Boundaries Don't Have to Be Battles
How to get what you want by asking for it instead of fighting for it.
“People want to help you, but they don’t know how to help until you tell them.”
I once asked an old friend of mine—an oncology social worker—about the most important piece of advice he gives to his patients, and that’s what he told me. Then I watched him put that wisdom into practice while traveling with our wives to a psychology conference in Honolulu.
When we got to the airport, he printed out their boarding passes and discovered their seats had been changed—they’d be sitting apart on the nine-hour flight. As we walked toward our gate, I asked him what he was planning to do about it.
“I’m going to ask to sit next to my wife,” he said, smiling. “People want to help, Kelly, you just have to ask.”
Not only did they sit together, but their seats were upgraded for free in order to make it happen.
In the years since then, I’ve tested his maxim over and over again, and people have pleasantly surprised me over and over again. It turns out, people do want to help. The problem is, we assume they don’t. So, we armor up for battle and then blame people when they treat us like an enemy combatant.
How we set a boundary influences how people respond to it.
“Now, hold on,” I can hear you saying. “Your friend didn’t set a boundary, he just asked for what he wanted.” But that’s the point: My friend was in the third stage of boundary-setting maturity, where boundaries begin as an ask.
Here are the stages:
Stage I: Codependent Boundaries. On that trip to Honolulu, if my wife and I had been placed apart on the flight, I wouldn’t have made a peep. A codependent boundary is a non-existent boundary. In our effort to avoid rejection, conflict, or simply being a bother, we keep what we want to ourselves. Most boundary-setting begins in this stage because, as children, our wants were often treated more like burdens than boundaries.
Stage II: Independent Boundaries. A lot of good therapy consists of codependent people learning how to speak up. Oftentimes, though, our boundaries are born from the resentment of having been a doormat for so long. Thus, we don’t openheartedly ask for what we want, we closed-heartedly dare people to resist what we demand. “If you don’t like my boundaries, you’re probably the reason I need them,” declares a popular social media meme. With an attitude like that, is it any wonder people fight back?
Stage III: Interdependent Boundaries. Here, we know what we want is valid, and we know others have a valid right to refuse it, but we don’t assume they will. We simply ask openheartedly for what we want. If they refuse, and if we decide our want is actually a need, we express it as such. And if they still refuse, we decide if we want to reassert it as a boundary. However, we don’t set the boundary because our heart has already closed—we set the boundary to keep our heart open. Then, even incompatible boundaries can become a dance rather than a duel.
It turns out, when a boundary begins with an openhearted ask, people are surprisingly happy to help.
I saw a viral TED Talk by Jia Jang, an aspiring entrepreneur whose ambitions were being undermined by a fear of rejection. While trying to cure his fear, he stumbled across “Rejection Therapy,” in which you get intentionally rejected for thirty consecutive days and thus desensitize yourself to the pain of rejection.
Jia Jang took it to the next level—he committed to one hundred days of rejection and started a video blog about it.
On day one, he asked a total stranger for $100. The man didn’t say no, he simply asked, “Why?”
On day two, he asked for a “burger refill” at his favorite hamburger joint. The cashier offered to ask his manager.
On day three—in a video that also went viral—he walked into a Krispy Kreme store and made a ridiculous ask: customized donuts in the shape and colors of the Olympic rings. Fifteen minutes later, the manager produced the donuts.
No one was saying no to him. They all wanted to help.
Over the next 97 days, people kept saying yes, resulting in a range of adventures including planting a rose bush in a stranger’s backyard, serving as the first and last ever Starbucks greeter, and teaching a college class, which had been one of his lifelong dreams.
Your boundaries don’t have to be battles.
They can begin with an openhearted ask.
What you want is mostly good.
So are other people.
Pivot #7: An open heart doesn’t make your boundaries weaker but wiser.
What questions about boundaries does this post answer for you? What new questions does it raise? Feel free to share any responses to this post in the comments, and I’ll be sure to reply!
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Well, this is the scariest post you have ever written, in my opinion. Just in time for Halloween, LOL. I am experiencing anxiety in the form of chest pressure and shortness of breath just by reading about the idea of asking for what you want, and the experiences of others asking for what they want. Even the thought of someone saying “yes” to what I ask for is scary to me, because then it is my fault if things turn out worse than before I asked for anything. And then my thoughts spiral to the point that I don’t even know or trust that I know what I want. So, this is a big one for me.
“Dance rather than duel” is such a great and memorable image. Thank you!