Why Setting Boundaries is the Ultimate Form of Self-Care

Setting boundaries is the ultimate form of self-care for two reasons and two reasons only: boundaries help us maintain our self-care routine and they also remind us when we are not following up on our self-care routine based on the boundaries that we are no longer honoring. It'll show up in different ways such as our mental health, physical health and appearance.

When we talk about setting boundaries, we must acknowledge that the pretense of boundaries is to help us protect us from people, places and things that could potentially cause us harm in any way. Most importantly, the boundaries are there to protect us from us!! When we set boundaries with ourself, we need to think of it as setting a covenant with God; making the ultimate promise to ourself. Doing this will ensure our safety and protection from the entities intentionally and/or unintentionally coming towards us. When we respect the promise we made to ourself based on the personal boundaries we've created we have now created a sacred place of peace within ourselves. Staying in alignment with our personal boundaries will not only help us remain mentally stable, it'll also help us improve our physical health and appearance.

But we're human right, and humans break promises. So of course it is inevitable for us to break a promise with ourselves at some point in our lives. When we break a promise with ourselves regarding our boundaries it automatically impacts our mental health. Take making a physical health boundary for example; engaging in at least 2 physical exercises weekly to help maintain a healthy physique as having a healthy body helps us feel more healthy, confident and secure in who we are. But when we decide to no longer honor the promise we made with ourselves when setting this physical health boundary it then impacts our mental health as we start seeing the impact from not taking care of our physical health. Not honoring our physical health boundary will take us from feeling healthy, confident and secure to feeling lazy, unmotivated and insecure expeditiously. Experiencing too many negative emotions about ourselves and/or our current circumstances is what develops into a mental health disorder such as anxiety and depression. But making the promise to begin with will help us know when we need to realign our true selves based on the chaos we see, hear and/or feel around us. The best way to honor ourselves is by honoring the boundaries that we created and intentionally reminding ourselves why we created them in the first place.

Look around, is there anything you see, hear and/or feel that reminds you of the promises you've broken with yourself? If so, what are they, and when will you start honoring who you are again?

P.S.

A sweet reminder: Just because others haven't came back to fix the broken promises they've made you, does not mean you don't deserve to heal the broken pieces within you.