Personal and Professional Relationship Boundaries
Experiencing a long-lasting friendship can be incredible. It feels great having someone in our corner, especially when we’re confident they’ll be there forever. It can be a beautiful experience to fall in love and explore life with someone.
Sometimes it is not so wonderful. Some people don’t want to be a part of the construction crew and build something new. They are content with jumping the wall and doing as they please. Others are life-long friends who we accidentally cast a blind eye toward, by allowing them to do something we would never tolerate with new friends.
Professional relationships are even trickier. As massage therapists we encounter all sorts of circumstances that are challenging to navigate.
The key to all relationships is to build bridges from one person’s palace walls to yours. You can invite them into your palace as a guest, but they can’t stay. Each time you meet they must cross the bridge and obey the road signs. If they break the rules their entry is denied.
Every relationship bridge has different rules. The rules your significant other follows are much different than those you’ve set with your mother, father, or friend. In your personal life these boundaries are more difficult to define, but in the professional world they are clear cut laws.
Every bridge requires upkeep and understanding and must be built from a foundation of empathy and respect. Everyone in the world is an island and these bridges connect us. The stronger we build and upkeep them the less likely they are to crumble or burn.
In relationships we must maintain a vigilant eye on all the moving parts. Our primary focus should be our palace, because the most important relationship we have is with ourselves. Are we doing everything we can to live the highest quality of life, are we chasing our dreams, are we living our purpose, and are we taking care of our body?
We must know our wants and desires. Think about the existence you want to live and build boundaries to prevent others from pulling the carpet out from under your feet.
A vigilant eye will help us thrive, but other times we have to use it to simply survive. In the path of life, we sometimes encounter people who escape definition, they seem so monstrous our ability to empathize fails, and once again we feel lost. This kind of creature swims through the waters of life like a hungry shark hunting wayward spirits. Sometimes they sink their teeth into anyone they can bite, but most seek to eat a special kind of treat. The worst monsters we can meet prowl the most vulnerable and desperate. They take the bad and boil it down until their victim’s experience only a hellish frown. They lie, cheat, steal and destroy for their own pleasure, often with little gain. They slice and stab their victim’s skin with their razor-sharp teeth, while smiling with a sadistic grin. These boundary breakers find their way to our lives, pick and pluck like a buzzard’s beak seeking to snip away our ability to see.
What do we do when we meet these unfortunate souls?
We stand our ground, remain rigid and strong and never allow these monsters to infect us with their message of wrong. It will hurt, this I know, but it is how these things must go. If we fail to keep them away from our palace walls they will smash, poison, and consume until our haven is in ruins.
