83. Effective Boundaries

0:00 Hey, what’s up everyone, it’s Jennie Dildine, the LDS mission coach and you’re listening to the LDS mission Podcast, episode number 83 effective boundaries. I’m Jennie the LDS mission coach. And whether you’re preparing to serve a mission, currently serving a returned missionary or a missionary mama like me, I created this podcast just for you. Are you searching for epic confidence? Ready to love yourself and to learn the how of doing hard things? Then let’s go. I will help you step powerfully into your potential and never question your purpose. Again. It’s time to embrace yourself. Embrace your mission, embrace your life, and embrace what’s next. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I’m excited that you are here. I’m excited to share some ideas with you today about effective boundaries. But first, I wanted to make sure that you guys knew all of the ways that you can get help from me today. Or this week, or next week, if you want some more help with navigating all the different challenges that come from getting ready to serve a mission. Being on a mission and coming home from a mission, the mission definitely presents a unique set of challenges. So I’m just here to help. I want to help as many of you as I can. And I have seen quite a lot of clients over the years, talk to a lot of missionaries. And if you if you’re feeling the pull to get some help, or some additional, like, insights or anything like that, there are lots of ways that I work with missionaries. So if you’re listening right now to this podcast, this is one of the ways that I get help out to missionaries. It’s through this podcast and a lot of missionaries are listening on Google Drive, which is super fun. You can also hop on a strategy call with me I love just hopping on they’re totally free and getting you as much help as I can, in 30 minutes. And if that sounds like maybe you need some help, or maybe you’re just kind of worried about a specific aspect of the mission or your home from your mission, you’re just kind of floundering, totally hop on there, let’s let’s chat about it, I would love to help you. A couple other ways, I do have a preparing missionary course that you can just go on my website and buy right now, I love that option for missionaries who are getting ready to leave. It’s basically all of my best tools that I have taught preparing missionaries for a couple years now. Totally available to you right on my website, which is super fun in a series of videos. And then I do some one on one work with currently serving missionaries. And this has been really, really fun and mission changing, honestly, for a lot of these missionaries. So if that sounds interesting, I’m here for it. I also, I’ve done lots and lots of work with returned missionaries, that is just really going to be such a tough transition for so many reasons that I’m not going to get into here. But know this, you don’t have to keep struggling, there are ways to continue moving forward and to feel more of like yourself again. And I would love to kind of talk through some of that with you. And there’s a couple of ways that I work with return missionaries just depending on kind of where you’re at. Yeah, so I have a couple options there if that feels like something you are drawn to do to kind of make you know a change and the way you see yourself or the way you see your life or the way that you view your mission experience. And so I’m here for all of it. So, if you guys have any questions, you know where to find me, Jennie at Jennie dildine.com, reach out on Instagram. I’m happy to help. I’m just here for it. I’m here for all of you. So today well before I jump into what I want to teach you today, I’ll give you a little update. Just things are moving along in January for the Dildine family. My husband and I were able to get out of town for a little bit to San Antonio. Normally if we have time We’d like to go visit like the mission home in a mission there out of the out of our state that’s out of our mission. We did that when we were in London in the fall that was super fun to meet those missionaries. Shout out to you, if you are listening, we didn’t get a chance to when we were in San Antonio, but thinking about all of you, and I just Yeah, I always have my eye out for you. Oh, totally crazy story is that on the way home when we were landing, this, it was on Monday. Our plane was taxiing. And we ended up in some gravel. I don’t know, the pilot said they made a wrong turn. And we ended up in some gravel, I’m sure there’s a metaphor or something in here at some point that I’ll have to circle back around to. But we ended up waiting on the plane for two and a half hours. And they had to bring like some military buses to get us off the plane because the plane was the full wheel was actually buried all the way into the gravel, so we couldn’t move on. Anyway, it was a whole crazy situation. It wasn’t dangerous. Nothing like no one was stressed or worried or overwhelmed. It was actually just kind of an interesting adventure. But here’s the part that’s crazy, is as we were getting on the plane, we noticed a missionary who was from where I’m from, pretty close to here in Boise, and he was going home. And so can you imagine his surprise and his family’s surprise, when it said that the plane had landed. And if you’re a mom, or every turn missionary, I know, you can sort of relate to this, like the anticipation, I’ve waited two years, he happened to be a guy, I’ve waited two years, and now I’m gonna see my family again. Anyway, then we’re just like it even probably showed on the screen like plane has arrived. And then you’re waiting at the gate for them to come through those doors, can you all relate to what I’m saying. And then it’s two and a half hours later, that he was able to get on a bus, and then finally see his family. But anyway, I’m like, he is gonna have a story to tell. My husband and I were one of the last ones off the plane because they unloaded it from the back. First, and we were in row two. But anyway, I didn’t get to see that reunion. But I did on my way, at one in the morning, by the way. Like through the area, I did see, you know the exit area as we went to get our bags. Oh, except for the bags are still on the plane. But anyway, we have our bags now. But at the time, the bags were still on the plane, and they couldn’t figure out how to get them off. Anyway, I have the bags now. But all say I did notice a bunch of glitter that it looked like they had thrown or there was must have been glitter on the sign or something like that is we were finally able to leave the airport. So yeah, just totally crazy random thing. I’m sure I will have some sort of analogy. And all of that at some point. So okay, now that I’ve shared a little bit of an update with you, I want to dive into effective boundaries. So we’re gonna kind of talk a little bit about what boundaries are and what they’re not. I’m gonna give you a formula for setting a boundary. I want to dive into a little bit about the difference between requests, expectations and boundaries. Because I think that’s really helpful like frame of reference. And, yeah, that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today. So let’s dive in. Let’s talk about what boundaries are. So the way I think about a boundary and the way I like to teach a boundary is that it is something that we do with love and love for every one in the story. So what I mean by this is not just done with love for the person that you’re interacting with, but also done with love for the people that maybe you have stewardship over. And also done with love though for your self. So I think this is just really important to keep in mind because here are some of the things that boundaries at least the way I teach them are not they are not selfish. They are not put in place to manipulate people. Okay, and get people to show up differently. Boundaries are not ultimatums and they’re also not us drawing a line in the sand. Okay, If

10:01 we it would be appropriate to set a boundary out of love when someone is intruding on your personal safety, your emotional safety, or your mental safety, and there might be other things. And I’m not an expert in the area of boundaries. I’m sure a lot of people have a lot of things to say about boundaries, and might have more to say about it. But those were kind of the three that I came up with. There’s a couple of things that we should maybe consider. So there’s boundaries that are spoken. And there are boundaries that are unspoken. So let’s think about that. So one of the boundaries I have is that if I’m walking down the street, and someone punches me in the face, I’m gonna call the cops. Okay, so that’s just sort of like, an unsaid boundary that I have for myself. But it’s not like I have to go around telling all of the people as I walked down the street, like, hey, just so you know, just so you know, in case you punch me, it sounds ridiculous saying it out loud, right? Just if you punch me, I’m gonna call the cops. Sometimes there’s these on said boundaries that we just sort of all understand. However, often, there are boundaries that we need to communicate more clearly. So the first question you can sort of ask yourself is, is this a boundary that needs to be illustrated or said out loud, or is this kind of a boundary that I can keep for myself, and all of these examples, I’m going to maybe share kind of what it would look like for it to be a set boundary versus maybe an unsaid boundary. Okay, and both can be super effective. So here’s the formula for setting a boundary. It sounds like this. Like you can use this these exact words if you want to, in your mind or out loud. If this person, the person I’m interacting with chooses to do this, I am going to blank. Now notice, we want to have kind of as a cradle for all of this, though, is love. And safety. So personal safety, emotional safety, mental safety and love. Okay, love for the person love for yourself, love for whoever you have stewardship over. Let me give you a couple of examples. And I’ll share with you maybe some things that you would say out loud, and then maybe also some that would just be boundaries, you would have in your own mind that maybe you don’t necessarily have to go out there and share with everybody. So this would be a set boundary. If you choose to raise your voice at me, I am going to leave the room for 15 minutes. Okay, so think about how this could apply. Like on the mission, think about how this could apply like in your dating relationships. Think about how this boundary might apply for you in your job where you work. Think about how this might apply in whatever stage you’re in. Now, this could also be an unsaid boundary that you just create for yourself. Like if whoever I’m interacting with starts to raise their voice at me. I am going to leave the room for 15 minutes. Now, we don’t have to say that out loud. But you can. All right. Here’s another example. If you choose to come over to my house unannounced, I am not going to answer the door. So again, this could be a set boundary if someone tends to keep crossing a line or crossing a line and you feel like it’s intruding on your personal safety, your emotional safety, your mental safety. And by safety. I don’t think it even has to be like, like all of a sudden it’s dangerous. I just mean even well being. So think about your personal well being your emotional well being your mental well being. If someone just keeps coming over and coming over and coming over and coming over and you’re getting mentally or emotionally drained. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to say to that person Hey, I love you. Here’s the love part, right? I love you and I I find it really hard to kind of show up in the way that I want to show up when you come over unannounced. So if you come over announce without sending me a text first or whatever. I’m not planning on answering the door. Okay. Here’s another example. And again, that’s actually a pretty good one, that could just be an unsaid boundary that you just have for yourself. Maybe here sometimes, like at certain times in my life where I’m just like hiding, like behind my bed, because I don’t want to go get the door. So true, true stories, guys, that’s that’s what we do here. All right, so maybe another example of a set boundary or unsaid boundary, if you choose to start telling me all the reasons I’m not a good missionary, I am going to leave the room. So notice how in this example, because I’ve had missionaries say like my companion was ruthless just told me all the things I was doing wrong. Okay, in this example, we’re not, we’re not like trying to get back at them, we’re not trying to punish them, we’re not trying to manipulate them, we’re not giving them ultimatums, we’re not trying to instill more fear in them are just like, if you choose to do this, start listing all the reasons, I’m a terrible missionary, I am going to do this in order to protect myself and protect the relationship that I have with you and the way that I want to continue to see you. Now the part you have to know is you have to let go of what the other person does. And we’re going to talk more about that, I think it’s next week, I’m doing another or maybe it’s in a couple of weeks a podcast on manuals. But I’m so file that away somewhere, but just it has to really like come from a loving place. Like, if you choose to start telling me all the reasons I’m not a good missionary. Right and, and really understanding like they’re allowed to, like they can and, and we’re not doing anything to manipulate or control them. But like, if you do this, then this is what I’m going to do. And we have to let go of how other people show up. Because even if you set that boundary one time, like a verbal said boundary, they still might do it. And then you can remind them, like if they start going off on you again, about all the reasons you’re not awesome, then you can go ahead and say, oh my gosh, remember, I, I love you. I love me though, too. And so I’m not gonna stay in the room. I’m just gonna leave. So I hope this is starting to become more clear to you. Here’s another example, if you choose to show up late, I’ll only wait for 15 minutes. Okay, I worked with one client who was just like, I show up. I’m supposed to meet my bestie there and they’re just late, over and over and over, like, what am I supposed to do with that. And then we start to get frustrated. Because we feel like that person is wasting our time, we start to have all these thoughts about them about how they don’t respect us and all of that. So instead of getting into all of that, you can protect your personal well being emotional well being your mental well being and protect sort of the way that you want to feel about them. So even ahead of time, you can just say, Oh, hey, friend, bestie. Like, guess what? I love you. And I love me. And just so you know, I can only wait for 15 minutes. And if you’re more than 15 minutes late, I’m going to probably leave. Okay? Does that sound harsh to you guys. Maybe if you’re not in like used to setting boundaries, and you’re kind of used to like letting other people run the show. But hopefully, if you can start practicing in small ways to set boundaries, you’ll start to practice it not having to be mean not having to be manipulative, but instead can be done out of love for you. Love for yourself and love for whoever you have stewardship over. So this is the last example I have for you. If you try to rearrange plans at the last minute, I will probably cancel.

19:32 So I was working with this client who said, you know, I have this really good friend, and he keeps saying let’s meet up and then he’ll say, Oh, can we meet up later? I guess I can only meet at eight. And then, you know, she’d say, okay, yeah, let’s meet at eight and then at eight, it would come around and he’d be like, Oh, just kidding. I guess like I still working on my paper. Can we say 11? And she’d be like, okay, yeah. 1111 is probably late to be I don’t No, actually, when I was in college, I was always up to 11. So maybe, but then, of course, he would be like, Oh my gosh, I’m just too tired. Nevermind, I’m to burnout. Can we meet up tomorrow? Can we go grab a smoothie? She’d be like, okay, yeah, sure. So what I worked on with her is this idea like, no, that probably feels terrible, because you’re just at the mercy of what he wants to do. And we talked about how it might be a good opportunity to set a boundary. Now, she could have said out loud to him, like, Hey, listen, yeah, I’d love to meet you at eight. But if you end up needing to reschedule at the last minute, I’m probably not going to be able to, like, hang out with you again till Tuesday, or whatever. But also, what she found is she found herself in this loop that wasn’t self loving, where she just kept saying, okay, yeah, I’ll do that. Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that. It was kind of like a people pleasing loop. Like, okay, yeah, I’ll do that. Instead of she could have also had an unsaid boundary for herself. Like, if he tries to rearrange the plans at the last minute, I’m just gonna cancel. Okay, so do you see how sometimes it is effective to say it out loud. And sometimes you just can have that boundary for yourself out of self love, and don’t need to actually say it out loud. Okay, so here’s one of the clinchers with boundaries is, you have to be willing to follow through. And again, whatever is in the blank part, remember, the formula is if I choose to do this, well, sorry, if you choose to do this, I’m going to do blank, that blank shouldn’t be in like to get back at them, or to be vindictive, or to, like, prove anything to them, or manipulate them, it should always be, if you do this, this is what I’m going to do to protect me out of love. Because I love you, I love our relationship. I love the way I think about you, in this specific way. I love what we have here, and I love me, and I don’t want any of that to get rattled. The truth is, is we don’t get to decide if someone does or doesn’t do what they say they’re gonna do. That would be nice if we could control all the people. So we can’t, though. I remember. I was coaching and another program be bold with Jody Moore. And I did a little bit of work in there with her. And I was coaching a mom, who said that her adult son would come home, he’d be really agitated and really angry. And just, you know, kind of take it out on her kind of a situation. So maybe you can see yourself in this if it’s like your companion or your boyfriend, or maybe it’s your parents or whatever, right? So the son would be really kind of agitated. And so I worked with her. And we talked about how she could set a boundary like Listen, son, I love you. And if you come home, and I noticed you’re really agitated, that’s okay, you’re allowed to be agitated, you’re allowed to show up however you want to. But if you choose to do that, this is what I’m going to do. And we kind of decided that she could go for a drive for 30 minutes or whatever. And, and you will need to though follow through with that boundary. When we follow through, we sort of teach people how we want to be treated. But also not like realize that people still get to show up. However, they want to notice in this example, with this woman and her son, how if she just never set a boundary, how the sun would just keep doing what he did. And she wouldn’t be protecting her own, like personal well being emotional well being or mental well being. But then notice on top of that, if she would have said, Hey, son, I love you. And if you come home and you’re agitated, I’m gonna go for a 30 minute drive. And then that happened and she didn’t go for a 30 minute drive. Then see how we’ve kind of lost some ground and teaching the son like what is going to happen and not anything against him something to protect ourselves. But maybe at some point the son would be like, Hmm, interesting. The the impact that my behavior is having I wonder if I want to change the way I’m showing up and totally letting go of it. If he doesn’t, he might not he might never and then you might want to set a different boundary like you’re not allowed to live here or whatever. Ever, but, but just giving someone an opportunity to make a choice, and letting go of what you know what they decide. So let’s quickly talk about the difference between requests, expectations and boundaries, because I think these sometimes get confused. So it’s good to know the difference between these three things for a couple of different reasons. Because then you can decide where you want to go. Like, if you’re like, you know, if someone is kind of making a request of you, it’s good to know if that’s a request and expectation or a boundary case. So then you can kind of know how you want to show up in that situation. But also, if you are the one doing the requesting, the expectations or the boundaries, okay, so you can be on the receiving end of requests, expectations, and boundaries. Or you can be on the giving end of request, expectations and boundaries. And so it’s good to kind of clear up what it is you’re trying to do. And it’s also good to clear up kind of what you are on the receiving end of let me give you an example of a request a request usually sounds like it would be nice if.dot.dot.so. With my kids say, I would say it would be nice if you could wash, do your dish job today, they each have, we rotate who loads the dishwasher who unloads the dishwasher, and who takes out the kitchen trash request. Sounds like it would be nice if you did your dish job today. Okay. So the thing about a request is if we’re making the request, we can’t necessarily, like ensure that someone is going to follow through, we have to definitely let go of whether the my kids do the dishes or not.

27:05 And it is also like if a request is being made of us just don’t you have full like, that’s not like necessarily an expectation or a boundary. It’s just It would be nice. If that’s just good to know, I was talking to a client who told me that her mission president said, before I leave this mission, I want to have enough baptisms in this mission that we can have a new temple. Now see how we can start to filter that through? Is that a boundary? Is that an expectation? Or is that a request? Okay, and I’m gonna explain expectation and boundary here quickly. But to me, this example is just a request, like, hey, if it works out, it would be nice if we could get a temple here. But notice, if we filter that through a different lens, like an expectation, it’s totally different and a boundary even more. So with an expectation, what we have is I expect you to show up in this certain way. And if you don’t, this is the consequence. So if we go back to my kids and the dishes, an expectation would sound like, I expect you to have your dishes done by the end of the night, each night. And if you don’t, you won’t get your cell phone the next day. I mean, I just totally made that up. That’s not our actual expectation. But notice how there is sort of a consequence a fixed to that specific expectation. And then the kids get to decide, they get to decide if they want to do the dishes or not do the dishes. Now, you’ve got to be super, super careful in this range, you’ve got to decide if what you are making the expectation about is within your stewardship. So let’s say that you’re a zone leader on the mission. You can make requests all day long, but maybe stay away from having them come off as expectations. You will get this certain number of contacts this week or this is the consequence. Okay, that may not be an appropriate place for you to set an expectation. Also, if you’re on the receiving end of an expectation that maybe shouldn’t be an expectation, like if you’re sitting in that zone conference or that district conference, or that district meeting and someone sets an expectation for you with some kind of a consequence. You have full ability to sort of see see that as a request, I’m giving you permission to see that as a request. And it would be nice if, because although they have sort of like some leadership over you, they don’t have final say, over what would like cross, kind of your mental well being and your emotional well being. And all of that good stuff, like you always have the final say in that. So also, when something is presented as an expectation, it just adds so much pressure, especially if it’s not a useful place to set an expectation like that. And especially if it’s not within your stewardship, so just kind of play with that a little bit. Like if you want to get results, you might set an expectation, but also also know that it’s, you got to be kind of careful here, you got to ask yourself, if it’s an area that you have stewardship, and if it’s even your place to set a consequence. Okay, then the last one boundary, we’ve talked about pretty extensively, that it’s about safety. And it sounds like this, if you choose to do this, this is what I’m going to do to have my own back and so that I can show up with love. Right. So the last thing I want to convey at the end is it’s always appropriate to set a boundary. Like it’s a tool you can use to maintain your personal well being your emotional well being and your mental well being. And, again, sometimes those need to be said out loud. And sometimes they’re just internal boundaries, like unsaid boundaries that we can do for ourselves. But the biggest thing you guys is just to remember that it’s done with love. Always done with love, love for yourself, love for the person that you’re interacting with and love for the person, the other person that might be involved that you have stewardship over. Okay, so I hope that gives you some useful things to think about and some useful tools to set more effective boundaries in your life. I hope you all have an amazing week, take care. Serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can present a unique set of challenges, and many of those challenges you might not even see coming. So you’re gonna want a unique set of solutions. It’s easier than you think to overcome worry and anxiety, serve the successful mission you’ve always dreamed up and navigate your post mission experience with confidence. That is why I created some amazing free goodies that I’m sharing in my show notes. Maybe you want to grab the free training for preparing missionaries, my video course for RMS or maybe you and I should hop on a free strategy call. If you’re ready to take your preparedness to serve or your preparedness to come home to the next level. Then go grab one of those freebies. And in the meantime, no matter which part of the mission experience you are involved in. Just know that Jenny, the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day