Iyanla Vanzant: Mastering the 4 Essential Trusts
Boundaries related to privacy, confidentiality, time requirements, personal space or property, and commitment expectations can serve to enhance the quality and integrity of any relationship. You need to be able to tell other people when they are being or behaving in ways that are unacceptable or frightening to you. When people care about you, they will respect the boundaries that you request and expect.
Here are some proven tools for establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries:
• Always communicate the parameters of your boundaries. Explain the “what and why.” Don’t ask other folks to read your mind. • You are not only responsible to let others know that a boundary exists; but you must also inform them if and when they have violated it. • Spell out the consequences of violating your boundaries. • When someone violates a boundary, you have to enforce consequences. Don’t just issue wolf tickets. • If someone repeatedly violates your boundaries, you have to be willing to surrender the relationship. If not, you are setting yourself up for repeated hurt or heartache.
OMTimes: What is the real key to “trust in others?”
Iyanla Vanzant: Trusting others is a difficult task and a powerful lesson. It means that we place our confidence in someone, to be honest, to keep his promise, to honor her word, and to treat us with decency and respect at all times, no matter what. The point we all seem to miss is that trusting other people means that we have a realistic understanding and perspective about people and that we must prepare ourselves for their failures. It means knowing that people are sometimes broken and complex, that they will lie when they are afraid and sacrifice our feelings to keep themselves safe and comfortable. Trusting others means recognizing, acknowledging, and accepting that we all have a history, and in some instances that history is filled with hurt, pain, and wounds that can and do impede our best intentions, resulting in dysfunctional behaviors that can have a devastating impact on those we know or love and care about most. In essence, trusting others means knowing that at all times, under all circumstances, in every situation, and with all people, we must be willing to trust, forgive, and start all over again.
