What are healthy boundaries?  Are you not supposed to feel for another’s pain?  Are you not supposed to help out?  Is offering advice bad?

 Here’s how you can quickly identify healthy boundaries – check in with your stomach and heart.  When you are tilting towards unhealthy there is an emotional pull you can actually feel from your stomach and/or heart.  It’s almost like an energy rope pulling or sucking you in a certain direction (I must save them!  I have to step in!)  There is desperate feeling in the air.

 With healthy boundaries you feel grounded, maybe your feet even feel heavy.  Your heart may still hurt for someone, but it is more like a squeeze then an uncontrollable pull. 

 It’s not usually the specific activity that identifies something as unhealthy but the emotions that are driving the support/boundary.  Sometimes people really do need extreme support offered by you, but the cost does not have to be your well-being. 

 How to do keep healthy boundaries?  By taking care of you every day.  That means checking in with yourself daily; eating and sleeping well; laughing; using humor when all else fails and when you feel that negative energetic pull, that’s your queue to consciously ground your energy down.  Down through your feet until you feel a sense of balance return.

 So, are you feeling grounded today?

3. Do you feel required to help?  It’s your job?  Is there a guilty, emotional tug that drives you to help?  A good question for yourself is – do I have a choice?  If you don’t feel like you have a choice, nine times out of ten you are really rescuing. 

 When you help someone from a healthy place, it’s from a place of fullness not lack.  Your support is not dependent on anything in return, just goodwill.  Your help has healthy boundaries and you are able to see the person also has choices.  The person can say no to your offered help and it’s ok.  You can say no and that’s ok too. 

 If you struggle with saying no, then I encourage you to go deeper.  This isn’t about helping someone else, but about validating how you see yourself.  Rescuing becomes how you identify yourself and your role in relationships.  Ultimately it becomes how you see your worth – to rescue others…Unfortunately this seemingly ‘good’ intention is actually harmful – do you really know what’s best for others?  Are you some all-knowing God here to re-direct your loved ones to the right path?  Maybe making mistakes is how they will learn the lessons they are here to transcend… 

 I like to think of babies learning to walk.  They must fall down, over and over.  They will never, ever learn to walk on their own if someone is always holding them up beneath their arms.  They need to find their own balance amid the falls…We never change.  Our falls look different at 32 and 48, but fall we do…And each of us, no matter what the event, must find our own separate peace…Can you allow another’s peace to look different from your own and be ok with that?

2. Regardless of whether the person asked for help or not, can the person do this for themselves?  Or is your ‘help’ keeping this person in a victim place or dependent on you? 

 Sure, sometimes we all need help.  There are real health crises and other life events that require support from those around us, but is your help actually undermining the success of another?  Does this other person need to do for themselves if only to know they can?  Sometimes our help does more harm then good.

1.  When we rescue, often we just step in without an invitation.  We withhold information from the person to ‘protect’ them or we ‘do’ things for the person to make it easier for them, after all, we’re just helping.  

 Actually, there is a fine line between helping and enabling.  I good way to identify the difference is to ask yourself if you are looking for a pay-off?  Are you looking to control something, someone or even the information?  Are you looking for love?  Are you trying to keep things the same?  Do you want to feel like the special friend/lover who really understands?  If you are looking for any emotional payoff – guess what?  You are in rescue mode.

 As you can see, when you are rescuing someone, it is actually about you and how you want to feel about yourself.  You may convince yourself it is about the other, but that’s a mirage to keep your self-image held up.  If you are rescuing then you can’t be the one messed up, right?

 Rescuing keeps you busy.   Obligations are created to distract and provide excuses as to why your own goals and dreams are delayed if not ultimately left unrealized.  It’s a choice.  It’s a choice to get into your own life and rescue yourself from the same behaviors that keep you in a less-than place.

Are you rescuing someone?  Here are three simple questions to ask yourself before you help…

 1.         Has this person asked you to do this for them? 

2.         Can this person do this for themselves?

3.         Do you want to do it?

 Rescuing others comes as the cost of our own journey.  How can you possibly get to your own best life when you are distracted by where those around you are on their own journeys?  Or is that the point?  Does rescuing others keep you from ‘failing’ at your own life?

 This week in my blog I will be examining these three questions and how they impact you connecting to your most abundant life…So take a few moments over the next day and really look at the relationships in your own life – are you rescuing someone?  Check back tomorrow to explore what may be driving your desire to rescue…

Instead of getting stuck in “Why me?”  Ask yourself, “What for?”  What do you need to learn?  If you are having trouble understanding your responsibility in this situation, ask yourself the following questions.

 1.         Is there a pattern?

2.         What am I doing the same?

3.         Am I telling my truth?

4.         Am I protecting someone’s feelings by keeping it the same? (can be your feelings…)

5.         What am I afraid of?

If you have kids you will understand this statement – September has become the lost month.  I can’t keep track of all the papers – new school rules, permission slips, order forms, jog-a-thons, one-time-only fees, lunch boxes, lunch money, conferences, pages and pages of homework, completed work on the refrigerator as well as work ‘to be completed at home and returned’ the next day.  Aaaaggghhhh!  Stop – I beg of you, stop pecking me to death with inane crap.  I swear if I had known this before having cute babies – I might have rethought the entire deal! 

 But September is now slipping into October, all the permission slips are mostly in, and check-ups are complete.  Things will surely settle down for a bit, right?…Now what do you want to be for Halloween? 

I slept with an alligator last night, my six year old son.  I was kicked in the ribs, elbows to the head, covers – gone.  My son said to me in the morning, with a big grin mind you, and mouth gaping, “Did I take over the bed?”

 “Yes, in fact, you did,” I reply with a begrudging smile.  For the past couple weeks every other night, one the kids will wander in saying he/she has had bad dreams.  I’m not surprised because I know what’s really going on – stress. 

 One of the best indicators of what is going on with you, is to examine what is going on with yours kids or your partner.  If they are acting out of the ordinary, guess what?  I’m betting you are too! 

 Lots of things are shifting in our home right now - new doors opening and a move is on the horizon.  As exciting as that is, it’s stressful too.  That’s how the unknown tends to be.  Yet somehow, slipping into bed with Mom and Dad seems to make it a little bit better…And surprisingly, it is.

 Are the loved ones in your home acting out of the ordinary?  What are they be reflecting back to you????

I love Spring and it also makes me a little nuts.  I like to remind myself and all my client of the many faces of Spring right about now…Yes, Spring tends to be a time of new beginnings and opportunities, but also there is the tilling of the earth…or more personally, chaos in your life.

 Think of a seed bursting open in springtime and driving it’s seedling to the sunlight above – it takes a lot of energy, a violent force of nature really.  In Eastern medicine – the season of Spring is connected to your liver and anger.  So what this suggests is people struggle with liver, urinary and issues around anger more during this time of year.  Just like all the seasons, there are wonderful opportunities for growth and transformation, but Spring holds a dizzying balance of new beginnings and endings…Joy mingled with loss.

 Are you struggling with feeling of rage or anxiety this Spring?  Is there a nervous energy of possibility clinging to you?  Feeling a bit overwhelmed or out of balance?  Here are five quick things you can do today to support yourself during the Springtime…

 1.       Water.  Drink more water.  Go for walks in the rain if possible.  Intentionally bathe more or spend time in a body of water – the ocean is best, but a good salt water bath is a great alternative.   

2.       Clean out a drawer, closet, or room.  The best way to attract more into your life is to purge the things you no longer need.

3.       Eat fresh fruit.  When you eat only processed foods, you disconnect from the earth.  Maybe this is the year for that vegetable garden you have been dreaming of?  Lettuce and peas are ridiculously easy to grow…

4.       Laugh.  Nothing changes energy faster then good humor.  Call a friend or read a funny book to connect to that light place again.  Sometimes the most chaotic and stressful situations are absolutely ripe with humor if you can just get a lighter point of view…

5.       Meditate…Spend a few quiet minutes each day focusing on what you DO want your life to look like.  Just anytime you have couple extra minutes, close your eyes and see this Spring unfolding the way you desire - be it with a new job, or maybe a health transformation, or a new awakening of love, whatever, just that you are focusing your energies on what you DO want instead of negatively responding to what you don’t want. 

 Happy Spring…The blooms are coming…

Feeling overwhelmed?  Stressed?  Listen to these easy tips and get back to balance today!