In this video Aaron Doughty explores why many spiritually‑oriented individuals struggle with personal boundaries and the ability to say no. He begins by describing a common scenario where a person feels obligated to act against their true desires, especially after a spiritual awakening that reshapes their identity. Aaron links this pattern to deep‑seated people‑pleasing habits formed in childhood—citing his own experience with a controlling step‑mother and the loss of his father—as well as a self‑worth system that equates value with how much they can make others happy. He explains that spiritual awakening often intensifies this conflict because the individual’s new authentic self can make friends and family uncomfortable, prompting pressure to revert to old roles. Aaron shares two concrete anecdotes: a coaching client who feels compelled to help multiple family members while recovering from a spinal condition, and a personal hiking story where he tried to pull a friend up a cliff, only to realize he was robbing her of the chance to discover her own capability. Both stories illustrate the tendency to “do the work for” others as a covert way to boost self‑esteem. Aaron argues that true boundaries arise when one reevaluates the internal rules that define worthiness, shifts from external validation to self‑validation, and learns to say no, which in turn creates space to say yes to authentic pursuits. He offers practical steps: recognize people‑pleasing triggers, consciously redefine self‑worth, practice setting limits, and use a specific meditation on “completing the past and feeling 100% worthy.” The video ends with a call to subscribe for daily empowerment content and a reminder that boundaries enable genuine self‑expression and attract like‑minded people.
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Do you find it hard to say no to other people when maybe other people want you to be a certain way, to do certain things, even though you know you really don't want to do it, yet there's a part of you that feels like you're obligated to or you should do it? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you why spiritual people tend to lack boundaries, show you how to build those boundaries, and then show you the most powerful way that I have transformed this in my own life. Welcome back to another video. My name is Aaron and I help people expand their consciousness. Now on this video, I'm going to be sharing with you something that so many spiritual people have asked me and they, uh, something I noticed as well. Just a lot of people say, well, how do I do this? Like people may be going through a spiritual awakening. I know that one time I was talking to a guy that was, uh, in my coaching, my group coaching group that I have called the Shift Academy. And I was talking to him and he was telling me like, I've gone through all this spiritual awakening and I feel like a completely new person and I'm excited. I've been telling my friends and family about it, but they want me to be this other way. They want me to be the old version of me. And he's like, what do I do about that? What I told him to do is I said, bro, you just gotta be the way everyone else wants you to be. It's so selfish to be going and doing what you and being who you really are. 'Why would you be so selfish?' Now, of course, that sounds so ridiculous, and I was being completely sarcastic, but once I framed it like that, he's like, 'You're right, there's really no other alternative.' I was like, 'There is no really other alternative. Either you're yourself and you're being yourself, or everyone else wants you to be a certain way, and you have to be inauthentic to you.' Now, that's the thing, is when we go through a spiritual awakening, we go through such a metamorphosis. We change the way we view ourself, we change the way that we see ourselves, we change the way we, really show up in the world, and then other people, that might make them uncomfortable. Now, part of us wants to make them happy. We want to make other people happy. And the thing is, is why do we want to make other people happy? Why do we want to be a certain way for other people? That's the question. So when we talk about spiritual people lacking boundaries, the boundaries are lacked because this person is focused on making someone else happy or on pleasing other people. This also has to do to do with being a people pleaser, something that I was for a long period of my life. I went through, many of you know, you heard my story, just a little quick snapshot of it. Between 7 to 15, I had a controlling ex-stepmom in my life. And what happened was in that period, I learned that I was rewarded for following the rules and I got pain if I didn't make someone happy and I didn't like get that validation in a way. So when my dad divorced when I was 15, I then felt like I was going around subconsciously trying to make other people happy. And that turned out that I was then people pleasing in many ways. I would do what I could to really, it's almost like my self-worth was tied upon how happy can I make other people? And I wouldn't be, I would do my best not to like kind of rustle the feathers of other people, even though in some ways I was a rebel. In many ways I wanted to make other people happy. I wanted that validation. Now, the reason this happens, especially for people that go through a spiritual awakening and what we call spiritual people, is 'cause many people tie their sense of self-worth based on the giving to other people, making other people happy. It's a part of the self-worth that says, if I can make you happy, then maybe you'll love me. And when it comes to spiritual awakening, what happens is people go through it And then they view themselves differently. They're into different things. And then what happens is they may have group of friends, family that understand them and know them in one certain way. But what happens is now they have a desire to make them happy, yet they want to be authentic to who they are now. So that's the thing with this whole process that's important to understand is how do you view yourself and is your self-worth tied upon other people validating you? Because when we get down to our rules about what it takes, think about what worth means as well. Worth has to do with value. Am I valuable? What are my rules to being valuable? And what happens is, is a lot of times we say, well, I am valuable once I do X, Y, Z. And I'll notice this a lot with a lot of people, people that go through a spiritual awakening, many of you watching this video right now, if you identify with this, you most likely have been through a lot of pain of your past because the pain of your past of going through a spiritual awakening, that pain catapulted you, gave you pressure to then go through a spiritual awakening. Now, when you go through the pain of your past, a lot of times that may mean that you had a rougher childhood. And if you had a rougher childhood, what that could mean is that your sense of self-worth isn't powerful from when you were growing up. It means you've had to relook at your sense of self-worth. And when you now look at your sense of self-worth and you redo the rules in your mind as to what it takes for you to be worthy, you can then reconstruct this whole thing to where then you don't feel, or feel like you're not worthy unless you do XYZ. I was talking to someone else in that Shift Academy, the coaching, group that I had 2 days ago when I did a live Q&A, and there was this lady that I was talking to who is currently going through where she's learning how to walk again because she had some type of disease that affected— or some type of thing that affected her spine, and she can't really walk. And what she said was, is that she finds herself— it's very difficult for her because she finds herself wanting to help other people in her family, her ex-husband, her grandma, and her mom. They all need her help. And what happens is she's extending herself so much and she's like, how do I, that was exactly the question. It's kind of what inspired this video. How do I develop the boundaries? 'Cause she lives with her mom and she's helping her mom. And then she's trying to help herself too because she's learning how to walk again. And then her husband, her ex-husband, all these things. And the thing that I explained to her is I actually shared with her a story, but the story is this. The other day, I was, it's about a week ago, I was with my buddies, with some friends. My buddy, I'll just tell you exactly who it is as well. I don't think she'll mind. So it's with Victor, my buddy Victor Otto, who's a YouTuber, and then his wife Patty, who's also amazing. And they're good, they're like my best friends. And we went hiking with some friends and we were at Red Rocks here in Las Vegas and we hiked up the mountain. We went up, we were at Red Rock. We go up, there's this little cave thing that's enclosed, that's like completely enclosed away from the wind and it's overlooking like this beautiful view of Las Vegas and all these mountains and stuff. So what we do is we get up there and that's the perfect place that we wanted to chill for a little bit as like the oasis at the top of this mountain. And so I get up there and it's kind of hard to get up because you gotta climb up this way and then you kinda gotta like, you kinda like gotta shoot yourself over a little bit in order to get up there, but it's totally worth it 'cause it's such a cool view. Well, one person was up, then I was the second person up, and then Patty was coming up, Victor's wife. And Patty was starting to get up. And then what I did is I was like, hey, "Take my hand, like let me take my hand and I'll get," 'cause she was like, she's afraid of heights. So she was kind of freaking out. She's like, "I don't know if I could do this, blah, blah, blah, blah." And she started to get really flustered. And when she started getting flustered, I was like, "Just grab my hand, I will pull you up." And she was like, "No, like, no, I'm not gonna do that." And I was like, I started to take it personal. I was like, "Why wouldn't you just grab my hand? I'll bring you up and you will get into the cave and it's all good." She's like, no. And she was, and she's a great person. So she might sound like she has a little bit of an attitude right now, but she was in a flustered state, you know? And I was like, okay. So then she's like trying to get up and she's still kind of like, she's like kind of freaking out about it. And I'm thinking to myself like, why won't she just let, why don't she just grab my hand and I will bring her up. Like it's super easy. Like she'll have the stability and she'll just put her leg up and she'll be good. And what happens is, is she's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. After I'd like, I said it again. And I was like, okay. I kind of like got quiet for a second. I was like, "Alright, let you do your thing." And then what happened is she eventually got up. And then when she got up, she calmed down a little bit 'cause she got flustered trying to get up. She wasn't mad at me or anything. However, then she said something very interesting. She said, "I had to do it myself because if I have you help me, then how would I know that I could do it myself or not? I wouldn't know." And in a moment, that was a wake-up call for me because I realized that I was trying to rob her of the joy of figuring out whether she could do it herself or not. I was trying to, and I also was aware that maybe part of my self-worth is based on how can I help someone else get up. In a way, I was gonna get some type of dirty high by bringing someone up and saying, look at me, I helped bring you up. And that's what I realized about myself. There's this part of me that always wants to add value, always wants to help people, but it's not just help people, it's do the work for them. My sense of self-worth is on doing and having that kind of perspective. So when I look at that situation, the key for it is understanding, are you really helping people or Are you doing the work for them? When I was talking to the lady I was talking to that I was coaching, I said, maybe you're trying to yank your family up to the cave. You're trying to yank them up and do the work for them and enabling them to always rely on you rather than letting them do it themselves. So all of our boundaries are based on our level of self-worth. And until we question our rules of worthiness, our rules of value, how will I know when I'm valuable? We tend to do everything we can to make other people happy instead of actually being ourselves and doing what makes us happy. So when I had that realization on the top of the Cape, it was very powerful for me. I realized what other, I'm kind of a fixer in my life in general. Family needs help with money, there you go. I have people that need help, I try to do it for them. And I'm realizing now, I have to let them, I can't keep robbing people of their power. I have to have my own boundaries. And when it comes to a spiritual awakening, when we go through this process, a lot of times we'll do everything we can to make it so that other people will love us, will value us, not knowing that that validation we seek, that love that we seek, we can give to ourselves. And by having those boundaries, that's how we give that love to ourselves. Because then we have more energy to focus on us. So when it comes to boundaries and spiritual people, the way you take your power back is you reevaluate a prior evaluation of your own self-worth. And you realize that the most powerful way for you to show up in the world is by you being yourself. You being yourself, you be you. And when you are being yourself, what you'll find is that more people gravitate towards you anyways. Those boundaries are a good thing. Those boundaries, when you say no to something, you say yes to something else. I see people that, you know, I know people that go through a spiritual awakening, their friends want them to always hang out the same way they used to. And sometimes as a spiritual person, you may find that a lot of people come to you for help and they want you to give them energy and to help them. But realize that the more you say yes to that, if it's out of place of guilt, A lot of times this will be tied to guilt. I know that even in my family, sometimes I feel like obligated and responsible. Even the lady I was coaching, she felt responsible for her mom and her ex-husband. But the thing is, we do our work, we do what we can do. We could still be compassionate, but we have to be aware of our own boundaries. And remember, when we have boundaries, that's when we're really able to be ourselves. This is about awareness and our sense of worthiness. That's where the power really is. Now for this, what I recommend you do is first off, subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. I share videos about how we take our power back. I help people to become empowered with the videos that I make. So if you haven't subscribed already, I make videos every single day on topics like this. And also there's a meditation that will help you to raise your vibration in the sense of worthiness. It's on completing the past and feeling 100% worthy, whole, and complete. And if you listen to that, that will help you to clear out these rules that you may have made about yourself. I'll go ahead and link that right here, plus in the top of the description box below. Other than that, I hope you enjoyed this video. And as always, peace, much love, and namaste.
