How to Set Boundaries and *Improve* Your Self-Worth in a Relationship!

Hey there. This is Meadow Devore, author of the Worthy Project, and I teach tools to help you build self worth. Okay, so today I want to talk about how self worth and boundaries play out in a relationship. And specifically I'm talking about maybe a romantic relationship or a close friendship. So first we need to talk about what it means to be sustainable. And the idea of self worth is that you collect more self than you have more worth. When you deplete self or give away self, you have less worth. So to build value in yourself, not only in your own feelings of self, but also in a relationship, you actually have to collect more self or keep more self. So when you are giving away too much and receiving too little, that actually makes your value go down. It makes your self worth how you feel about yourself. The confidence or the self esteem that you actually experience plummets when you spend less of yourself and receive more, then your value goes up. So how does that actually look in real life? These are concepts, of course. What I want to show you is how this plays out, maybe in a regular day. So whether you're exchanging time, attention, energy, or love, if you have unfair compensation, you're set up for an outcome that's unsustainable. So unfair compensation, meaning like you're giving too much and getting too little, so that's unsustainable. When you're over giving, under receiving, or both, over time, your resources are depleted, your self worth declines, and eventually you bottom out. So fair compensation creates the opposite. It creates a sustainable outcome where you gain resources over time and increase your reserves. So sustainable means able to be maintained or able to keep going. That means you give and you receive in this way that's not depleting you over time. When it comes to relationships, what do you actually deserve? How do you create sustainability? So when I'm talking about earning or receiving resources in a relationship, it's complicated and it's a little bit more difficult or tricky than if I was talking about receiving fair compensation at work or receiving fair compensation for something that you made or a product. Right? So this is tricky because fair compensation in a relationship can easily be confused with tit for tat or keeping score. And neither of these foster intimacy, trust, and both tit for tat and keeping score actually plummet self worth. They make you feel bad about yourself and they, they plummet your value. So when considering fair compensation within a relationship, the key is to focus on whether your own behavior is sustainable. That means you focus on your own actions and see if what you're doing Is it sustainable or are you depleting your resource? The essential word here is you. So this strategy requires that you maintain healthy boundaries by modifying your own behavior so you're not over giving and so you're not under receiving. Now, on the flip side, tit for tat, that's completely different. That's a strategy that focuses on the other person. It's focused on retaliation. It's focused on the other person's behavior in seeking to punish or manipulate or exact vengeance to get them to change. This is reactive rather than proactive, and the focus is on the other person. Tit for tat doesn't have boundaries. It's trying to change the other person's behavior rather than focusing on your own. So as a general rule of thumb, keep your eyes on your own paper when it comes to sustainability. So in relationships, I used to way over give, way, way, way over give and ask for very little in return. I would give energy, I would give time, I would give money, I would give love, I would give worry, I would give just so much. And all I used to ask for is basically like, just tolerate me. Just, just keep me around. I mean, my, my. The way I valued myself was so low that I actually felt like just being around me was a burden for them. So I tried to earn the right to be in their proximity, I guess. I don't know, man. It was bad, it didn't feel good, and it always failed. So when I started changing this, I realized, oh, give my time and my energy and all of my thinking and my money, and I go grocery shopping and I cook dinner and I ask for nothing in return. That's a me problem. And it really changed the way that I value myself and it also changed the way that I was valued in relationships. For you to change your relationship, you might have to learn a blunt and simple truth. You have to learn how to contain yourself. I talk about about this a lot on this podcast, but this is a big issue. So healthy boundaries work in two ways. One is to protect you from the outside in, and the other is to protect you from the inside out. So think of it this way. Walls can only protect you if you stay inside the house. In your relationship, you might run around putting out fires and do anything but stay within your own walls. So your personal work would be to learn how to keep yourself inside your boundary line and to wait. This is extremely uncomfortable. You have to wait to see if others help themselves. You have to learn how to be patient. And this feels intensely vulnerable. For me, it was really Excruciating. Rather than repeatedly calling or texting to try to keep a conversation alive, the work would be to wait and see how often they naturally want to engage. Or rather than automatically paying for a meal, you, you wait and see how they want to handle it. Rather than changing your schedule so that you can meet at times that work for them, you wait and try to work out what works for both of you. So instead of shape shifting yourself into something that they might want, you wait to figure out if they are someone you want. So you take a step back. You contain your over giving, you contain your overspending, you contain your over depleting of yourself. You create sustainability of your resources and then you're able to see if that relationship is sustainable or if you need to keep changing your behavior or changing your actions to see if you're a better fit. So here's the tool. Number one, look at your own behavior. What I mean by behavior, what do you do? Look at your actions. Look at how you're reacting, what you're doing, how you're spending time, you're spending your resources, how you're giving away your energy, your worry, your money, whatever it is. So look at your own behavior and determine what resources you're giving and spending in this relationship. Number two, determine if this is sustainable. Are you receiving back enough to create sustainability? Are you giving and receiving in a way that that doesn't deplete your resources and actually over time builds value, builds worth, builds resources. And number three, if it's not sustainable, modify your own behavior so you're not over giving or you're not under receiving. And this means to set boundaries with yourself and to keep yourself contained. Okay, I'll repeat the tool one more time. Number one, look at your own behavior and determine what you're giving and spending. Number two, determine if this is sustainable. Are you receiving back enough to create a sustainable situation? If not, number three, modify your behavior so you're not over giving or under receiving. Set boundaries with yourself. All right, have a good one guys. Thanks for listening. You guys, if you find this helpful, please share with your friends. And if you'd like to know more about me, my courses, my books, or about privately coaching with me, please go to my website, meadowdivore.com.