explore this, right. Speaker 1 It comes back to the content thing of like, you know, if there's no self-limitation, then there's no identity, there's no Speaker 2 right, or right, right, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 Now, you know, you can, there are obviously, there's all sorts of configurations of personalities. You can be high in conscientiousness and high in agreeableness which I feel like I am and so there's probably some mitigating factors there. I'm somewhere in the middle on openness so Speaker 1 yeah, I Speaker 2 don't know how that really goes for me. Neuroticism. I'm pretty neurotic, I would say. Yeah, I have periods right here, very neurotic. Yeah, I'm Speaker 1 off the charts. In openness and like super, super low neuroticism. Yeah, which means that I'm like pretty much happy in every situation which is Speaker 2 Problematic. Yeah, I can't be seriously. It can be. Speaker 1 Yeah, like it's funny because my wife is actually very she's extremely high conscientiousness and and probably decently high in neuroticism and It's like, honestly, she protects me from myself. Like, I I could live in a sleeping bag and under an underpass Speaker 2 and probably, like be okay. And Speaker 1 that's unreasonable. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 2 now, for sure. So we should do an episode on personality sometimes I think we should. Yeah, it's fascinating really. It's a whole fascinating field, but Speaker 3 it. Yeah, it Speaker 1 is. And it's, it is. I think most people are surprised to hear that. It is the most reliable and replicated. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Segment of psychology. Speaker 3 There's Speaker 2 a few people who are like I don't know about it but it's very small minority. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah you can replicate it over and over. It's very very applicable to. It's very, very practical, very Speaker 1 predictive, Speaker 2 right, right. If you know, like your personality types, you can plan a lot of your, your life around it, even too. It's yeah, it's actually Speaker 1 ships, your careers. Yeah for sure. Speaker 2 And in this case your boundaries you too. Yeah. Right. Okay, so you got the developmental side, you have the personality slash individual differences side, all of these kind of overlap to, by the way, obviously the next one is kind of like the emotion regulation mental health, which is obviously influenced a lot by development and a lot by personality, as well Neuroscience, they've found fmri Studies have found that Your brain actually distinguishes between what they call empathetic concern and personal distress. Okay? What happens with people who seem to have these more porous boundaries is those kind of get switched not switch but there's a lot of crosstalk or each. One of them is kind of firing mostly like, kind of 50/50. There's not a whole lot of distinguishing, neural activity between those two regions when you find this and this kind of gets into like the emotional contagion type stuff. Speaker 1 Yeah, you Speaker 2 might be very susceptible to others the other emotions around you because you're highly empathetic person, right. Which, you know, there's I'm going to say there's nothing wrong with that because there can be well, I'm gonna get to is there can be something wrong with that, but Just to start out like if you're if you are susceptible to that emotional contagion around you that that almost by definition. You don't have very healthy or strong boundaries Speaker 3 right Speaker 1 around any of that. This comes back. This is like a golden mean thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Once again you don't want to Be completely indifferent to people's emotions around you, because then you're just a psychopath. But at the same time, you don't want your entire well-being, dictated by the emotions of the people around you because then Speaker 3 you're just Speaker 1 purely codependent and have no Identity or Center of yourself. So it's like being influenced by others. But not being dictated by others, right? Is the formula Speaker 3 and Speaker 2 the way some people formulate that is rather than emphasizing empathy. So much is to emphasize compassion more. Yes, because compassion is, is more of a. Yes, I see your, your plight, your pain, whatever. But I can also there's an individuation there, right? There's a that's yours, and this is mine. And yes, I can have compassion for that but I'm not completely absorbing your all of your emotions in that moment and letting you hijack my my emotional system my empathy that way. Yeah. Speaker 1 And Speaker 2 so that's that's one kind of school of thought is that actually compassion is way way more useful in these types. Situations. Speaker 1 Yeah, and Speaker 2 you can still set boundaries when you have compassion for someone, Speaker 3 right, right Speaker 1 there. There's a for listeners. There's a great book about this cult against the empathy, by Paul Bloom. Yeah? From Yale University? Yeah. Super, fascinating book. Very convincing argument makes this distinction with a lot of research. And it's it's it's it's a very I found a convincing. Empathy is one of those emotions. Speaker 2 Maybe we mentioned this in the emotions episode of empathy is one of those emotions that doesn't scale very well. Yeah, it's good on a one-on-one situation to a certain degree. I was still are you compassion even in that situation is better but it doesn't scale very well because now you have the emotion of you know we see we see this in like yeah this group or that group or yes Communications to kind of hijack your empathy very easily. Speaker 1 Yes. So Speaker 3 yeah Speaker 1 the tribalism and that's stuff Speaker 2 right. Speaker 3 So Speaker 2 you have like that that's emotional contagion and whether or not you're able to to navigate that well Convert it to compassion. Sure. The other one though is, is what I'm calling the stress, boundary trap. Okay, so stress can kind of make us almost desperate for boundaries. Up and then it kind of steals the energy. We need to hold them in a way that the stress is a boundary trap is why overmeld can spread? For example, when people feel so you're overwhelmed at work, like you're you don't have a very good work-life balance, you Speaker 1 have no idea what that's like, You right? Speaker 2 You want to keep those worlds, separate say, you want to keep your work life and your home life separate, okay? Which a lot of people do, Speaker 1 okay. Speaker 2 And I don't think there's anything wrong with that the stress Though can make that that separation almost impossible because in order for you like you're having stress at work and in order for you to not have stress at work you bring it home with you. You try to mitigate it that way you try to fix the stress and fix the work stress at home that creates more stress at home, right? You get in this vicious cycle, right? It creates this. This kind of fresh trading. Very frustrating cycle. Where The more stress you are, like the wider, the Gap becomes between the boundaries you want in the boundaries that you have Speaker 1 actually become. This makes a lot of sense because it's, you know, it coming back to the thinking, brain, feeling brave, you know, boundaries are the self-definition aspect of boundaries is dictated by the thinking brain. And, you know, the the prefrontal cortex which is the thinking brain is just so energy intensive. Like there's, there's just tons of studies and data and we know very well that the more tired, you are the more stressed, you are the more exhausted. You are like, it's the worst, you're executive functioning the worst. You're you're thinking brain is at dictating to the to your feeling brain, like what should be done and when it should be done. So it makes sense that boundaries would fall under that umbrella of things that you just start failing to do when you're stressed or exhausted. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 I think they'll dissolve under stress a lot of times too. And you usually it's your defaulting again, finding the balance. Yeah. Speaker 3 Is Speaker 2 what the hardest part is? And so you default to the easy? Speaker 1 Yes, Speaker 2 whichever is easiest, which is usually every poorest or a very Rigid boundary. Speaker 1 Oh well that okay that last part's interesting because I was just thinking about as someone who has been working way too much the last few months is like regularly coming home exhausted. Speaker 2 Yeah I think about that for a second and Speaker 1 letting boundary like kind of failing at some boundaries. You know I was just thinking about that but it's interesting what you said there because in my case What I find is that, you know, I come home, I'm exhausted, I'm tired. I just start letting stuff go. I'm just like, you know. Deal with it tomorrow or like I'll tell her tomorrow or you know, like I don't want to fight right now. So fuck it, who cares? You know and it's it's in that includes again. A lot of the the boundaries and expectations I set for myself like I I find it harder to follow through on a lot of the behaviors and expectations that I I hold myself too and Speaker 2 so okay I'm having I have this problem too. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay. So Speaker 3 do Speaker 2 you set a boundary around that then and say pass a certain time? I have no boundaries and I just let it all go. Speaker 3 Is Speaker 2 that a boundary? Is that a container? You can create I guess for those for like, a stress Outlet? I guess or I Speaker 1 mean honestly at this point in my life and my career I just start to I've I think I've developed a lot more awareness around this and I think these days I'm much more sensitive to it and aware of it. And I guess the meta boundary of set for myself is that if I ever reach the point where I'm too stressed or overwhelmed to maintain, The boundaries throughout my life, then you have to take the foot off the gas okay? You gotta take a day off, you got to take an afternoon off, you gotta sleep in a couple days. It's and I mean I've actually coincidentally I've actually been doing that the last few weeks. It's like Speaker 2 yeah Speaker 1 I've been basically behind on work for two or three weeks straight now and a lot of that is just because I hit a point last month where I was like, okay. If I keep going at this pace, I'm gonna be a rack and by the end of the year. So, Let's just fall behind. Yeah, Speaker 2 and Speaker 1 take the Saturday off, hang out with the wife on Friday night, maybe sleep in and play some video games instead of working, you know, before I come to the studio, giving myself that time, just to know. Just just because, at this point, I've burnt myself out enough times to Speaker 3 know Speaker 1 like like this is the longevity play. Okay? It's better to be inefficient in the short term and alive in the long term that is to, you know, Just be maximally efficient in the short run. Okay. So you are you, you're protecting your boundaries with another boundary. Speaker 2 Almost, Speaker 1 yes. So, Speaker 2 some of those boundaries would be like Health stuff. I'm imagining. Yeah. Um, time with your wife. Yep, that kind of stuff. Speaker 1 Those are like, the first two things. The first show. Yeah. And sleep is another Speaker 2 one. Okay, yeah. Yeah. And all about that. I yeah that's one area I could do better on boundaries is sleeping Health stuff for sure because mine that's the usually first thing to go for me too. This is the health stuff. So yeah, Speaker 1 when I'm in a mode like this, where I'm like, okay, I'm working like 60, 70 hours a week, I I hold myself to the Baseline standard so it's like, okay, I know I'm not gonna Get stronger this year. I know I'm not gonna get faster or like run further or whatever, but if I can just maintain my current Fitness and my current level of Health, That's a win. Okay, alright, if I can just not let things go. I've won. Speaker 2 Okay. Speaker 1 And I kind of see that. I kind of treat every every area of my life, you know, it's like, if I, if I just don't lose sleep, I've won. I don't need to be like the most rested and recovered person on the planet. But as long as I'm not, You know, waking up exhausted every morning like that's a win. Speaker 2 Once again, I'll point out the flexibility in that that's gonna be a recurring theme based on a situation. This is what people think that boundaries are like these rigid like, oh I got these boundaries and I got these strong healthy boundaries and they don't move and I'm gonna move it will force. No, not at all. There's actually a very adaptive and flexible nature to healthy boundaries that you have. And in your case like this is like okay I have this Baseline and usually I want to hit this. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 But I'm okay with this kind of zooming out for a second. Yeah, Speaker 1 I mean at this point, you know, we did we did an episode on a motion and I guess kind of one of the surprise conclusions in that episode was possibly the biggest factor for emotional regulation and emotional stability is flexibility. Yeah. Speaker 3 Is Speaker 1 it adaptability? Similarly, we did an episode on resilience. Biggest finding there is that actually resilience is not about being hardcore immovable, uncompromising. It's the opposite resilience is actually about like becoming an incredibly flexible adaptable. Person under a lot of different contexts and a lot of different dresses. and it's funny that we're kind of finding the same thing here that it's like, Having really solid boundaries and like by the nature of solid boundaries. I would say the two things that are Downstream of really good. Strong boundaries is a strong relationships and strong self-discipline. We come back to this flexibility adaptability like it just understanding yourself understanding the context understanding like, okay, when is it worth Letting this go and because I'll do that, too. Like I'll be like, let's say there's a book launch like that month of the book launch, everything's out the way. Sure, everything is out like, it's just in and I know for that period of time, like, I'll even Speaker 3 to Speaker 1 the point where I even have a date on my calendar. It's like okay, the tour ends on the 19th on the 20th, I'm becoming a normal person again. My wife and I even talked about it in those terms like like when I have conversations with her about commitments or like crazy busy periods in my career, I'll give her a date. I'll be like, I'll be a normal person again on the 23rd and like and that sets, her expectation, right? Yeah. Which is about boundary, right? Yeah. So it's like okay and reduces conflict in your relationship. Speaker 2 Exactly. All the things we've already talked about Speaker 1 exactly. Because now it's like if we if I'm being a dick on the 21st like she's not gonna hold it against me. She's like okay, he's under a lot of stress. He's doing the book tour but like When I'm a normal person again like the old expectations come back, right? Spoiler alert. But that's one of the biggest things I took away Speaker 2 from this was just that the degree to which you can be flexible in your boundaries. It's kind of like that Carl Sagan, quote, you know, be open-minded, but not so open-minded your brains fall out like have strong boundaries but not so strong that you you can't move, you know, basically, you put yourself in a box or don't have any boundaries at all. Yeah, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 Balance is hard Speaker 1 at what point are we just gonna change the name of this podcast to Aristotle was right? Like that. You could summarize like yeah, 30 hours of podcasts, you know, with those four words. That's three words. Speaker 2 Okay. So the last part of the emotional thing, I want to bring up the two, I mentioned this at the top here was the mental health aspect though? So if you do have, you know, there's clinical extremes, especially in the cluster called the cluster B. Speaker 1 Those are fun. Speaker 3 Yeah Speaker 2 yeah. So you got like bipolar borderline borderline, bipolar narcissistic, antisocial history, on all the fun personality disorders, talked about personality already like the mall Speaker 3 If? Speaker 2 I did. But these like, Some of these are almost defined by lack of boundary, you know, like a borderline is there. They have difficulty in relationships precisely because of the they almost don't even see boundaries in relationships, right? There's probably goes back to a lot of individuals Speaker 1 just to fail. Individuation, it's Speaker 2 failed, individuation, Speaker 1 which I believe a lot of borderline. I could be wrong about this. It's been a long time since I read about this, but like, I believe a lot of the cluster B stuff is like directly related to Early Childhood. CHAPTER 5: Types of Boundaries Yeah, yeah, stuff. Yeah, Speaker 2 100%. Yeah, usually goes back to yeah, you two, three, four years old, whatever. All the way up to like eight or nine. The hard thing about. A lot of these though, too, is that these are the people who don't see help, right, right. Because if you're, if you're borderline, it's everybody else is fall. It's not your fault history on kind of same thing. Narcissist the same antisocial. You just don't even give a shit. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 2 so there's that. Maybe if you have somebody like this in your life though, too. Just know that. There's just like the boundaries are not going to be there. Yeah, Speaker 1 I mean what I so I I've known of a few bipolar people and You know, it what's interesting with with a number of them is that it kind of comes and goes like they kind of. Yeah. Speaker 2 That's part of the Speaker 1 go process. Physical Boundaries Yeah. They go through episodes, right? And so it's it's almost like You know, it's almost like weathering a storm when they're in an in an episode and you just kind of almost sometimes. It makes me wonder if like, this is where, you know, like medieval people thought that people were possessed by demons, like it makes me want, like, when you start understanding cluster, B personality disorders, like it starts to make sense. You're like, it's all like this person almost becomes an entirely different person and then they come back and they're like, Pleasant loving and you know, so it's just it's super interesting. A Speaker 2 lot of that is based around boundaries because again you kind of like you build an identity based on your boundaries based on what you choose to participate in to not participate in to believe in to not believe in. So yeah. Like when they're in those episodes, say a manic episode or something like that. From a, a Bipolar person. There's just a dissolution of the boundaries around what they typically do or want to do at least and so yeah, I think that's where you get that. You get that whole other identity side of it because they're boundaries are gone they're boundaryless. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 or they have completed different boundaries around weird things too. Yeah. See that a lot too. So yeah, yes. Okay, so those those are the kind of three big areas of why we fail, sometimes to create healthy boundaries. You have your developmental, the development aspects of it, the personality individual differences, and then kind of emotion regulation, obviously. All those are a lot of overlap, and interlinking, and all of those things, but hopefully, if you're somebody who does have struggle with boundaries, maybe you guys something out, maybe you can pinpoint, I don't know, something your childhood or whatever, not to get your navel gazey. But sure there's these three big areas that might be contributing to that. Speaker 1 I think people tend to overestimate the value of knowing where A dysfunction came from, but there is value in knowing where dysfunction, Speaker 2 good point. Good point. A lot of times we stop right there. That's not where you stop. Speaker 1 Yes. Okay, Speaker 2 it is. Yeah, this was I heard this again recently, is like people when they do get a diagnosis or something like that, a lot of times it just kind of like they feel the sense of release and they relief. Speaker 1 Yeah. And Speaker 2 they think that's it, like cool, not my fault right? But hey, we're only halfway through the episode here if that. So Speaker 1 yeah, keep listening. It's yeah. Figuring out where it came from is just Speaker 3 that's Speaker 2 not Speaker 1 even half the work. That's just the start, Speaker 2 okay? So now let's get into like the different types of boundaries that we have. There's, I think a lot of us think that oh, you just have boundaries in your closer relationships and maybe work and home boundaries and that's kind of where they should be. But it's actually boundaries kind of permeate all Little Mix and crannies of our lives. Emotional Boundaries And I think the key thing we need to think about though, is that It as we're going through these. They're very, very context dependent, Speaker 1 okay? Speaker 2 Right. Boundaries aren't, there's not like a hard and fast rule on all these but it shifts a lot with the universal boundaries. There's no universities that everybody over very personal and they can change very quickly based on context based on culture based on all these different factors that we're going to get over, okay? All right, cool. So let's just Dive Right into some of these the first one and maybe maybe the most obvious and a lot of ways is like physical boundaries that we have. Right so Speaker 3 you Speaker 1 know you stay on your side of the Speaker 2 table. You stay over there. I stay over here. Don't touch me. I just but I mean like seriously like this kind of like the the most one of the most fundamental boundaries right is to be able to draw boundaries around when you can, when your personal space can be invaded. I guess this is one way to think about it or at least occupied by someone else if not full on like when you're Speaker 3 touched or Speaker 2 anything like that, right now there's this whole field called proximity that this guy Edward Hall, Speaker 1 He wrote a whole book on it. Okay. Speaker 2 And basically found his big Insight was what he calls social distance like when you're interacting with someone, how how comfortable are you at what distance? Speaker 3 Yeah Speaker 2 and how comfortable you are at that distance, like personal space, personal space when you're having a conversation or any sort of interaction with somebody. Speaker 1 Sure Speaker 2 what that relationship that you have with them? It's a closer relationship. Are you more comfortable? And it's closer that all that kind of stuff. So one of his insights was that's very culturally dependent. So like for example like in Latin America, people generally are more comfortable interacting with each other at a closer distance. Yeah, whereas like places like United States or specialty it's there's more distance. People are more comfortable at our further distance so far and you see like people get together from different cultures and this can be kind of funny sometimes. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 one example, I thought of though, for this too that I I've seen over the years, I kind of wanted to get your take on this. There's some parents and I never understood this but they're like, You go over to their house or like, maybe it's a family gathering or something like that. And they're like, go hug your uncle or go, hug, your cousin or go hug. Like something like that. I was, that was just weird. Like, I think as it you should be taught as a kid physical boundaries. Intellectual Boundaries Like that should be the first kind of boundary, you learn. It's like you have complete autonomy over when you're touched and how other people touch you and everything like that. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 I always just have you ever seen that though? Like, somebody gets upset that that? Oh, your kid didn't hug me, or something like that? Speaker 1 No, well, so I remember when I was a kid. Yeah. Because my parents used to do that. Speaker 2 Yeah. Like Speaker 1 when my grandparents, they'd be like, oh, go give your grandmother. Yes, I would be Speaker 2 like, yeah. Speaker 3 But, Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, I never really thought about it. I don't know. I think I remember like, I read it. Am I the assshole or something like that? You know, where somebody came and they were like, yes, like, one of my wife's friends was over and She's like wanted to hug from my kid. My kid didn't want to and we got in a big fight about it. I'm like, why do people? I don't get that at all. It's a foundational boundary though. Let's just put that out there. Yeah, then we have like emotional boundaries, which I think is a lot. I think the goal of a lot of therapy is getting people to see how you're letting other people's emotions, kind of invade your emotional space Speaker 1 right Speaker 2 to begin with you. You're trying to take on everybody else's emotions and cut away. You're not everybody's therapist. Yes. Right. And even if you were like even therapists have boundaries around Speaker 1 patients, exactly Speaker 2 office hours. They have all of that kind of stuff. So even if you are somebody who's very helpful and wants to help people with their emotional problems, like, you still have to draw a boundary around, right that stops and ends. We talked about the empathy versus compassion thing, too. I think that's really important to know the difference there as well. Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 I think it's interesting too because I think in a lot of cases, poor physical boundaries, compete the Gateway into poor emotional boundaries, right? So like you can have good emotional boundaries but if you're not enforcing your physical boundaries, like if you're people are friends are coming over. And living in your place without permission and using your stuff. And your family is constantly like showing up and bothering you and demanding your time or to use a therapist example, like, you know, therapists generally have a rule of like, they don't hang out with their patients outside of therapy rights, for very specific reason of like intermingling relationships. You know, if your therapist is like hanging out with you at the grocery store That can complicate the, the patient. Clinician relationship that they've built with Speaker 2 you, right? Yeah, and the therapy world. There's a small, but vocal group of people saying, oh, we shouldn't know that shouldn't be. The thing. We should be able to be friends with our clients and stuff like Speaker 1 they should totally, do you think you not understand that one at all? Should totally be the thing at any therapist, who doesn't think they should be able to be friends with their patients? Yeah. Yeah, to me, you know, it's like it's like teachers, right? Like at a good friend who was a PhD student and he He had a huge crush on one of his undergrads and she had a big crush on him. And basically, he told her he was like, look, you need to wait till I get my PhD like, Speaker 3 it's that simple. Yeah, Speaker 1 because I'm an authority in your department and like This is problematic and you know as soon as one or both of us graduates. Cool. We can date. But Speaker 2 until that moment, like, this can't happen, right? Yeah. Another one. I don't think a lot of us think about are intellectual boundaries. Okay, not every debate deserves your energy. Okay, let's just say that there's a boundary right there, but even the ones that do really do should have like a healthy respect for boundaries, Speaker 3 right? Speaker 2 I think it was John Stuart Mill who argued back in the 1850s even too that the free exchange of ideas really does require a respect for boundaries now. What does that look like? Yeah, basically just look at what's going on right now and do the that's what I would say. Yes, it's a respect for someone else's point of view. But it's like, what you could set, boundaries around, what topics am I going to discuss? And with who, okay, how you're willing to discuss them? Like what's the tone we're going to use? What kind of topics that we're going to get into or types of evidence will will accept right? How long where you're going to do this? And what context you're going to do this with people and why you're discussing it? Like what's the goal? I think that's a that's a good boundary to set. Like if I'm gonna have a debate or discussion with somebody about something we might disagree with what's actually the goal here. Am I trying to change your mind or am I just trying to understand somebody else's point of view? Time Boundaries Well, Speaker 1 I think that the golden mean framework of porous and rigid. Yeah, works really, really well with intellectual ideas, right? It's like people with porous intellectual boundaries, will probably just believe whatever the they'll be like, Joe Rogan. It's like, whoever's sitting in front of them. They just start, believing whatever. They're saying, whereas somebody with a very rigid intellectual bound, Will just double down and not be convinced about anything like they will. They're basically a ideological extremists. Like you just can't get through to them, no matter what. So the idea is to hold the line, like, don't be easily influenceable, but if you are presented with a better idea or better evidence, or a different perspective, you should be able to be flexible enough to be able to, like shift boundaries. What? What's interesting too? You see this a lot with codependent relationships. So they're generally in a codependent relationship, there's like, one person who's always needs to be saved. And then there's another person who's always doing the saving, and the person who's always doing the saving, what you see happen. A lot is they start adopting the ideas and beliefs and values of the person, they're trying to save. Let me ask you this. Have you ever had a friend who starts dating somebody and within a year like changes the way they dress changes the music. They listen to changes the the places they like to go as like suddenly developed a deep interest in like 18. Entry English literature, you know, because it's like fucking new. Girlfriend is a lit major like it. It's stuff like that and you see it quite a bit. Like people's taste will change their interests will change their political beliefs will change based on the, the Romantic based on a romantic relationship with very, poor boundaries. Yes. It's like the intellectual boundaries follow suit, they just help reinforce the dynamic, right? Like if you're in a codependent relationship, you the thing that you are deathly afraid of at all times is is conflict and and your partner being on happy. And so what's a better way to keep your partner happy than just believing all the same shit your partner believes right? Speaker 2 Yes I have seen that happened a few times. I a few in particular I'm thinking of right now and it's it's kind of wild from the outside when you see it happen. You're like what the Speaker 3 ha? Speaker 1 Yes, it's Speaker 2 going on here and and, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's, it's like an identity merging type of thing that goes on like Whereas when you have good boundaries around these is like I can I can challenge your claims and your opinions without challenging your identity. Right? Speaker 3 And Speaker 2 and not feeling and you not feeling like I am too. Yes. Same time. So that's when like you do. Have these good boundaries set up, that's what it should feel like anyway. And again I think very hard to Speaker 1 do. Yes. And again, I do think it is probably Downstream from emotional boundaries because I think part of disagreeing with somebody, you care about is being okay with this Comfort. Yeah, together. Yeah. And to be okay with this Comfort together, like you both need to have Like a strong identity and a good sense of boundaries. Definitely, Speaker 2 definitely next one. Time boundaries. I think a lot of us probably do think about this a little bit more but it's pretty obvious. If you don't prioritize your schedule, somebody else is going to do it for you, right? Like that's sick. That's gonna happen. Speaker 1 I saw I saw a facsimile of that on Twitter recently. I think Shane Parish posted it but it was like, if you don't decide what's on your calendar other people will decide for you. Yeah. Speaker 3 Right. Exactly. Exactly. Speaker 2 I, the thing is is that especially, you know, like in in the states in North America in general like busyness is just there's kind of a status attached to it. And so you were kind of almost incentivized to not have boundaries around your time and not and what if it's separating work from your home life, or whatever it is or even just at work, we'll get into that a little bit more too, but there's just like, kind of this pressure to not have boundaries around your time, and if anything, this is one of the most important boundaries, I would say because what else do you have? Digital Boundaries But time at the end of the day, right? Like, it's like, It like setting up your own schedule. This is why I like time boxing too, right? Is because it's like, literally, there's a boundary in my, in my little planner around this time. And it's a protected time and it's Speaker 3 this Speaker 2 is where I am. I, I put a battery on, I'm not doing anything but this thing for this amount of time and you'd be surprised to just how like that. Just that little mental box that I draw in my mind and literally on paper really does like reinforce a boundary around okay, not not scrolling. I'm not screwing around, I'm not taking calls, I'm not doing whatever. Yeah, Speaker 1 and I, I also feel like Poor time, boundaries are probably. Also Downstream of these other boundaries, right? Like so if you don't specially, if you don't know how to say no to your partner, yeah. Then you're gonna agree to do a bunch of things, you don't want to do. If you are afraid to disagree with your boss, then you're gonna take on a bunch of projects. You don't want to take on. If you are desperate for your friends to like you and think you're cool, you're going to like do a bunch of things that you don't really want to do. So time is feels like it's the casualty of all the other field boundaries and a lot of ways. Speaker 2 I'll get you think you are at this time boundaries I feel like I Wax and Wane a little bit. I can get a solid like few hours of a good boundary. And yeah, I feel like Speaker 1 on the one hand, I feel like this is one of the ones I'm weakest at yeah. Speaker 3 Um, Speaker 1 on the other hand, I Him doing so many things and like have so many responsibilities that I try to be a little bit. Like kind to myself. Yeah. It is hard. It is like very, very hard to to balance all the stuff that I want to do. But yeah, I do think this is I have a tendency to just, Get excited about new things. Very easily. Yeah. And so I tend to say yes to more stuff but it's funny because it's not like it's there's not it's not a desperation for people to like me or it's not this like oh I'm afraid the tell my friends know or anything. It's it's more just like it's it's that openness to experience, right? Like I just there's I want to do everything I Speaker 3 want Speaker 1 to do everything. I want to hang out with everyone. I want to try everything. I want all. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 1 Every like every opportunity that comes like, that sounds great, right? So it is. For me, it's been very, very hard to, to manage to protect my time. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah. The Paradox. There is to that like when you want to do everything you end up doing Speaker 1 nothing at certainly. Yes. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 1 I think the other Paradox of this too, is that I think time boundary issues are probably more of a luxury problem because they suggest that you already do have relationships that you care about. You already do have a career that you really care about you do have a lot of obligations and a lot of responsibilities in your life so it's weird. It's I think the more probably the more successful and the more you have going on for yourself the more time boundaries become an issue. Where is if you don't have any relationships, don't have friendships don't have a job like This is probably less pertinent, I guess. Yeah. Speaker 2 Some related to that one especially and our modern culture is digital boundaries. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 Okay again we kind of mistake constant availability for connection and what Speaker 1 are you listening Zuckerberg? It's time for your Digital Boundary Speaker 2 lesson. Okay, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Yeah, you'll be connected though. 24/7 doesn't actually make you more connected, right to people. It really makes you just more of a consumer. Speaker 1 Yes, is Speaker 2 what it does. This is one I've kind of made a little bit of a point. I used to be really good about like responding to texts, like right away and stuff like that. Speaker 3 And Speaker 2 I've made a conscious well, I don't know how conscious it was at first, at least, but at a certain point, I just stopped responding right away. I would always respond, but I would always give like a few hours or something, right? If it's in the middle of my work day and I get text messages and stuff. I I like okay not not responding an hour, I don't have the phone on me or Whatever it is. I am also I pride myself on how terrible I am at responding to emails. People should I think most people know, don't email him because he's just, he's probably not gonna get up and I can I have the luxury of doing that people don't like their jobs depend on that. A lot more than mine, dude. Probably. But like, just like random emails. Okay, sometimes and not not that I'm like trying to be snooty about her. I was protecting my time there, Speaker 1 10 or 15 years ago, I took a lot of pride in, in being the guy who responded to every email and responded to every text that was like, super reliable. And you always heard back from and yeah, now it's if it feels the opposite, it feels it. Feels like you're you're being irresponsible if you respond right thing, right? And and yeah, the Digital Boundary thing is is interesting because I think it exists on a few I mean you could almost lump the digital in the time. Yeah. Boundaries into to an attention boundary, right? It's like what are you spending your attention on. So like there's that aspect of it is is like are you just getting sucked down rabbit holes on YouTube or social media or whatever? But then there's all an aspect of it of yeah, availability like, how reachable are you because? Yeah, it's pre-internet. I guess the closest thing you could, you could relate it to, in terms of boundaries is like, Showing up knocking on somebody's door at their house. Like on announced, right? Like that was probably the closest thing that we had pre-internet to like managing being reachable others, right? But like now you're literally reachable to people. All the time, 24/7 365. The other aspect of this is Giving out phone numbers. I've gotten very stingy with who I give my number to. Speaker 2 Yeah. And Speaker 1 part of it is this like it's just it's being reachable all the time and and Suddenly you're just getting tons of texts from a bunch of people. You barely know or met one time or like getting invited to. Like I don't know asked to do things. And so yeah, I I've gotten very stingy about phone numbers. I think another Speaker 2 one though, too. Is like Jesse using your phone in general? Speaker 1 Yeah. Like I Speaker 2 think we that ship is sale and we just blew through that boundary where it was like I think there's more now. This was the thing I saw the other day and I haven't seen it as much in the wild but I think more more people are like they're okay with playing a video or some sort of Audio. Oh, God in public. So Speaker 1 God, Speaker 3 yes, Speaker 2 this happened in more to you. I haven't seen much, I believe I've been on a lot of planes and they always say, hey, if you're gonna be like, watch a video, put your headphones on. I can't believe they even have to say that, Speaker 1 but I post, I posted on Twitter about this like a year ago. I was like, what is wrong with people? Like, who people were like listening to music with with no headphones? Yeah. Like in the middle of a restaurant? Speaker 2 Yeah. Or Speaker 1 having a FaceTime like shouting Speaker 2 shouting Speaker 1 into a FaceTime call in line at the airport with no headphones. It just I don't know when it became, okay, to do this, like the noise pollution that people produce and it's funny. I posted a big thing about it and like, dozens of people got upset, they were like, I, yeah, I'm like guys, you can get ten dollar headphones at 7-Eleven like what? There's no excuse Speaker 2 for this, I saw the other day, it was from Jason Park and the writer and I don't know if you know him, but he's got these really great videos that he puts out. And he kind of addressed this a little bit and he thinks one of it. One of the things was the, the shift to two things video, as just become more. Like, it wasn't as much as calls anymore, but like FaceTime and all that. And then also Apple creating the airpods 10, 15 years ago. It was, you have your headphones, you plug them in if you're out in public and it was actually a great way to like there's Speaker 1 your boundaries right there. Exactly. And Speaker 2 it's not anymore and he said it's just these these minor shifts that kind of shift the culture along with it, right? So you have like if you have these Bluetooth headphones well you lose them a lot for one so it's like almost a subscription model for Apple, you know who's number that gets stolen or they run out of battery. And so you don't Don't have that option. And then just the, again, this shift to video is just, I think it's more. Yeah. Now you have people being like, well, I should be able to I I don't know what, what is the what were they saying? Whether they're pissed off, they were like, I should be able to do this. I should be able to invade your Ear. And yes, I don't know. They Speaker 1 were like I don't get some of them were like, not all of us can afford fancy airpods or like Mike Will you can afford the phone. So, yeah, this is not, this should not be hard. Yeah, that's Speaker 2 funny. A Bluetooth headsets that are like 10 bucks. Now, Speaker 3 exactly. Speaker 1 So this is a, this was a huge problem in New York as you can imagine, listen on, like the subway. Yeah. All sorts of different public spaces. Financial Boundaries Shout out to Peter shankman old friend of mine. I haven't seen in a long time, but he told a hilarious story where he got. So, so fed up of it in New York, that he went to one of these electronic stores and bought like 30 of these cheap 15 Dollar, you know, USB headphone sets. And then he just every time he left the house, he had one or two of them in his pocket. And and so every time somebody was on the train with like a loud FaceTime call or like watching a YouTube video or something. He just walk up and he just hand them out to be like I got this for you. Yes. Yes I was like man you're the best. That is yeah that's right here you are doing God's work Speaker 2 the hero we don't deserve the one that we absolutely need. Yeah. Even just pulling out your phone Speaker 3 like Speaker 2 if you're at a restaurant or you're with your family somewhere that used to be very rude. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 So you've you've you've prioritized You've deprioritized the people around you, for your device or whatever interaction, you're having on their usually just social media calling or something in Maine like that? Yeah. And I, I don't know. I, I there has to be some sort of better cultural norm that we can Implement here. Yeah, Speaker 3 for Speaker 1 the record. I, I just whoever that video you mentioned. I, I disagree. I don't think it's the video or the airpods, like, just simply because you're seeing a lot more low-level I call it anti-social behavior in general for the first mini years that I went to New York, you know, the, the idea of hopping the turnstile was just like, Nobody really thought about it. Now I go to New York it's like nobody pays. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's like jump over. Speaker 1 They're literally like half the people or like jumping through the term style or like opening the door for each other. And it's just, they're just seems to be this kind of like casual. Anti soil, we sound like old men right now but shaking our fist at the cloud. But back in my day, people had some fucking respect for the public spaces. Speaker 2 Stayed off our lawn, they Speaker 1 didn't make noise, they didn't hop the turnstile, they didn't like shout like make a scene in the middle of the restaurant or like now you've got people getting up and shouting on planes at stewardesses and stuff. Like I don't know when this started, but it's maybe this is, it's probably another podcast but it is really, it is relevant. In terms of boundaries, of terms of like just public social spaces, like there are social expectations of how to behave in public, how to treat strangers, like how to do things that are don't make you a selfish asshole and It is interesting that that we definitely, at least in the US. He definitely see that breaking down certain extent. Yeah, and I wonder if part of it too, some of it is Speaker 2 We don't use shame effectively like we talked in the shame episode about the kind of the the social glue that shame can provide and we don't like I think that's become a little bit taboo. Oh you shouldn't shame people for Speaker 1 ya. Oh don't make them feel bad. Speaker 2 Yeah. Well you're making everybody else so, Speaker 1 yeah, fuck Speaker 2 you. Okay, let's stop. Let's stop shaking her face to the wind here, Mark? Okay, next One Financial boundaries. So this is Speaker 1 a big one. This is better rated Speaker 2 this one applies under the radar for sure. Yeah just like you can't afford to be generous with money, you don't have right? Speaker 3 Okay. Speaker 2 This ties into like the familial stuff and all that, you know, if you do run into some money you start making good money and then there's this expectation put on you that you're supposed to help other people out and sure you should help other people out. But you have to have some boundaries around that. Yeah, too. You've probably have some experience with this. I'm Speaker 3 sure that. Speaker 2 Yeah, Speaker 1 I mean money is tricky. I the best advice I could give around. Family boundaries This is just Speaker 3 Have those explicit difficult conversations with people and set expectations? I think they're with money. People tend to make a lot of assumptions about what is deserved and what's not deserved and who what should be shared and what shouldn't be shared. And what I've discovered over the years is just that, like, people have a very different relationships with money itself, right? So, it's like, being generous to one person could really strengthen that relationship and then trying to be generous with another person could actually offend that person. So you have to be very explicit about it and just say like hey here's my assumptions. Here's what I want to do. Could any in this goes for everything? I mean in a romantic relationship, this is a, this is like one of the most important conversations you have to have at some point, even, you know, a cross conversations when it comes to helping out family members or pain for friends, you know, even like I've even tried to buy friends dinner before and they get mad at me and Like it's like all right, dude, sure. Here's the check like, you know. So it is Speaker 1 People come to money with a wide range of beliefs and most of those beliefs are held very strongly. So you just want to be above the board with everything. Speaker 2 Yeah. I think like you said, with the Romantic relationship part two, I think getting good strong, boundaries around your finances, obviously because finances are one of the leading causes of Speaker 1 divorce. It is the leading yeah Speaker 2 right? Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 And so I I think what that is just a lack of boundaries unless lack of explicit boundaries like you were talking about yeah relationships. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 3 and Speaker 1 in and I think it's people all often get romance involved here too. Right. So we kind of talked about the codependency Speaker 3 you Speaker 1 know, another classic Trade of a codependent person is like, spend all their money on them. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3 Like Speaker 1 they'll be happy if I just, you know, spend this or buy him that or take him here. I also, you know, we're definitely not experts on this. You know, repeat Sadie from the Pod, has a great podcast that is solely about this about couples and figuring out how to manage their money together. But it's, it's super fascinating podcast, simply because like, Yeah, people have such widely different assumptions about money. And then you also see people try to create boundaries that just don't make sense, right? So it's, you know, you some couples. They'll be like, okay, we're gonna go 50/50 on everything but then one person in the relationship, literally spends everything and the other one saves everything. And so, like you just have to be realistic about what each of you want, what? Each of you, oh, you know what, the expectations are going to be, what the obligations are going to be. It's hard. It's it's, it's, it's not, it's like one of the least sexy and romantic conversations, but I think for the longevity of any relationship it's all. So, probably one of the most important 100% Speaker 2 100%, we are going to get into a family boundaries. Oh, fun! This is a fun one. Yeah, and I think this is where a lot of like this one's hard both directly and indirectly, right? So it's like the family, the lack, Speaker 1 the poor family boundaries mess you up because it's just I think it's the most painful boundaries boundary issues that you can have. Yes. But they also mess you up because it's like if you're about, if your family has poor boundaries, then you're probably gonna grow up having poor boundaries in other areas of your life, Speaker 3 right? Speaker 1 Because it's like, your family is where you learn your boundaries. So if they're terrible at it, then you're probably suffering in a lot of different places. Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah. Family systems therapy, you know, started kind of back in the 70s and the kind of that's where internal family systems therapy. Kind of came from too, but the original formulation of this was from Salvador. A back in the 70s and what he would do is he would bring families in for a therapy session. You know, you have this dysfunctional family and try to figure out what's going on. And he would use these kind of principles of boundaries to kind of figure out the dynamic of what was going on. So he would, he would sit the family down. He would just let them sit wherever they'd sit and he would take a note of like, okay, where did someone, where did someone sit in relation to someone else? Is there like a Coalition in the family? Like maybe a daughter and a mother or a daughter and a son or something like that are formed this Coalition against somebody else and so he would scramble that up and he would move people around the room and then he would insert himself between people and see how the dynamic changed. And he could kind of make a map of all of this, right? And it was all boundaries based, it was, you know, where you dropped drawing these boundaries and how are those boundaries either helping or hurting the family system here. I thought that was really, really interesting too. I think one of the earliest experience is I had with this was one time, I'm pretty sure what happened was. I got into a fight with somebody. I didn't get a lot of fights when I was a kid, but I got a few. Fights and Speaker 1 tough guy. I get it. Speaker 2 No, I mean I was I was trying to prove something and usually get my ass kicked too. Yeah. But I remember I came, I got in trouble, come home, you know, my dad comes home and he talks to me and he drew, he drew boundary really early on which I really appreciated. Now, not really at the time and I was trying to make my case for what happened. Of course, he listened to me and he said, well look, I really want to be your friend and I want to support you but I have to be your dad first. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 And to me that was like, okay that's a that's a boundary that he drew. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Where he was like this is Speaker 3 we Speaker 2 have to keep these things separate and here's why. And it's because I need, I want the best for you. Yeah. Right. And I thought that was just, I was like, like, looking back on that. I was like, that was a good move dad, that was, he had, he had to be my dad first and I knew from then on. Speaker 1 Yeah. That Speaker 2 like, okay, I can depend on him as my dad. Not like my buddy, right? And he's gonna do the right thing for me. Speaker 1 I'm gonna touch a little bit on parenting boundaries, yeah, later. Yeah, but yeah, that's huge. That's actually in very mature of your father. Yeah, a good move on his part because I think one of the most common issues going on today is that parents think that being a good parent is being their child's best friend your buddy. Yeah, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 Doing cool. Fun things with you and everything which is part of it. Friendship Boundaries I get it. But sure that's first. You have to be their parent. Speaker 1 Yes and it's again. Well I'll get into it later but yeah, that's that's a huge issue. All right. so, what would you say is like, the defining characteristic of family boundaries because obviously family boundaries are very different than Any other boundary we have in our lives? Like, what is Hmm. What is the core struggle? I My intuition is just that like I think, generally speaking. People and families, feel a lot more entitled to each other's. Time attention. Speaker 2 Oh yeah, motion. Yeah, Speaker 1 in money. Um, much more so than say, a friendship. And definitely way more than, like a friend or a stranger or a co-worker, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 A lot of as cultural independent too, right? Yes. There's a lot of cultural pressure in some societies. That Speaker 3 will Speaker 2 accentuate that a lot more than others. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah Speaker 1 and I guess there's it is like, family is really the one that it's it's hard it you can justify that right? Like it's Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 1 I got I don't know how many times your mother's gotten mad at you and said I used to change your diapers and but my mom definitely reminds me. Probably once every few years when I'm being a little twat, she's like you know I used to change your diapers. Once upon a time, you might owe me a thing or two, Speaker 3 I'll be quiet. Speaker 2 I yeah, no, that's that's a really good one. I think there is that core struggle. Like you're saying is between like the individual and the family unit just like there is between the individual Society, right. But there, yeah, that's a lot more immediate and a lot more pressing for a lot of people because it is more visceral. It's like, yeah, that's your family, family type. I do get like that a lot. The older I get, the more I I feel like I do have like, some sort of obligation to family, whereas, when I was younger, I was like, I'm, I'm doing this on my own and I'm out here and family is actually pretty cool with that. The older I get the more, I feel like I have a little bit of an obligation to Speaker 3 it. Speaker 2 That said, I realized too that there has to be boundaries. Speaker 1 Yes, there Speaker 2 has to be some sort of okay, where how far does my obligation go and write, and I think you gotta get real specific about that. But actually as you get older, your parents get older things, start, you know, you're going to have to start taking care of them at some point. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Like you need to get explicit about that. With everybody involved if you have siblings or other family members that. Speaker 1 Yeah. Well The Sibling things really interesting too, because I mean it's it's I mean you're you're we won't get into details but you're kind of going through this right now. Like you, your parents are having health problems and, and you have siblings. And so, I imagine there's a ton of conversations around. Like, okay, what are you gonna do? What am I gonna do? What is she gonna do? You know, like how often am I coming back? What are, who's paying for what? You know, that sort of stuff? Yeah, Speaker 2 I know there's a lot of that going on. And it's just, it's one of those two where, you know, like we talked about the Friendship episode dropped, the score card. That's not helping anybody. So, it's like, who can do, what, who who's good at this? Who's good at that? It might not look even from the outside. But as long as you have kind of those expectations and those boundaries set up around it. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 it's it's a lot easier for everybody to get on board with it, right? So yeah, another big relationship category even get into his friends, Speaker 3 okay? Speaker 2 And like we talked about in the Friendship episode, I think this one's boundaries are sometimes a little bit trickier with friends because there aren't. There aren't those societal rules. They're on those expectations? Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 there's like more explicit expectations that you have of friends and so and everybody has a different idea of what friendship should mean, Speaker 3 right? Speaker 2 So you can just get into all sorts of hairy situations if you don't have like good boundaries around your friends. I have a whole, I came up with a whole laundry list of like boundary violations, give us a view. Let's give you a few. Okay, emotional over Reliance. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay, so you have a friend who was like, I'm going through something. I need you to drop everything. Yeah, help me out. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 right. Availability creep, the same type of thing. You I expect you to text me back right away, like I said, I've gotten better about setting the expectation, it could be a few hours or a day even favors and unpaid labor. Oh hey, I'm moving this weekend. It's only gonna take, you know, a half a day. Speaker 1 16 hours. Yeah, Speaker 2 right. There you are. You're you're one slip disc and a, you know, a whole Saturday out of your entire schedule later and, you know, or take, you know, rides. Work Relationship Boundaries I expect you to take me to the airport or whatever it is that kind of stuff money Tangles. We've talked about the financial thing with friends. That's a little bit harder. It's hard. When you see a friend going through like hard times one, you don't want to insult them and be like here, I'll help you out and the other is like, I need to help them out. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Um, or if they ask for help. Are you a bad friend if you don't help? You know, like so haven't boundaries around that kind of stuff. Gossip Speaker 3 triangles Speaker 2 That's why like, there needs to be more of a boundary around that for, Speaker 1 yeah, Speaker 2 you know, a lot of friendship circles anyway. A possessiveness and exclusivity. I had that it was really strange, a friend of mine who had a What? She considered was her best friend? Got super possessive of her at this one. I've seen Speaker 1 it before. That is wildly jealous friendship jealous? Yeah, yeah, I have definitely seen that before. I would add to that to competitive news. I've seen that a lot, especially with like male friendships where like they'll they'll get extremely competitive with one another and it'll get into such an extreme that you actually. You you will actually start kind of rooting for your friends failure Speaker 3 because Speaker 1 you're you're measuring Yourself by them so much like you're so you have so much of yourself as Steam invested in like not being one up by your buddy and so you see that too and a lot of immature friendships you know I think family relationships or like romantic relationships, you know. They can obviously be too poorest to open too few boundaries and they can also be too rigid with friendships. I feel like most of the issues come from just to like, being too poorest. Because if you're too rigid in a friendship, you just become more casual friends, Speaker 2 right? You're not going to be close friends, anyway, right? You get to unmatched with them is more. Usually the yeah risk. Speaker 1 Yeah, so I I think like if you're rigid with your friendships, you're probably not gonna have drama. Where is if you're rigid with your family, there's probably gonna be a ton of drama. Speaker 3 Yeah. But Speaker 1 like with friendships is just not going to be much drama. You're probably just gonna be very casual friends. You just meet up to like, play golf or play poker or something. Where you see. Friendships get in the troubles. They get way too poorest and it's just the expectations become too high. Speaker 2 Yeah. You Speaker 1 see this with people who are like You know, friends that are like Inseparable, right? It's funny because when I remember, when I was young, whenever I came across people who were like Inseparable Besties, Like spent every day together when everywhere together did everything together vacation together, when I was young, I thought that was really cool like Speaker 3 that. Speaker 2 So jealous. Yeah. Speaker 1 Now that now if I come across somebody I'm like whoa big red flag, big red flag. Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think a lot of it is that like failure to individuate like you talked about before, right? You you're not, you don't have an identity separate from that other person. This can happen in her friendship. Yeah. And yeah, the risk is is that you still see it? Like you're that little kid and you're like, oh, that's so amazing. And I would love to have that myself and in some ways share, that's, it's great. You have somebody to lean on like that but there has to be some sort of, like, yeah, separation there. Yeah, Speaker 1 how Speaker 2 about A work relationships Mark, professional relationships. What kind of boundaries I guess? What kind of boundaries should we draw around those? That because those can bleed in especially I think with our generation your work friend. You have your work friends. Speaker 3 Yeah right. And Speaker 2 sure that's that's fine. And I think that's a great place to meet friends and be friends with people. There has to be some boundaries around that maybe dating at work too. You got to be the boundaries around that Speaker 1 you know what's funny? I've actually heard that there are a number of like Fortune 500 like large Fortune, 500 companies that actually have policies to try to get their employees to date each Speaker 2 other. Which when did that start? Speaker 1 It's because I need for a while, really, but it's kind of a hush hush thing. Like, I had a really good friend who worked at like a very massive. Like, yeah, one of the biggest companies in the world and he was like, yeah, dude. They like they have singles events for people at the company and they like it's not explicit like, they're not like, hey, why don't you? And you like go off, you know, in the back room together and get their asses. Yeah, Speaker 2 but Speaker 1 it's like they have they have events. They like host events, for all the young single and plays, they like, they have mixers. They have activities, they like will intentionally kind of move people on the teams together. Speaker 3 I'm Speaker 2 okay with that, which I get with that. Yeah, I like, like obviously management, keep it in your pants. But yeah, yeah. It's I don't Speaker 1 necessarily have a problem with it either. I mean, this friend told me, he said that, like, I think the idea is that it's actually a retention strategy for the company because it's like, if two people in a couple or both at the same company, then each one's much less Speaker 2 likely to leave the goddamn capitalists. Just ruin it, Speaker 1 just kill the romance and everything that Speaker 2 I do. But I seriously am kind of, I'm for this but Speaker 1 they're, they're like there's some Ivy League schools that do the same thing. Yeah, so like Princeton I think is very aggressive in trying to encourage. Speaker 2 I've heard this too. Yeah. Speaker 1 Students and Alum to date each other and yeah each Speaker 3 other. Yeah Speaker 2 you Speaker 1 know to breed like a little Princeton wings and populate their their Speaker 2 Universe. Yeah. Speaker 1 Exactly back to like the actual conversation which is workplace boundaries. Boundaries around authority I think there's kind of, there's Two, there's kind of two segments of workplace. Boundaries one is kind of the time attention. Piece, right? It's like Not over committing yourself learning the same note to your boss or your co-workers. You know not checking emails at 10 p.m. Yeah, on a Tuesday night. Like there's there's that aspect of it there's kind of like the time protection and the work life balance boundaries. And then I would say there's, there's like the personal relationship boundaries, you know, I think a lot of people's kind of default policy is is to be super rigid, right? Like don't mix work and play, I don't know again, I think it's like what probably gets you in trouble. Here is just like, super Porsche boundaries like just trying to make your your your co-workers like your entire social life or whatever, like it's probably not super healthy, but I think it's good that forensic. We're like honestly it's I think it's actually probably one of the best things is to have friends at work. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 1 not just for you but also for the company like it's good for people to like working together. So yeah, I mean, you're spending so much time there. You may as well. Yeah, Speaker 2 like somebody, that actually, that's one of the biggest predictors of jobs satisfied. People who's having a good friend? Yes. Speaker 1 And it's also biggest predictor of people who stay. Yeah, Speaker 2 is Speaker 1 if they've made a friend at work. Yeah. Speaker 2 If they don't really even like their job, they're like well I don't want to let these people down and that's a that's a good thing. Yeah. Speaker 1 I Speaker 2 and I'm not just for the company or whatever it's actually a good thing for you too. Yeah. Because it's like it's outside of Speaker 1 yourself to some degree. I mean what's better than going and hanging out like working with your friends for eight hours a day? Yeah, that's yeah, that's great. That's actually kind of the ideal. Self Boundaries Yeah, Speaker 3 and Speaker 2 interesting thing I came up with was a in convents nuns. Well, the stricter ones and there's more old school. It's not so much anymore, but they would actually discourage friendships like Like, like, you should not be having a friendship because at interferes with your relationship with God, right? That that kind of thing. But then they said, if anything, there's other other comments, too, that would say, if anything, you should seek out the people that you're not attracted to and the friendship type of way, anyway, right? Like they would they would have them go. Try to go befriend. Somebody who just like I would not Speaker 1 yeah Speaker 2 gel with that person at all as like an act of God in a type of way, which I thought was really interesting. So they had very strict boundaries between the relationships within the organization that way. Okay. But then they also some of them also are like well, but if you want to do it this way and it's more of its, it's like you're it's like I said, it's like an active God or you're, you're acting out God's Will and including other people into it something that's Speaker 3 right. Speaker 1 Yeah. How to make friends like a nun folks? Speaker 2 Yeah you Speaker 1 already hear from? I do think there is another kind of boundary, that's very important around. I guess I would call like an authority or I don't know, there's probably a word for this that we should have sat down and thought of, but didn't but, you know, thinking about like a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist. Speaker 3 Yeah, like Speaker 1 somebody who Has expertise and has some a very large. Influence on your life but who's not a friend who's not a family member? You know, they're paid essentially. I do think that there's very important boundaries around this, you know, we kind of We talked earlier about, you know, therapists not being friends with their patients, it's probably, you know, it's probably good that like you're you're lawyers not investing in your competitive competitors. You like your yeah, you know, your tax accountant is not a, you know, trying to convince you to know donate to his charity. Like there's just all sorts of conflicts of interest that can happen among these sorts of like mentorship roles or professional roles. I don't know. I would throw that in there. Speaker 2 Yeah. And Speaker 1 because I do run across this quite a bit is like, I mean, I've made this mistake too, like, I've hired people because, I like them or because they're a friend. And it ended up being a total fucking disaster. It was just like, I know it's when you're like Crossing incentives and interests, you, you can put yourself in like a very Complicated situations. So Speaker 2 yeah. No, that particular example, I think illustrates an interesting point about, you know, boundaries that cross. So, like, if you have a friend and like, oh, since they're a friend. Yeah, and I have the set of boundaries with them and I bring them into another situation, you have to have a completely different set of boundaries Speaker 3 and Speaker 2 those can conflict. But yeah, right. Speaker 1 That's a perfect way of putting it. Yeah, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 Perfect way of putting it, so yeah, Speaker 1 yeah, Speaker 2 boundaries everywhere, man. Yeah. Boundaries all the way down. Okay, let's get into this last relationship itself. So really what the boundaries you keep with yourself? We might not think about this in the same terms. We don't think about this in the same terms, Speaker 1 right? I Speaker 2 do with other people, but this gets into just kind of like, you know, how do you treat yourself? First of all, like, there's like self-talk right? Too can be, you can have boundaries around that Speaker 3 if Speaker 2 you've ever meditated and, you know, like how what there's actually a very clear boundary around that and then you can set. So if you do have a lot of negative, self-talk. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 3 Um, Speaker 2 how do you, how do you manage That what are the kind of boundaries you set around that even just like taking care of yourself too? Like what do you do for self-care? What do you, what are the boundaries? All these other boundaries we've already discussed in different areas of your life? How do you implement those for yourself? Yeah. Commitments that you make saying no to different things and then the internal discipline part of it, too, exercise, eating all of that kind of stuff. Those are all boundaries that we have to navigate and negotiate with ourselves. Yeah. That I don't think we give a whole lot of thought to other. There's just kind of on autopilot. Yeah I Speaker 1 see this in terms of like making agreements that I make with myself and okay and I was just sitting here thinking about like okay what the fuck does that mean? Yeah I think making an agreement with myself is essentially like the two sides of my brain. Make it an agreement, the thinking brain and the feeling brain coming together because when I think about, when I think about like a successful agreement I've made with myself. So for instance you mentioned self-talk like there's certain things that I just literally will not say it myself. Chapter 6: How to Set and Maintain Boundaries It's just off limits. Yeah, you just don't say that because nothing good comes out of it and Both of my brains are on board with that. The thinking brain is on board with that because the thinking brain is like, Hey we're trying to be like healthy and productive and efficient. And the feeling brain is on board because it feeling brain doesn't want to feel bad. Speaker 3 Yeah. So Speaker 1 That's not an issue, but when I think about other agreements I've tried to make with myself, like, you know, Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 don't know. I'm gonna get up at 5 a.m. and run four miles every single morning. That might work for like a day or two, Speaker 3 but Speaker 1 if the, if one of the two brains isn't on board, like it doesn't happen. And so I I think it's This is kind of where you get into alignment. in terms of, like, what feels right to you and also like what you you rationally, know is right for you and trying to get those things to line up and I think that's what really we're behavioral, change happens you can study and read until you're blue in the face but like until you feel like doing something different, you're not going to do anything different so it's the real struggle of Behavioral changes like getting finding a way to feel like making the change or feel like implementing the boundary into your life. Not just thinking about it all the time. Yeah. Speaker 2 How are boundaries used in order to get those things to to mess up? Do you start with the boundary kind of on the thinking side and that kind of sets the parameters and then the feeling brain comes on. I don't I don't know if that would work or not. Speaker 1 Yeah, no I think it's like the boundary is is set. It is set by the thinking brain, right? It's like you rationally, kind of decide what type of person you want to be. The problem is getting the feeling brain. They come along with it which usually means having to deal with Messy emotions. Impulses cravings. Health stuff. Yeah, you know, stuff like that. Speaker 2 I think you know the big the big takeaway from all of this that I get anyway. Is that doesn't matter which domain which category which relationship it is that you're setting a boundary with its really got to have kind of like three parts to it. You got to be clear. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 as well when you're doing with other people. But even when you're dealing with yourself, it's got to be a clear boundary like what is, what is actually the boundary and just be Speaker 3 like, um, you know, I eat healthy. It's like I don't eat dessert, right? That's a boundary that I have with myself. Speaker 2 A flexibility too. Yeah, we've, this is again, that thing keeps coming up. Yeah. Carve out the exceptions Define the exceptions, Speaker 1 right? Sure they're clear as Speaker 2 well. And those are also clear. Speaker 1 That's right, I will eat dessert at a three-star. Michelin restaurant Speaker 2 that. Yeah, right. Once every six months, right, or whatever it is. Yeah, alignment too. And we've already mentioned this as well, the aligning with your values and the person that you want to be as special. Those self boundaries. I think too. That's really important but Speaker 1 be clear on the value you're protecting not the feeling you're protecting. Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Because otherwise you're just reacting, right? We talked about before. So those that's kind of the big takeaway from that those three areas any, any boundary you want to set in your life in any category. I think you gotta have those three things so that Speaker 1 concludes the theory portion of the episode. Now we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty. What do boundaries actually look like? How do you set them? How do you maintain them? What happens if they're not maintained all that good fun juicy. Stuff. These are all the Practical. Takeaways the exercise is the things that you can use take home with you, try out with your family and friends and See how your mileage varies, just a reminder to everybody listening. We do have a free companion PDF for this episode. It goes over everything that we're talking about has all of the recommendations exercises and citations you can go to solve podcast calm slash boundaries, the check that out, it's free. And then of course if you want help implementing this stuff into your life, you should join the salt podcast membership. That is that membership. Dot solid. Podcast.com, it is an awesome community. With great boundaries this. Speaker 2 Yeah I will I would I would really agree with that. Yeah, good boundaries there. Yeah, Speaker 1 good boundaries in the community. So if you want to see what boundaries look like, join the solve Community. All right. Moving on. We're gonna talk about how to actually set and maintain boundaries. Because as we alluded to earlier if you don't set boundaries the other people in your life will and you're probably not gonna like their version. So, how do we actually do this? Well, based on all of our reading and research we narrowed this down to Six steps essentially. These are six steps that you go through not just with each individual relationship but with each individual boundary within a relationship, obviously some boundaries are going to be much easier more natural than others. Some boundaries are going to be very hard and you're gonna fuck them up over and over again. And Oh yeah, that's part of life. So, without further Ado, step one is just simply awareness, like, understanding. Where is the ambiguity in your life? Where is the area? That is not being enforced, where your, your individual self is not being properly, defined that there is not a divide between you and the people around you. And that, that divide is not being Properly, enforced or maintained. so, the awareness piece For a lot of people is actually the hardest piece, especially if you grew up in an environment that didn't have boundaries if your family is absolutely fucking terrible about boundaries, it can be actually be very hard to know where you need a boundary in your life. We talked earlier about some indicators, some red flags, so to speak again. I would categorize, you know, I to me there are Probably two or three big red flags that are. Leading indicators of where there needs to be a boundary in your life but there's not. The first one is resentment, like, where where are the areas? Is there a repeated area in your life that you just find yourself getting annoyed with people feeling disrespected by people feeling like your needs or wishes aren't being considered? Like what is it? What are you constantly griping about or complaining about our muttering under your breath? About blaming others for blaming other people about, that is probably a very strong indicator of a place that and a boundary needs to be implemented. Let's say you work in finance and your boss is like calling you at 10 p.m. on a Monday night and you're trying to put your kids to bed and you're, you know, trying to relax with your with your partner and you're a workplace. Just keeps bothering you at all hours of the week. and you're pissed about it, like that's an indicator of like hey some some sort of boundary needs to be implemented here, some sort of agreement or expectation needs to be set indicator number two I would just say is ambiguity like situations where Things feel messy and unclear, you know, we talked earlier about finances. I've met so many couples that the finances get enmeshed, and they've never really talked about it, and it becomes extremely difficult for them because they're both, like, on the one hand. They're like, I'm happy to pay for things. Like I want to contribute to the relationship. I'm happy to pay for my partner. But if you ask them specifically, what, how much, what's the budget who's in charge of what? Is it merged bank accounts? Is it separate bank accounts like none of these things have been discussed? And so I guess another way to put this is that A good intention is not a boundary like a boundary that you can't enforce with any Clarity. It's just a suggestion. and, Generally speaking, people treat suggestions like a suggestion eventually they started doing it, right? That's just not a boundary. Yeah, it's not it's it's Goodwill is nice but it doesn't really get you very far in the real world. So in a situation like that, while the intentions may be explicit, while it may be two people in a couple are like we do want to share finances or we want to share responsibilities, maybe they live together and they want to share rent or they want to share expenses or utilities or whatever their needs to be a very explicit conversation of like okay who contributes, what are we basing? It on how much we make are we basing it on? Are we going 50/50 on everything or we basing it on how much credit card debt you have versus me. Like there's, there's all sorts of factors that need to be considered. When when going into decisions like this and then the third big indicator, I would say is an area of your life that you feel compulsive or out of control. So something that you keep doing in your like why do I keep doing that? And this could be anything from drinking too much to going to events that you don't enjoy going to to maintaining a friendship with a person that you don't actually like, hanging out with going home for the holidays, with the family that drives you crazy like, whatever it is in your life. That you're like, why do I keep doing this Speaker 2 emotional reactions and impulsive emotional reaction? Yeah, Speaker 1 like, it's just it, that's probably an indicator that there needs to be a boundary there, like, you need to Define what you're willing to accept and tolerate and what you're not willing to accept in tolerate, otherwise you just gonna keep doing it. Yeah, Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 2 Essentially, where do you think? You think energy drains would fit in there somewhere. And one of those three, I think that's a that's one to. Like, if you're just, you're constantly doing things that just drain you. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 And not in a good way like sometimes there's, you know, a good way to do that but other times there's Speaker 3 not I Speaker 1 think energy drain can be a bad thing. I wouldn't necessarily say it's definitely a boundary issue just because you can, you can Be drained doing things that you are. Happy to be good. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay. Speaker 1 And that you've explicitly defined, you know, like, let's say you and your partner have decide that a newborn like have a kid, right? That's draining us Speaker 2 walk. Right? So, Speaker 1 um, I would say if you're finding your energy draining you and you don't know why, then that's probably an indication. There's There's a boundary leak somewhere and the energy is getting out. Okay? So step number two, once you've identified what You need to boundary around step. Number two is stating it Speaker 3 clearly and Speaker 1 by clearly. it's it needs to be observable or quantifiable in some way you can't just say, like, I want to be healthy or I want to spend more time with friends. What does that mean? Or tell your spouse? Like, I don't want to argue anymore. Like what is that mean? Actually like what about what? How often under what circumstances are is every argument off limits or is it just like certain stupid topics that we keep arguing about you? You really need to get granular about what the boundary actually is. We've got a little bit of a formula here, which is this comes from nonviolent, communication from martial Rosenberg, which is, by the way, a great resource for communicating Any sort of difficult conversation in a relationship. Non-violent, communication is just full of useful tools phrasing. framing of of ideas to State your needs and get your needs met with somebody in your life. With without pissing everybody off, this formula comes from NVC. And it basically says, when I feel X emotion in why situation? I need Z action. So simple example, when I feel distracted because my phone is buzzing during dinner, I've decided to turn off my phone at the dinner table. This is about boundary. No, no phone at the dinner table, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 1 You could do another one, which is like, You know. when I feel, ignored or uncared for when my partner doesn't clean up after themselves, we set rules and expectations of Who's in charge of cleaning the kitchen on which days or after which meals. So you basically you identify the situation that is triggering you or upsetting you, you identify the exact occurrences or or actions that happen that bother you and then you set expectations or negotiate, you know, some sort of Behavior with somebody else to, to mitigate that, prevent it from happening in the first place. The importance of thing about boundaries is that they are stated assertively but not aggressively. So there's a very subtle difference. The way I would describe this is like, you know, stating something passively is stating it in a way that you take no ownership or autonomy over it. So it'd be something like, you know, Drew it'd be really nice if like when we recorded podcasts the AC was turned on you know it just be nice if I wasn't hot all the time like it's such a passive. It's almost like it's making it your problem Speaker 2 be nice. Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, I'm taking 0 ownership of it. And so the the effect of that is that I am sub communicating that it's actually your problem and your fault that I'm hot, Speaker 2 which Speaker 1 is not the way you want to go about this. That's not effective at all. Where is I would say doing it. Aggressively is demanding something. And also blaming taking no ownership over it. So if I was the state stated aggressively, it would be something like you know Drew every time we record these podcasts, I'm hot as fuck and it'd be great if you got your shit together and turn on the AC once in a while like it's disrespectful, it's condescending, it's demeaning and I'm taking no ownership of it whatsoever. So an assertive way of saying it would be Hey, Drew. Every time we're shooting these podcasts, I get really hot. How about we agreed to turn on the AC, when we take breaks in between shoots How does that sound to you? Right. It's like I'm owning it. I'm suggesting a solution. I'm telling you, exactly, I feel this way in this situation. How about we do this? I Speaker 2 bringing you in as part of the boundary too, right? Speaker 1 It's a collaboration where and you and it opens. It, it makes it clear that you don't have to agree to it. You could be like, well, I'm cold all the time. Yeah. And then that, okay. So now we change the conversation we'll get to the negotiating a little bit later, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 1 So that's an example of I guess passive doing it. Passively I would even call it passive, aggressiveness aggressiveness, you want to assertiveness you want to own it be like, hey, this is my feeling This is what I don't like and this is how I would like to see it changed. How do you feel about that, right? So that's Speaker 2 step. Number two, we've got awareness communication, I think, I think in the communication, part two, I think the important part is To realize that a lot of people just don't know that they're violating your boundaries. So of course that's what the communication is really about. Obviously I say a majority of the time but most of the time people they don't even like. So you have all this resentment building up like we're talking about, I want the red flags and people they don't even know it because you haven't set the boundary, it's not clear they don't know that you're upset about it. So being able to do that like you said assertively too. And clearly And and bringing them in on it and not making them feel like they're you're attacking them or they're attacking you either way. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 I think that's a huge thing. I just people just don't even realize they're crossing your boundary lines. Yeah and this is the pattern you see in so Speaker 1 many relationship. I mean this is happened. A dozen times in my my marriage. All right? It's like there's something that's pissing me off. Or pissing her off but it's like it's low enough on the scale of annoyance that you just don't you, let it go, you don't say anything. But then it keeps happening over and over and over again and it builds and it builds and that resentment builds and ambiguity builds of like, well is, is he supposed to do this or am I supposed to do this? And I supposed to tell him and then all sudden, like, one day you get pissed off at each other and the other person's like, whoa, where did this come from? Speaker 2 Like, how Speaker 1 the hell am I supposed to know that? Like you want the plates in this drawer? Not that drawer, like you never said Speaker 2 anything right? And Speaker 1 so it just comes back to stating assertively with respect. It's funny because I think people who are terrified of conflict, they're mostly worried about the topic. When actually, I think most conflict can be avoided tactically, a large percentage of interpersonal conflict Emerges not because something was communicated. Its how it was communicated. Okay. Yeah. It's like you're being a dick about it or you're being judgmental about it or you're being condescending about it or you're not taking any responsibility for it or accountability or whatever. So Speaker 2 no problem most of the time it's how I'm gonna know. It's seriously it's how I'm communicating my need or whatever it is like, almost everybody can understand what need you have. If you if you're communicating and either aggressive way or I really whiny way or whatever it is. Yeah, expecting someone else to respond in kind, you know. Yeah, Speaker 1 I want to I actually want to hammer home on this point again because this also ties into the like philosophical stuff. We Speaker 2 were talking about which is Speaker 1 The thing that is going to make like when you approach somebody with a boundary or a request or something, you want them to change. I would say the majority of like whether it lands or not is again the way you present it, but it really has to do with agency and it has to do with ownership, right? So this is the big thing that nonviolent communication teaches it says that like you're feelings, are your responsibility, right? So if you're doing something that's pissing me off, And I come to you and I'm like, you're pissing me off like immediately, you're gonna get defensive and you're gonna be like, I didn't do anything. Fuck you. You know, where is if I come to you and be like, you know, Drew you've been doing this thing lately and it like, when you do it, I feel really irritated. Suddenly I'm like I'm giving you your agency, right? Like you're allowed to do whatever you want. I'm maintaining my own agency which is like hey when this thing happens, this is the emotion that I feel. and then I say, and when I feel that irritation it's hard, it's hard to do a podcast well together, right? And it's now I'm like framing. The problem is something that we can both help solve. It's just a repackaging of the same experience, but it is so much more effective. than just being like, dude, stop being a dick. You're pissing me off, right? Like it just it completely changes the tenor of everything. But the reason that matters is because they're remember boundaries originated in self-definition and when when you come to somebody and you're like Stop doing that thing. You can't do that anymore, because it makes me mad, you are, you're violating their autonomy, your you are impeding on their, their ability to Define themselves to choose how they are acting in the world. And if you are moving your own agency, you're also doing that to yourself. So it's like a very subtle and philosophical thing. But I do think it is like super interesting that Like the whole notion of respect I think is very much tied up in the respect of our own autonomy and the respective other people's autonomy. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%, that goes back to the like distinguishing boundaries between rules and other that that's a rule, when yes, you can't do this, Speaker 1 right? Speaker 2 That's not about right, Speaker 1 right? Whereas the boundary is like, hey, when you do that, I feel this way. And so I'm just not gonna hang out with you, right? Speaker 2 Yeah. Right. You've been friends on their autonomy at that point. Yeah, Speaker 1 step three is consistency. Speaker 3 This Speaker 1 is basically, I mean one of the hardest steps. Yeah. It's I think it it's almost like a law of the universe that any boundary that's defined is going to be tested. Yeah, this is true. Children Speaker 2 almost, by definition, Speaker 1 its true friendships. It's true with family, it's just human nature. Any time we are presented with a boundary, Our first inclination is like let me put my toe over that line and see what happens. Right. It's just we can't help ourselves Speaker 2 that's fun to me. Sometimes you Speaker 1 yeah, so it is important that The boundaries are actually enforced. Right? So, Like let's say, I tell a friend like, hey, dude, if you're gonna start doing FaceTime calls in public without headphones, I'm just gonna go home. and then he pulls out his phone and starts doing a FaceTime calling public without headphones and I stick around How much is that boundary worth? We're fucking nothing right? It's unless you follow unless your actions follow through on the statement of the expectation of the boundary it's not worth anything. Yeah. Speaker 2 Real boundaries have Stakes? Speaker 3 Yes. Speaker 1 And you have to follow through? Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 I think this is Crucially important with parenting. Any, anybody who has a kid knows? Speaker 3 That Speaker 1 if you're inconsistent and enforcement the kid, like the respect goes out the window. Yeah. Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, it's it's that's their job as a test boundaries, right? It is. Yeah, it is. I mean a child is Speaker 1 Again, they are either learning about the world and then B they're learning about the cells. So they're they're trying to push the boundaries of their own capabilities and their own self-definition and it's your job as a parent to give them that freedom but also put guardrails around them to make sure that they don't, you know, push themselves into a dangerous territory, right? And if you don't reinforce those guardrails, guess what? They're just gonna drive straight through the hugely important. Part about consistency, like, this is the step we're trust comes from. Right. Like oh yeah. Okay. Like if you think about what is trust in a relationship? It is it is a confidence that you are going to do what you say, you're going to do its confidence that you are going to Be consistent in your actions and in your words. And so if you are regularly saying things, And then you don't actually do them. I'm Not Really Gonna trust you like, think about it this way. Like, if you have a friend who is regularly like talking shit, Saying I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that and then never does anything. Never actually takes action on anything. And then, let's say you're in a problem or a crisis. Like How likely are you to call that person? Right. Not very yeah. Trust you like dude if you can't even do things for yourself like how am I going to rely on you to do something for me, right? So it's the consistency piece is huge. again, often unpleasant, but it is funny because it is when you hold the line on the boundary, Even though it might upset people, even though it might annoy people, or they might get offended or you might calls a fight. It causes them to respect you and it causes them to trust you. This is this is what I was saying Speaker 2 earlier about when my dad told me. I got to be your dad first and not your friend. Yeah. After that I feel like oh I can trust him when I know I'm in a bind or something like that. Right? I can go to him and I know he's gonna do the right thing for me in that situation. He's not going to do anything. I want to do is gonna do the right thing, Speaker 1 so yes. Speaker 2 Yeah, Speaker 1 boundaries often don't work. The first, the first try, They have to be enforce multiple times to like kick in. So like, I'll give you like, the facetious example about the friend on FaceTime, right? Let's say I'm hanging out with a friend, he pulls out. He starts doing a FaceTime call. I'm like, dude. Fuck this shit. I'm out of here. And I actually go home. And 20 minutes later he like calls me, he's like, oh my God, you're such a dick. I can't believe you actually did that blah blah. And I'm like, I told you I told you Well, guess what? Next time we're hanging out. He gets a face on Cole. You think he's gonna take it right? Probably not, because you knows what's gonna happen. I think a lot of people, you know, they think to themselves. Well, I set a boundary but it wasn't respected. Well, it. Yeah. You have to, it's gonna be tested a couple times first and then then it starts to get in forced. Speaker 3 So Speaker 1 step four is related to all this, it's anticipating pushback. So people who don't have a lot of boundaries in their lives I don't like it when you come along and try to insert one Speaker 3 like Speaker 1 there's a there is a, there's a tendency to, you know, basically the only people who really respect boundaries or people who have plenty of their own and they're they're not going to be the ones that test it, the ones who like really struggle to set boundaries for themselves or adhere to boundaries and others are They're going to try to wiggle their ways out of it, so this can come up in the form of guilt. Tripping. Getting mad at you, picking a fight ghosting. You basically manipulative Behavior. Like they're, they're its And we're gonna get in the relationship section, we're going to get into kind of like why this happens. But for somebody with a lack of boundaries or who, Doesn't have boundaries in their life. It actually feels easier for them to try to manipulate you and to letting go of a boundary then it is to actually adhere to it in many cases. Yeah, that sounds fucked up but it's gonna happen. Step five is Adaptation. So, No boundary is perfect. You could set a an expectation in a relationship to behave a certain way. Five years go by, you know, maybe you get married, maybe somebody's parent dies, maybe you move to another country like Situations change, people change, conditions, change. So boundaries should be flexible and adaptable. There might come a day where you're like, you know what? Maybe I do keep hanging out with somebody who takes a FaceTime call now. That's not true. I will. Speaker 2 Yeah, I will never hang that person, our boundary for you. Speaker 1 How would they? Yeah, that is a rule that is, that's not a boundary. The other aspect of this is that you're often, very likely not going to set the correct boundary the first time. Speaker 2 Yeah. Right. Speaker 1 You might overshoot it. You might be too too rigid too porous like you're like anything in life. You're probably not going to get it on the first shot. You gonna have to come back and revise it a Speaker 3 couple times, right? Speaker 2 Yeah. There's a process of discovery and a lot of that comes from the testing of the boundaries, like we were talking about and then you figure out. Oh, okay, that's not quite the right boundary, let me adjust. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 1 people might have some anxiety of like, well, if I go back on the boundary then people aren't going to respect me. It's like no actually if you just communicate to people like hey you know, I I used to be like this, but like, You know, I don't think that was really fair to people in my life. So I have like adjusted to hear, people respect that, you just Again communication? Yeah, just be explicit. Be like this is what I need now, I thought it was this. That didn't work. So now I'm doing it this way. Yeah, Speaker 2 it's the uncertainty that that if you don't, if you don't provide some sort of clarity around it, yeah, whether that Clarity changes or not. Beside the Speaker 1 point. Yeah, we also talked about exceptions again. I think a lot of it is just Being clear and defining the exceptions explicitly. Right. Speaker 2 That's part of the boundary. Yeah, so, yeah, it's like, okay, my boundaries. I, I don't take Speaker 1 late night calls after 10 p.m. but I don't know. Let's say your mother's in the hospital and sick, and the doctors are calling, like she's gonna be In the ER overnight like obviously you want to keep your phone on and you want to take calls in that situation so it is just adapting to the situation around you and knowing what is realistic. And practical. And then finally number six and this is going to be a huge one for a lot of people listening to this. Gilt management guilts management. So what tends to happen? If you are a person who historically has had very few boundaries and you were surrounded by people who have very few boundaries. Two things are going to happen. One is. When you set a boundary, the people around, you are not going to like it. Again bitch at you they're gonna complain, they're gonna guilt trip you. They're gonna Try to pick a fight with you, they're gonna test you. The second thing that's going to happen is you're gonna feel really guilty about it. And there's a reason for this because you are essentially. Cutting them off from a source of validation and self-esteem that used to be available to them. We're about to talk a lot more about in meshed relationships or toxic relationships, but if you really look at like, what a toxic relationship is essentially two people who are becoming emotionally reliant on each other, to meet their needs and fulfill their self-esteem and It's not a healthy thing. And you can almost think of it as like almost in literal terms becoming an addicted to each other. Right? Like you, you are now the same way an alcoholic is becomes dependent on the alcohol to feel normal and functional. The codependent person relies on the validation and affection and attention from another person to Simply feel normal and be able to be Speaker 3 functional. Speaker 1 So when you cut somebody off, you're essentially cutting them off of their supply Speaker 3 of Speaker 1 their emotional addiction. And If you ever been around an attic that just got cut off. Like, it's not pretty, like, people don't take it. Well, they're not, they're not very understanding about it. So right, there's gonna be a lot of guilt. There might be some shame. You might lose a few relationships, but it's important to remember that boundaries are old. Are the ultimate Act of love, right? Its boundaries. It's not just for your own health and safety. It's for the other persons as well like they are never going to learn To stand on their own two feet psychologically and emotionally, as long as they're dependent on you. And Vice versa. and so the longer you wait to establish those boundaries, the more you just prevent each of you from Developing appropriately. Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah. There's a there's I think we'll talk about this a little bit more too and shortly, but there's an identity aspect to it. There too, right? Like you're talking about like, in code dependent relationships. Let's say or whatever you cut somebody off by setting a boundary. They're so enmeshed with you too, that they have to find this new identity now. Speaker 3 Right? Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. Speaker 3 They Speaker 2 have to come up, so it's not just that, oh, you're you're cutting off their, their supply, of validating feelings, or whatever it is. Is that like, a, they feel like a part of them is being extracted. Yes, Speaker 3 yes. So Speaker 2 that's kind of where that it's a fear response a lot of times from. Yeah. And then and then you feel guilty about it so knowing that. Speaker 1 Yeah, Speaker 2 that kind of sits the stage. Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 mean, it's kind of it. This is one of those situations where, you know, I'm just kind of imagining like Cheesy rom-coms, you know, but we're but it's like when people in toxic relationships, when they they do split apart or net, or when they feel like they're splitting apart, they resist it because that they will say things like I need you, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 1 And and they literally feel that like that is actually what they feel. They're like, I am not, I'm nothing without you. I can't function without you overall, that's a very unhealthy place to be. But like once you are if you can imagine being in that place and I've been there before. I imagine you've been there before literally. Anything else feels worth it to keep that person. Yeah, right. Like you you, at that point when once you feel like you need another human being to Simply function and feel normal about yourself, you are able and willing to justify almost any Behavior to keep that person in your life, which gets pretty fucked up if you like that, can take you to a dark place. If you let it, Speaker 2 I remember a friend of mine going through a rough patch in their relationship and they said, yeah, they came to me and they said, they said the words you said, Earlier I'm addicted to you. Speaker 3 Yeah, Speaker 2 that's what they said. They came out and said they were aware enough to say that. They're to know that I'm actually addicted to whatever this is. Yeah even though he was a terrible relationship. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 But they they realize that I didn't know what to do with it. I'm addicted to you. I need you because, you are my little supply of whatever. Valuation I'm getting, or whatever it is. Yeah, Speaker 1 at some point, we will definitely do an episode on codependence. Speaker 3 Yeah, it is. Speaker 1 Such an important topic. And I think it's, it's funny because on the one hand, I feel it's under discussed. On the other hand, when I get on Instagram or I just all you hear is it's like 80% of self-help advice is just Helping codependent people. Stop being codependent. Like that's that is basically what this entire industry is. Yeah, it's rarely explicitly labeled Speaker 3 that Speaker 2 way. Yeah. Speaker 1 It's it's all I'd say. The vast majority of it is is treating the symptoms, right? It's like codependent people tend to have very low self-esteem. So a lot of it's just trying to boost their self-esteem. Codependent people tend to feel guilty all the time or be incredibly concerned with what other people think about them. So it's, you know, a lot of content is Speaker 2 geared towards that a lot of fixing, the symptoms and not the cause. Yeah, Speaker 1 exactly. I'm gonna kind of dissect, the anatomy of a toxic relationship and then the next section. But before we move on, I want to make a couple just touch on a couple more things, boundaries are hard. They don't come naturally, they require a lot of thought, they often involve difficult or uncomfortable conversations, so they are not They're not going to come easy and like anything in life. That's good for you. That doesn't come, easy, or naturally. It's ideal to try to build habits and rituals around them so that you don't have to repeatedly choose these things over and over again. So for example, you can build routines into your life that automatically enforce a lot of these boundaries, right? So it's like there's a setting in your phone to automatically go into do not disturb say at 7 p.m. every night or you know, scheduling, you know. One thing, my wife and I have done in the past is like we will preschool date nights like months in advance and just because once it's on the calendar, we know that it will get done other stuff gets planned around it. Whereas if we if we don't put it on the calendar like I mean as you know it just it gets pushed off week after like a logical switch, you guys like it's important enough. We're going to put it on the calendar and even just that small act. Yeah. Absolutely creates a pretty strong boundary. A lot of people, they do. It's so funny. This is so nerdy. But I also think it's probably a healthy thing. A lot of people do they create a relationship dashboards? So so like in like notion or other stuff like even spreadsheets like and they will either like every quarter or every month, they will sit down for an hour and like go through their dashboard and they'll look at their finances. They'll look at their, like, how they're feeling emotionally. They'll look at their social life. They'll look at their work life and they'll kind of like discuss each category and be like what can we do be doing better on how can I support you? It's funny on the one hand, like I feel so torn about that because there's like, 50% of me. Here's that. And I'm like nerd, Speaker 3 right? Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Right, you fucking nerd? But then the other half of like the I guess the the relationship coach and psychic. Wow, that's so healthy. Speaker 2 Look at how incredibly intentional that is. Right. And that, I mean, you're so intentional about your job. You're so intentional about other parts of your life, that you're finances, whatever it is. Why not be that intentional with that? The most important relationships in your life? It I get it, it's probably over the top or seems over The top to a lot of people, it makes sense. I mean, Speaker 1 Know what you just said makes 100% sense. Like, especially, considering that like, your, your primary relationship. Like you're, you're romantic partnership is arguably the most significant fact, like variable in your entire psychological. Wellbeing absolutely. Like it's, it's A good marriage or long-term relationship. Improves every other aspect of your life and a bad one, harms every other aspect of your life. So it makes sense to put that much care into it. I think and I'm actually gonna get to this a little bit it just violate. There's like this romantic notion. Sure in the culture that like Speaker 2 sure Speaker 1 something like a spreadsheet or a relationship spreadsheet or dashboard just like kind of violates that romance. Speaker 2 If that's the case, come up with a different habit, you can make a habit out of it though. Maybe it's just a check in. Maybe it's just a weekly check-in. Yeah, whatever it is. But yeah. There's intentionality behind it. I think that's a good thing. Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll get to that. So anyway, yeah, create the routine, create the Habit app, basically, find find the ritual or the, The Habit, that will make a lot of these boundaries solve themselves. Another point that I wanted to touch on here. And I don't know, maybe this doesn't even need to be worth touching on, but like almost everything we're talking about here. involves like, Hey, I'm upset. I have a problem. And so I'm coming to you and I'm trying to establish a boundary where is like we're not talking a whole lot about like respecting other people's boundaries, Speaker 3 right? Yeah. Speaker 1 It's it's A that in many ways can be harder for a lot of people like noticing when somebody likes or dislikes something, when they have a certain expectation around something and then just not living up to it, I don't know if like, I don't have like, a whole list of like, practical actionable advice around this, but I do think it is specially as we move into the Romantic relationship section. And I'm going to talk a little bit, a little bit more about parenting as well. A huge part of this is simply respecting the autonomy of the of the other person and acting accordingly. Right. So it's like even if you don't understand it, if that person lays out an expectation or boundary, if you want to have a good relationship with that person and you should probably follow it and if you don't want to follow it then you probably shouldn't have a relationship with that person. Like it's just kind of Like I think a lot of people being on the receiving end. A lot of us. Don't want to accept that. Yes. Speaker 2 Yeah, no. And then a lot of us just wind up taking Face Time calls in public. So that's what it is. Like you're not respecting other people's boundaries. Exactly exactly. And it's not even it's not a wall I didn't know the boundary. It's like come on yeah Speaker 3 it's Speaker 2 for sure. Speaker 1 And of course then we end up being the ones who tested Speaker 3 yeah. Speaker 1 Like well He really mean that I don't know, I'm gonna do it anyway. Let's just see what happens, you know? And, and Then it gets, you know, reinforced and then you're like, oh okay I guess this is a thing now and but I guess I just want to raise the point that it's not just about setting boundaries. It's also respecting other people's boundaries even in This is where it gets really important and also really hard, even if that person has not explicitly said it themselves. Okay. Yeah. Because they're there are some boundaries that, like, you. It's impossible to know unless the other person says something, right? So like the first three years, my wife and I lived together, she hated What the way I I put away my dirty clothes like it drove her crazy. Chapter 7: Boundaries in Romantic Relationships It took her three years to say something, so obviously like I have no idea. I've been like I've been throwing my dirty clothes in this the same hamper. The same way since I was a child. So like Speaker 3 there's Speaker 1 no way for me to know that that's a thing until she says something. But there are other things that once you under and I guess this Speaker 3 is why Speaker 1 I keep hitting on the autonomy thing, the self-definition thing. When you understand that, there are certain things that people shouldn't have to say, let's say you're suffering emotionally, very intensely and I feel this urge of like, you know, I could kind of swoop in and like Make Drew's life a lot better. Like I could fix some things for him and take care of this problem for him or whatever you have to resist that urge because it's it's not your job. It's not that's not your Speaker 2 place Speaker 1 and if you really want to do it, Then you need to talk to them about it first. You can't just do it and be like, I'm gonna be the Savior, I'm actually reading a great book right now around this Liz Gilbert. I'm a huge fan of for those people listening who don't know. She wrote she's most famous for writing. He pray love, but she's also ridden written a number of other fantastic books. Her new book is a memoir and it's about a very, very intense relationship. Well, it's about her history of codependency. And and then it's about a very intense romantic relationship. She had with a woman who was dying of stage, four cancer. And it's funny because As soon as the woman she was seeing was diagnosed. It's like Everything she had ever learned about romance and relationships and codependence and everything like went out the window because it's like, well, she is only got a few months left to live, so like, let's go for it. And then, of course, she ended up living for years and it like turned into a nightmare. It's, it's a, it's a fascinating book and it's not only is it beautifully written, but it's also like her level of self-awareness and like understanding Why she keeps behaving? Worse and worse and worse. Like you can see just the boundaries like melting away. As she like continues to justify like well. it's just this one time or it's just this one or you know what like let me pay for this thing because she's gonna die soon anyway. So like let me just go for it and it's just all the boundaries melt away and you you really see this horse story of what happens when you when you take. All of the Speaker 2 chains off and contrast that with the Harvard Professor what was his name like Christian? Yeah, contrast that he was like, no, I'm gonna put up more about boundaries now. Yeah and and was completely happy with that, Speaker 1 which makes sense. Right? Because I think, let's say you are diagnosed with terminal cancer or a loved one is like I think the instinct is to like, Let everything yeah right and just go for it but it's like no you the opposite is actually makes more sense because you have so little time. That you need to make every single day count as much as possible, after protect the most important things, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 Not Give them give all the space that for all the important things. The Russian know, it's, you have to define those important things. You have to Speaker 3 find the container for them. Yeah. Speaker 1 So this is actually a perfect transition into a discussion of boundaries in romantic relationships and Basically, the anatomy of a toxic relationship. How does a toxic relationship happen? How does it form? And how does it perpetuate because boundaries is really at the core of, all of these Dynamics we've already talked about quite a bit, but my goal here is to actually like really lay out a framework for people to understand. This is why you get into a toxic relationship. This is what makes it toxic. This is what it feels like. This is why these certain Dynamics happen and then of course this is how you get out of it. Ideally. So as we talked about earlier in the show, Every single one of us, when, as we're, when we're children, as we're developing psychologically. As we're maturing in many ways, that that maturation process is the process of developing an ego or developing an identity of understanding of who is Drew. Bernie. What is he like to do? What is he good at? What is he bad at? Who are his friends? Who are his enemies? What is he want to do with his life? These are all such core questions that we all ask start asking ourselves at a pretty young age and it takes us most of our young lives to answer them clearly and That that answering process is. It's very long, it's very difficult. It requires a lot of experimentation. That experimentation requires a lot of failure, a lot of embarrassment, a decent amount of rejection, and so it's not fun. It's like, it's just a very unfun process and for that reason, a lot of people of the process They they check out they numb themselves. They distract themselves. A lot of other people also grow up in environments that don't Foster that process. So maybe they're in an abusive environment that that they're just constantly on survival mode. So they're not able to experiment or try different things out, maybe they're coddled and over protected by their parents. So they're not allowed to have different experiences or ask these questions of themselves. Maybe they're parents are super demanding and they're like, this is who you are, this is who you're going to be. And so they're, they're just know, there's no room for them to develop this individual identity. So what happens as as those of us who come into adulthood with a un individuated identity, basically, a lack of Conception of our self. We are still very emotionally dependent on others, to feel validated to feel worthy. And and normal, And this is again, this is a pretty normal experience. I think it's everybody experiences this to a certain extent as an adolescent and and then, if you had a rough upbringing or a rough childhood, in some way, you'll experience it well into young adult hood as well. It's, it's One way of looking at it is simply just, it's insecurity, right? It's like you're very needy or you're very status driven, or you're very emotional and dramatic, you know, whatever it is like you latch onto the people around you, to help. You feel like an individual to feel like somebody who is, who is Clearly defined, when these insecure people come across secure, people. The secure people are Speaker 2 like ill. Speaker 1 Yeah, you're so needy. Oh my God. You're so Insight. Like you need to be validated fucking constantly. Dude, stop texting me. What the fuck? So insecure people. By definition kind of, scare a lot of the secure people away. What they do is, they attract other insecure people who also need to emotionally rely upon somebody else to feel whole fulfilled validated, like they have some self-esteem. And so, what you get, And this is not only romantic relationships, but this can also be through friendships. You get two people that come together. they suddenly, they they press all each other's buttons in the right way. They validate each other. All in the right way, they basically become extremely emotionally dependent on one another and if you think about it, if you are Emotionally dependent on another human being. To feel normal, feel good. Feel good about yourself. Then it makes sense that you want to remove as many boundaries as possible. Between you yourself in that person, right? You don't want it to be hard for them to come. See you. You don't want it to be difficult to get along. You don't want to argue about where you're going to go for dinner. You want to make it as, like, clean and seamless as possible. So it's like, yeah, move on. In Speaker 2 Fusion. It's what you're going for exactly. Speaker 1 It's like, yeah, yeah. I am into that band. Oh yeah. I totally love that movie. Okay, sure. Yeah, no, your friends are great, like it just you start. Melding into the same person. It's kind of a sad irony that this this enmeshing that happens as it's often called this. This this D individuation, that happens. It is motivated by a desperate attempt to get closer to each other, to remove any any boundaries to remove any distance between the two of you. But the problem is is that no matter what you do, you are now emotionally dependent on her person that you cannot control. Its so the closer you get to them, the more you remove boundaries, the more dependent you become upon them. The more desperate you are to control them to make sure like, oh shit she didn't call me back tonight. Oh my God. Like something as simple as somebody as the person, not returning a call. To a secure person like to an insecure and mesh person. It like you spiral out of control and identity crisis. It is, it's literally an identity crisis. It's like, I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. My world is falling apart, right? And then it like, it turns out that, you know, they fell asleep in a movie theater or something, right. Speaker 2 Forgot to call you, right? Speaker 1 What happens as a result, you get lots of drama, lots and lots of drama and with the drama, you get lots of manipulation. because, again, if I'm emotionally dependent on a person, To feel healthy and normal. And I don't control that person. Well, what's the next best thing? Manipulating them. This is where you get into guilt trip. You get into the scorecard, right? It's like, hey last week I did this for you and I paid for that. And this is how you repay me, right? It's Jealousy, you know, demanding. Like I don't want you to talk to her anymore, demanding time and Speaker 2 attention and yeah, right, yeah, Speaker 1 right. It's it's that's, that's disrespectful to me, you know, control can be aggressive and over. It can be You know, rage, it can be screaming, it can be making demands. It can be setting rules and it can also be subtle and covert, right? It can be You know creating drama is a form of control, right? Like if my life is always a mess. And my partner is always consoling. Me. And telling me it's gonna be okay and and supporting me and and intervening the try to save me that's all. So a form of control needing this can be a form of control. If I'm always desperately anxious, and lonely. And oh my God, I'm like, I hate being alone and I hate it when you go out of town. I, it's so I'm so miserable without you here. That's a form of control Speaker 2 and demanding, affection demanding attention again. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 And so, what ends up happening in these relationships is they tend to fall into a handful of patterns. 10 years ago. I, I grouped them in the three patterns, but honestly, like there's and all all three patterns are kind of similar and, and, and honestly, they're these are not exhaustive. Like, there's plenty of other patterns, too, but the ones that the three, the three groups that I identified back when I was a dating relationship, coach, is the victim savior, right? So, one person in the relationship is always getting screwed over. His always being hurt is never being respected and then the other person in the relationship is constantly showing up taking care of them. So we've been the hero the night on Shining Armor All That. the second one is the breaker in the fixer, so the breaker is somebody who is just Always finding problems like this is wrong. That's wrong. You didn't do this, right. Oh my God, I can't believe you make us live in this apartment. This is disgusting. You know, it's just like everything is nothing is ever good enough. And then the fixer is like oh I'm gonna make a good enough for you and then the third pattern is the the runner and the Chaser, right? The runner is always like finding reasons like, you know, I don't know. Like it's It's a little too much and like, I got things to do and you know, they're probably cheating on you and going on a lot of business trips. And then the Chaser is like, well, if I can just love them a little bit more, maybe they'll come back, maybe it'll show them. Yeah, maybe maybe if I can just, you know, when when he comes back to town, I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna throw him the best birthday party and then he'll never want to leave again. And then, of course, three days later he leaves again. And The funny thing about all three of these Dynamics is that no matter which role you play in each dynamic. You get to feel needed all the time. Yeah, Speaker 2 right. Yeah. There's a sick. Perverse fucked up like two-way, street going on. Yeah, and each one of those. Yeah. So Speaker 1 it's like, Speaker 2 speaking from experience. Yeah, right? Just from, yeah, Speaker 1 friends, tell me that this is what it feels like, right? So, it's like, when you're the victim, obviously, it doesn't feel good to be a victim, but when you're always when you're in a relationship Dynamic, like this, and you, and you discover that anytime you feel victimized, your partners shows up and gives you a lot of attention and affection. Guess what? You're probably gonna find more reasons to be a victim. Yeah, if you're the breaker, right in a relationship and you, you discover that anytime you're unhappy, your partner is showing up and trying to make you happy. Guess what? You're going to find more reasons to be unhappy, right? It just each each role in the relationship reinforces itself. and then, if you're The Rescuer or the fixer, Man, you get to feel needed all the time. You're like, man, I'm making this person's life, so much better. I'm this person's hero. I'm I'm the best. I'm so admirable. Oh my God, I'm like the best boyfriend or girlfriend ever. You get to feel great about yourself. Yeah. There's always another fire to put Speaker 3 out. Speaker 2 Yeah. And you don't have to think about your own shit because you're constantly thinking about their shit. That Speaker 1 is a great Point too, right? Speaker 2 And Speaker 1 again it kind of comes back to its like it's a form of avoiding Speaker 3 you Speaker 1 know dealing with your own insecurities, developing your own identity deciding who you are for yourself on your own terms. I almost visualize this as like, you know, imagine a couple in a house and there's like one person in the relationship is just walking into each room and like setting something on fire and then the other person in the relationship is like sprinting into the room with a fire hose and like putting it out and then by the time they put it out the partners gone to the next room and set another fire. And he's like, oh shit like runs in with the fire hose and you just kind of repeat that over and over the emotional intensity of these Dynamics is extremely powerful, extremely powerful. Like it's When the highs are so high Speaker 2 like Speaker 1 it's just you are almost Drunk on Love. Speaker 3 and Speaker 1 then the lows are so low, like you just It's it's scorched Earth. It's just a bleak abysmal existence when things are bad and you kind of ride this roller coaster up and down and up and down. Now, the reason boundaries never get set in these relationships, is because it interrupts that Dynamic, right? Like, let's say I'm a savior and I'm dating a victim. And my my partner calls me and she's like you won't believe what happened to me today. It's so unfair like people are so mean to me blah blah blah blah. Now imagine if I was like well you know that's You kind of have to take responsibility for yourself. It's at a certain point, you know, maybe deal with it, you're like deal with, it yourself. Go tell them how you feel like that just interrupts the entire toxic cycle, right? Because now, she's not now, I'm victimizing her, right? Like now, I'm part of the problem. And now, my love Supply gets Speaker 3 cut off Speaker 1 and my, my addiction can't be fed anymore. So there's like incredible incentive for the for each person in the dynamic that can keep the dynamic going and not erect any sort of boundary Speaker 2 to interfere with it. The Chaser Chasey A situation if you're the chassis and you're the ones kind of, I don't know about this. And the person is always kind of chasing you. As soon as they cut that out, the other person says, I'm gonna put a boundary down, I'm gonna stop chasing you. Yeah that also throws that cycle off too right. Because then the other person wait I was getting this validation that I didn't even have to work for. Really? Yeah Speaker 3 and Speaker 2 now I don't get it anymore and now that throws them off too. So again it's that sick two-way street that's going on here. Speaker 1 Back when I used the Used to coach. Speaker 2 I Speaker 1 talked to so many people in these sorts of relationships and essentially, if I was to boil down hours and hours of calls and consultations until like a couple cents is really what it came down to was this is I would tell them. You have to set a boundary. And when you set that boundary, one of two things is going to happen. Speaker 2 Either. Speaker 1 It's gonna heal the relationship, right? Because it's like, let's say you're the Chaser and you're dating a runner, and then one day you tell the runner you're like, I'm not chasing you anymore. Now the runner is two decisions. Either they can come back and stop running. Or they can run away forever, right? Parenting And it's like that with all of the Dynamics, right? It's if you tell the breaker, like, I'm not fixing your shit anymore, you need to deal with it yourself. Either they start fixing their own shit. Or they leave you and go find another fixer, right? And, and so, what I would tell all these people is I'm like one of two things is gonna happen. Either the relationship is going to heal or it's gonna end and in both cases, you're better off. So you might as well do it. Speaker 2 People don't want to hear that. How receptive were people that I guess? I mean I'm sure ran the gamut but generally speaking I because I think what a lot of people want is like, no, no. Tell me how to keep them from running. Yeah. Speaker 1 That's just oh, Speaker 2 just tell me how they keep running. Speaker 1 Exactly, Speaker 2 that's all I want. Just give me that hack. That's it. Whatever Speaker 1 make them stop running. Yeah, that's basically, yeah. But Speaker 2 no, no, no. You get two choices here. Well, I, so Speaker 1 here's, here's the funny thing about this Dynamic too. Is that it's like any drug. You need a larger dose to get the same? Yeah. Speaker 2 Right Speaker 1 each cycle. So, you know, when that when a couple first starts, you know, maybe they're breaker fixer Dynamic, make some feel really loved on a pretty meager situation, but you run that play for two, three, four years, and it gets pretty extreme like to get that same high, that same level of Romance that same intensity. Things get very messy and Speaker 3 dramatic. Speaker 1 This is why toxic relationships are ultimately, like, not sustainable in the long run because it's, they burn themselves out. My answer to you, is that the clients that I worked with who were, like, towards the end of that cycle. Or like, dude, I've been doing this for five years. Like, I can't fucking do this anymore, they were way more receptive than, you know. Yeah. Then people like six months in or like, well, just tell me how to get them to stop, running away from me Speaker 3 like Speaker 1 yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. It's not that simple. Speaker 2 Yeah, Speaker 1 you know, I've written quite a bit before about how people tend to mistake. Drama for intimacy. Yeah, Speaker 2 and Speaker 1 I think it's just because of the intensity of the emotions and but the truth is is that intimacy and drama are like not related at all polar opposite. Yeah, it's like real intimacy. I would describe more is like peaceful Speaker 3 call. Speaker 1 You know, it's it's intimacy is when you can like, if you can sit quietly on a couch with somebody, Doing different things and still feel loved. Yeah, Speaker 2 close. Yeah, that's intimacy. Yeah. Speaker 1 You know, if you need to, like, literally set the house on fire to feel close to one another, like, that's not intimacy that that you are in a drama spiral. You're in a sick, like codependent and it sounds silly, but Speaker 2 so many people get wrapped up in that. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 You see it all the time too. And even even people will say like, oh, look how much they care, right? Yeah. Like treats me like shit because he cares so Speaker 1 much, exactly, because he cares. I mean, you hear this all the time, too, with like jealousy? Yeah, it's like, well, he's just that jealous because he loves me and it's like, No, I'm pretty sure that's not it. I'm pretty sure he's just really insecure. Yeah. And controlling. Yeah. Speaker 2 That validation back from you. Yeah. Speaker 1 Exactly. Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 want to touch on. A little bit, not as much, the dynamic with parenting around this as well. We've we've mentioned parenting and passing a couple times, you know, this same toxic cycle can happen with a parent or child and A parent who lacks boundaries. Is not individuated, has not Health like fully developmentally matured, psychologically speaking. And a lot of cases. they will decide to mesh themselves with one of their kids and that becomes their Supply of validation and self-esteem. This also does not turn out very well. It's not as it's not always as dramatic. There's, you know, it's not as explosive as a toxic romantic relationship. But what ends up happening is that because the parent is emotionally dependent on a certain child's affection or performance or validation, or becoming a certain person that child never properly, individually the cells and there's like, plenty of like Famous child celebrity examples of this. If you think of about somebody like, like a Michael Jackson or basically anybody I remember. So there's like a really famous jazz guitarist named Joe Pass. He was incredible, but he was active in like the 670s and 80s. Incredible incredible guitar player. I studied him a bunch of Music School. But he had like a very sad. Personal story, which is essentially that like his dad just decided like when he was like six, like, you're gonna be the best guitar player in the world and basically like locked him in a room and made him practice for 12 hours a day and would be the shit out of him if he didn't. And it's It's that sort of thing. Like you are, you're emotionally preventing the child, from exploring, the world, to a certain extent from running those experiments. Seeing what works for them, what works for their personality? Seeing what fails for them, experiencing the rejection, and the failure. They never developed that that personal identity. And on top of that, what you tend to see with these, these children, is that They are emotionally unavailable well into adulthood, they're basically emotionally unavailable either until a they set a boundary with that parent or be. the parent dies and like, I hate to say it but I I've met and know a number of adult men in particular because I think, I think mothers probably do this more often, I have known a number of adult male's, they're well into adulthood and they're still completely un individuated and still enmeshed. With their mother. And basically, Have never had a long, a long term relationship have never settled down with a woman have never had healthy boundaries in any of the relationships. And it's pretty clear to me from the outside that is just like, yeah, this dude's still in mesh with his mother and he's like until she passes away or he like sets, a boundary becomes aware of it and sets a boundary like he's never gonna Have a healthy romantic relationship. Research & Frameworks Yeah. What happened with Joe Pass? You Speaker 1 said yeah. Speaker 2 Why do you know his story? How did that play out? Speaker 1 He became a world famous guitar player. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. But like was he was he like emotionally stunted all through that that's all he did, you know? Because you hear about that sometimes Speaker 1 I'm sure he was, you know, maybe maybe he wasn't. I mean Michael Jackson's. Probably a much better example there but I mean there's a lot of examples of stuff like that Tiger Woods's stories. Super interesting. There's a documentary about him. That's fascinating. Like there's also like there's part of me is just it's when I hear stories like this, I'm like Okay, it's it's fucking nuts. This parent is insane and irresponsible and arguably like very moral but at the same time, Like like Tiger Woods's, father decided that tiger was gonna be the best goal in the world before he was born. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Like, I don't know. That's another podcast. But Speaker 3 but Speaker 1 yeah, I mean it you look at obviously tiger at very, very public. Failing marriage, sex addiction, all sorts of stuff, you can see the pattern that happens. And and I would say too that this doesn't really require an inch men of the parent with the child. This can simply this can be a result of both abuse and negligence, right? It's like you, the child is never feels enough. Safety or security to explore and to take risks and to try things for themselves. Or. the parent over protects the child and never you know never exposes them to any sort of failure or setback or whatever. And we talked earlier about you know your your dad being wise enough to tell you like I'm not your friend one of the more troubling things that That you you see happening more recently, is that parents? particularly like wealthy educated parents like have started defining good parenting as like being their child's best friend and the problem with that is, is that as children grow up, they need Again, limitation is what creates freedom. They need like the fine structure, like the child is not aware enough or experienced enough to know, what sort of structure or framework that they need for themselves. It's the parents job to say. Like look, Here's here's the guardrails, you know, go experience life Within These two guardrails and then slowly as the child gets older like slowly expand those guardrails if you're trying to be your child's best friend, like you're not setting guardrails, you're basically just trying to make them feel good all the time. Yeah. And as we said earlier, good boundaries don't protect feelings, they protect values. So if you want to instill good values in your child, then you have to be willing to let them feel bad. Sometimes But if you want to be their best friend, then you're just gonna be trying to make them feel good all the time. Yeah. All right, a couple shout outs to some research and Frameworks around this, you know. A lot of what I just described is attachment Theory, you know, which comes from boldly and other researchers. We'll do a full episode on attachment Theory at some point. I'm pretty sure in the next year. It's just like It's two foundational to. Human Experience and general. I think it's all so interesting, the mention John gottman here. Western Romance We haven't actually talked about him a whole lot, but, you know, John gottman's. The preeminent relationship researcher in the world him and his wife Julie. And he is this thing called The Four Horsemen of the Marriage apocalypse, which is basically like he analyzed thousands and thousands of married couples and recorded them, having fights and arguments. He then tracked which ones stayed together and which one's got divorced and he tried to find patterns in their communication Styles and basically over the course of like 10, 20 years, what the conclusion he came to is that therefore forms of communication that the tier 8 intimacy and Trust within a within a relationship. And it's interesting because so the four, the four factors are criticism contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling, and I was looking at this, and I was like, you know, criticism and contempt are porous boundaries and basically, a lack of respect for for the other person's boundaries, right? It's like, if you, if you say something like, hey I need, I need a loan time and I'm like, well, you're stupid for that, right? Why would you need that? I show contempt. Or a critique. You, I'm not respecting your boundary. I'm disregarding it. The other two defensiveness and stonewalling is is I think being too rigid, right? It's like if my partner is criticizing me, I'm like I don't care not listening to this. I don't know. I'm not changing, I'm not doing anything, right? So it's interesting, you could look at it and kind of see it as like a lack of boundary flexibility. Harriet. Lerner has a book called the dance of intimacy. She basically just talks about how autonomy and closeness are actually intention and like they kind of play off one another Esther perel has a similar thing around this where she talks about how like you know eroticism demands separateness like she calls it of like how the same way fire needs air Speaker 3 to Speaker 1 grow. And a lot of cases like you need distance and separation from your partner to to maintain, or rekindle the intimacy and the the Excitement the romance. So again, that in meshman when you, when you remove all boundaries between two people, you remove all surprises and you basically already breeds contempt, right? Speaker 3 Exactly. Speaker 1 It's by getting away from each other and becoming your own person that you like Speaker 2 re-attack, each other to each Speaker 3 other. It's Speaker 1 funny because my wife, and I, Speaker 3 you Speaker 1 know, we were digital Nomads together. So, we traveled everywhere together. And then, I forget what happened. There was like a situation where I think she couldn't get a Visa or something. and so I just decided to do the trip by myself and at first she was like pretty bummed out kind of pissed and she was like all right we'll find I'm gonna go do this trip by myself and I was like all right and, and then we came back and we were like It was such a good thing for the relationship. I gave you so healthy and that's actually something that we've tried to maintain throughout throughout our 15 years together, which is like every year or two one or like, take pretty much every year. One of us does a trip by herself and for ourselves to like, not, not like a business thing or whatever. It's like, She'll go somewhere with her girlfriends or I'll you know go on a surf trip or something. You know, the last thing I'm going to talk about is the concept of Western romance. I really do think that Romance idealizes in meshed on individuated toxic relationships. And let me against the world, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was like, oh Smith be we're gonna be together forever screw everyone else, you know. Yeah. You know what's really funny like I you know, I never loved romantic movies but Speaker 2 oh Speaker 3 no, no, Speaker 1 I never loved them. I mean, it was, but it was funny because I remember, you know, once I a, you know, I spent as you know I spent first Four or five years in my career, as a dating relationship coach. So I read all these books on relationships and intimacy and sex and love and all this stuff. And Then it was funny that because I towards the very end, I think I met my wife, like, right before I kind of pivoted into self-help, in general, and it was funny. CHAPTER 8: The 80/20 of Boundaries So, I went through this whole period of just like really studying and understanding relationships, and, and intimacy, and I started dating my wife and she loves rom-coms. Yeah. It's so we would start watching ROMs together and it was, I, I was unbearable because every movie I would like pause and start. Explaining like, why each character's Behavior was problematic? I was like, no, no. She shouldn't have that expectation on him because she's violating his right to autonomy. Yeah, and she's also not communicated her values clearly. And by the way, he needs to set a boundary around his time because this is not good that he keeps coming to her apartment and, and sleeping there without permission like that's just setting a bad precedent and of course she would look at me and be like, shut the fuk right? Speaker 2 Stop it. Yeah, if you go back and you watch a lot of those rom-coms this special, I'm like the 90s. You won't see a lot of problem. Oh, you're in a minute? Not just because, like times have changed or whatever it was just Speaker 1 I think there's just more at the time. Yeah, yeah. It's It is interesting and if you go back, even further it gets even. Oh yeah, yeah. I watched I watched a Hitchcock movie, maybe like five or six years ago, called vertigo. I think it was I think it was called vertigo. Speaker 2 Yeah. And Speaker 1 it was basically a love story but it was so fucked up. Oh or another one. Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando it's like literally an abusive relationship, right? Speaker 2 Like Speaker 1 he's like literally psychologically and physically abusing her until she starts loving him. And it was like, it's a run like in the 50s. This was considered a romance. Speaker 3 I Speaker 2 think you and I, this has been a long time. You probably don't even remember this. But I you and I are both Gabrielle Garcia Marquez. Yes. And I was like, hands down, loving the time or Colorado. And you were like, no, no, no, no. So you ruined that one for me, too. Speaker 1 Yeah, so that one's funny because I read that in high school. Speaker 2 Yeah. And Speaker 3 I Speaker 1 thought it was the most romantic thing I had ever Speaker 3 read. Yeah, Speaker 2 it's beautiful. Right, obviously Speaker 1 gorgeous. And on the surface on paper. Yeah, it is so incredibly, beautiful and romantic, right? It's like this guy who like literally Waits his entire life to be with a woman, Speaker 2 but Speaker 3 if Speaker 1 you go back and read it as an adult, Speaker 2 yeah, with Speaker 1 a little bit of knowledge about this stuff. It is creepy. It's full of air bubble people. Yeah. Oh my God, like that was that is what is that his goal to just be like, these are awful people and I'm gonna wrap it up in a love story. I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think he's, I think that's why it's, it's Love in the Time of Colorado, right? It's like it's it's like a plague. Oh, right. It's like everybody sees this as romance but like, actually it's really sick. And this guy is Basically stocks a woman for his entire life and is obsessed with her and whereas her down until she is no autonomy anymore. And it's so desperate in her old age that she's like, All right, sure why audience? Yeah, if you, if you were planning to read it's actually a great book. Great book. It's worth reading but yeah, sorry to shit all over it. We're rounding out the episode. That means it is time for another session of 80/20. It's the 80 and 20 of boundaries Drew what is the what is the 20% of the advice here that probably generates 80% of the result? What would you say? Speaker 2 Yeah well we've mentioned it a few times. I think the very first step getting clear with the what you are lacking boundaries the areas you're lacking boundaries in your life. Anyway, right the resentments are the real big one. The those red flags. We went through, go through those figure those out where in your life are, could you really stand to use some boundaries, right? Speaker 1 I would go with really finding and defining a simple know. Like I think I think boundaries is one of these things that that people probably have a tendency to over complicate in amplifying their minds, right? It's like, oh, I've got my my partner and I were having all these fights or, you know, things that work are crazy and It's such a mess and I'm really gonna like put my foot down and do all these things. You know, it might be as simple as just kind of asking yourself like what is one simple thing that that is occurring right now that you you just don't want to occur anymore? It could be something as simple as like phones at the dinner table or Hey man, it's 6:00. I'm going home. Like no ifs or butts like just pick a simple know because I think two things happen. One is often the resolving. The small problem is an 80/20 situation where it's like, you think you think you're only solving the smallest of like five different issues but actually by solving that one small issue, You you remove like, 80% of your resentment or it like, gives you momentum to kind of move into the other things like. Okay, now that I've like blocked off my time Let's talk about some of the things that you said to me that I'm like, not a huge fan of Speaker 3 right. And Speaker 1 it like kind of opens the door to having other conversations. Speaker 2 Do you think too that the like a Gateway into this is? Would it be better to maybe start with some of those self boundaries than others test them out on yourself first or do you think it's better to practice external boundaries with other people first? I think that because I went back and forth on this I think the self-boundaries you can cheat them a little more easier. Yeah. Bulshit yourself more. Whereas like there's there's more Stakes when you're kind of setting them up with other people. Yeah, I'm Speaker 1 kind of struggling with this man. I think there's like different risk reward profiles. Yeah. Like I do feel like interpersonal, boundaries are like higher Stakes but higher reward. Yeah. Self-boundaries, Speaker 3 they're Speaker 1 easier to set, but they're all so easier to fuck up, Speaker 2 right? I Speaker 1 will say this though, like my, I'm leaning towards setting boundaries with yourself because I think it gives you Clarity on what you want and then like, once you've set a boundary with yourself, it's much easier to go to somebody else to get point and explain it to them, right? Like if I have decided for myself that I'm not gonna drink alcohol anymore. It. And I've decided that on my own without anybody's, you know, influencer conversation going on. Then when I am in a social situation, it makes it that much easier. Speaker 2 Okay? Speaker 1 To like decide or decline or whatever. Speaker 2 Yeah. And Speaker 1 then I guess the other thing too is just like If you feel guilt around boundaries and assuming that's not a shity boundary or not overreacting, you like that. Guilt is a sign that that boundary needed to be in place. It's it's one of the things that I've written a few times and Has like gone viral on social media a couple times is, you know I said that like if you set a boundary and people get upset that you said it, that's kind of evidence that it needed to be set in the first place. Like generally speaking people who are very respectful of your time and space and autonomy or like not gonna get super upset if you tell them like, hey, this doesn't work for me. Worst case scenario, they're like, oh, okay. I guess I'm just gonna see you last or whatever but it's it's the people who are In it for the wrong reasons. We're gonna get like really up in arms and defensive and guilt trip. You and tell you. You're being selfish all the Speaker 2 stuff. Yeah. For Speaker 3 sure. Speaker 2 I would say. To another kind of high impact. One is, you know, we went through all the different kinds of categories of boundaries. I would say that starting with your own time like starting with a Time boundary somewhere in your life where it's like, okay this part of my life is a mess or I need to get this whether it's work or you know even your leisure time or whatever it is is actually like going in and setting a very concrete boundary around some block of time that you actually have control over and and trying to stick with that too. Yeah so that's kind of a self boundary but it's also an external boundary at the same time. So it gives you some practice around that I don't like for me is like the boundary around like bedtime and then like keeping phones out of the the Bedtime boundary has got to be a little bit stronger for me. It's when I need to work on and I think that's a pretty that's a good way to get into this anyway. Yeah, I agree with that, I think. Yeah, time time is probably the easiest one because it is like purely rational, right? Like there's not any the whole lot, emotional involved in it and then it has a nice Downstream effect of like, once you've established it for yourself, you get to go to some, get to go to other people and you're like, oh no, I have this rule. I go to bed at 9 p.m. sorry. I can't come to the thing. Yeah, you know, and you don't feel guilty about it or upset or whatever, right? Yeah, and you I mean it's cliche at this point here, like CEOs and people saying I protect my mornings or protecting this block of time or whatever it is. And there's a big reason for that because they realize that's a huge leverage point in their life. Yeah. And I think you can do the same as just a normal person, too. All right. What are the hidden costs of boundaries? Oh, we I mean we've been sprinkling these in all throughout. I think probably should have picked up in some of these. I do want to bring to light a little story though. Okay, you all probably remember back in the 2020 Olympics is occurred in 2021 because of the the pandemic and some of Miles. Yeah. Right. She She was Drew herself from some of the events in the Olympics, right? During that year and there was For mental health, for mental health reasons, really is what it was. There was a safety aspect to it. She was, she said, she was getting the twisty. She was losing orientation in some of her, and some of her flips, whatever they do on gymnastics. I don't know what they call them, but yeah. Um, and so she was a little bit concerned, but she realized what it was, it was a mental health underlying cause to all that. So she withdrew herself and there was a big uproar about it, right? If you remember this, she caught a lot of shit for that. She did. She got a lot of shit for that. There's a lot of people who supported over to write the same time. She caught a lot of shit for that. She put down a boundary saying. Hey, my mental health at this point, is more important than than the gold or the competing. The Olympics, sure in interviews. Later. Why I just found really interesting? Was she read a book? Yeah. Yeah. She read a book that helped her. I was Foundry. Yeah, I wanted to embarrass you just a little bit Mark. What is it like to ruin the Olympics? She read a book called The subtle hour of not giving a fight. This is what she told, a reporter. She's and and I guess like her teammates are reading and stuff like that. And they're like, wow, you really just don't even give a fuck anymore, do you? And she's like, look, I'm protecting my mental health now. Yeah. And and then yeah, mark on the Olympics. I remember when that came out and, and I was like, super excited and proud. I was like, oh my God, its own biles. Read my book. It was like doing this, this like very courageous thing. And then everybody started shiting on her and dog piling on her. And like, yeah, hated her and said, she'd, like wasn't patriotic and didn't care about the country and had no Pride at all this stuff at, oh, Quietly tip. Exactly. Exactly. Shout out to Simone biles. Yeah, she's listening. Yeah, no, it's super cool. And it is, that is a that's a perfect example. Oh perfect. Example in cost a boundaries is like a lot of people, a lot of people just are not going to understand or appreciate like what what you need and I guess this is where like the Instagram Cliches get it right where it's like if they don't get it, if they don't appreciate it, if they don't respect it then like fuck off. Yeah. And there is a certain element of that like you have to know what's what's right for yourself and you have to enforce it and one way to look at boundaries is that they're like filtering mechanisms for the people in your life, right? When you set good boundaries that protect your values they will automatically filter the right people in and out of your life that match those values and help you live up to those values. And sure a side effect of that is that you lose some people. And you know some friendships fall away or there might be some fights and drama. There might be tension in the family. It's probably worth touching on just briefly. But like, you know, with friendships acquaintances co-workers whatnot. Like, if there's a big conflict around a boundary, Speaker 1 In nine times out of 10 you just lose that friend or you just stop associating with that person and that sucks but it's fine where it gets really difficult is with family. And generally speaking, when when in a family if a boundaries not being respected it becomes it becomes more. A question of exposure and management, right? It's like you have to set boundaries within the relationship or the familiar relationship of like, okay, this is how much time I'm willing to spend with my parents. These are the topics I'm willing to talk about in the topics. I'm not willing to talk about these are the activities I'm willing to do and the activities. I'm not willing to do and anybody who has kind of a strange relationship with people in their family. Like, that's a process that you have to go through at Speaker 3 some point. Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah. So I mean, that's the relational conflict is really That that will come up. Yeah. Speaker 3 When Speaker 2 you when you create new boundaries, that's going to come up the relational side, with this mobile story too, you have the social backlash. Most of us won't have to go through that thankful, but it can feel just as intense too. When you're going through, those relationships that are coming back at you, like you're putting this boundary down, like we talked about with the you're in a codependent relationship or something like that, like you're taking a leg out from under them and they're going to get pissed off. Yeah. And defensive about it as a referee there and you have to you have to prepare for that and knowing that ahead of Speaker 1 time, I think helps a lot, there can be a workplace backlash especially within certain industries. I mean it's funny because on the one hand you can look at this and be like that's so shity right? Like that. Like let's say you work on Wall Street. If you try to tell your boss on Wall Street, like, hey, don't text me after 7 p.m. like he's probably gonna laugh at your Speaker 2 face. Yeah. Speaker 1 And in shortly before firing so it's, there's certain industries where it's like, look man. If you're not If you're not available at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, like you're in the wrong place, you shouldn't be working here, Speaker 2 right? And hopefully you're getting paid for that. Yeah. Hopefully. At least getting some. Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, the reason you're making that much money. Yeah. And it's one thing to like, yes, draw a line in the sand. Say this is what I'm not available or whatever but like if the company comes back to you and they're like, hey man, this doesn't work for us. Then you might be at the wrong company or you might be in the wrong industry and like that's that's a factor here, too. Like you can't just You can't have everything. Oh yeah. Or you, you might not advanced in that company. Yes, Speaker 2 the way you thought you might at some point. Yeah. And you need to accept that or yeah, Speaker 3 or Speaker 2 move on. And Speaker 1 again, this comes back to the values piece, right? Like if you're somebody who highly values your leisure time and work life balance and mental health, What the fuck? Are you doing Investment Bank, right? Like that is aligned. What are you doing? On the surface it's like wow that's really shitty. It's not fair and all but like if you zoom out you're like no that's not the right fit for you and actually the boundary it comes back to what I said. It's like one of two things is going to happen either. It's gonna heal or it's gonna or it's going to go away. And in this case going away is often Speaker 2 the best the best time for sure. Um, you also have like the cultural conflicts that might come up. We didn't really get into individualist versus collectivist cultures, but that's one way to look at the cultural conflicts that might come up. I think, especially I think one of the reasons we mentioned this at the top of the show, you know, that boundaries have kind of become a thing just within the last 50, 60 years. And it's come from kind of self-help culture, and therapy culture more. So, in the western individualistic cultures, Speaker 1 right? And Speaker 2 those are that same as a good thing. In more collectivist cultures, you might find that putting up a personal boundary that's kind of, I mean, wow, that's a little bit rude. Speaker 3 If Speaker 2 not all out against defensive. Yeah. It's it's an offensive act that Speaker 1 special with like family. Yeah, Speaker 2 yeah. So again you know, we went through all those different categories and everything like that, each time you're going through. One of these, you have to like you have to plan for that ball back at some Speaker 1 point in contextualize and the us or Germany, like it may be totally. Fine inappropriate to ask your mother to not call you every single day. But if you're in like India, like It might be completely inappropriate. Right? Asked her mother or not call Speaker 2 you every day. So Speaker 1 just be aware of sure where you are. I think, one way of looking at all, this too is just like, It is the cost of Freedom. It is the cost of being independent, being your own person. being defining yourself like it's easy for us to come on a podcast like this or to Throw stuff on social media being like, yeah, be yourself, stand up for yourself. Be your own person. Like all that stuff, sounds nice, but This is actually where the rubber meets the road being yourself? Having personal freedom, having personal autonomy, it requires having difficult conversations, being willing to disappoint, other people being willing to be disliked by other people being willing to let certain things in your life go. Being willing to make hard decisions like that. This is what it takes. Again it comes back to the content and freedom versus I guess I'll call it the childish Freedom, right? The childish freedom is all the candy in the candy store, anytime I want it. Nobody's know there's no Mom and mommy and daddy. You're never going to tell me now. I can have what I want when I want it and there's no repercussions or Consequences Content freedom is like no, you get to Define your own limitations because you have to have limitations. At some point and either you define them for yourself or the world's going to Define them for you. So you might as well start to finding them for yourself and as you define them that's going to come with trade-offs and costs. Speaker 2 What you let into your life is just as much just as important as what you keep out, right? When it's comes to defining who you are, you're autonomy your freedom, your your identity. It's Speaker 1 just as much of what you keep out. So any big personal takeaways for you on this episode? Speaker 2 Well, the point I kept hammering all the way through this was the flexibility. Like I I think I I think I kind of knew this to some extent like oh yeah, you know, rigid boundaries are just as bad as like No Boundaries to some extent, but the contextual flexibility to me, that was kind of a like, oh, okay. It's It gives you a little bit of Freedom itself, right? Like it gives you a little bit of, okay, I'm gonna set this boundary and it's okay if you're going to change it a little bit better. So it's okay. If there's exceptions for it, it's okay. If you communicate that flexibility to other people too. Like, yeah, that was a big one for me. I think. What do you got Mark? Let's go with you. Speaker 1 You know, it's funny, I the relationships. I mean, I've been right? Speaker 2 Yeah, Speaker 1 literally writing about this relationship stuff for like my entire adult life. So, you know, none of that stuff was new. I've known for a long time that I had. Bad boundaries in my relationships. Pretty much through most my 20s, I think. I like finally started getting decent at them and maybe my late twenties. I guess I never really, it's such a simple thing. But like this, the, the self-imposed boundaries like the boundaries with yourself and with your relationship with yourself. I think prepping for this episode, maybe realize like how bad I was at that. Like I was a very indulgent person for Speaker 3 a long time. I Speaker 1 was the kid in the candy store it was like no Mommy is not gonna tell me know I do what I want at Speaker 3 all. Yeah Speaker 1 exactly and I guess like I think I Speaker 3 kind Speaker 1 of got cleared on that that like how how childish and unrealistic that is in my personal relationships like, A pretty good time, you know? As somebody who I think grew up with out any strong role models with boundaries, I think I figured it out pretty well by like a relatively young age? Yeah, and I'm, like, very proud of that, but Speaker 3 yeah, Speaker 1 it took it probably took me another 10 years to really get a handle on setting boundaries with myself like respecting my own time respecting my own health, respecting my own energy and not just like mindlessly indulging or You know, compulsively doing things. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, okay. That I'll tack on to that I guess to the other big one, which you mentioned early on. Is that actually like that freedom comes through the limitation, it comes from the boundaries. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 And that's like whenever I look back and even now, the things I struggle with right now is like I wish I had more time in this area, which I have more freedom or I wish I had more like freedom to do the things I want to do and it's usually because I have a lack of boundaries somewhere else in my life like especially around my own time especially around my own personal boundaries myself. Speaker 1 Yeah Speaker 2 I tend to have pretty good external boundaries with other people. It's the ones with myself that I struggle with more and that's really where like that freedom and autonomy comes from. I think yeah protecting your time doing what you're saying the health stuff too. The like I was saying about the sleep. Speaker 3 Yeah. You Speaker 2 know, I don't have very good boundaries around my sleep hygiene and my sleep routine. Speaker 1 And it's interesting because I feel like people are they tend to be Very good at one or not they like they do they appear to be different skills. Like I have a few people in my life who are extremely regimented with themselves like have great boundaries with them as a total Messes in relationship, Speaker 2 right? Speaker 1 Just A complete classified. Speaker 2 Yeah. The Speaker 1 two influence each other but they they are they're different muscles. Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah Speaker 1 for sure. Yeah, anything else? Any other words of wisdom, Speaker 2 I want to leave the world with I think that's it, boundaries. Boundaries. Good. Speaker 1 Like three weeks of research, brains much, higher hours of recording, right? Speaker 2 Big supporter about go Speaker 1 back to Nebraska. Yeah. Speaker 3 Oh Speaker 2 my God. Speaker 1 All right. That's it for another episode everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review. Subscribe follow the show wherever you're listening to it. It helps us out a ton. It helps us get the word out as always if you want to implement all these lessons into your life. Check out the solve membership community that membership. That's all podcast.com. We course a fight, everything that we talked about here and we've got a great community of people that work through it. Every single month, ton of fun, Drew and I are both active back there. We do webinars and meetups and all sorts of cool things. So with that, We will see you again in a couple weeks Speaker 2 around.