How To Set Healthy Boundaries

Hey, guys. My name is Alec Dewitts. I am the product developer here at Cadre. It's nice to meet all you guys. This is my first live, and I wanted to do a quick introduction of who I am and my background before diving into setting healthy boundaries. Yeah, I'm going to wait and see if the notification pops up here. I think it did. So, I'm the product developer here at Cadre. I have a background in software engineering, product development, product management, and really excited because all of you here are.

Are watching this live stream on our. Hey, there we go. You guys are watching this live stream on the app that we've built. And we're so excited that all of you are here and here testing this with us, giving us the feedback that we want, that we need to make this a great experience for everybody. So super happy that you're here, and any feedback that you have for us, anything at all, would be super helpful to help us make this a better app for everybody. Today, I want to get into a topic that over the past few weeks, I've been very passionate about.

It was probably a month or so ago myself, Reese Acostas, and Katie Donovan were sitting down together. Those are two of our coaches and creators here at Cadre. We were sitting down. I don't know where the topic started, but we were talking about setting boundaries because there's a lot of stress, a lot of anxieties, a lot of people pushing the boundaries in my life. And so I got turned onto the book, set boundaries, find peace, one of the greatest books I have ever read or listened to. I'm a big audible fan, but there's a lot of.

A lot of key takeaways from this book that I've directly implemented into my life, which has been, you know, a very powerful thing for. For setting those boundaries with individuals in your life. Whether those are relationships, whether they're friendships, could be co workers, could be acquaintances, could be strangers on the street. Setting those boundaries allows you to open up a world of possibilities, because you are only living one life. And if somebody else is taking your time away from you, where you need to set goals and you need to achieve those goals, if somebody is taking that time and energy away from you being able to accomplish those goals, I do not believe that those people are always in your bet, are always there to be in your best interest.

Katie, thank you for the question. I will get to that in a second. She mentioned, what is an example of a boundary that's helped you? The very, very first one that I was able to implement was, what was it? It was with somebody close, very close to my life who was joking around, right? A lot of friends of mine, we like to have fun with each other, we like to mess around. But this one individual was doing it many, many times and it was getting to a point where I was done with it. Words are very powerful, right?

Words of energy, dots of energy. And we need to be around people that are lifting each other up, bringing each other good energy. And as soon as somebody pushes those boundaries of continuous stop, you gotta stop, you gotta stop that. You just gotta take them to the side and you gotta tell them exactly how you feel. Now I was going to introduce this with a quote, so I'm going to mention that now. And that was Brene Brown. Let's see, Brene Brown. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of her. She has a really good quote.

And that is clear, is kind unclear is unkind. Now let me repeat that again. Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. If you are not telling somebody exactly how you feel, they will never know exactly how you feel. They can guess. They could probably get it right, they could probably have a good idea, but they're never going to know for certain. And as soon as you are able to tell someone exactly how you feel, you put the power back in yourself. Instead of outside forces, instead of other friends of yours, other relationships taking advantage of you, you're able to bring that power back to yourself so that you can focus on exactly what's important in your life.

And I truly believe that you become the five people that you hang out with the most. And setting these boundaries with these individuals, as soon as you can let them know exactly how you feel, these people are going to respect you, they're going to love you and you guys are just going to have a much better relationship. So that is been one of the most powerful things over the last few weeks that I've already been implementing over and over and over again. A lot of the things in work, we have a lot on our plates, all of us do.

We're all stressed out, we all have a lot of things that we're doing, we're tackling in our lives. And I've always been a people pleaser my entire life. I always want to help people out. I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I want to watch people grow, I want to watch people excited when I help them. And it's such a good feeling. But sometimes when you're doing it over and over and over and you're constantly that person, that friend that they can reach out to and say, hey, can you do this for me?

Can you help me with this? Can you do this project? You did great the last time. As soon as you keep getting that over and over again, it starts to drain you and you're no longer getting that same benefit and the outcome. And you think that if you put up those walls and you say, sorry, guys, I can't help right now that all of a sudden that relationship is now broken and we need to, like, we need to cut that out. The passive aggressive, the being unclear, we need to cut that out of our lives because setting those boundaries, exactly what we need to be able to build stronger relationships with people around us, to grow as an individual, to accomplish our goals.

And, you know, that's, that's been a big, big change in my life, is being able to do those things and tell people how you feel. Setting boundaries. Like, there's so much to talk about in this subject, but I'm going to mention a few more things. One is if you're in a new relationship, a new friendship, set those boundaries up front. As soon as you possibly can, be honest with this person, be straight up with this person. Tell them exactly what you want out of this relationship. It's going to lead to much better relationships and friendships in the long run.

And you're not going to be wasting your time trying to discover exactly if you guys are a right fit. You just need to be honest. Maybe that's a first date or a second date. Or it's if somebody's starting to push those boundaries right away, you need to just say, hey, no. Or if this gets too far and this ruins our relationship, you know, let's back off on that and let's promise that we're not going to go there. So that's something that you can do right away in those early relationships that can help make those even better.

Some toxic behaviors within creating boundaries. I want to mention a few of these. Ghosting somebody, giving someone the silent treatment, or being passive aggressive, these can all be really toxic things that are not only toxic for you, but toxic for other people. Could be for your business, could be for your friend group. If you're not honest with people and you don't kill something right away, it just lingers. And that can really ruin friendships. That can ruin relationships. And that's always a good thing to do, to just be honest with people.

Thanks for all the comments, guys. If you guys have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. But I appreciate you all for being here again. This is my first live so I hope you enjoy it. This topic to me is I'm very passionate about it just because it's actually given me a lot more control in my life. And I've noticed such a significant difference in being able to just be honest with people and tell people straight up exactly how I feel. And I really recommend that you try the same. It can be pretty hard to get started because this is a new thing and you're used to being kind of quiet behind the scenes, but as soon as you do it once, you do it twice, it starts to become easy.

And like other people who have implemented this as well, they're doing it and all of a sudden they're doing it too much. So maybe you just need to dial it back a little bit and as soon as you. You find that perfect rhythm, you bring yourself back to baseline. This can be a really powerful thing. So I want to thank you guys for being here. My name is Alec and I hope to be doing more of these soon, so see you guys.