How to Set (And Keep) Your Boundaries, Solved

00:00:00I'm Mark Manson, number one New York Times bestselling author, and this is Drew Burney, my intrepid co-host, lead researcher, and the Boundary Zen Master. And this is Solved, the most over-researched, over-analyzed, ridiculously comprehensive podcast that sometimes tries to be funny. And for the next few hours, we're gonna break down everything you need to know about boundaries. The goal of this podcast, the reason it's called Solved, is that if you can get through the whole fucking thing, you should have no problem implementing and maintaining boundaries in your life. So with that, let's cue the music. So just a quick reminder before we get started, these episodes are very large, very comprehensive. So if you want a full episode summary along with all of our citations and references, as well as practical exercises that you can use to implement boundaries into your life today, you can go to solvepodcast.com slash boundaries and download a free PDF guide there. Now, without further ado, Drew, why don't we talk about what the hell are boundaries? Yeah. What are we going on about? What are boundaries? I think a lot of people think they know what they are, but I'm not so sure about that. I, from my observation, a lot of people don't know what they are. From my personal experience. Well, they think they do. They think they do. Yeah, yeah. I think we're gonna get through this section here and we're gonna find out, okay, there's a lot of confusion going on here. And so let's just start out, like what are boundaries?

00:01:34I think I came up with a pretty succinct definition that you can take wherever you go. Okay. Boundaries are, they're self-defined. Okay. Self-defined limits. Okay. That protect core needs and values across the domains of your life. I like that. That's a pretty good one, isn't it? I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I should reference just for the audience that like boundaries is actually a very modern term. So, you know, we're going to talk about philosophy and psychology later, but like, you know, Boundaries as a part of our daily vernacular or part of like what we associate with life advice or relationship advice, it's really only emerged in the last 20, 25 years probably. I believe there was a pretty major self-help book in the 90s written by a pastor called Boundaries. But yeah, I mean, if you go digging into psychology from 60, 70, 80 years ago, like you don't really see any talk about this. This is a very modern concept, although it does have very old philosophical roots, which we'll talk about in a minute. Right. Yeah. We had to infer a lot of what they were talking about, about boundaries. But I bring that up just because it's like it's not unreasonable for you to define it yourself. Because usually what we do is we come in here and we're like, the APA defines this as that, right? Or it's like this philosopher, Aristotle defined this as X, Y, Z. But it's like with boundaries, it's a pretty new thing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of gray area as we'll see here, but boundaries can be almost any part of your life, right? And there's so many different areas of boundaries that come into play. There's physical boundaries. There's emotional boundaries. There's intellectual time boundaries, digital boundaries. We're going to get into all of that. That core definition again.

00:03:17self-defined limits that protect core needs and values across domains. Okay. So all those domains I just mentioned, love it, that you can have that. Okay. So that's kind of the definition we're going to be working with. You know, you might have a partner that sets a temporal boundary, like a time boundary on you. I need an hour after work before we kind of reconnect, right? Communication boundaries. I need you to tell me directly when you're upset about something rather than hinting at it, right? That's a boundary you could set an emotional boundary. Right. You might tell somebody, look, I'm not responsible for your happiness, even though I'm like really, I care about that. But there's a boundary there. I'm not responsible for your happiness, right? So that's just kind of like a quick and dirty example of... The thing is, is that like without kind of naming these limits and without kind of defining these, you can really, you end up drifting kind of on autopilot. And as we see, you get into a lot of power struggles with people too. Yeah. If you don't define what your particular boundaries are in all the areas of your life, really. Yeah. Okay. There's different kind of flavors of boundaries though too. And by that, I mean, they kind of exist on a continuum. Okay. You have porous boundaries. You can all the way up to rigid boundaries too. And somewhere in the middle is healthy boundaries. Okay. So what are we talking about here?

00:04:34Porous boundaries. This is when you, for example, you're over disclosing or you have difficulty saying no. These are people with like really porous boundaries or they're, they're really trying to, you're trying to please a lot of other people a lot of times. And so you get enmeshed with them and you don't have very good boundaries between who you are, what you do, what you do for them, how you show up for them. I would think of it as like boundaries with way too many exceptions. Yes. Right. So it's like, it's like, I, I expect people to treat me with respect. And then as each person disrespects you, you're like, well, they had a bad day at work or, well, you know, I probably deserve that. Or, well, you know, you start making excuses for everything. Right. Now, flexibility is important, but when you're too flexible, that becomes an issue. It's not really a boundary anymore, right? Right, yeah. On the other end of the spectrum, you have rigid boundaries. People who, you know, they're overprotective. They keep everybody at arm's length, maybe. You're inflexible. You shut others out. Yeah. This can really lead to like a lot of isolation, missed opportunities for intimacy or just getting to know somebody. Even to the point like even when you're overwhelmed, you refuse help. Yeah. Right. Because you have a boundary like I'm independent. I'm going to do this sort of thing. That can be an issue.

00:05:50That's a rigid boundary. Yeah. We've talked on the old podcast. I think we did a couple episodes about people ghosting people in their life in the name of boundaries. And I think what you see, kind of a phenomenon that's happened maybe the last couple of years on TikTok and Instagram, is that there's a lot of life advice aimed towards people with a lack of boundaries. Yeah. encouraging them to have overly rigid boundaries, right? So it's like you see a lot of advice out there of like set this boundary and then if the person doesn't respect it, cut them out of your life. Right. And so it's like, oh, if your mom doesn't call you back, well, then fuck her. No one's talking to mom anymore, right? And so you've actually seen there's like a bit of an epidemic going on of – in that episode, we talked about a bunch of crazy statistics of the amount of young people who are like not speaking to their parents. parents anymore or like the people who are ending friendships over like really minor transgressions. And so there is, I think the point here is that there's a way to take this way too far. And with a lot of personal growth advice. When you lack something, the excess of something can look like a solution, even though it's not. Yeah, that's especially true in boundaries. I think people will, they'll take it to the extremes. Because when you are somebody who has these, like, ultra-porous boundaries for a long time, the tendency is to react way too far. To overcompensate. To overcompensate the other way. Yeah. And that's especially true, I think, in boundaries. Because people, oh, I figure out boundaries. I can assert myself. I can...

00:07:22And it's like, yeah, you can. And maybe there is like a period where you need to do some overcompensation to realize that you need to come back to, you know, that, that golden mean that Aristotle talks about a lot. Right. Yep. And while he never talked about boundaries, like we said, he does, I would say that. That's kind of the goal here, which brings me to the healthy boundaries. They're clear. They're clear yet flexible. You state a boundary. You have an idea that protects a value or a need of yours, right? And yet you adjust it for the context too, right? Like, The one I already kind of said was, you know, with a partner, you're like, I'm not responsible for your happiness. Yet I do care about your happiness. That's a flexibility around your boundaries too, right? Like I'm going to be interested and invested in your happiness, but ultimately I'm not responsible for it. Right. So that's a, that's a one example. Again, they protect your values and they protect your needs. while adjusting to the situation that you're in. The whole episode, we're going to go through tons and tons of examples of that. Okay, so I won't get too far in the weeds. But I think one thing you were kind of just getting at was I think people confuse boundaries for a lot of other things. Mm-hmm. Because, again, this is kind of a newer concept and there is there's a lot of different definitions, I think, floating around out there. So I want to distinguish it between a few other things before we get going. OK, we've already stated values. We have a whole episode on values, too. OK, so if you haven't watched that one, I think that's a really good one to go.

00:08:48Yeah. Go listen to a watch before you watch this one or after whatever. It will definitely inform and help this one quite a bit. Because I will add to that if you are if you have a shitty value that you're trying to protect, you're going to have a shitty boundary. Right. Right. Yeah. And we'll definitely get into that values, though. They are they're kind of like those enduring principles that matter to you. Maybe it's honesty. Maybe it's helping others. Maybe it's taking care of yourself and your family, whatever that is. they're related to boundaries, but they're not the same thing. They're kind of the why behind the boundaries, right? I don't know. Let's say you value health. That's your value. You set a boundary around, I don't eat this certain type of food or whatever it is, right? Okay. So that's just one example. We have to distinguish between rules as well. This one, I think, is where people get tripped up a lot. A rule is actually an attempt to kind of – it's an attempt to control others, right? You're setting a rule. You may not do this or I don't do this around me. That's not really a boundary. You're putting up a rule and you're forcing other people to follow it, right? Whereas a boundary is more internal. It's more this is what I do. I can't control what other people do. Yeah. Right. I tend to think of boundaries as like if then statements. Right. So it's that's a good way to think about it. You know. Yeah. Like it's it's if you get angry with me, this is how I'm going to respond. Right. Like if you throw a tantrum and start yelling at me, I'm going to leave and go home like that. You said that's that's a boundary because it's like a clear if this occurs, this is my action. And you were like.

00:10:23letting the person know what the consequences are going to be. Whereas a rule would just be like, you're not allowed to get angry and throw a tantrum around. Right. Right. Yeah. Again, I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up. They're like, well, I set a boundary by telling this person not to do that. And it's like, no, that's not how it works. That's not how boundaries works. Yeah. In fact, you're probably violating their boundaries. Exactly. Exactly. It's bumping up against their own autonomy. And so that's a rule, not a boundary. Okay. Then you have like preferences, lower stakes, obviously. Right. Negotiable wants like I like Italian food. I prefer Italian food or Thai food or whatever. That's a preference stated. Thai food is a pretty strong boundary in my life. As in you don't or you do? If you don't eat Thai food, I want nothing to do with you. OK, well, hey, that's fine because that's just a boundary. That's not. Fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, you have- Sorry. I shouldn't be derailing this this early, but- Your preferences like Thai food, like I prefer Thai food over like I don't eat dessert. Yes. Right? That's a boundary. Yes. Or I don't eat dairy because of my health or whatever it is. That's a boundary versus just stating a preference. I don't think people confuse these as much, but they can. There's subtler examples, I think, more subtle examples that will- Yeah.

00:11:38I think it gets confusing because some boundaries are self-enforced, right? So it's like I don't drink anymore. Yeah. Like that's a boundary I've set for myself. And again, kind of like the rule thing, it looks like the same thing from the outside, but it's the experience is different or like the, I guess, the kind of logical mechanics of it are different internally. Yeah. Because honestly, there are many moments where my preference is absolutely to drink. But because I have set a boundary with myself that I am a person who doesn't drink, then, you know, there's significant overlap with a preference. But it's not always the same thing, similar to like an external boundary being like there's significant overlap. But it is all these subtleties that we get into where you start bumping up against like interpersonal problems and conflicts and all that. Yeah, we'll get to that here in just a second. But the last one I want to go over requests. OK. When you go out and you ask somebody, hey, can you do this? Can you, whatever it is, pick me up at the airport. Can you please pick up after yourself? Those are requests, right? As opposed to a boundary which isn't requesting, again, it's not requesting anything of anyone else. It's determining... It's a self-determining act of your own behavior. Yes. Okay. Keep those in mind because I think a lot of times when you're not clear on your boundaries, you're using rules or using preferences or using requests instead of boundaries. Yeah. And that's where like a lot of the, a lot of conflict comes in a lot of our relationships that way. Okay. So what happens then when boundaries are,

00:13:13start to erode, or they weren't set up in the first place even too. I think of these as kind of the telltale signs that you're not doing very well at your boundaries. You don't do boundaries good, right? Oh man, your Midwestern Southern-ness is coming out. Drew, we've worked so hard to appear respectable. You don't boundary good. And this is the signs. These are the red flags. Red flags. Okay. Yes. So the first one is like chronic resentment. Right. You're resenting the people around you. Right. This is this is you don't you don't set boundaries around your work or a relationship or emotions, whatever it is. And you start to resent other people because they're like coming at you, foisting all this upon you. Right. Right. That really is just a sign that you haven't set a clear boundary around that. Right. Okay. Then you have exhaustion and burnout. Right. So like you're taking on too much at work and it's like, oh, this kind of scope creep comes and it's like, well, it's not really my job, but it's just this one little thing and I'm going to take it on. You have exhaustion and burnout through that. So without clear limits on your time, your work or emotional labor, even to you get overextended and that leads to like exhaustion and burnout. Then you have overwhelm and time debt. Okay. Saying yes to everything. Right. Creates this big backlog of things you have to do. Obligations that creep up. You said yes to this thing three weeks ago. And now here we are. And now you have to do it. So now you're in time debt. Now you're overwhelmed. Now you feel like you're getting pulled in seven different directions. Blurred roles and relationships. So it's like when you have a close bond with someone.

00:14:52a boundary collapse, it feels like you're like enmeshed with that person to the point where you can't even like make decisions on your own without consulting them or even thinking about them or some of that's okay. Sure. But there's gotta be a flexibility to it too. By the way, there's a very interesting statistic that finds that couples that split home responsibilities 50-50 across the board are like some of the most miserable couples and the most likely to break up. And I think it's because of this. Surprise me. Imagine everything has to be split 50-50. So it's like all the things I'm terrible at, I still have to do half of it. All the things you're terrible at, you still have to do half of it. And then we just get pissed off at each other because we're terrible at the things that we're terrible at. Whereas it makes sense to divide and conquer in terms of like each person's skill set or whatever. But anyway, I do think it's this ideal of this kind of idealistic view of... equality within a relationship that like, oh, we should both manage the finances and we should both clean the house and we should both drive the kids to school and we should both bring in the same paycheck and we should both call, visit each other's parents the exact same amount. Like, it's just, you're living in fairytale land. Those are rules. Those aren't boundaries. All those things you just said, we should do this. We should do like this. We should do that. Those are rules. That's true. And then you end up enmeshed. There's no boundary there. Yeah.

00:16:18Yeah. Highly related to this is identity confusion. At some point, you just lose who you are. Yes. Right. Because you're at the whims of the opinions of other people. You look to the outside world for everything from your job to who you date to your leisure time, whatever it is. I think that what you just said is really applicable to caregivers. Right. So I think you see this a lot with stay at home moms. Right. So it's like the they're taking care of the kids all day. And and then the husband comes home and he's exhausted from work. And so then she's taking care of him. And it's basically like weeks or months, even years go by where she's just giving, giving, giving. And she's never like stopping to think about what she needs or what she wants or what's going to make her happy. And you end up getting this kind of just loss of identity through constant caregiving. If you're the breadwinner in a family, the professional world kind of forces you to get good at boundaries. Like if you don't get good at boundaries, you're probably not going to climb very high in your career ladder, simply because you're not going to be reliable or accountable enough. So you have to like learn how to say no to people. You need to learn how to negotiate and all that stuff. Whereas, yeah, if you're kind of in more of a caregiver role in your family, you're actually incentivized to not have boundaries. You're incentivized to always be available and always take on the burden of others. And that's just – it's a recipe for burnout, as you said, and a lot of like simmering resentment under the surface.

00:17:52Yeah, that's what you see like empty nesters, right? Yeah. But like when that happens, they empty nest like now what do I do? The second most common point of divorce. Yeah. Is empty nesters. Right. And what was the first? Uh, right after the first child. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So those are kind of our red flags. What you see, the boundaries, they're not really luxuries, right? They're actually like survival mechanisms that we use because if you don't, that's what ends up happening. You lose yourself. You lose yourself. Let's take the opposite side. When you have really good, clear, healthy boundaries, what does that kind of look like, right? Boundaries, well, they're going to reduce conflict. I mean, Probably already see that from what we've mentioned. They're going to reduce conflict in your relationships because people have their expectations. They're clear expectations. When people know, even if they don't like a boundary, if they know you have it and you're going to stick to it, They're probably going to at least respect it, right? Yeah. To some degree. And this is very paradoxical because I feel like a lot of people don't set boundaries because they're afraid of the conflict. Yes. Right? They don't want to say that they don't like something or that they don't want to do something because they're like, well, I don't want to upset them or like fight about it. Whereas it's actually the opposite. When you state that you don't want to do it, like maybe you have a little argument then, but you're preventing like 20 arguments in the future. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:11Yeah, I had this. This actually happened to me recently. Somebody treated me in a way I didn't really like, and I was like, I don't want to, I'm not going to rock the boat. And then I came back later and I was like, look, hey, go fuck yourself. No, no, no, no, no. I took the time. I actually did this. I was proud of myself for doing this. I was like, I'm going to take time. Like, I'm upset. So I'm going to hold off and I'm going to come back to them. Okay. And I'm going to state like, hey, the way you treated me, like, you can be frustrated with me. This is what I said. I left the autonomy. It was definitely a boundary. It wasn't a rule. I was like, right. I never said, don't talk to me like that ever again. I said, I understand if you're going to get upset and frustrated with me. I just, I would prefer you do it in a different way next time. Find a kinder way to express that to me and then we can talk about it. And It was uncomfortable. Yeah. Uncomfortable. But like it actually led to a better like understanding with each other. It's stuff like that that generates respect for other people. Yeah. And I think what you see another red flag, I would say, is if you feel constantly disrespected by others. Yeah. It's that'll lead to the resentment, too. Yeah. Right. Like if you're not being respected by others, it's because you're not standing for anything and you're not standing up for anything. And paradoxically, it's by standing up for something and being willing to have conflict about it that people start to actually respect you. They're like, oh, OK, like Drew, Drew's got his thing about that. Like I'm going to I'm not going to bother. Right. The next one.

00:20:32Boundaries help you regulate your emotions too. And this is, we go back to the emotions episode we did too. If you can kind of like run the simulation in your head, this is what boundaries kind of do. It's that if then statement, right? If this happens, then I'm going to act like this. This gives you kind of a template for emotional regulation in the moment. When these kinds of things happen, if you're clear about your boundaries, when somebody has a boundary violation, they come at you, you have a template. right there that you can be like, okay, this is how I'm gonna do it. And that helps you. You're still gonna get emotional in the moment, I'm sure. But you're like, okay, no, this is how I react. And so I'm drawing the boundary there. Got like a little mini plan. It's a little mini script for you to follow. So boundaries really help with that. And then last, putting limits on yourself or putting limits on your relationships too. That actually has a freeing aspect to it. So when you say no to something, you're also saying yes to something else, right? And vice versa as well. You're saying yes to say, well, your values really, whether that's like health or rest, whether that's. focus, you're saying, no, I'm not going to do that because I am doing this other thing over here. That is, it's freeing you up to live more in alignment with the way you want to live by setting up the boundary, by limiting yourself, by putting yourself in this box even too.

00:21:52A good, healthy boundary is going to help you do that. Those are kind of the foundations of boundaries. That's going to kind of set the tone. So when we're going forward here, this is when we're talking about different aspects of boundaries. So we go back to that definition. There's self-limits, right, that help you maintain your needs and your values across all the domains of your life. I guess we will get into later kind of what the tactical components of a boundary is, like, you know, the... what a good statement looks like, what the if-then should look like, and then the enforcement of that as well. We'll come back to that in the latter half of the episode. All right, so now that we have like a basic understanding of what boundaries are, what it feels like to not have them, what some of the repercussions of not having them are in our lives, I want to take a minute and go very deep on why this matters. Like why are boundaries so important? Why do they seem to have such an outsized effect on our mental well-being, the quality of our relationships, the success in our careers? And it turns out that they – like when you dig into the philosophy and psychology of it, they are very significant. I would dare say underrated in a lot of ways.

00:23:10I would say philosophically underrated. I think they're probably Instagram overrated. But just in terms of how core they are to our identity and our general psychological well-being, they're definitely underrated. I would say the cartoon version of them are overrated. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So I want to start out by talking about creativity. So there's kind of a cliche in the arts that it's actually limitation that breeds innovation, that it's only when you put constraints on somebody that you get the best work out of them. And this is very counterintuitive, especially for most artists, most artists and creatives. I include myself in this. You know, we just, our natural disposition is to tell everybody to fuck off and just let me make whatever I want to make. and that's great to a certain extent. Like, you do want some of that energy going on, but... If I'm being honest, like when I look at, say, my relationship with my editor or my relationship with you guys on my team, like a lot of the benefit is that you guys set guardrails for me, right? And- That's at least half my job is to corral you. Just keep me in fucking line. Push in the corner. Box you in. Yeah, yeah. No, Mark. Yeah. Yeah, I get it though, yeah. No, no more Boonga Boonga parties.

00:24:37So creativity. And it turns out you see this all across the arts, right? So I dug up a couple interesting examples here. Johann Sebastian Bach, who in the music world is often considered the GOAT in a lot of ways. I've heard of him, yeah. Yeah. I think non-musicians don't realize like how – like it's just this guy is miles above anybody else. But – He produced over 1,100 works in his life. I think if you averaged out how many pieces of music he composed throughout his life, it ended up being like around one every five or six days. Like it's just an absolute prodigious output, especially back in a period that like Western music wasn't completely developed yet, and it wasn't standardized and formalized. And a lot of that was due to Bach's work. Like he had tons of musical innovations. He created and redefined genres. But what's fascinating about him is that everything existed within a formulaic framework, right? So everything would be composed by a set of rules. And... Somehow, by limiting himself to a set of rules or a certain system or framework, it would define the parameters by which he could innovate, right? If you don't have those framework and rules, then the innovation is just kind of nonexistent. Conversely, if you look at, say, innovation.

00:26:07modern music, contemporary music, and I mean modern classical music. So atonal, no melody, lots of weird sounds like John Cage type shit, you know, wind blowing, weird chimes. There's – your brain has nothing to latch on to. And so there's no – in a way because everything is free and new and untethered, there is no innovation. Because like for something to be innovative, it needs to be defined against something else that's like expected, right? And so if there's nothing that's expected, there's no innovation. So this phenomenon of gaining from limitation or gaining from constraint, you see it in the business world all the time. So there was a hugely popular business book maybe 10 years ago called The One Thing. And can you guess what the advice was? Focus on one thing. Focus on one fucking thing. Yes. If you just focus on the most important thing, everything else will kind of take care of itself. But sure enough, you see this all across multiple businesses. There's tons of case studies and different examples of businesses that – branched out way too far started trying to be Create products in every vertical and just ended up generating a bunch of crap and failing as a result Interestingly like for example when Steve Jobs came back to Apple the second time when he was rehired I think Apple had something like 34 lines of computers. Yeah, they put out tons of products and yeah

00:27:36Tons. And they were all poorly differentiated. Like half of them were designed to fit like some specific enterprise customer that they were trying to woo away from IBM. And what was the first thing that Steve Jobs did when he came in? He like slacked, he cut like 90% of those products down to, I think it was four. Yeah. Yeah. Within the first couple of years. You also see this happen within your personal life, within your relationships, right? When you try to be liked by everybody, You're loved by none. That's the cliche. When you try to get along all the time, when you try to be pleasant all the time, when you try to say the right thing that everybody's going to like all the time. What happens? You become forgettable. There's no interesting opinions. There's no unique personality. There's no personal take. Because there's nothing to hate about you, there's also nothing to love about you. And so what we see consistently is the more that you kind of narrowly define yourself, within your social life and know what you stand for, know what you care about, know what you like to do. Sure, most of the people you meet you may not connect with or resonate with, but the ones that you do, it's a very strong, impactful, meaningful connection. So these are just a few examples of things that gain from constraints or gain from limitation. And it turns out that our mental health and our psychological well-being

00:29:00also gains from constraint and self-limitation. It's very paradoxical, but there is a logical explanation for this. See, we often assume that freedom means removing our limitations, having access to whatever we want, being able to indulge in any impulse or any desire, or hang out with anybody, or meet anybody, or go anywhere anytime we want. And sure, there's like a part of our brain that's very exciting and sexy and appealing, but What we don't realize is that there is a very silent and subtle cost that comes with that. And that is if you set no boundaries for yourself, that is if you set no prioritization, no decision of I'm this type of person and not that type of person, then pretty much all of your decisions are going to be dictated by impulse and desire. And what do we call somebody whose whole life is dictated by impulse and desire? We call him a selfish piece of shit. It doesn't turn out very well, Drew. I don't recommend dictating your life by impulse and desire. Now, interestingly, there's a very powerful philosophical basis for this idea. So Emmanuel Kant, who's my philosophical homeboy. I have a – Kant had issues, but like, man, I have such a soft spot for him. I'm a –

00:30:18I'm a fanboy. He wrote something extremely powerful and it was very powerful and impactful on me as well, which is he believed very strongly that freedom is only exercised when you choose limitations for yourself. So the only – put it another way, like the only freedom we really have in our lives is choosing what boundaries we set up for ourselves. Choosing who we're not going to be. Choosing which impulses we're not going to indulge. Choosing which paths in life we're not going to take. Choosing the people we're not going to hang out with. Basically putting those limitations on ourselves because what that does is it frees us up to what remains. It frees us to focus and go deep and get extremely good at the few things that we do care about. And he argued that that's where true freedom was found. And... Even though he was writing all this stuff hundreds of years before the advent of modern psychology, we know today that there is a very real psychological basis for this idea. So in my second book, I wrote that there's two brains, the thinking brain and the feeling brain. And the feeling brain is at the core of all of our impulses and wants and desires and yearnings and cravings. And the thinking brain is basically the logical reasoning brain that stops and analyzes and thinks, you know, is that really a good idea?

00:31:42you know, maybe we shouldn't smoke crack this weekend and we should, I don't know, go do a sauna and meditate for a while. And most of us spend most of our lives in this kind of constant tension between the two brains, resisting the cravings and desires and trying to lean on our higher reason and understanding to make good decisions. Now, I think our default assumption is that freedom is the freedom to indulge the feeling brain, to indulge whatever impulses we have or whatever cravings we want to fulfill or whatever desires we want. Kant argued that true freedom resided within the thinking brain, that it was living up to the standards that we define for ourselves, embodying the person that we wished ourselves to be. Now, to do those things, your thinking brain has to decide which impulses are okay to indulge, which cravings are okay to pursue, and which ones are not. And to do that, you have to set limitations around yourself. You have to decide, okay, these sets of impulses and desires are okay because these match the person that I want to become or the best version of myself that I can live up to and embody. And these other impulses and desires, I have to set a boundary. I can't indulge them. I can't pursue them blindly. And for Kant, this was not like a question of just –

00:33:12getting rid of anxiety or stress or whatever. Like Kant, this was actually the fundamental basis of morality itself. Kant's moral system was really based on the idea that reason and rationality is the most scarce and unique thing in the known universe. And so everything else should be downstream of protecting and maximizing that reason and rationality. And so to Kant, indulging your cravings or succumbing to your impulses and compromising the person you want to become, you weren't just hurting yourself. You were actually committing a moral infraction on the universe. He was hardcore. He was real hardcore. Kant did not fuck around. Yeah. So it's from Kant that we get this idea that self-limitation is at the root of self-definition, and self-definition is just necessary for the moral order. Freud would take this baton and run with it. So in Freud's framework, Freud kind of divided the human mind up into three parts. You had the id, which is the kind of animalistic impulses and desires. You had the superego, which was the social conscience, the feelings of guilt and obligation to society, the concerns about reputation and like what are people going to think about me?

00:34:31And then you had the ego. And in Freud's framework, the ego emerged as a negotiation between the id and the superego. Essentially, the negotiation between the feeling brain and the thinking brain. Like, okay, I want to do all these fun, sexy, exciting things, but I also don't want to be a horrible person and piss everybody off and cause a bunch of problems for myself. So I need to find a balance in here. rules, guidelines, or boundaries for myself of like what kind of person I'm going to be in each situation, what are the things that I'm going to prioritize and care about, who are the people that I'm going to associate with, and how am I going to treat them, and essentially how am I going to view myself. Now, it's funny because that last part, how am I going to view myself, that's – I think if you grab the random person off the street and ask them to define what an ego is, they would say that it's a view of yourself. And if you ask them what a big ego is or a strong ego is, they would say that it's somebody who's very full of themselves, who overestimates their own capabilities or how important they are. Now, ironically, this is just one of those things that's kind of gotten bastardized throughout history. Yeah. is that what we colloquially define as a big ego, Freud would have defined as a weak ego. See, for Freud, if you are constantly overestimating yourself, if you are not setting limitations around yourself, if you think you are, should, and are capable of doing everything and deserve everything, that is not the result of a strong ego, that is a result of a weak ego.

00:36:10That is a result of somebody who has not clearly defined themselves and who is not aware of the compromises that must be made between their impulses and desires and their social obligations and their higher rationality. So if Kant saw self-definition and self-limitation as kind of the root of – the moral universe, Freud came along and really defined it as kind of the core of the psychological universe. Like this is the root of mental health is like somebody who has a well-defined and properly sized ego in relation to the other aspects of their consciousness. And for Freud, anybody who suffered intensely from mental health issues, it was largely because either their ego was poorly defined or underdeveloped or it was defined in the wrong way. Earlier, you talked about internal boundaries, boundaries as a form of self-definition. You know, if I decide I'm an author and I write books for a living, that... definition of self in a way is a boundary. Like I am basic, I am defining which actions and behaviors are appropriate for myself and which actions and behaviors are not appropriate for myself. If I decide to define myself as a husband to my wife, I'm going to define myself as a husband

00:37:28I'm creating a boundary. I'm deciding that I'm not going to do certain things or have sex with certain people and that I have certain social and familial obligations to my wife, right? So… Self-definition is a form of boundary setting, and it is the form of boundary setting with ourselves. The boundary setting that happens with others is a side effect or kind of the reverse side of the coin of that self-definition. And what we'll find throughout this episode, we've already alluded to it a little bit, but what we'll continue to find throughout this episode is that generally speaking, people who are poor at defining boundaries for others are poor. are proportionally bad at defining boundaries for themselves. Like, if you really know yourself and you know who you are and you know what you want out of life, That's going to be reflected in your ability to set boundaries with others. The more you fail to set boundaries with others, the more you're going to fail to set those boundaries with yourself and vice versa. Give me an example of that. So let's say that I don't know how I feel about recreational drug use. Okay. I've never really thought about it. I don't really have any strong opinions about it. I have certain people in my life who are big fans of it and other people who are not.

00:38:47But I like both those people and I want both those people to like me. And let's say I go to a party this weekend and everybody's, I don't know, like taking a bunch of mushrooms or MDMA or something. And somebody sticks out their hand and hands it to me. I'm probably gonna have no boundaries in that situation. I'm probably gonna take it just because I don't know how I feel about this situation. And so I'm just like, well, this is what's in front of me. And this is exactly what Kant meant by, a lack of boundaries is a lack of freedom. A lack of self limitation is a lack of freedom. If I don't have the knowledge of myself to know that like, I don't do drugs and I definitely don't do them recreationally. I only do them professionally. Then I'm not going to have the freedom in that moment to say no. And define who you are. And define who I am and know what I want and all those other things. Whereas if I've decided, which I have in my own life, if I've decided, if I've done enough drugs to know, I don't really want to do this anymore. I know, especially that if I'm out on a Friday night and somebody puts a bunch of drugs in front of me, that that's just not something I do. I have that self-definition. I have that boundary within myself. And I've enforced it repeatedly. So I've built up that definition.

00:40:05mountain of evidence of like, this is who I am. Now when somebody sticks out their hand and offers me something to take, it's going to be an easy no. Okay. It's like, I'm not going to think about it. I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to be like, oh, well, what if this person gets mad at me? Like, it's just, it's a clearly defined boundary within myself, which means it's an easy boundary to define with others. Yeah, and then you can apply that to it. All areas you like. Anything. A marriage or your work or whatever. Right. Okay. Anything. I'll give you another example. So it's funny. I don't know how many bachelor parties you've been on. A few, yeah. I would argue there's two types of bachelor parties. And the first type is like kind of the cliche – guy's guy type like, oh, the ball and chain's coming. Better get it in while you can, bro. Ball and chain is coming, you know, and all that stuff. I've only been on a couple bachelor parties like that. And it's funny because like every single one of them, like, dude, you're going to end up, you're going to be divorced in like three years. Because if that's your mentality going into marriage, that this is a, you are having to subvert your own desires and like you're about to do something that doesn't match your self-definition. Like if you see marriages as a sacrifice that you are having to like give up a part of your identity or your life, yeah, that's not good. Because like what most bachelor parties are like, including my own, is all the single buddies are like having a great time and then like.

00:41:33the dude who's getting married is like just sitting there texting his fiance being like, I want to go home. And, and like, those are the guys that, that stick it out, right? Because they've already defined a boundary within themselves of like, I'm committed to this person. Like this is my partner for the rest of my life. They've already decided that internally. They've already set that boundary with themselves. Therefore, it's like not even a thought to set it externally. Right. Whereas like the guys who haven't really set that boundary with themselves, they're like, well, I guess I'm getting married because that's what I'm supposed to do. But I still want to go bang all these other chicks. Right. Right. They're the ones who are like, oh, man, like last days of freedom. We better have fun with my boys while I still can. Or they don't even understand why somebody wouldn't think that way. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And so then those are the guys that end up cheating and paying alimony for the rest of their life. Right. I also think this is why ultimately boundaries in many ways are not only indicative of a person's identity, but they're also indicative of a person's maturity. You could even argue that boundaries are the lagging indicator of how mature somebody is. Let me explain why.

00:42:48So if identity formation is a process of setting boundaries within yourself, when you look at young children, you know, like the difference between, say, a child and an adolescent and an adult is the child is going to have like no sense of identity, no self-definition and no self-limitation, which tracks. An adolescent is going to have some self-definition, some self-limitation, but it's going to be chaotic, it's going to be inconsistent. They're like, it's very experimental. Like they're kind of testing a bunch of different things and seeing which boundaries work for them and which ones don't. Also tracks. And then an adult should have a clear idea of who they are, what they want, what they care about, what they're committed to, and their actions should follow suit, right? If you think about like what an immature adult looks like, how they behave, they probably have no strong or clear opinions. They're probably very impulsive. They probably indulge their urges. They probably don't follow through on their commitments. They probably lack self-discipline. They're probably often disrespectful or rude towards others. They probably don't communicate their feelings very well. They probably don't empathize with other people's feelings very well. Like all of these things are – we associate them with immaturity but at their core,

00:44:08they are rooted in a lack of boundary definition. Like they, it stems from a lack of understanding and commitment to this is the type of person I want to be. This is the boundary I'm going to enforce on myself. And therefore, these are the boundaries, my expectations that I'm going to have going into the relationships with others. Got it, yeah. Whereas a mature person, right, it's like you know exactly where you stand with them. You know exactly what they care about, what they like, what they dislike. You can empathize with them because you know what they care about. They probably communicate well. They're probably disciplined and accountable. They probably – like they're probably reliable. They don't tolerate bullshit. They don't tolerate bullshit. All of those things are downstream of boundaries, having good boundaries. Let's talk about the basis of boundary formation. Like, how do you know how to define yourself? How do you know what's worth committing to or what's worth sticking up for or what's worth saying no to, right? Ultimately, it comes back to values. So there was actually a very famous Harvard Business School professor named Clayton Christensen and wrote a bunch of very famous business books, like extremely well regarded in the business world. And he was diagnosed with cancer in 2010.

00:45:27Now, facing mortality, he did something very admirable, which is he decided to teach to the end. And in one of his last lectures, he got up in front of all of his students and he said, you know, instead of talking about business strategy, I just want to ask you all a simple question. How are you going to measure your life? Because he said that throughout his life, you know, he had met so many powerful CEOs and presidents and board members and billionaires and all these like incredibly successful and impressive people. And he said the majority of them were neurotic, depressed, divorced, had estranged children, horrible relationships, addictions, like all sorts of issues and problems. They'd climb the career ladder all the way to the top, but on a personal and emotional basis, they were just total messes. Now, the insight that he pulled from this is that while they had boundaries, like obviously you have to have strong boundaries if you're going to work like 80 hours, 100 hours a week, if you're going to become CEO, if you're going to, you know, climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top. Yeah. Those boundaries weren't actually connected to the most important things in their lives. Like they would say that family mattered more than anything else, but they would work through the weekend. Or they would say that integrity was super important to them, but then they would get caught for billions of dollars of tax fraud. Like it just, there was like example after example after example of people saying that they valued one thing, but their behavior was clearly demonstrating something else.

00:47:05And we talked about this when we did the values episode a while back, which is that it's often not our words or our thoughts that demonstrate what we actually care about. Like, it's actually very easy for us to lie to ourselves about what we care about. It's our actions that actually demonstrate what we care about. You know, I can tell you that I value family until I'm blue in the face. But if I'm like here at the studio until 11 o'clock at night and I'm not going home, that tells you something. Right. So Christensen shared a practice that he had come up with, and he said that for every major life decision that he came up against, he would filter the decision through three separate questions. First one was, is this gonna help me become the person I wanna be? Very Kantian. Number two was, will this strengthen the relationships that matter to me? Number three was, will this create value beyond myself? Now, these decision filters, he ran everything through them. So like when McKenzie came to him and offered him like a massive consultancy, it was going to require him to miss tons of weekends and time with his kids. And so he passed up on it because ultimately he felt like being around for his daughter's childhood was more important than, you know, making a couple million dollars. So –

00:48:20Obviously, the cancer progressed. Who needs another couple million dollars when you're like a famous Harvard business professor anyway? I mean, and you have cancer, too. And you have cancer. I mean, like how many of your daughter's soccer games are you really willing to miss? Yeah. So I think that's just that that's like a very nice example or anecdote of what we're talking about. Now, I think, again, just a reminder to the listener, if you're unclear what values are, how to figure out what your values are, how to decide, prioritize your values, I highly, highly recommend going back and listening to our values episode. It's over four hours long. It's super thorough. It's actually probably like maybe our most popular episode that we've ever done. It's up there. Yeah. It's it's hugely illuminating for people. The first and most crucial mistake that people make when they are setting boundaries around their values is that they set the boundaries reactively. That is, they wait until the drama has already happened. Right. Something happens. Right. They wait until they're already burnt out. They wait until they already are pissed off at their boss or their coworker or their sister or whatever. Then they decide to set the boundary. And this is dangerous because there's a very high likelihood that you're going to overcompensate. Because you're emotional in that moment, you're probably not going to see the situation clearly. And you're probably going to overestimate either how rigid the boundary needs to be, like how uncompromising you need to be, or you're just going to be misaligned.

00:49:52Like you're just going to in that moment when you're really upset about something, you're probably going to read the situation incorrectly. Yeah, definitely miss the forest for the trees. A lot of times, something, something terrible happens and you get so hyper fixated on that one thing. Yes. And then that becomes the thing you set a boundary around when actually you need to step back. Yeah. And really, I think in these situations, it's like time that tells because because this is the funny thing is like bad boundaries. I think they just they don't have longevity. Like they start to look ridiculous after a certain amount of time. Yeah. So like I like there's somebody in my life that I know who had some drama around the holidays with with their parents and. You know, it was a fight. It was like an argument with their mother. And it got a little bit dramatic and a little bit heated or whatever. But this person is, you know, an avid consumer of Instagram life advice. And so they decided to cut off their mother and basically not talk to them anymore. And it was funny because at the time, this person like felt very empowered and they were like, I'm sick of it. I'm not going to stand for this anymore. I deserve respect and I don't have to listen to these things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's my boundary. And here's my boundary. I'm never talking to her again. And – As the months went on, it just started to feel a little bit silly. And then about a year later, by like, you know, after the next holiday season, from the outside, it just looked absolutely ridiculous. And I think it's everybody involved just kind of reached the point where like, this is absurd. Like, why are we doing this? Right. And then sure enough, they started talking to their mother again and everything's fine.

00:51:32And I think this gets into actually like probably the most important point around this, which is that effective boundaries are designed to protect your values. They're not designed to protect your feelings. I think most people who don't know what they're doing with boundaries, they set boundaries to protect their feelings. They're like, you made me feel bad not talking to you. That's the reactivity, right? Yeah, it's like that's not what you're trying to protect here. In fact, if you're trying to protect your feelings, you're actually just allowing yourself to indulge more into the feeling brain, to become more impulsive, to become more desire-driven, right? You're not living up to your higher self. So it's not about feelings. It's about the values. And again, in the values episode, one of the things we talked about constantly is that the one of the ways that you know what your values are is you know what you're willing to suffer for right like if i value my kids it means that i'm willing to suffer for them that's how i know that i value them if i said i valued my kids but like i spent no time with them i had like a fleet of a dozen nannies and i refused to get up in the middle of the night would you say that i actually value my kids No, I'd be a fucking selfish deadbeat dad. Right. You know, so it's you see this everywhere. And and it's ultimately the way you know that you actually value care about something is that you're willing to sacrifice for it. And if you're not willing to sacrifice for it, then you're not really protecting a value. You're protecting indulgence.

00:53:07And this is where it gets crucially important with relationships. This is where you get that paradoxical effect where the more you're willing to fight about something, the less likely you are to fight about it. Because people see that you really fucking care. And they're like, oh, OK, don't mess with Drew about that thing. There's stakes. Yes, there's stakes involved. And it's just people know it. And like, I don't want to get into geopolitics, but there's probably some analogy here of like, the willingness to go to war is what prevents war. I like that framing, that they're Boundaries are protect your values, not your feelings. The example I brought up earlier that happened to me recently, initially I wanted – it was very reactive. Like somebody – the way they treated me, somebody said something. There was like – they got upset, cursed at me. I didn't like that. It felt bad. And I wanted to react. And I did to some extent. And when I first came to them, I was like, hey, that makes me feel this way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were kind of – they were pushing back a little bit on me. Yeah. And they're like, it's not about your feelings here, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, fuck you. Yes, it is. My feelings are hurt. And then it took some time. Okay, let me get away from this. And what it came down to was I value this relationship more than I value my feelings right now. And so can we talk about that?

00:54:25Yeah. That's what opened up that, this whole situation that you're talking about. I was like, I'm going to fight over that. Yeah. I'll fight over that. Not about my feelings, which come and go and all of that. It's funny. The feelings thing, I think in relationships, the feelings thing is funny because it's not about the feelings itself. They're like a proxy for respect. Yes. Yeah. Right? And that's what I, yeah. Yeah. That's the conclusion I came to. Yeah. It's one of those things. It reminds me of the line from The Big Lebowski. It's like, you're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole. Yeah. I run into that quite a bit in my marriage where it's like both my wife and I do it to each other where it's like we'll be right but we're just kind of being a dick about it and the issue isn't like it's like okay you're right I should take out the trash, but like, can you just say please? Right. You just ask nicely. You know, I'm happy to do it, but like just ask nicely. You know, and it's the language is a signal for a respect of each other's values. There's a lot of subtlety on the relationship side of this. I mean, there's subtlety too with setting boundaries for yourself. But like all in all, I think it's way more straightforward than navigating boundaries with other people. And I think there's a reason why probably two-thirds of this episode is going to be about relationship-related boundaries. Just because there is so much nuance and detail and like different factors that go into it.

00:55:51Obviously, this point ties into, like, you know, my main point in the subtle order of not giving a fuck, which is that, like, It's easy to want the benefit of something, but like what are you willing to suffer for? What's the cost that you enjoy? What's the thing that you like? You kind of secretly, the pain that you kind of secretly like having. When I give live talks, like one of the things I always say to the audience is I say like, I believe that every person is a masochist about one thing in their life. The question is like, what are you a masochist about? Like what's the pain that you kind of secretly like? Yeah, daddy, hit me again. Yeah. Yeah. You like that? Promotion for your live shows. Yes, I'm available for children's parties. I mean every meaningful pursuit does have an inherent component of suffering. So defining your values is a way of defining what you're willing to suffer for. I think this is also important because behavioral economics, if you look at all the famous work of Kahneman, Tversky and – and others, you see consistently that we have a tendency to overestimate the joy that the benefits of a sacrifice is going to bring us, and we underestimate the cost of the sacrifice itself. And so our brains are just kind of naturally wired to-

00:57:20distort the way we perceive any sort of cost or sacrifice. We always assume that the benefits are going to be way better than they are. So I just think that thinking in terms of like, what is the pain that I'm willing to sustain? What is the pain that I actually kind of like having is a way to hack that flaw in our own psychology. All right, so let's talk about like, let's say you know what you care about, you know what your values are. You know, what does this actually look like? So I'm going to run through a handful of examples of, you know, kind of translating personal value into something. both internal boundary, something that I define for myself, and then an external boundary, something that I define for the world. So another useful test to kind of figure out what you value or what you care about is the deathbed test. So think about yourself on your deathbed. Ask yourself, like, what would you regret not doing? What would you regret doing? What did you spend too much time on? This is kind of the memento mori practice from stoicism that we've talked about quite a bit. You know, if I was to die in a year, like, what would I change about my life? Is there anything that's been left unsaid? Is there anything that I have been too afraid to do that I wish I would have done? Those are all very useful exercises. And then, of course, there's the energy audit. What challenges energize you versus what challenges drain you? I think this is a question that's not discussed enough. I think we tend to assume that every challenge just drains us and sucks. But the truth is that some challenges are very invigorating and exciting, and we become more alive and we rise to the occasion. So I think it's useful to think in those terms. Another way that I've often framed this to myself is like,

00:59:05What is something that sucks that feels kind of easy to me, but seems very, very difficult to other people? Like I remember when I first started blogging, I was writing these super long articles, and I just thought that that's what every blogger did. You know, it was like a 3,000 word article every three days. And it wasn't until I went to my first blogging conference and everybody I met was just like, dude, how do you write so much? How do you post so often? And I was like, I don't know. It never occurred to me. Just sit down and do it. Yeah, you just fucking write. You just like, you just put the words in your head onto a paper and like then you hit publish. Like it never occurred to me that that was a difficult thing. I actually had to go meet a lot of other bloggers and writers to realize that they were like just getting a single post out each week was like a huge struggle for them. And so that was actually an indicator to me of like, oh, maybe I should be a writer. All right. So we've thought through what are the things that we care about? What are the challenges that enliven us? What does this look like in terms of boundaries? Well, values without boundaries, it's just wishful thinking. Whereas boundaries with values actually make the values real. They like manifest the values in your life. Can we use that word, Drew? Manifest? I'll allow it. You'll allow it? Yeah. Yeah. In that context. In that context. Okay. No, the woo-woo police have not been alerted. That's right. So a few simple examples. Like, let's say I value my health, right? An internal boundary I might set for myself is that...

01:00:35I don't stay out past midnight except for extremely special occasions. That's actually a real boundary I have for myself. I'm in bed by midnight these days unless it's like a birthday or a holiday or something. Note the flexibility in there. Yes. Yes. The external boundary around that would be like let's say I get invited to, I don't know, a party or a concert or whatever and it starts at 11 p.m. The boundary is I say no. And if I'm worried about hurting that person's feelings or upsetting somebody or whatever, just send them a quick explanation. Be like, hey, man, I'm an early bird. I really like my sleep. I don't really party much. Would love to get together for coffee sometime. Sure. Shoot that text off. So just to make sure that they know it's not about them. I've got this boundary in my life. I'm adhering to it. Another example is, let's say, a top value of mine is family. Well, an internal boundary that I can set is that as soon as I walk in the door and I get home, no work allowed. Not on my phone at dinner, not taking calls from my boss, not checking email in bed. It's like when I'm at home, it's family time, no exceptions. Now, an external boundary, you know, to enforce that,

01:01:54would be to tell my coworkers, hey, when I go home, I don't answer emails. Or, yeah, if you message me at 9 p.m., you're not gonna get a response until I wake up. Period. So the first step is defining the personal value. The second step is to operationalize the value in the form of a boundary, both defining it for yourself, but also defining it for others. And by the way, like this is a super useful exercise to like actually write these things out, like write out these things, these definitions for yourself. Like I don't work at home or I don't work at home. I don't stay out past 12 p.m. That way, when you are put in the situation with other people, you already know what to say. You're like, hey, I don't do this, or this isn't my thing, or that's not a priority for me. Yeah, and I think in the values episode, we talked about how values, and you've mentioned this too here, values are acted out. They're just the way you behave. That's really where they come in. We didn't get into as much of the real – like boundaries are kind of the – They're the verbs and the values are the nouns, right? Yeah. And the boundaries are the ones that give your values some weight, actually. We didn't get as much into that in the values episode, but I think that's an important point you're making right now. Yes. Is that, you know, translating values into real life.

01:03:10real life values that manifest in your life, that's through the boundaries that you set. So yeah. So once you've done that, step three, and this is like, this is almost just like a check, which is make, make sure that they're flexible, a firm, right? Like you don't want to be a zealot. You don't want to be like, I will never, I will never, ever go to bed past 10 p.m. ever again like that's just that's insanity and by the way you can't control things so like it's probably going to happen at some point anyway you also don't want to be wishy-washy about it though you don't want to be like oh i need to sleep more i'm going to go to bed early like if you don't define what early is you don't define what the cutoff is you don't define what the circumstances that you do it or you don't do it are you You're not going to adhere to it. It's very similar to goals in that matter. It's like if you don't define what your goal is or if you don't decide how you're going to measure your goal, you're just not going to hit it. It's the same with boundaries. If there's not a clear definition around it and if the exceptions are not also clearly defined, then you're just going to be back in that wishy-washy, ambiguous state. It seems like in every episode we do, we find it's like, oh, there's gotta be a balance and stuff like that. And I used to think that that was a really kind of like a cop-out answer for a lot of things. But if you think about it, finding that balance is actually really, really hard. That's like actually the most difficult thing. Taking it to an extreme, having very porous boundaries is easy. Having very rigid boundaries is very easy. Finding that balance where you do have that situational flexibility, that's actually really hard. It is. And so there's a practice to it that you have to kind of engage in over and over again

01:04:45I think it only comes with practice. There's a self correction that happens. And it's like, you're probably going to miss the mark the first time you try it. And then you're going to realize like, oh, I was really too rigid or like, oh, I need to tighten things up. I can't really be trusted in these situations. So it does come back to the Aristotelian golden mean. The golden mean, right? Like you never hit the perfect balance. You're just always adjusting and readjusting and readjusting. Yeah, so just want to have, like, it's not actually a cop-out answer where you're like, oh, you just need to find balance. I mean, people use it as a cop-out a lot of times, but it's like, okay, what does that actually look like? That's the hard part. It's probably a useful reminder as well at this point too that, like, boundaries are super important. They are, they matter a lot, but they're not gospel. Like this shit is not being chiseled into stone tablets and being brought down from a mountain by God. Like this is stuff, you're creating it for yourself. Like you're human. It's very personal. Yeah. Yeah. It's very personal. And also the boundaries that you set today may not be appropriate for you two or three years from now, right? Like your life's going to change. Your values are going to change. Your situation's going to change. Your relationships are going to change. So again, there's just like a constant adjustment that has to be made. Otherwise, you end up becoming too rigid. Right.

01:06:07So I'm just going to round this section out with a few more examples. Again, the value is the why and the boundary is the how, right? So in my relationships, I value authenticity. Authenticity is the why behind my relationships, you know, my friendships and my my good family, like the people I make time for. It's why do I make time time for them? Because I feel very they feel very authentic. It feels very like the connection is very honest and pure. The how is the boundary, right? Which is I decide for myself first that I'm going to be authentic in my relationships. I'm not going to hide who I am. I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I'm not going to people please or placate. If somebody doesn't like me, I'm just going to allow that to happen. And then, of course, the practice is holding to that boundary, right? So if I'm out with a friend and I find out that he's kind of been bullshitting me or lied to me about something, I don't let it go. I don't pretend it didn't happen. You know, I say, like, what the fuck, dude? Like, why did you say that? You know, and hash it out with them. Another example, let's say in work, I value excellence over volume of output. I would operationalize that internally by saying my value is that I take on fewer projects so I can do them extremely well.

01:07:31That means that I don't take on any projects that I think is going to sacrifice the quality of my work. And then in practice externally, that means being able to look coworkers or my boss in the face and being like, hey, I don't have the bandwidth for that, you know, unless you want me to compromise on something. And finally, in personal development, let's say I have a value of being open to try anything, right? I set a boundary within myself of like not judging or criticizing something unless I've like given it a fair shake or given it a fair try. And then externally, that means that if somebody is talking to me about some whacked out spirit crystal or, you know, yoga retreat that involves a bunch of like naked gurus humping me, I don't necessarily discount it at first glance. I withhold my skepticism. That's a sign of maturity, Mark. How far I've come. Yeah, look at you. How far I've come. So ultimately, I mean, this is kind of the philosophical and psychological underpinning of boundaries. This is why they matter so much. This is how they function in the depths of our mind. You know, they really are our values manifested through our actions. And, you know, as you and I, like, we bang the values drum every fucking chance we get. That's beautiful.

01:08:58First episode for a reason. Yes. Foundational. Exactly. So it's in that sense, boundaries are also foundational. Like it's you can spend all the time in the world staring at your navel, figuring out what you care about or what matters to you. But if you're not actually out there living it and you're not enforcing those values in your own life, then like what the fuck does it matter? We've talked a little bit about what boundaries are, where they come from, why they're so important. We've mentioned some of the difficulties too, but now I kind of want to get into the nitty gritty of why we so often fail to set and kind of maintain these boundaries. People think it's like, oh, it's you're a weakness or you have no self-discipline. And maybe that's part of it. Sure. I'm a coward. Or you're a coward. Yes. Maybe that's it. And sure, maybe those are like surface level explanations for it. But actually, it's when I dug into this, it's a little bit deeper than that. So there are really kind of I found three areas anyway that kind of explain some of this. There's developmental reasons for a lack of boundaries. There are kind of personality and individual differences that we have. So we'll talk about some of the personality factors. And then there's just like emotion regulation and emotional skills that that all factor into this. So I'm going to go through each one of those. OK. OK.

01:10:18We'll start with the developmental stuff. Now, if you think about it, the first boundary you ever had wasn't really like a rule-based boundary. It was a relationship. It was probably with your caregivers that you had. And for a lot of people, that didn't really go so well. Right. And then you carry that forward into your adult life. Yes. Yeah. So there's this idea in developmental psychology is called developmental fusion. OK, so when you're really young, like zero to maybe one and a half, two years old, somewhere in there, you really don't have an identity. You've already mentioned this actually. You really don't have an identity separate from your parents or your caregivers, whatever's going on, the people around you. You're just kind of this. Well, you have no abstract sense of self. No abstract sense of self. So you're just pure sensation. Yeah. You're just pure consciousness basically, right? At that point. That's called developmental fusion. It's very normal. That's how we all start out. But at a certain point, you have to start doing what they call individuation. Okay? There was this famous psychologist back in the 70s, Margaret Mahler, and she came up with this idea of individuation. And this is where you, like, the terrible twos come around. You know, if you know any parents have a two- or three-year-old, they're starting to assert their independence. They find out how to say no and what it means and the power of no, right? Yeah. You start to realize, like, oh, I'm a separate person.

01:11:36Being I'm a separate entity from all the other things around me. I have feelings that are my own that not everybody else is experiencing that same thing at the same time as I am. I have desires and opinions that are outside of everybody else's as well. There's there starts to be a sense of independence and individuation during that period. That's very normal, too. However, if that gets disrupted, then you don't go through that full individuation process and you don't develop a sense of self that's separate from others. You don't develop that first boundary. Right. Right. And you can carry that all the way. That will show up later in your life as well. Donald Winnicott back in the 60s and 70s, he called this the good enough mother. And you could say the good enough caregiver. Right. It's... This is a secure caregiver who they let there's enough autonomy. They give them enough autonomy. They give the child enough autonomy, but at the same time, they put those constraints around that we talk to again, that kind of balance that we find. Okay. Healthy caregiving really isn't about like rescuing the child. It's from every discomfort. Yeah. It's really about teaching them that they can survive those discomforts. And that's where individuation starts. It's kind of like, OK, something bad happens. You're feeling this, but not everybody else is feeling it. And you have to you have to deal with it. Can I say something? This is this is a connection I just made right now. Listen to you talk. Coming back to that question, like, what are you willing to suffer for? Yeah.

01:13:01You need to suffer from things to know what's worth suffering. That's true. Yeah. Like you can't figure out what you value in life until you've suffered a certain amount of hardship or pain or struggle. And so if you have parents that are constantly protecting you from all hardship and struggle, then no value formation happens in the first place. Right. No identity formation happens in the first place. I just made that connect. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. Just being able to face and handle those types of like tough situations when you're younger and you carry that skill on with you, that's a huge part of individuation like you're talking about. And so it's a huge part of like establishing yourself. And then you're saying, yes, I can deal with this and I choose to deal with this too. So that's a big part of an individuation for sure. Another area, though, that came up with this is you've heard of schema therapy. Yeah. So schema therapy was originally developed by Jeffrey Young. I think it was Jeffrey Young back in the 60s, 70s. And there's been a lot of work done since then. And they found that like childhood traumas and unmet emotional needs during that critical period, during those early years like that, that can lead to what they call early maladaptive schemas. EMS is what they call them. Not to get too jargony here. Schemas are kind of like they're mind maps kind of or maps of the world, maps of life that you have. And then you develop these from an early age, how to interact with other people, how to interact with the world. That's a schema. Yeah. Okay.

01:14:22If you go through some sort of childhood trauma or even just consistently don't get your needs met during those early critical periods when you're very, very you're very dependent on your caregivers, then you can develop some of these more maladaptive. So basically like inaccurate schemas. Inaccurate schemas. To the world. Right. Now, they serve an adaptive function. It's called maladaptive. They serve an adaptive function early on, but later on, as you get older, they're not more adaptive. So an example of that would be like, say somebody grew up in a traumatic household and they grow up believing that everybody is threatening. Right. Every person is threatening. You have to protect yourself at all times. Like that would be a maladaptive schema. Right. And then you would probably develop very rigid boundaries around that. Keeping people at arm's length, putting up walls, not letting people in, not accepting help. The other side is if you have, yeah, like helicopter parents or somebody who's always taking care of everything for you, then you come up with very porous boundaries and probably you project that on other people. You start wanting to just help them all the time and forget your own values and boundaries and all of that. Or you become Eric Cartman who believes you're entitled to everything. That is Cartman's MO, isn't it? It is. I mean, it's funny what you were describing, a helicopter parent who gives you everything. I just immediately thought of Cartman. And I'm like, yeah, he's a fucking demon because he's the most spoiled, entitled little prick. But I mean, it's funny because that narcissism is also a lack of boundaries. It's also a weak ego, right? It's like believing that everything is yours. It should be yours. You deserve everything. You're entitled to everything.

01:16:04That is a lack of boundaries. Right, right. All of this kind of points in the direction, though, of like developing your attachment system, which just comes up a lot in our episodes too. But attachment, just real briefly, you can have a secure attachment or an insecure attachment. Securely attached people, they navigate relationships well, that boundaries for them aren't like threatening. Yeah. Nor are they completely non-negotiable to them. Like, oh, this is a boundary, but let me like, we can negotiate this, right? Yeah. Sorry, I just got really excited of like thinking about attachment theory through the lens of boundaries, right? It's wild, right? It is like, you know. There's so many lenses you can put attachment theory through. Yeah, like an anxious attachment person is like somebody who like has extremely porous boundaries. And then an avoidant is probably somebody who has too rigid of boundaries. Absolutely. You just want to do the rest of the section? Yeah. I'm sorry, Drew. I'm getting excited. No, it's awesome though. No, that's exactly where I was going with it. I'm getting nerd excited over there. No, maybe I'm just too predictable. I don't know. Maybe we've been working together too. It does. It does though. It all kind of leads to that though. Through all of this, through the early unmet needs that you have, or even traumas that you have, the schemas that you develop from that.

01:17:20the parenting style you are subjected to, it leads up to this attachment style and that has a huge influence on the way you set and maintain your boundaries. So a secure person, again, they're going to see boundaries as a useful tool. They don't see them as threatening. They don't use them to threaten other people either. They don't use them as a wall to keep people out. They don't use them as, you know, carrots and sticks to get people to come closer to them or not. Whereas insecure attachments, if you're anxious, like you said, you're going to have more porous boundaries. If you're more avoidant, you're probably going to be more rigid in your boundaries. So that's kind of the developmental. That's a real quick survey of the developmental side of how, you know, if you are a person who has issues with boundaries, maybe take a look at some of the take a look at some of that. Therapy is good for this kind of stuff, too, because a lot of times you don't realize what you went through and how it is now affecting people. the way you set up boundaries in your life or just really navigate relationships in general, too. Yeah. We're going to get to this a little bit later when we talk a bit more about romantic relationships. But, you know, boundaries is one of those things that it's it's kind of there's like a social contagion of it. Like the best way to learn boundaries is to be around somebody who has good boundaries. Yeah.

01:18:36and feel what it feels like to be friends with somebody with good boundaries or be like a partner of somebody with good boundaries. Like it's not that it rubs off on you, but like you by experiencing what a good boundary feels like, you start to get a sense of like, oh, this is how I should be behaving. And I think just on a very practical and like obvious level, if you have parents who are terrible at boundaries, you're never going to learn that. It's just because you're never going to experience it with them. They're going to constantly be, you know, holding you responsible for their feelings and intermingling in your life and messing with things and meshing themselves with different things that you're doing. And so, like, if that's where you come from, you're just going to assume that that's normal and everybody should behave that way. Yeah. A nuance I would put on that is, yes, being around healthy boundaries is the best way to learn them and to exercise them, sure. I think at first, though, those first few times you are – like say you are – I'll give you a very personal example in my case. Let's go. Yeah. So for the longest time, I've just – my avoidance. I was avoidantly attached. Put up the walls, keep people out, arm's length, like all of that. Um, then when I got into some relationships that were more secure, I was like, well, this is what it felt weird. It felt weird because it was, I was in the class, usually in the classic kind of like, I was the avoidant with an anxious, the chasey and chaser, you know? Yeah.

01:20:05And then when I got into with if I was in a relationship with somebody who was more secure, I was like, oh, what? Like, does she like me or is this this boring? Yeah. You know, so I think you really got to watch out a little bit for that. The self-awareness has to kick in at some point being like, oh, OK, this is. It's okay that there's not some weird, toxic dynamic going on, right? Yeah. So again, yes, it is. That's the best way to learn boundaries and secure attachment. And all of that is to be in one of those relationships with someone or friendship or whatever it is. You do got to have the self-awareness, though, to know that when you're going down the wrong side of it. It's funny, I've personally found as somebody who was like very insecure when he was younger. When I think back to when I was insecure, like somebody saying no to me felt like death. Right. Yeah. It just, it was brutal. I took it super personally. I would like ruminate for days of like, whoa, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't she want to hang out with me? as I've gotten older and gotten more secure, now when I meet people who are really good at saying no, like, I love them. Like, if I'm hanging out with a new person or a new friend and they're able to, like, very gracefully decline things or reject people for things or reject me, like, say no to me for certain things, I'm just like, this person's awesome. I want to be friends with this person. Like, it's just such a rare skill and an admirable skill.

01:21:32It's a green flag, essentially. 100%. I have a real good friend of mine who's like that, who's just very much like, we'll tell you no. Yeah. And not apologize, you know, not dance around it. And not make you feel bad. And not make you feel bad about it. He's like, nah, I'm not doing this, and this is why I'm good with it. Yeah. And at first, it was a little bit like, oh, dude, you don't want to hang out? You don't want to, you know, any of that? And now I just get it, and I really respect him for it. Because then when he does want to come and join, then you know it's real. You know it's real. Yeah. Another benefit of boundaries right there. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that's kind of – that's the developmental side. The next area I want to get into is just like personality traits, right? There's individual differences obviously within personality. If you take like the big five, let's say the big five personality traits, somebody who's highly agreeable tends to have more porous boundaries, right? They tend to want to please other people more, go with the flow, not really assert themselves. This isn't – I mean that's not – I feel like whenever I bring up agreeableness, especially I think in the... culture in the United States or whatever, it seems like you're a big pushover, but it's just people who like, they're more, they want to be more communal. They're more compassionate and they want other people to enjoy themselves around them too. And so don't like, don't think I'm trashing you if you're just because you're agreeable, but it, it can very quickly go. And if you're high in agreeableness, uh, it can very quickly go down to like some porous boundaries or non-existent boundaries whatsoever.

01:23:00You contrast that with like highly conscientious people. If you're highly conscientious and you're low in agreeableness, even maybe disagreeable, you're probably going to have very, very rigid boundaries. Yes. Just to maintain that structure in your life, because conscientious people, they they find a lot of control and structure and organization. Just to define a couple of terms for people listening who aren't familiar with the big five, you know, agreeableness is generally people who are prone to seek out positive feelings in their relationship. So they like good vibes. They like good energy. They like to make people happy. They like to feel good all the time. And coincidentally, a person extremely high in agreeableness is probably somebody who's going to tiptoe around something uncomfortable, not want to bring up a potential conflict, you know, won't say anything controversial and so on. Conscientiousness is generally people who like things to be very organized, rigid, structured. and like well-maintained. So an extremely high conscientious person would make a great tax accountant. They keep their spaces super tidy and clean. They love organization. They love order. They love systems. So yeah, what you're describing is somebody very high in conscientiousness, which means basically they have extremely high standards for the environment around them. and other people around them and then low agreeableness, which means that they will totally call you out if you are pissing them off. Yeah, those people can have very rigid boundaries. Right. And then let's get into like another dimension, neurotic individuals. So neurotic, the dimension of neuroses is your tendency towards negative emotion. Yeah. Right. So if you're high in neuroticism, you tend to like have

01:24:42bigger negative emotions, they're more intense for you, generally speaking. Whereas if you're low in neuroticism, you have more towards maybe positive affect, but at least not negative affect. Neurotic people actually can have very rigid boundaries as well, because there again, they're trying to protect themselves. That's usually what it is. It's a survival mechanism almost for them. It's extroversion, introversion. So if you're extroverted more so than introverted. Extroverted people tend to have a little bit more porous boundaries, a little looser. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, because they want to connect with people. That's how they get a lot of satisfaction out of their relationships in their lives and with connecting people. They're energized by it even. Yeah. And so they might go out of their way and kind of loosen up their boundaries or foreguard them completely if it means that they get to connect with someone or, you know, the drugs example you were saying, too, like people, people extroverted people who are high in openness, which is the next one. I tend to do a lot more drugs. No judgment here. It's just that's that's a fact. Right. Which brings me to openness. So openness to new experience. That's another dimension of the big five. If you're open to new experience, you're open to new experience, right? You like novelty. You're high in this. I'm off the charts. You're off the charts on openness for sure. And those, they tend to have...

01:26:07Flexible, more exploratory boundaries, which has more porous as well. Yes. And so from the outside, if you're not as high in that, it can sometimes look like a little bit of a lack of compass to other people, which there's maybe a kernel of truth to that. Yeah, I think so. I mean, being extremely high in openness just means that you're able to – you're curious about a lot of things and you're open to a lot of different perspectives and – So I can, this is something I run into my own relationships where I think it's very easy for me to see the other person's perspective. And so I kind of become very malleable. Right. You change your mind a lot. I'm like, oh, oh, well, that's how you feel. Okay. Yeah. We'll do it your way. And I think at a certain point that can start to backfire if you're not careful. If you're overly suggestible in that, if you're open and highly suggestible, then yeah. Yeah. You're going to have a problem. Defining boundaries because you're open to so many things, you're like, well, let's explore this, right? It comes back to the Kantian thing of like, you know, if there's no self-limitation, then there's no identity, there's no order. Right, right. Now, you know, obviously there's all sorts of configurations of personalities. You can be high in conscientiousness and high in agreeableness, which I feel like I am. And so there's probably some mitigating factors there. I'm somewhere in the middle on openness, so...

01:27:32I don't know how that really goes for me. Neuroticism, I'm pretty neurotic, I would say. Are you? I have periods where I can be very neurotic, yeah. I'm off the charts in openness and I'm like super, super low neuroticism, which means that I'm like pretty much happy in every situation, which is... problematic. Yeah, it can be. Seriously, it can be. Yeah. Like it's funny because my wife is actually very, she's extremely high conscientiousness and probably decently high in neuroticism. And it's like, honestly, she protects me from myself. Like I could live in a sleeping bag and under an underpass and probably like be okay. And that's unreasonable. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. So we should do an episode on personality sometime. I think we should. Yeah. It's fascinating, really. It's a whole fascinating field. Yeah. It is. And it is, I think most people are surprised to hear that it is the most reliable and replicated segment of psychology. There's a few people who are like, I don't know about it, but it's a small minority. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you can replicate it over and over. It's very, very applicable to it's very, very practical, very predictive. Right. Right. If you know, like your personality types, you can plan a lot of your your life around it. Even to it's yeah, it's relationships, your careers. Yeah, for sure. And in this case, your boundaries, even to you. Yeah. Right.

01:28:53Okay, so you got the developmental side, you have the personality slash individual differences side. All of these kind of overlap too, by the way, obviously. The next one is kind of like the emotion regulation, mental health, which is obviously influenced a lot by development and a lot by personality as well. In neuroscience, they've found, fMRI studies have found that your brain actually distinguishes between what they call empathetic concern and personal distress, okay? Okay. What happens with people who seem to have these more porous boundaries is those kind of get switched, not switched, but there's a lot of crosstalk or each one of them is kind of firing mostly like kind of 50 50. There's not a whole lot of distinguishing. Um, neural activity between those two regions when you find this. And this kind of gets into like the emotional contagion type stuff. Yeah. You might be very susceptible to the emotions around you because you're a highly empathetic person. Right. Which, you know, there's – I'm going to say there's nothing wrong with that because there can be. What I'm going to get to is there can be something wrong with that. But just to start out, like if you are susceptible to that emotional contagion around you, almost by definition, you don't have very healthy or strong boundaries around any of that.

01:30:10This comes back, this is like a golden meme thing, right? Again, yeah. Once again, you don't want to be completely indifferent to people's emotions around you because then you're just a psychopath. But at the same time, you don't want your entire well-being dictated by the emotions of the people around you because then you're just purely codependent and have no identity or center of yourself. So it's like being influenced by others but not being dictated by others is the formula. And the way some people formulate that is rather than emphasizing empathy so much is to emphasize compassion more. Yes. Because compassion is more of a, yes, I see your plight, your pain, whatever. But I can also, there's an individuation there, right? That's yours and this is mine. And yes, I can have compassion for that. But I'm not completely absorbing all of your emotions in that moment and letting you hijack my emotional system, my empathy that way. Yeah. And so that's one kind of school of thought is that actually compassion is way, way more useful in these types of situations. Yeah. And you can still set boundaries when you have compassion for someone. Right. Right? There's a – for listeners, there's a great book about this called Against Empathy by Paul Bloom. Yeah. From Yale University. Love Paul Bloom.

01:31:32Super fascinating book, very convincing argument, makes this distinction with a lot of research. And it's a very – I found it convincing. Empathy is one of those emotions – maybe we mentioned this in the emotions episode, but empathy is one of those emotions that doesn't scale very well. Yeah. Yeah. It's good in a one-on-one situation to a certain degree. I would still argue compassion even in that situation is better, but it doesn't scale very well because now you have the emotions of, you know, we see this in like a mass communications too can hijack your empathy very easily. Yes. So yeah. The tribalism and all that stuff. Right. So you have like that emotional contagion and whether or not you're able to navigate that well, convert it to compassion, sure. The other one though is what I'm calling the stress boundary trap. Okay, so stress can kind of make us almost desperate for boundaries, and then it kind of steals the energy we need to hold them. In a way, the stress is a boundary trap and is why overwhelm can spread. For example, when people feel, say you're overwhelmed at work, like you don't have a very good work-life balance. You have no idea what that's like. Pretend like you do, right? Right.

01:32:54Say you want to keep those worlds separate. Say you want to keep your work life and your home life separate, which a lot of people do. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The stress, though, can make that separation almost impossible because in order for you, like you're having stress at work, and in order for you to not have stress at work, you bring it home with you. You try to mitigate it that way. You try to fix the stress and fix the work stress at home. That creates more stress at home. You get in this vicious, vicious cycle, right? It creates this kind of free. frustrating, very frustrating cycle where the more stress you are, like the wider the gap becomes between the boundaries you want and the boundaries that you have actually become. This makes a lot of sense because it's coming back to the thinking brain, feeling brain. Yes. You know, boundaries are – the self-definition aspect of boundaries is dictated by the thinking brain. And, you know, the prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking brain, is just so energy intensive. Like there's just tons of studies and data and we know very well that the more tired you are, the more stressed you are, the more exhausted you are. Like it's – the worse your executive functioning, the worse your thinking brain is at dictating to your feeling brain like what should be done and when it should be done. So it makes sense that boundaries would fall under that umbrella of things that you just start failing to do when you're stressed or exhausted.

01:34:14Yeah, yeah. They'll dissolve under stress a lot of times too. And usually it's you're defaulting again, finding the balance is what the hardest part is. And so you default to the easy. Yes. Whichever is the easiest, which is usually a very porous or a very rigid boundary. Oh, well that, okay. That last part's interesting because I was just thinking about, I mean, as someone who has been working way too much the last few months and is like regularly coming home exhausted. Yeah, think about that for a second. And letting boundaries, like kind of failing at some boundaries. You know, I was just thinking about that. But it's interesting what you said there, because in my case, what I find is that, you know, I come home, I'm exhausted, I'm tired. I'm tired. I just start letting stuff go. I'm just like, you know, deal with it tomorrow. Or like, I'll tell her tomorrow or, you know, like, I don't want to fight right now. So fuck it. Who cares? You know? And it's, it's, and that includes again, a lot of the boundaries and expectations I set for myself. Like I've, I find it harder to follow through on a lot of the behaviors and expectations that I. I hold myself to. And so, okay, I'm having, I have this problem too. Yeah. Okay. So do you set a boundary around that then and say, past a certain time, I have no boundaries and I just let it all go? Is that a boundary? Is that a container you can create, I guess, for those, for like a stress outlet, I guess, or? I mean, honestly, at this point in my life and my career, I just start to, I think I've developed a lot more awareness around this. Mm-hmm.

01:35:46I think these days I'm much more sensitive to it and aware of it. And I guess the meta boundary I've set for myself is that if I ever reach the point where I'm too stressed or overwhelmed to maintain boundaries throughout my life then you have to take the foot off the gas okay you got to take a day off you got to take an afternoon off you got to sleep in a couple days it's and i mean i've actually coincidentally i've actually been doing that the last few weeks yeah it's like yeah i've been basically behind on work for two or three weeks straight now and a lot of that is just because i hit a point last month where i was like okay if i keep going at this pace Let's just fall behind. Yeah. And take the Saturday off, hang out with the wife on Friday night, maybe sleep in and play some video games instead of working, you know, before I come to the studio, giving myself that time just to know, just because at this point I've burnt myself out enough times to know. Like, like this is the longevity play. Okay. It's better to be inefficient in the short term and alive in the long term than it is to, you know, just be maximally efficient in the short run. Okay. So you are, you're, you're protecting your boundaries with another boundary almost. Yes. So some of those boundaries would be like health stuff I'm imagining. Yeah. Time with your wife. Yep. That kind of stuff. Those are like the first two things to go. The first two. Yeah. And sleep is another one. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know all about that.

01:37:21I, yeah, that's one area I could do better on boundaries is sleep and health stuff for sure. Cause mine, that's usually the first thing to go for me too, is the health stuff. So yeah. When I'm in a mode like this where I'm like, okay, I'm working like 60, 70 hours a week. I, I hold myself to the baseline standard. So it's like, okay, I know I'm not going to get stronger this year. I know I'm not going to get faster or like run further or whatever. But if I can just maintain my current fitness and my current level of health, that's a win. Right? If I can just not let things go, I've won. Okay. And I kind of see that – I kind of treat every area of my life. It's like if I just don't lose sleep, I've won. I don't need to be like the most rested and recovered person on the planet. But as long as I'm not waking up exhausted every morning, that's a win. Once again, I'll point out the flexibility in that. This is going to be a recurring theme based on the situation. This is what people think that boundaries are like these rigid, like, oh, I got these boundaries and I got these strong, healthy boundaries and they don't move and I'm an immovable force. No, not at all. There's actually a very adaptive and flexible nature to healthy boundaries that you have. And in your case, like this is like, OK, I have this baseline and usually I want to hit this, but I'm OK with this.

01:38:38Kind of zooming out for a second. I mean, at this point, you know, we did an episode on emotions. And I guess kind of one of the surprise conclusions in that episode was possibly the biggest factor for emotional regulation and emotional stability is flexibility. Yeah. Is adaptability. Yeah. Yeah. Similarly, we did an episode on resilience. Biggest finding there is that actually resilience is not about being hardcore, immovable, uncompromising. It's the opposite. Resilience is actually about like becoming an incredibly flexible, adaptable person under a lot of different contexts and a lot of different stresses. And it's funny that we're kind of finding the same thing here, that it's like having really solid boundaries and like by the nature of solid boundaries, I would say the two things that are downstream of really good strong boundaries is strong relationships and strong self-discipline. We come back to this flexibility, adaptability, like it just understanding yourself, understanding the context, understanding like, okay, when is it worth letting this go? Mm-hmm. and because i'll do that too like i'll be like let's say there's a book launch like that month of the book launch everything's out the window sure everything is out the window like it's just and and i know for that period of time like i'll i'll even to the point where i'll even have a date on my calendar it's like okay the tour ends on the 19th on the 20th i'm becoming a normal person again my wife and i even talk about it in those terms like like when i have conversations with her about commitments or like crazy busy periods in my career

01:40:14I'll give her a date. I'll be like, I'll be a normal person again on the 23rd. And like, and that sets her expectation, right? Yeah. Which is a boundary, right? You know? So it's like, okay. And reduces conflict in your relationships. Exactly. And all the things we've already talked about. Exactly. Cause now, now it's like, if we, if I'm being a dick on the 21st, like she's not going to hold it against me. She's like, okay, he's under a lot of stress. He's doing the book tour. But like when I'm a normal person, again, like the old expectations come back. Right. Spoiler alert, but that's one of the biggest things I took away from this was just that the degree to which you can be flexible in your boundaries. It's kind of like that Carl Sagan quote, you know, be open-minded, but not so open-minded your brains fall out. It's like have strong boundaries, but not so strong that you can't move, you know, basically. You put yourself in a box or don't have any boundaries at all. Yeah. Yeah. Balance is hard. At what point are we just going to change the name of this podcast to Aristotle was right? That could be a spinoff. That could be a spinoff. Somebody should start that one. Like you could summarize like 30 hours of podcast, you know, with those four words, three words. Okay, so the last part of the emotional thing I wanna bring up though too, I mentioned this at the top here was the mental health aspect though. So if you do have, you know, there's clinical extremes, especially in the cluster, what they call the cluster B. Oh, those are fun.

01:41:36Yeah. Yeah. So you got like bipolar borderline, borderline, bipolar, narcissistic, antisocial, histrionic, all the fun personality disorders. We talked about personality already. Collect them all. If I did, but these like Some of these are almost defined by lack of boundary. Yes. Like a borderline is they have difficulty in relationships precisely because they almost don't even see boundaries in relationships, right? This probably goes back to a lot of individuation stuff. It's the failed individuation. It's failed individuation. Which I believe a lot of borderline – I could be wrong about this. It's been a long time since I read about this. But like I believe a lot of the cluster B stuff is like directly related to early childhood childhood. Oh yeah. Yep. Stuff. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. It usually goes back to, yeah, two, three, four years old, whatever, all the way up to like eight or nine. The hard thing about a lot of these though too, is that these are the people who don't seek help. Right. Right. Because if you're, if you're borderline, it's everybody else's fault. It's not your fault. History on it, kind of the same thing. Narcissists, same antisocial. You just don't even give a shit. Right. So there's that. Maybe if you have somebody like this in your life though too, Just know that the boundaries are not going to be there. Yeah. I mean, what I so I've known of a few bipolar people and, you know,

01:42:53What's interesting with a number of them is that it kind of comes and goes. Like they kind of... Yeah. That's part of the prognosis. Yeah, they go through episodes, right? And so it's almost like weathering a storm when they're in an episode. And you just kind of almost... Sometimes it makes me wonder if this is where medieval people thought that people were possessed by demons. It makes me wonder... when you start understanding cluster B personality disorders, like it starts to make sense. Right. You're like, it's like this person almost becomes an entirely different person. And then they come back and they're like pleasant and loving. And, you know, so it's just, it's super interesting. A lot of that is based around boundaries because again, you kind of like you build an identity based on your boundaries, based on what you choose to, to participate in, to not participate in, to believe in, to not believe in. So yeah, like when they're in those episodes, say a manic episode or something like that from a bipolar person, there's just a dissolution of the boundaries around what they typically do or want to do at least. And so yeah, I think that's where you get that. You get that whole other identity side of it because their boundaries are gone. They're boundaryless. Or they have completely different boundaries around weird things too. Yeah. You see that a lot too. So yeah. It is. Okay. So those are the kind of three big areas of why we fail sometimes to create healthy boundaries. You have your developmental – the developmental aspects of it, the personality, individual differences –

01:44:22and then kind of emotion regulation. Obviously, all of those, there's a lot of overlap and interlinking and all of those things. But hopefully, if you're somebody who does struggle with boundaries, maybe you got something out of that. Maybe you can pinpoint, I don't know, something in your childhood or whatever, not to get too navel-gazy, but there's these three big areas that might be contributing to that. I think people tend to overestimate the value of knowing where a dysfunction came from, but there is value in knowing where a dysfunction came from. Good point. A lot of times we stop right there and that's not where you stop. Yes. Okay. It is. I heard this again recently. It's like people, when they do get a diagnosis or something like that, a lot of times it just kind of like, they feel the sense of release and they relief and they think that's it. Like, cool, not my fault. Right, right. But hey, we're only halfway through the episode here, if that, so yeah, keep listening. Yeah, figuring out where it came from is just, it's not even half the work. That's just the start. Okay, so now let's get into like the different types of boundaries that we have. I think a lot of us think that, oh, you just have boundaries in your close relationships and maybe work and home boundaries, and that's kind of where they should be. But it's actually boundaries kind of permeate all little nooks and crannies of our lives. And I think the key thing we need to think about, though, is that

01:45:39as we're going through these, they're very, very context dependent. Okay. Right? Boundaries aren't, there's not like a hard and fast rule on all of these, but it shifts a lot with context. There's no universal boundary. There's no universal boundary. That applies to everybody all the time. They're very personal. Yeah. And they can change very quickly based on context, based on culture, based on all of these different factors that we're gonna get over. Gotcha, okay. All right, cool. So let's just dive right into some of these. The first one, and maybe the most obvious in a lot of ways is like physical boundaries that we have, right? So, you know, You stay on your side of the table. You stay over there. I stay over here. Don't touch me. Oh, yeah. Right. I just but I mean, like, seriously, like it's kind of like the the most one of the most fundamental boundaries, right, is to be able to draw boundaries around when you can when your personal space can be invaded, I guess is one way to think about it, or at least occupied by someone else, if not full on, like when you're touched or anything like that. Now, there's this whole field called proxemics that this guy, Edward Hall, he wrote he wrote a whole book on it and basically found his big insight was what he calls social distance. Yeah. So like when you're interacting with someone, how how comfortable are you at what distance? Yeah. And how comfortable you are at that distance? Like personal space, personal space when you're having a conversation or any sort of interaction with somebody. Sure.

01:46:56that relationship that you have with him it's a closer relationship are you more comfortable and it's closer that all that kind of stuff so one of his insights was that's very culturally dependent so like for example like in latin america uh people generally are more comfortable uh interacting with each other at a closer distance yeah whereas like places like the united states or especially germany it's there's more uh distance people are A little more comfortable at a further distance apart. And then you see people get together from different cultures, and this can be kind of funny sometimes. Awkward, yeah. One example I thought of, though, for this, too, that I've seen over the years, and I kind of wanted to get your take on this. There's some parents, and I never understood this, but they're like, you go over to their house, or maybe it's a family gathering or something like that, and they're like, go hug your uncle or go hug your cousin or go hug something like that. I always thought that was just weird. Like, I think as you should be taught as a kid, physical boundaries, like that should be the first kind of boundary you learn. It's like you have complete autonomy over when you're touched and how other people touch you and everything like that. Yeah. I always just have you ever seen that, though? Like somebody gets upset that that, oh, your kid didn't hug me or something like that. No. Well, so I remember when I was a kid, because my parents used to do that, like with my grandparents. They'd be like, oh, go give your grandmother a kiss. Sure. I would be like, no, gross. But I mean, yeah, I never really thought about it. I don't know. I think I remember like a Reddit, am I the asshole or something like that, you know, where somebody came and they were like, yeah, like one of my wife's friends was over. And she was like wanting a hug from my kid. My kid didn't want to. And we got in a big fight about it. I'm like, why do people? I don't get that at all.

01:48:36It's a foundational boundary though. Let's just put that out there. Yeah. Then we have like emotional boundaries, which I think is a lot. I think the goal of a lot of therapy is getting people to see how you're letting other people's emotions kind of invade your emotional space. Right. To begin with. You're trying to take on everybody else's emotions and cut away. You're not everybody's therapist. Yes. Right. And even if you were like, even therapists have boundaries around, boundaries around patients, exactly. Office hours. They have all of that kind of stuff. So even if you are somebody who's very helpful and wants to help people with their emotional problems, like you still have to draw a boundary around where that stops and ends. We talked about the empathy versus compassion thing too. I think that's really important to know the difference there as well. I think it's interesting too because I think in a lot of cases poor physical boundaries can be the gateway into poor emotional boundaries, right? So like you can have good emotional boundaries but if you're not enforcing your physical boundaries, like if your people or friends are coming over and living in your place without permission and using your stuff and your family is constantly like showing up and bothering you and demanding your time. Or to use a therapist example, like, you know, therapists generally have a rule of, like, they don't hang out with their patients outside of therapy. And that's for a very specific reason of, like, intermingling relationships. You know, if your therapist is, like, hanging out with you at the grocery store, that can complicate the patient-clinician relationship that they've built with you. Right, yeah.

01:50:08In a therapy world, there's a small but vocal group of people saying, oh, we shouldn't. No, that shouldn't be the thing. We should be able to be friends with our clients and stuff like that. It should totally be the thing. I do not understand that one at all. Should totally be the thing. Any therapist who thinks they should be able to be friends with their patients. To me, it's like teachers, right? I had a good friend who was a PhD student and he had a huge crush on one of his undergrads and she had a big crush on him. And basically he told her, he was like, look, you need to wait till I get my PhD. Like it's that simple because I'm an authority in your department and like, this is problematic. And, you know, as soon as one or both of us graduates, cool, we can date. But until that moment, like this can't happen. Right. Yeah. Another one I don't think a lot of us think about are intellectual boundaries. Okay. Okay. Not every debate deserves your energy. Okay. Let's just say that there's a boundary right there. Uh, but even the ones that do really do should have like a healthy respect for boundaries. Right. Um, I think it was John Stuart Mill, uh, who argued back in the 1850s, even to that, the, the free exchange of ideas really does require a respect for boundaries. Now, what does that look like? Yeah. Uh, but.

01:51:25Basically just look at what's going on right now and do the opposite. Do the opposite. That's what I would say. Yes, it's a respect for someone else's point of view, but it's like what, you could set boundaries around what topics am I going to discuss and with who, okay? How you're willing to discuss them, like what's the tone we're gonna use, what kind of topics that we're gonna get into or types of evidence we'll accept, right? Uh, how long, where are you going to do this and what context you're going to do this with people? Um, and why you're discussing it? Like, what's the goal? I think that's a, that's a good boundary to set. Like if I'm going to have a debate or discussion with somebody about something we might disagree with, what's actually the goal here? Yeah. Am I trying to change your mind or am I just trying to understand somebody else's point of view? Well, I think that the golden mean framework of porous and rigid works really, really well with intellectual ideas, right? It's like people with porous intellectual boundaries will probably just believe whatever. They'll be like Joe Rogan. It's like whoever's sitting in front of them, they just start believing whatever they're saying. Whereas somebody with a very extremely rigid intellectual boundaries will just double down and not be convinced about anything. Like they will... They're basically an ideological extremist. You just can't get through to them no matter what. So the idea is to hold the line. Like don't be easily influenceable. But if you are presented with a better idea or better evidence or a different perspective, you should be able to be –

01:52:57flexible enough to be able to like shift boundaries. What's interesting too, you see this a lot with codependent relationships. So they're generally in a codependent relationship. There's like one person who's always needs to be saved. And then there's another person who's always doing the saving. And the person who's always doing the saving, what you see happen a lot is they start adopting the ideas and beliefs and values of the person they're trying to save. Yeah. Let me let me ask you this. Have you ever had a friend who starts dating somebody and within a year like changes the way they dress changes the music they listen to changes the the places they like to go is like suddenly developed a deep interest in like. 18th century English literature, you know, because his like fucking new girlfriend is a lit major. Like it's stuff like that. And you see it quite a bit. Like people's tastes will change. Their interests will change. Their political beliefs will change based on the romantic, like based on a romantic relationship with very poor boundaries. Yes. It's like the intellectual boundaries follow suit. They just help reinforce the dynamic, right? Like If you're in a codependent relationship, the thing that you are deathly afraid of at all times is conflict and your partner being unhappy. And so what's a better way to keep your partner happy than just believing all the same shit your partner believes? Right. Yes, I have had that. I've seen that happen a few times, a few in particular I'm thinking of right now. And it's kind of wild from the outside when you see it happen. You're like, what the fuck is going on here?

01:54:30and and yeah i think you're right i think it's it's like an identity merging type of thing that goes on like whereas when you have good boundaries around these it's like i can i can challenge your claims and your opinions without challenging your identity right and and not feeling and you not feeling like i am too at the same time so that's when like you do have these good boundaries set up that's what it should feel like anyway And again, I think it's very hard to do. Yes. And again, I do think it is probably downstream from emotional boundaries because I think part of disagreeing with somebody you care about is being okay with discomfort together. Yeah. And to be okay with discomfort together, like you both need to have like a strong identity and a good sense of boundaries. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Next one. time boundaries. I think a lot of us probably do think about this a little bit more. But I think it's pretty obvious if you don't prioritize your schedule, somebody else is going to do it for you. Right? Like that's going to happen. I saw a facsimile of that on Twitter recently. I think Shane Parrish posted it, but he was like, if you don't decide what's on your calendar, other people will decide for you. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. The thing is that especially like in the States and North America in general, like busyness is just there's kind of a status attached to it. And so you're kind of almost incentivized to not have boundaries around your time and not – if it's separating work from your home life or whatever it is or even just at work. And we'll get into that a little bit more too. But there's just like kind of this pressure to not have boundaries around your time.

01:56:08And if anything, this is one of the most important boundaries, I would say, because what else do you have but time at the end of the day? Right. Like it's like like setting up your own schedule. This is why I like time boxing, too. Right. Is because it's like literally there's a boundary in my in my little planner around this time. And it's a protected time. And it's this is where I am. I put a boundary. I'm not doing anything but this thing for this amount of time. And you'd be surprised just how like that. just that little mental box that I draw in my mind and literally on paper really does like reinforce a boundary around. Okay. Not not scrolling. I'm not screwing around. I'm not taking calls. I'm not doing whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I also feel like poor time boundaries are probably also downstream of these other boundaries, right? Like, so if you don't know... Oceans, especially. If you don't know how to say no to your partner, then you're going to agree to do a bunch of things you don't want to do. If you are afraid to disagree with your boss, then you're going to take on a bunch of projects you don't want to take on. If you are... desperate for your friends to like you and think you're cool, you're going to like do a bunch of things that you don't really want to do. So time is, feels like it's the casualty of all the other failed boundaries in a lot of ways. How good do you think you are at this? Drawing time boundaries. I feel like I wax and wane a little bit. I can get a solid like few hours of a good boundary in a day, I feel like.

01:57:32On the one hand, I feel like this is one of the ones I'm weakest at. Yeah. On the other hand, I am doing so many things and, like, have so many responsibilities that I try to be a little bit, like, kind to myself. Yeah. It is hard. It is, like, very, very hard to balance all the stuff that I want to do. But, yeah, I do think this is – I have a tendency to just – get excited about new things very easily. And so I tend to say yes to more stuff. But it's funny because it's not like, there's not a desperation for people to like me, or it's not this like, oh, I'm afraid to tell my friends no or anything. It's more just like, it's that openness to experience, right? Like I just, there's- I wanna do everything too. I wanna do everything. I wanna hang out with everyone. I wanna try everything. Squeeze it all in. Every opportunity that comes, I'm like, that sounds great. So it is, for me, it's been very, very hard to manage, to protect my time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the paradox there is too that when you want to do everything, you end up doing nothing. Nothing. Or nothing well, at least. Yeah, yeah. I think the other paradox of this too is that I think time boundary issues are probably more of a luxury problem because they suggest that you already do have relationships that you care about. You already do have a career that you really care about. You do have a lot of obligations and a lot of.

01:58:56responsibilities in your life. So it's weird. It's I think the more probably the more successful and the more you have going on for yourself, the more time boundaries become an issue. Whereas if you don't have any relationships, don't have friendships, don't have a job like this is probably less pertinent. Yeah, I would guess. Yeah. Somewhat related to that one, especially in our modern culture is digital boundaries. Yes. Okay. Again, we kind of mistake constant availability for connection and what? Are you listening, Zuckerberg? It's time for your digital boundary lesson. Okay, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Yeah, you'll be being connected though 24 seven doesn't actually make you more connected to people. It really makes you just more of a consumer is what it does. This is one I've kind of made a little bit of a point. I used to be really good about like responding to texts like right away and stuff like that. And I've made a conscious, well, I don't know how conscious it was at first at least, But at a certain point, I just stopped responding right away. I would I would always respond, but I would always give it like a few hours or something. Right. If it's in the middle of my work day and I get text messages and stuff. I, I, I tend, I'd be like, okay, not, not respond an hour. I don't have the phone on me or, or whatever it is. I am also, I pride myself on how terrible I am at responding to emails. People, I think most people know, don't email him because he's just, he's probably, you're not going to get a response very, very soon. And I can, I have the luxury of doing that. I know some people don't like their jobs depend on that a lot more than, than mine do probably. But like, just these like random emails I'll get sometimes, uh,

02:00:35And not that I'm like trying to be snooty about it or whatever. I'm just protecting my time there. 10 or 15 years ago, I took a lot of pride in being the guy who responded to every email and responded to every text. It was like super reliable and you always heard back from. And yeah, now it feels the opposite. It feels like you're – You're being irresponsible if you respond to everything. And yeah, the digital boundary thing is interesting because I think it exists on a few. I mean, you could almost lump the digital and the time boundaries into an attention boundary of like, what are you spending your attention on? So like there's that aspect of it. It's like, are you just getting sucked down rabbit holes on YouTube or social media or whatever? Yeah. But then there's also an aspect of it of, yeah, availability. Like how reachable are you? Because, yeah, it's pre-internet. I guess the closest thing you could relate it to in terms of boundaries is like showing up, knocking on somebody's door at their house, like unannounced. Right? Like that was probably the closest thing that we had pre-internet to like managing being reachable to others. Right. But like now you're literally reachable to people.

02:01:52all the time, 24 seven, 365. The other aspect of this is giving out phone numbers. I've gotten very stingy with who I give my number to. And part of it is this, like it's just, it's being reachable all the time and suddenly you're just getting tons of texts from a bunch of people you barely know or met one time or like getting invited to like, I don't know, asked to do things. And so, yeah, I've gotten very stingy about phone numbers. I think another one though too is like just using your phone in general. Yeah. Like I think we – that ship has sailed and we just blew through that boundary where it was like – I think there's more now. This was a thing I saw the other day and I haven't seen it as much in the wild, but I think more and more people are – like they're okay with playing a video or some sort of audio Oh God in public somewhere. Oh God. Yeah. Has this happened more to you? I haven't seen it much. I've been on a lot of planes and they always say, Hey, if you're going to be like watch a video, put your headphones on. I can't believe they even have to say that. But I post, I posted on Twitter about this like a year ago. I was like, what is wrong with people? Like who people are like listening to music. with no headphones, like in the middle of a restaurant or having a FaceTime, like shouting, shouting into a FaceTime call in line at the airport with no headphones. It just, I don't know when it became okay to do this, like the noise pollution that people produce. And it's funny, I posted a big thing about it and like dozens of people got upset. They were like,

02:03:28Yeah. I'm like, guys, you can get $10 headphones at 7-Eleven. Like, there's no excuse for this. I saw the other day, it was from Jason Pargan, the writer, and I don't know if you know him, but he's got these really great videos that he puts out and he kind of addressed this a little bit. And he thinks one of the things was... The shift to two things, video has just become more like, it wasn't, it's not just calls anymore, but like FaceTime and all of that. And then also Apple creating the AirPods. 10, 15 years ago, it was, you have your headphones, you plug them in if you're out in public. And it was actually a great way to like, there's your boundaries right there. Exactly. And it's not anymore. And he said, it's just these, these minor shifts that kind of shift the culture along with it. Right. So you have, like, if you have these Bluetooth headphones, well, you lose them a lot for one. So it's like almost a subscription model for Apple, you know, you lose them or they get stolen or they run out of battery. And so you don't have that option. And then just the, again, the shift to video is just, I think it's more, yeah. Now you have people being like, well, I should be able to I don't know, what were they saying when they were pissed off? They were like, I should be able to do this? I should be able to invade your ear and eye space? I don't know. They were like, some of them were like, not all of us can afford fancy AirPods. Or like, well, you can afford the phone, so.

02:04:54This is not – this should not be hard. Yeah, I don't know. And there's plenty of Bluetooth headsets that are like $10 now. Yeah. Exactly. So this is – this was a huge problem in New York as you can imagine, especially on like the subway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all sorts of different public spaces. Shout out to Peter Shankman, an old friend of mine I haven't seen in a long time. But he told a hilarious story where he got so fed up of it in New York that he went to one of these electronic stores and bought like – 30 of these cheap $15, you know, USB headphone sets. And then he just, every time he left the house, he had one or two of them in his pocket. And so every time somebody was on the train with like a loud FaceTime call or like watching a YouTube video or something, he'd just walk up and he'd just hand them the headphones and be like, I got this for you. Yes, yes. And I was just like, man, you're the best. That is, yeah, that's the hero we need. You are doing God's work, sir. The hero we don't deserve, the one that we absolutely need, yeah. Even just pulling out your phone, like if you're at a restaurant or you're with your family somewhere, that used to be very rude. Yes. So you've, you've, you've prioritized, you've, you've deprioritized the people around you for your device or whatever interaction you're having on there. Usually it's just social media scrolling or something inane like that. Yeah.

02:06:12And I don't know. I there has to be some sort of better cultural norm that we can implement here. Yeah. For the record, I just whoever that video you mentioned, I disagree. I don't think it's the video or the AirPods. Like just simply because you're seeing a lot more low level. I call it antisocial behavior in general. Yeah. For the first many years that I went to New York, you know, the idea of hopping the turnstile was just like. Nobody really thought about it. Now that I go to New York, it's like nobody pays. Yeah. It's like they're literally like half the people are like jumping through the term style or like opening the door for each other. And it's just there just seems to be this kind of like casual. Anti so. Like. Drew, we sound like old men right now, but shaking our fist at the cloud. But back in my day, people had some fucking respect for their public spaces. They stayed off our lawn. They didn't make noise. They didn't hop the turnstile. They didn't like shout, like make a scene in the middle of the restaurant or like now you've got people getting up and shouting on planes at stewardesses and stuff like I don't know when this started, but it's maybe this is it's probably another podcast. But. It is relevant in terms of boundaries, in terms of just public social spaces. There are social expectations of how to behave in public, how to treat strangers, how to do things that don't make you a selfish asshole. And it is interesting that we definitely, at least in the US, we definitely see that breaking down to a certain extent. Yeah. I wonder if part of it too, some of it is…

02:07:49We don't use shame effectively. Like we talked in the shame episode about the kind of the social glue that shame can provide. And we don't like I think that's become a little bit taboo. Oh, you shouldn't shame people for. Yeah. Oh, don't make them feel bad. Yeah, don't make them feel bad. Well, you're making everybody else feel bad. Yeah, yeah. Fuck you. Okay, okay. Let's stop. Let's stop shaking our fists at the wind here, Mark. Okay. Next one, financial boundaries. This is a big one. Underrated. This one flies under the radar for sure. Yeah. It's just like you can't afford to be generous with money you don't have. Right. Okay. So this ties into like the familial stuff and all that, you know, if you do run into some money or you start making good money and there's this expectation put on you that you're supposed to help other people out and sure you, you should help other people out. But you have to have some boundaries around that as well too. You probably have some experience with this. I'm sure that. Yeah. I mean, money is tricky. I, the, the best advice I could give around this is just, have those explicit difficult conversations with people and set expectations. Um, I think there are with money, people tend to, um, make a lot of assumptions about what is deserved and what's not deserved and who, what should be shared and what shouldn't be shared. And, uh,

02:09:11What I've discovered over the years is just that like people have very different relationships with money itself. Right. So it's like being generous to one person could really strengthen that relationship. And then trying to be generous with another person could actually offend that person. So you have to be very explicit about it and just say like, hey. Here's my assumptions. Here's what I want to do. And this goes for everything. I mean, in a romantic relationship, this is like one of the most important conversations you have to have at some point, even across conversations when it comes to helping out family members or paying for... friends, you know, even like I've even tried to buy friends dinner before and they get mad at me. And like, it's like, all right, dude, like, sure. Here's the check. Like, you know, so it is people come to money with a wide range of beliefs. And most of those beliefs are held very strongly. So you just want to be above the board with everything. Yeah. I think like you said, with a romantic relationship part two, I think getting good, strong boundaries around your finances, obviously, because finances are one of the leading causes of divorce. It is the leading. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so I think what that is is a lack of boundaries, a lack of explicit boundaries that you were talking about in relationships.

02:10:33Yeah. And and I think it's people often get romance involved here, too. Right. So we kind of talked about the codependency. You know, another classic trait of a codependent person is like spend all their money on them. Yeah, exactly. It's like they'll be happy if I just, you know, spend this or buy them that or take them here. I also – we're definitely not experts on this. Ramit Sethi, friend of the pod, has a great podcast that is solely about this, about couples and figuring out how to manage their money together. But it's fascinating to watch. It's a super fascinating podcast simply because like – Yeah, people have such widely different assumptions about money. And then you also see people try to create boundaries that just don't make sense. Right. So it's, you know, some couples, they'll be like, okay, we're going to go 50-50 on everything. But then one person in the relationship literally spends everything and the other one saves everything. And so, like, you just have to be realistic about... What each of you want, what each of you owe, you know, what the expectations are going to be, what the obligations are going to be. It's hard. It's not – it's like one of the least sexy and romantic conversations. But I think for the longevity of any relationship, it's also probably one of the most important. 100%.

02:11:55100%. We are going to get into family boundaries. Oh, fun. This is a fun one, yeah. And I think this is where a lot of like this one's hard. Both directly and indirectly, right? So it's like the poor family boundaries mess you up because it's just, I think it's the most painful boundaries, boundary issues that you can have. Yes. But they also mess you up because it's like if your family has poor boundaries, then you're probably going to grow up having poor boundaries in other areas of your life. Because it's like your family is where you learn your boundaries. So if they're terrible at it, then you're probably suffering in a lot of different places. Yeah. Yeah. Family systems therapy started kind of back in the 70s. And that's where internal family systems therapy kind of came from, too. But the original formulation of this was from Salvador Mnuchin. back in the 70s. And what he would do is he would bring families in for a therapy session. You know, you have this dysfunctional family and try to figure out what's going on. And he would use these kind of principles of boundaries to kind of figure out the dynamics of what was going on. So he would... He would sit the family down. He would just let them sit wherever they'd sit. And he would take a note of like, okay, where did someone sit in relation to someone else? Is there like a coalition in the family? Like maybe a daughter and a mother or a daughter and a son or something like that. Form this coalition against somebody else. And so he would scramble that up and he would move people around the room. And then he would insert himself between people and see how the dynamic changed. And he could kind of make a map.

02:13:22of all of this, right? And it was all boundaries-based. It was, you know, where are you drawing these boundaries and how are those boundaries either helping or hurting the family system here? Yeah. Which I thought was really, really interesting too. I think one of the earliest experiences I had with this was one time, I don't know, I'm pretty sure what happened was I got into a fight with somebody. I didn't get a lot of fights when I was a kid, but I got in a few fights. Tough guy. I get it. I mean, I was trying to prove something. That's what I was trying to do. Usually get my ass kicked too. But I remember I got in trouble, come home. My dad comes home and he talks to me. And he drew a boundary really early on, which I really appreciated now, not really at the time. And I was trying to make my case for what happened. Of course, he listened to me and he said, well, look, I really want to be your friend and I want to support you, but I have to be your dad first. Yeah. And to me, that was like, okay, that's a, that's a boundary that he drew. Yeah. Where he was like, this is, we have to keep these things separate and here's why. And it's because I need, I want the best for you. Yeah. Right. And I thought that was just, I was like, like looking back on that, I was like, that was a good move, dad. That was, he had, he had to be my dad first. And I knew from then on. Yeah. Yeah. That like, okay, I can depend on him as my dad, not like my buddy. Yes. Right. And he's going to do the right thing for me. I'm going to touch a little bit on parenting boundaries later. Yeah. But yeah, that's huge. That's actually, and very mature of your father. Yeah. Yeah. A good move on his part. Because I think one of the most common issues going on today is that parents think that being a good parent is being their child's best friend. Being your buddy. Yeah. Yeah.

02:14:57Yeah. Doing cool, fun things with you and everything, which is part of it. I get it. Sure. First, you have to be their parent. Yes. And it's, again, well, I'll get into it later, but yeah, that's a huge issue. All right. So what would you say is like the defining characteristic of family boundaries? Because obviously family boundaries are very different than any other boundary we have in our lives. Like what is the core struggle? I – my intuition is just that like i think generally speaking people and families feel a lot more entitled to each other's time attention oh yeah emotion okay yeah and money um much more so than say a friendship and definitely way more than like a friend or a stranger or a co-worker right Yeah. A lot of that's culturally independent, too. Yes. There's a lot of cultural pressure in some some societies that will accentuate that a lot more than others. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess there's it is like family is really the one that it's it's you can justify that. Right. Like it's. Yeah. I don't know how many times your mother has gotten mad at you and said, I used to change your diapers. But my mom definitely reminds me probably once every few years when I'm being a little twat. She's like, you know, I used to change your diapers once upon a time. You might owe me a thing or two. Don't be a twat, Mark.

02:16:24uh yeah no that's that's a really good one i i think there is that core struggle like you're saying is between like the individual and the family unit just like there is between the individual and the society right but there's that's a lot more immediate and a lot more pressing for a lot of people because it is more visceral it's like yeah that's your family family type i do get like that a lot um the older i get the more i i i feel like i do have like some sort of obligation to to family um whereas when i was younger i was like i'm I'm doing this on my own and I'm out here. And my family was actually pretty cool with that. The older I get though, the more I feel like I have a little bit of an obligation to it. That said, I realized too that there has to be boundaries. Yes. There has to be some sort of, okay, where, how far does my obligation go in this? And I think you got to get real specific about that. Especially as you get older, your parents get older, things start, you know, you're going to have to start taking care of them at some point. Yeah. Like you need to get explicit about that with everybody involved. If you have siblings or other family members that- Yeah, well, the sibling thing is really interesting too because, I mean, it's – I mean, we won't get into details, but you're kind of going through this right now. Like your parents are having health problems and you have siblings. And so I imagine there's a ton of conversations around like, okay, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? What is she going to do? You know, like how often am I coming back? Who's paying for what? You know, that sort of stuff.

02:17:44Yeah, I know there's a lot of that going on and it's just, it's one of those two where you're, you know, like we talked about in the friendship episode, drop the scorecard. That's not helping anybody. So it's like, who can do what, who's good at this, who's good at that. It might not look even from the outside, but as long as you have kind of those expectations and those boundaries set up around it. Yeah. It's, it's a lot easier for everybody to get on board with it. Right. Right. So yeah. Another big relationship category we can get into is friends. Okay. And like we talked about in the friendship episode, I think this one's boundaries are sometimes a little bit trickier with friends because there aren't there aren't those societal rules. There aren't those expectations. There's like more explicit expectations that you have of friends. And everybody has a different idea of what friendship should mean. Right. So you can just get into all sorts of hairy situations if you don't have like good boundaries around your friends. I have a whole. I came up with a whole laundry list of like boundary violations. Give us a few. Let's give you a few. Okay. Uh, emotional over reliance. Yeah. Okay. So you have a friend who's like, I'm going through something. I need you to drop everything. Yeah. Help me out. Right. Availability creep. It's the same type of thing. Yeah. I expect you to text me back right away. Like I said, I've gotten better about setting the expectation. It could be a few hours or a day even.

02:19:02Favors and unpaid labor. Oh, hey, I'm moving this weekend. It's only going to take, you know, a half a day. 16 hours. Yeah, right. And there you are, your one slip disc and, you know, a whole Saturday out of your entire schedule later. And, you know. Or taking, you know, rides, I expect you to take me to the airport or whatever it is, that kind of stuff. Money tangles, we've talked about the financial thing. With friends, that's a little bit harder. It's hard when you see a friend going through, like, hard times. One, you don't want to insult them and be like, here, I'll help you out. And the other is like, I need to, should I help them out? Yeah. Or if they ask for help, are you a bad friend if you don't help? You know? Yeah. Like, so having boundaries around that kind of stuff. Gossip triangles. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why there needs to be more of a boundary around that for a lot of friendship circles anyway. A possessiveness and exclusivity. I had – it was really strange. A friend of mine who had a – what she considered was her best friend got super possessive of her at this one period. I've seen that before. That is wild. Like jealous, friendship jealousy. Yeah, yeah. Like I've definitely seen that before. I would add to that too, competitiveness. I've seen that a lot, especially with like male friendships where like –

02:20:18They'll get extremely competitive with one another and it'll get taken to such an extreme that you actually start kind of rooting for your friend's failure because you're measuring yourself by them so much. Like you have so much of your self-esteem invested in like not being one-upped by your buddy. And so you see that too in a lot of immature friendships. You know, I think family relationships or like romantic relationships, you know, they can obviously be too porous, too open, too few boundaries. And they can also be too rigid. With friendships, I feel like most of the issues come from just like being too porous. Because if you're too rigid in a friendship, you just become more casual friends. Right. You're not going to be close friends anyway. Right. You get too enmeshed with them is more usually the risk. So I think like if you're rigid with your friendships, you're probably not going to have drama. Whereas if you're rigid with your family, there's probably going to be a ton of drama. Yeah. But like with friendships, it's just not going to be much drama. You're probably just going to be very casual friends. You just meet up to like play golf or play poker or something where you see friendships get in the troubles. They get way too porous. And it's just the expectations become too high. Yeah. You see this with people who are like, you know, friends that are like inseparable, right? It's funny because when I remember when I was young, whenever I came across people who were like inseparable besties, like spent every day together, went everywhere together, did everything together, vacationed together. When I was young, I thought that was really cool. I wanted that too. I know. I'm so jealous. Yeah. Now that now if I come across somebody, I'm like, whoa, big red flag, big red flag. Yeah.

02:21:53Yeah. And I think a lot of it is that like failure to individuate like we talked about before. Right. You're not you don't have an identity separate from that other person. This can happen in a friendship. Yeah. And yeah, the risk is, is that you still see it like you're that little kid and you're like, oh, that's so amazing. And I would love to have that myself. And in some ways, sure, that's it's great. You have somebody to lean on like that. But there has to be some sort of separation there. Yeah. Yeah. How about work relationships, Mark? Professional relationships. What kind of boundaries – I guess what kind of boundaries should we draw around those? Because those can bleed in, especially I think with our generation, your work friend. You have your work friends. Yeah. Right? And sure, that's fine. And I think that's a great place to meet friends and be friends with people. There has to be some boundaries around that. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe dating at work too. You got to be, there's boundaries around that. You know what's funny? I've actually heard that there are a number of like Fortune 500, like large Fortune 500 companies that actually have policies to try to get their employees to date each other. When did that start? It's been going on for a while. Oh, really? But it's kind of a hush-hush thing. Like, I had a really good friend who worked at, like, a very massive, like, one of the biggest companies in the world. And he was like, yeah, dude, they, like, they have singles events for people at the company. And they, like...

02:23:16It's not explicit. Like, they're not like, hey, why don't you and you, like, go off, you know, in the back room together. Yeah, they get their asses suited off. But it's like they have events. They, like, host events for all the young single employees. They, like, they have mixers. They have activities. They, like, will intentionally kind of move people on the teams together. Yeah. I'm okay with that, which I get. I'm okay with that. But like obviously management, keep it in your pants, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't necessarily have a problem with it either. I mean, this friend told me, he said that like, I think the idea is that it's actually a retention strategy for the company. Because it's like if two people in a couple are both at the same company, then each one's much less likely to leave. The goddamn capitalists. Just ruin everything. Just kill the romance and everything. I seriously am kind of, I'm for this. But there's some Ivy League schools that do the same thing. So like Princeton, I think is very aggressive in trying to encourage- I've heard this too, yeah. Students and alum to date each other and marry each other. You know, to breed like elite little Princetonlings and populate their- their universe. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Back to like the actual conversation, which is workplace boundaries.

02:24:35I think there's kind of two segments of workplace boundaries. One is kind of the time attention piece, right? It's like not over committing yourself, learning to say no to your boss or your coworkers, not checking emails at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Like there's that aspect of it. There's kind of like the time protection and the work-life balance boundaries. And then I would say there's like the personal relationship boundaries. You know, I think a lot of people's kind of default policy is to be super rigid, right? Like don't mix work and play. I don't know. Again, I think it's like what probably gets you in trouble here is just like super porous boundaries, like just trying to make your... your coworkers, like your entire social life or whatever, like it's probably not super healthy, but I think it's good to have friends at work. Like honestly, I think it's actually probably one of the best things is to have friends at work. Yeah. Not just for you, but also for the company. Like it's good for people to like working together. Right, yeah. I mean, you're spending so much time there, you may as well. Yeah. Like somebody that actually, that's one of the biggest predictors of job satisfaction is having a good friend. Yes. And it's also biggest predictor of people who stay. Yeah. Is if they've made a friend at work. Yeah. If they don't really even like their job, they're like, well, I don't want to let these people down. And that's a that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah.

02:25:57I, and I'm not just for the company or whatever. It's actually a good thing for you too, because it's like, it's outside of yourself to some degree. I mean, what's better than going and hanging out, like working with your friends for eight hours a day. Yeah. That's yeah. That's great. That's actually kind of the ideal. Yeah. Yeah. An interesting thing I came up with was a, in convents nuns. Well, um, the, the, the stricter ones, there's more old school. It's not so much anymore, but, um. they would actually discourage friendships. Like, you should not be having a friendship because it interferes with your relationship with God, that kind of thing. But then they said, if anything, there's other comments too that would say, if anything, you should seek out the people that you're not attracted to and in the friendship type of way anyway. Right. Like they would, they would have them, um, go try to go befriend somebody who you're just like, I would not gel with that person at all as, as like an act of God in a type of way, which I thought was really interesting. So they had very strict boundaries between, uh, the relationships within the organization that way. Okay. Um, but then they also, some of them also were like, well, but if you want to do it this way and it's more of a, it's, it's like you're. It's like, like I said, it's like an act of God or you're acting out God's will and including other people into it. Sometimes it's kind of interesting. How to make friends like a nun, folks. Yeah. You heard it here first. I do think there is another kind of boundary that's very important around.

02:27:22I guess I would call it like an authority or... I don't know. There's probably a word for this that we should have sat down and thought of, but didn't. But thinking about like a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist. Yeah, yeah. Like somebody who... has expertise and has some, a very large influence on your life, but who's not a friend, who's not a family member, you know, they're paid essentially. I do think that there's very important boundaries around this. You know, we kind of, We talked earlier about, you know, therapists not being friends with their patients. It's probably, you know, it's probably good that like your your lawyer is not investing in your competitive competitors. You like your. Yeah. You know, your tax accountant is not, you know, trying to convince you to. No, donate to his charity. Like there's just all sorts of conflicts of interest that can happen among these sorts of like mentorship roles or professional roles. I don't know. I would throw that in there. Yeah. And because I do run across this quite a bit is like, I mean, I've made this mistake too. Like I've hired people because I like them or because they're a friend. And it ended up being a total fucking disaster.

02:28:40It was just like, wait a second. No, it's when you're like crossing incentives and interests, you can put yourself in like a very complicated situation. So yeah, no, that particular example, I think illustrates an interesting point about, you know, boundaries that cross. So like if you have a friend and you're like, oh, since they're a friend and I have this set of boundaries with them and I bring them into another situation. You have to have a completely different set of boundaries. Right. And those can conflict with each other. Right. That's a perfect way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect way of putting it. So yeah. Yeah. Boundaries everywhere, man. Yeah. Boundaries all the way down. Okay. Let's get into this last relationship. Self. Self. What the, the boundaries you keep with yourself. We might not think about this in the same terms. We don't think about this in the same terms. Right. We do with other people, but this gets into just kind of like, you know, You know, how do you treat yourself? First of all, like there's like self-talk even too can be, you can have boundaries around that. If you've ever meditated and you know, like how, what there's actually a very clear boundary around that that you can set. So if you do have a lot of negative self-talk, how do you, how do you manage that? What are the kind of boundaries you set around that? Even just like taking care of yourself too. Like what do you do for self-care? What do you, what are the boundaries? All these other boundaries we've already discussed in different areas of your life. How do you implement those for yourself? Yeah.

02:30:04commitments that you make, saying no to different things, and then the internal discipline part of it too, exercise, eating, all of that kind of stuff. Those are all boundaries that we have to navigate and negotiate with ourselves. Yeah. But I don't think we give a whole lot of thought to other than there's just kind of on autopilot a lot of times. Yeah. I see this in terms of like making agreements that I make with myself. And I was just sitting here thinking about like, okay, what the fuck does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. I think making an agreement with myself is essentially like the two sides of my brain making an agreement, the thinking brain and the feeling brain coming together. Because when I think about when I think about like a successful agreement I've made with myself. So, for instance, you mentioned self-talk, like there are certain things that I just literally will not say to myself. It's just off limits. You just don't say that because nothing good comes out of it. And. Both of my brains are on board with that. The thinking brain is on board with that because the thinking brain is like, hey, we're trying to be like healthy and productive and efficient. And the feeling brain is on board because the feeling brain doesn't want to feel bad. So that's not an issue. But when I think about other agreements I've tried to make with myself, like, you know, I don't know, I'm going to get up at 5 a.m. and run four miles every single morning. Mm hmm. That might work for like a day or two. But if one of the two brains isn't on board, like it doesn't happen. And so I think it's, this is kind of where you get into alignment in terms of like what feels right to you and also like what you rationally know is right for you and trying to get those things to line up.

02:31:41And I think that's really where behavioral change happens. You can study and read until you're blue in the face, but until you feel like doing something different, you're not going to do anything different. So it's the real struggle of behavioral change is like finding a way to feel like making the change or feel like implementing the boundary into your life, not just thinking about it all the time. Yeah. How are boundaries used in order to get those things to mesh up? Do you start with the boundary kind of on the thinking side and that kind of sets the parameters and then the feeling brain comes on? I don't know if that would work or not. Yeah. No, I think it's like the boundary is set by the thinking brain, right? It's like you rationally kind of decide what type of person you want to be. The problem is getting the feeling brain to come along with it, which usually means having to deal with messy emotions. Yeah. impulses, cravings, health stuff, you know, stuff like that. I think, you know, the big takeaway from all of this that I get anyway is that it doesn't matter which domain, which category, which relationship it is that you're setting a boundary with, it's really got to have kind of like three parts to it. You got to be clear, especially when you're dealing with other people. But even when you're dealing with yourself, it's got to be a clear boundary. Like what is actually the boundary? And it can't just be like,

02:33:04Um, you know, I eat healthy. It's like, I don't eat dessert. Right. That's a boundary that I have with myself. Um, flexibility too. Yeah. Um, we've, this is again, that thing keeps coming up. Yeah. Carve out the exceptions, define the exceptions, make sure they're clear as well. And those are also clear. That's right. I will eat dessert at a three-star Michelin restaurant. Yeah. Right. Once every six months, right. Or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Alignment too. Um, and we've already mentioned this as well, the aligning with your values and the person that you want to be, especially those self boundaries. I think too, that's really important, but. Be clear on the value you're protecting, not the feeling you're protecting. Exactly. Exactly. Because otherwise you're just reacting. Right. We talked about before. So that's kind of the big takeaway from that. Those three areas, any any boundary you want to set in your life in any category. I think you got to have those three things. So that concludes the theory portion of the episode. Now we're gonna get into the nitty gritty. What do boundaries actually look like? How do you set them? How do you maintain them? What happens if they're not maintained? All that good, fun, juicy stuff. These are all the practical takeaways. The exercises, the things that you can use, take home with you, try out with your family and friends. and see how your mileage varies. Just a reminder to everybody listening, we do have a free companion PDF for this episode. It goes over everything that we're talking about, has all of the recommendations, exercises, and citations. You can go to solvepodcast.com slash boundaries to check that out. It's free. All right, moving on. We're going to talk about how to actually set and maintain boundaries.

02:34:45Because, as we alluded to earlier, if you don't set boundaries, the other people in your life will, and you're probably not going to like their version. So, how do we actually do this? Well, based on all of our reading and research, we narrowed this down to... Six steps, essentially. These are six steps that you go through, not just with each individual relationship, but with each individual boundary within a relationship. Obviously, some boundaries are going to be much easier, more natural than others. Some boundaries are going to be very hard, and you're going to fuck them up over and over again. And, well, yeah, that's part of life. So without further ado, step one is just simply awareness. Like understanding where is the ambiguity in your life? Where is the area that is not being enforced? Where your individual self is not being properly defined, that there is not a divide between you and the people around you, and that that divide is not being properly enforced or maintained. So the awareness piece is, for a lot of people, is actually the hardest piece, especially if you grew up in an environment that didn't have boundaries, if your family is absolutely fucking terrible at boundaries, it can actually be very hard to know where you need a boundary in your life. We talked earlier about some indicators, some red flags, so to speak. Again, I would categorize, to me, there are probably two or three big red flags that are

02:36:17leading indicators of where there needs to be a boundary in your life, but there's not. The first one is resentment. Like where are the areas – is there a repeated area in your life that you just find yourself getting annoyed with people, feeling disrespected by people, feeling like your needs or wishes aren't being considered? Like what is it? What are you – constantly griping about or complaining about or muttering under your breath about blaming others for blaming other people about That is probably a very strong indicator of a place that a boundary needs to be implemented Let's say you work in finance and your boss is like calling you at 10 p.m On a Monday night and you're trying to put your kids to bed and you're you know trying to relax with your with your partner and Your workplace just keeps bothering you at all hours of the week and you're pissed about it like that's an indicator of like hey some some sort of boundary needs to be implemented here some sort of agreement or expectation needs to be set indicator number two i would just say is ambiguity like situations where things feel messy and unclear. You know, we talked earlier about finances. I've met so many couples that the finances get enmeshed and they've never really talked about it. And it becomes extremely difficult for them because they're both like, on the one hand, they're like, I'm happy to pay for things. Like I wanna contribute to the relationship, I'm happy to pay for my partner. But if you ask them specifically what, how much, what's the budget, who's in charge of what,

02:37:52Is it merged bank accounts? Is it separate bank accounts? Like none of these things have been discussed. And so I guess another way to put this is that A good intention is not a boundary. Like a boundary that you can't enforce with any clarity, it's just a suggestion. And generally speaking, people treat suggestions like a suggestion. Eventually, they start ignoring it. That's just not a boundary. Yes, it's not. It's goodwill is nice, but it doesn't really get you very far in the real world. So in a situation like that, while the intentions may be explicit, while it may – two people and a couple are like, we do want to share finances or we want to share responsibilities. Maybe they live together and they want to share rent or they want to share expenses or utilities or whatever. There needs to be a very explicit conversation of like, okay, who contributes what? Are we basing it on how much we make? Are we basing it on – are we going 50-50 on everything? Are we basing it on how much – credit card debt you have versus me. Like there's all sorts of factors that need to be considered when going into decisions like this. And then the third big indicator I would say is an area of your life that you feel compulsive or out of control. So something that you keep doing and you're like, why do I keep doing that?

02:39:14And this could be anything from drinking too much to going to events that you don't enjoy going to, to maintaining a friendship with a person that you don't actually like hanging out with, going home for the holidays with the family that drives you crazy. Like whatever it is in your life that you're like, why do I keep doing this? Emotional reactions, impulsive emotional reactions. Yeah. Like it's just – that's probably an indicator that there needs to be a boundary there. Like you need to define what you're willing to accept and tolerate and what you're not willing to accept and tolerate. Otherwise, you're just going to keep doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially. Where do you think, do you think energy drains would fit in there somewhere? One of those three? I think that's one too. Like if you're just, you're constantly doing things that just drain you and not in a good way. Like sometimes there's a good way to do that, but other times there's not. I think energy drain can be a bad thing. I wouldn't necessarily say it's definitely a boundary issue just because you can be drained doing things that you're happy to be doing. Yeah, okay. And that you've explicitly defined, you know. Like let's say you and your partner have decided to have a newborn, like have a kid, right? That's draining as fuck. So I would say if you're finding your energy drain and you don't know why, then that's probably an indication of like there's –

02:40:35There's a boundary leak somewhere and the energy is getting out. Okay. So step number two, once you've identified what you need a boundary around, step number two is stating it clearly. And by clearly, it needs to be observable or quantifiable in some way. You can't just say like, I want to be healthy or I want to spend more time with friends. what does that mean? Or tell your spouse, like, I don't want to argue anymore. Like, what does that mean, actually? Like, about what? How often? Under what circumstances? Is every argument off limits? Or is it just like certain stupid topics that we keep arguing about? You really need to get granular about what the boundary actually is. We've got a little bit of a formula here, which is – this comes from nonviolent communication from Marshall Rosenberg, which is, by the way, a great resource for communicating any sort of difficult conversation in a relationship. Nonviolent communication is just full of useful tools, phrasings, framing of ideas to – state your needs and get your needs met with somebody in your life with without pissing everybody off this formula comes from nvc and it basically says when i feel x emotion in y situation i need z action so simple example when i feel distracted because my phone is buzzing during dinner uh i've decided to turn off my phone at the dinner table this is a boundary

02:42:15No phone at the dinner table. You could do another one, which is like, you know, when I feel ignored or uncared for, when my partner doesn't clean up after themselves, we set rules and expectations of who's in charge of cleaning the kitchen on which days or after which… So you basically, you identify the situation that is triggering you or upsetting you. You identify the exact occurrences or actions that happen that bother you. And then you set expectations or negotiate, you know, some sort of behavior with somebody else to mitigate that, prevent it from happening in the first place. The important thing about boundaries is that they are stated assertively but not aggressively. So there's a very subtle difference. The way I would describe this is like stating something passively is stating it in a way that you take no ownership or autonomy over it. So it would be something like, you know, Drew, it would be really nice if like when we recorded podcasts, the AC was turned on.

02:43:31You know, it'd just be nice if I wasn't hot all the time. Like it's such a passive. It's almost like it's making it your problem. That'd be nice. Yeah, exactly. It's like I'm taking zero ownership of it. And so the effect of that is that I am sub communicating that it's actually your problem and your fault that I'm hot. Which is not the way you want to go about this. That's not effective at all. Whereas I would say doing it aggressively is demanding something and also blaming, taking no ownership over it. So if I was to state it aggressively, it would be something like, you know, Drew, every time we record these podcasts, I'm hot as fuck. And it'd be great if you got your shit together and turn on the AC once in a while. Like it's disrespectful. It's condescending. It's demeaning. And I'm taking no ownership of it whatsoever. Yeah. So an assertive way of saying it would be, hey, Drew, every time we're shooting these podcasts, I get really hot. How about we agree to turn on the AC when we take breaks in between shoots? How does that sound to you? Right? It's like, I'm owning it. I'm suggesting a solution. I'm telling you exactly. I feel this way in this situation. How about we do this? I'm bringing you in as part of the boundary too. Right. It's a collaboration where, and you, and it opens, it, it makes it clear that you don't have to agree to it. You could be like, well, I'm cold all the time. And then that, okay, so now we changed the conversation.

02:45:04We'll get to negotiating a little bit later. So that's an example of, I guess, doing it passively. I would even call it passive aggressiveness, aggressiveness. You want assertiveness. You want to own it. Be like, hey, this is my feeling. This is what I don't like. And this is how I would like to see it changed. How do you feel about that? So that's step number two. We've got awareness, communication. I think in the communication part too, I think the important part is to realize too that a lot of people just don't know that they're violating your boundaries so often. And that's what the communication is really all about. Obviously – I would say a majority of the time. But most of the time, they don't even like, so you have all this resentment building up. Like we're talking about one of the red flags and people, they don't even know it because you haven't set the boundary. It's not clear. They don't know that you're upset about it. So being able to do that, like you said, assertively too, um, and, and clearly and, and, and bringing them in on it and not making them feel like they're, you're attacking them or they're attacking you either way. Yeah. I think that's a huge thing. I just, people just don't even realize they're crossing your boundary lines. Yeah. And this is the pattern you see in so many relationships. I mean, this has happened a dozen times in my marriage. All right. It's like there's something that's pissing me off or pissing her off. But it's like it's low enough on the scale of annoyance that you just don't you let it go. You don't say anything. But then it keeps happening over and over and over again. And it builds and it builds. And that resentment builds. And the ambiguity builds of like, well, is he supposed to do this? Or am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to tell him?

02:46:36and then all of a sudden, like one day, you get pissed off at each other, and the other person's like, whoa, where did this come from? Like, how the hell am I supposed to know that you want the plates in this drawer, not that drawer? Like, you never said anything, right? And so it just comes back to stating assertively With respect, it's funny because I think people who are terrified of conflict, they're mostly worried about the topic when actually I think most conflict can be avoided tactically. A large percentage of interpersonal conflict emerges not because something was communicated, it's how it was communicated. It's like you're being a dick about it or you're being judgmental about it or you're being condescending about it or you're not taking any responsibility for it or accountability or whatever. That's my problem. Most of the time. It's how I'm communicating. No, seriously, it's how I'm communicating my need or whatever it is. Like almost everybody can understand what need you have. But if you're communicating in an either aggressive way or a really whiny way or whatever it is, yeah, expecting someone else to respond in kind, you know, yeah. I actually want to hammer home on this point again because this also ties into the, like, philosophical stuff we were talking about, which is – The thing that is going to make – like when you approach somebody with a boundary or a request or something you want them to change, I would say the majority of like whether it lands or not is, again, the way you present it. But it really has to do with agency and it has to do with ownership, right? So – and this is the big thing that nonviolent communication teaches. It says that like your feelings are your responsibility, right? So if you're doing something that's pissing me off –

02:48:14and I come to you and I'm like, you're pissing me off. Like immediately you're gonna get defensive and you're gonna be like, I didn't do anything, fuck you. Whereas if I come to you and be like, you know, Drew, you've been doing this thing lately. And it like, when you do it, I feel really irritated. Suddenly I'm like, I'm giving you your agency, right? Like you're allowed to do whatever you want. I'm maintaining my own agency, which is like, hey, when this thing happens, this is the emotion that I feel. And then I say, and when I feel that irritation, it's hard to do a podcast well together, right? And now I'm like framing the problem as something that we can both help solve. It's just a repackaging of this same experience, but it is so much more effective than just being like, dude, stop being a dick, you're pissing me off, right? Like it just, it completely changes the tenor of everything. But the reason that matters is because, remember, boundaries originate in self-definition. And when you come to somebody and you're like, Stop doing that thing. You can't do that anymore because it makes me mad. You are – you're violating their autonomy. You are impeding on their ability to define themselves, to choose how they are acting in the world. And if you are removing your own agency, you're also doing that to yourself. So it's like a very subtle and philosophical thing but I do think it is like super interesting that –

02:49:42Like the whole notion of respect, I think, is very much tied up in the respect of our own autonomy and the respect of other people's autonomy. Yeah, 100%. That goes back to the distinguishing boundaries between rules. That's a rule when you're like, you can't do this. Right. That's not a boundary. Right. Whereas a boundary is like, hey, when you do that, I feel this way. And so I'm just not going to hang out with you. Right. Right. You've infringed on their autonomy at that point. Yeah. Step three is consistency. This is basically, I mean – One of the hardest steps. Yeah. It's – I think it's almost like a law of the universe that any boundary that's defined is going to be tested. Yeah. This is true with children. Almost by definition, yeah. It's true with friendships. It's true with family. It's just human nature. Anytime we are presented with a boundary – our first inclination is like, let me put my toe over that line and see what happens. It's just, we can't help ourselves. Sounds fun to me sometimes. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I want to test this boundary. Yeah. So it is important that the boundaries are actually enforced. Yeah. Right? So like, let's say I tell a friend like, hey dude, if you're going to start doing FaceTime calls in public without headphones, I'm just going to go home.

02:50:59And then he pulls out his phone and starts doing a FaceTime call in public without headphones. And I stick around. Yeah. How much is that boundary worth? We're fucking nothing. Right? It's unless you follow, unless your actions follow through on the statement of the expectation of the boundary, it's not worth anything. Yeah. Real boundaries have stakes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And you have to follow through on them. I think this is. crucially important with parenting. Anybody who has a kid knows that if you're inconsistent in an enforcement, the respect goes out the window, right? That's their job is to test boundaries, right? It is. I mean, a child is, again, they are, A, they're learning about the world. And then B, they're learning about themselves. So they're trying to push the And it's your job as a parent to give them that freedom, but also put guardrails around them to make sure that they don't push themselves into a dangerous territory. And if you don't reinforce those guardrails, guess what? They're just going to drive straight through. The hugely important part about consistency, like this is the step where trust comes from, right? Like

02:52:17Oh, yeah. Okay. Like if you think about what is trust in a relationship, it is a confidence that you are going to do what you say you're going to do. It's confidence that you are going to be consistent in your actions and in your words. And so if you are regularly saying things and then you don't actually do them. I'm not really going to trust you. Like, think about it this way. Like, if you have a friend who is regularly, like, talking shit, saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and then never does anything, never actually takes action on anything. then let's say you're in a problem or a crisis like how likely are you to call that person right not very yeah i don't trust you help so i'm not gonna talk like like dude if you can't even do things for yourself like how am i going to rely on you to do something for me right so it's the consistency piece is huge again often unpleasant but it is funny because it is when you hold the line on the boundary Even though it might upset people, even though it might annoy people or they might get offended or it might cause a fight, it causes them to respect you and it causes them to trust you. This is what I was saying earlier about when my dad told me I got to be your dad first and not your friend. Yeah. Um.

02:53:34After that, I felt like, oh, I can trust him when I know I'm in a bind or something like that. Right. I can go to him and I know he's going to do the right thing for me in that situation. He's not going to do the thing I want to do. He's going to do the right thing for me. A hundred percent. Yeah. Boundaries often don't work the first, the first try. Uh. They have to be enforced multiple times to like kick in. So like I'll give you the facetious example about the friend on FaceTime, right? Let's say I'm hanging out with a friend. He pulls out. He starts doing a FaceTime call. I'm like, dude, fuck this shit. I'm out of here. And I actually go home. And 20 minutes later, he like calls me. He's like, oh, my God, you're such a dick. I can't believe you actually did that. Blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I told you. I told you. Well, guess what? Next time we're hanging out, he gets a FaceTime call. You think he's going to take it? Probably not because he knows what's going to happen. I think a lot of people, you know, they think to themselves, well, I set a boundary, but it wasn't respected. Well, yeah, you have to. It's going to be tested a couple of times first and then then it starts to get enforced. So step four is related to all this. It's anticipating pushback. So people who don't have a lot of boundaries in their lives don't like it when you come along and try to insert one. Like there's a tendency to, you know, basically the only people who really respect boundaries are people who have plenty of their own, and they're not going to be the ones that test it. The ones who like really struggle to set boundaries for themselves or adhere to boundaries in others are

02:55:04They're going to try to wiggle their ways out of it. So this can come up in the form of guilt tripping, getting mad at you, picking a fight, ghosting you, basically manipulative behavior. Like they're – it's – and we're going to get in the relationship section. We're going to get into kind of like why this happens. But for somebody with a lack of boundaries or who – doesn't have boundaries in their life, it actually feels easier for them to try to manipulate you into letting go of a boundary than it is to actually adhere to it in many cases. That sounds fucked up, but it's... going to happen. Step five is adaptation. So no boundary is perfect. You could set an expectation in your relationship to behave a certain way. Five years go by. Maybe you get married. Maybe somebody's parent dies. Maybe you move to another country. Situations change. People change. Conditions change. So boundaries should be flexible and adaptable. There might come a day where you're Maybe I do keep hanging out with somebody who takes a FaceTime call. No, that's not true. I will never hang out. I will never hang out with that person. That's a hard boundary for you. That is a rule. That is not a boundary. The other aspect of this is that you are often very likely not going to set the correct boundary the first time. Yeah. Right? You might overshoot it.

02:56:30You might be too rigid, too porous. Like anything in life, you're probably not going to get it on the first shot. You're going to have to come back and revise it a couple times. Right. Yeah. There's a process of discovery. And a lot of that comes from the testing of the boundaries like we were talking about. And then you figure out, oh, okay, that's not quite the right boundary. Let me adjust here. Yeah. People might have some anxiety of like, well, if I go back on the boundary, then people aren't going to respect me. It's like, no, actually, if you just communicate to people, you're like, hey – You know, I used to be like this, but like, you know, I don't think that was really fair to the people in my life. So I've like adjusted to here. People respect that. You just, again, communication. Yeah. Just be explicit. Be like, this is what I need now. I thought it was this. That didn't work. So now I'm doing it this way. Yeah. It's the uncertainty that if you don't provide some sort of clarity around it, then yeah. Whether that clarity changes or not. beside the point. Yeah. We also talked about exceptions. Again, I think a lot of it is just being clear and defining the exceptions explicitly, right? Yeah, that's part of the boundary. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's like, okay, my boundary is I don't take late night calls after 10 p.m., but I don't know. Let's say your mother's in the hospital and sick and the doctors are in the ER overnight. Like, obviously, you want to keep your phone on and you want to take calls in that situation. So it is just adapting to the situation around you and knowing what is realistic and practical.

02:57:57And then finally, number six, and this is going to be a huge one for a lot of people listening to this, guilt management. Yeah. Yeah. Guilt management. So what tends to happen if you are a person who historically has had very few boundaries and you are surrounded by people who have very few boundaries, two things are going to happen. One is… When you set a boundary, the people around you are not going to like it. They're going to bitch at you. They're going to complain. They're going to guilt trip you. They're going to try to pick a fight with you. They're going to test you. The second thing that's going to happen is you're going to feel really guilty about it. And there's a reason for this because you are essentially cutting them off from a source of validation and self-esteem that used to be available to them. We're about to talk a lot more about enmeshed relationships or toxic relationships. But if you really look at like what a toxic relationship is, it's essentially two people who are becoming emotionally reliant on each other. Right. to meet their needs and fulfill their self-esteem. And it's not a healthy thing. And you can almost think of it as like almost in literal terms becoming addicted to each other, right? Like you are now the same way an alcoholic is –

02:59:19becomes dependent on the alcohol to feel normal and functional, the codependent person relies on the validation and affection and attention from another person to simply feel normal and be able to be functional. So when you cut somebody off, you're essentially cutting them off of their supply of their emotional addiction. And If you've ever been around an addict that just got cut off, like it's not pretty. Like people don't take it well. They're not very understanding about it. So there's going to be a lot of guilt. There might be some shame. You might lose a few relationships. But it's important to remember that boundaries are the ultimate act of love. Right. It's boundaries. It's not just for your own health and safety. It's for the other person's as well. Like they are never going to learn to stand on their own two feet psychologically and emotionally, as long as they're dependent on you and and vice versa. And so the longer you wait to establish those boundaries, the more you just prevent each of you from developing appropriately. Yeah, I think we'll talk about this a little bit more too shortly, but there's an identity aspect to it there too, right? Like you're talking about like encode dependent relationships, let's say, or whatever. You cut somebody off by setting a boundary. They're so enmeshed with you too that they have to find this new identity now.

03:00:41Right. Right. Yeah. They have to come up. So it's not just that, oh, you're cutting off their supply of validating feelings or whatever it is. They feel like a part of them is being extracted. Yes. Yes. So that's kind of where that – it's a fear response a lot of times from people. And then you feel guilty about it. So knowing that, that kind of sets the stage. I mean it's kind of – this is one of those situations where – I'm just kind of imagining cheesy rom-coms. But it's like when people in toxic relationships, when they do split apart or when they feel like they're splitting apart, they resist it because they will say things like, I need you. Right. And they literally feel that. That is actually what they feel. I am nothing without you. I can't function without you. Overall, that's a very unhealthy place to be, but like once you are, if you can imagine being in that place and I've been there before, I imagine you've been there before. Literally anything else feels worth it to keep that person, right? Like you, at that point, once you feel like you need another human being to simply function and feel normal about yourself, you are able and willing to justify almost any behavior to keep that person in your life, which gets pretty fucked up. If you like that, that can take you to a dark place. If you let it. I remember a friend of mine, they're going through a rough patch in their relationship. And they said, yeah, they came to me and they said, I'm not.

03:02:10They said the words you said earlier, I'm addicted to you. Yeah. Is what they said. They came out and said they were aware enough to say that or to know that I'm actually addicted to whatever this is. Yes. Even though it was a terrible relationship. Yes. But they realized it and didn't know what to do with it. I'm addicted to you. I need you because you are my little supply of whatever validation I'm getting or whatever it is. Yeah. At some point, we will definitely do an episode on codependence. Yeah. It is – Such an important topic. And I think it's funny because on the one hand, I feel it's under discussed. On the other hand, when I get on Instagram or I just – it's based like 80 percent of self-help advice is just helping codependent people stop being codependent. Like that is basically what this entire industry is. It's rarely explicitly labeled in that way. Yeah. It's it's it's I'd say the vast majority of it is is treating the symptoms, right? It's like codependent people tend to have very low self-esteem. So a lot of it's just trying to boost their self-esteem. Codependent people tend to feel guilty all the time or be incredibly concerned with what other people think about them. So it's, you know, a lot of the content. is geared towards that. A lot of fixing the symptoms and not the cause. Yeah. Exactly. I'm going to kind of dissect the anatomy of a toxic relationship in the next section. But before we move on, I want to make a couple, just touch on a couple more things. Boundaries are hard. They don't come naturally. They require a lot of thought. They often involve difficult or

03:03:45they're not going to come easy. And like anything in life that's good for you that doesn't come easy or naturally, it's ideal to try to build habits and rituals around them so that you don't have to repeatedly choose these things over and over again. So for example, you can build routines into your life that automatically enforce a lot of these boundaries, right? So it's like there's a setting in your phone to automatically go into do not disturb, say at 7 p.m. every night, or, you know, scheduling, you know, one thing my wife and I have done in the past is like, we will pre-schedule date nights like months in advance. And just because once it's on the calendar, we know that it will get done. Other stuff gets planned around it. Whereas if we, if we don't put it on the calendar, like, I mean, as you know, it just, it gets pushed off week after week. It's a little psychological switch again. It's like, it's important enough. We're going to put it on the calendar. And even just that small act. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Creates a pretty strong boundary. A lot of people, they do – it's so funny. This is so nerdy, but I also think it's probably a healthy thing. A lot of people do – they create relationship dashboards. So like in like Notion or other stuff, like even spreadsheets, like – and they will either like every quarter or every month, they will sit down for an hour and like go through their dashboard and –

03:05:08They'll look at their finances, they'll look at their, like how they're feeling emotionally, they'll look at their social life, they'll look at their work life, and they'll kind of like discuss each category and be like, what can we be doing better on? How can I support you? It's funny, on the one hand, like, I feel so torn about that because there's like 50% of me hears that and I'm like, nerd. Right, yeah. Right. You fucking nerd. But then the other half of like the, I guess the relationship coach and psychology part of me is like, wow, that's so healthy. Look at how incredibly intentional that is. Yes. Right? And that, I mean, you're so intentional about your job. You're so intentional about other parts of your life, your finances, whatever it is. Why not be that intentional with the most important relationships in your life? I get it. It's probably over the top or it seems over the top to a lot of people. It makes sense. No, what you just said makes 100% of sense. Like especially considering that like your primary relationship, like your romantic partnership is arguably the most significant fact – like variable in your entire psychological well-being. Absolutely. Like it's – A good marriage or long-term relationship improves every other aspect of your life, and a bad one harms every other aspect of your life. So it makes sense to put that much care into it. I think – and I'm actually going to get to this in a little bit. It just violates – there's like this romantic notion in the culture that like –

03:06:33Sure. Something like a spreadsheet or a relationship spreadsheet or dashboard just like kind of violates that romance. If that's the case, come up with a different habit. You can make a habit out of it, though. Maybe it's just a check in. Maybe it's just a weekly check in. Yeah, whatever it is. But yeah, there's intentionality behind it. I think that's a good thing. Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. So anyway, yeah, create the routine, create the habit. Basically, find the ritual or the habit that will make a lot of these boundaries solve themselves. Another point that I wanted to touch on here And I don't know, maybe this doesn't even need to be worth touching on, but like almost everything we're talking about here involves like, hey, I'm upset. I have a problem. And so I'm coming to you and I'm trying to establish a boundary. Whereas like we're not talking a whole lot about like respecting other people's boundaries. Right. Yeah. It's – That in many ways can be harder for a lot of people. Like noticing when somebody likes or dislikes something, when they have a certain expectation around something and then just not living up to it. I don't know if like, I don't have like a whole list of like practical, actionable advice around this, but I do think it is, especially as we move into the romantic relationship section and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about parenting as well. A huge part of this is simply respecting the autonomy of the other person.

03:07:54and acting accordingly, right? So it's like, even if you don't understand it, if that person lays out an expectation or a boundary, if you wanna have a good relationship with that person, then you should probably follow it. And if you don't wanna follow it, then you probably shouldn't have a relationship with that person. Like it's just kinda, like I think a lot of people, being on the receiving end, a lot of us don't wanna accept that. Yes. Yeah, no. And then a lot of us just wind up taking FaceTime calls in public. That's what it is. It's like you're not respecting other people's boundaries. Exactly. Exactly. And it's not even, it's not, well, I didn't know the boundary. It's like, come on. Yeah. It's for sure. And of course, then we end up being the ones who test it. Yeah. We're like, well, does he really mean that? I don't know. I'm going to do it anyway. Let's just see what happens. And then it gets reinforced and then you're like, oh, okay, I guess this is a thing now. But I guess I just want to raise the point that it's not just about setting boundaries, it's also respecting other people's boundaries. This is where it gets really important and also really hard, even if that person has not explicitly said it themselves. OK, yeah. Because there are some boundaries that like you – it's impossible to know unless the other person says something, right? So like the first three years my wife and I lived together, she hated the way I put away my dirty clothes. Like it drove her crazy.

03:09:23It took her three years to say something. So obviously, like, I have no idea. I've been like, I've been throwing my dirty clothes in the same hamper the same way since I was a child. So like, there's no way for me to know that that's a thing until she says something. But there are other things that once you under, and I guess this is why I keep hitting on the autonomy thing, the self-definition thing. When you understand that, are certain things that people shouldn't have to say let's say you're suffering emotionally very intensely and i suddenly feel this urge of like you know i could kind of swoop in and like make make drew's life a lot better like i can fix some things for him and take care of this problem for him or whatever you have to resist that urge because it's it's not your job it's not that's not your place and if you really want to do it then you need to talk to them about it first. You can't just do it and be like, I'm going to be the savior. I'm actually reading a great book right now around this. Liz Gilbert, who I'm a huge fan of. For those people listening who don't know, she wrote, she's most famous for writing E, Pray, Love, but she's also written a number of other fantastic books. Her new book is a memoir, and it's about a very, very intense relationship. Well, it's about her history of codependency,

03:10:39And then it's about a very intense romantic relationship she had with a woman who was dying of stage four cancer. And it's funny because as soon as the woman she was seeing was diagnosed, it's like – Everything she had ever learned about romance and relationships and codependence and everything like went out the window because it's like, well, she has only got a few months left to live. So, like, let's go for it. And then, of course, she ended up living for years and it like turned into a nightmare. It's a fascinating book and it's not only is it beautifully written, but it's also like her level of self-awareness and like understanding. Yeah. why she keeps behaving worse and worse and worse. Like you can see just the boundaries like melting away as she like continues to justify like, well, it's just this one time or it's just this one time. You know what? Like, let me pay for this thing because she's going to die soon anyway. So like, let me just go for it. And it's just all the boundaries melt away and you really see this horror story of what happens when you take all of the chains off. I contrast that with the Harvard professor. What was his name? Clay Christensen. Clay Christensen. Yeah. Contrast that. He was like, no, I'm going to put up more boundaries now. Yeah. And was completely happy with that. Which makes sense, right? Because I think let's say you are diagnosed with terminal cancer or a loved one is like, I think the instinct is to like –

03:12:07Let everything go. Yeah, right. And just go for it. But it's like, no, you, you, the opposite is actually makes more sense because you have so little time that you need to make every single day count as much as possible. You have to protect the most important things. Right. Yeah. Not, not give them, give all the space that for all the important things that rush in. No, it's that you have to define those important things. Yeah. Define the container. So this is actually a perfect transition into a discussion of boundaries and romantic relationships and basically the anatomy of a toxic relationship. How does a toxic relationship happen? How does it form? And then how does it perpetuate? Because boundaries is really at the core of all of these dynamics. We've already talked about quite a bit, but my goal here is to actually like really lay out a framework for people to understand that This is why you get into a toxic relationship. This is what makes it toxic. This is what it feels like. This is why these certain dynamics happen. And then, of course, this is how you get out of it, ideally. So as we talked about earlier in the show, every single one of us, when we're children, as we're developing psychologically, as we're maturing, in many ways, that maturation process is...

03:13:22the process of developing an ego or developing an identity, of understanding who is Drew Bernie, what does he like to do, what is he good at, what is he bad at, who are his friends, who are his enemies, what does he want to do with his life? These are all such core questions that we all start asking ourselves at a pretty young age, and it takes us most of our young lives to answer them clearly. And that answering process is It's very long. It's very difficult. It requires a lot of experimentation. That experimentation requires a lot of failure, a lot of embarrassment, a decent amount of rejection. And so it's not fun. It's like it's just a very unfun process. And for that reason, a lot of people avoid the process. They check out, they numb themselves, they distract themselves. A lot of other people also grow up in environments that don't foster that process. So maybe they're in an abusive environment that they're just constantly on survival mode. So they're not able to experiment or try different things out. Maybe they're coddled and overprotected by their parents. So they're not allowed to have different experiences or ask these questions of themselves. Maybe their parents are super demanding and they're like –

03:14:45This is who you are, this is who you're going to be. And so there's just no room for them to develop this individual identity. So what happens as those of us who come into adulthood with an unindividuated identity, basically a lack of a... conception of ourself, we are still very emotionally dependent on others to feel validated, to feel worthy and normal. And this is, again, this is a pretty normal experience. I think it's, everybody experiences this to a certain extent as an adolescent. And then if you've had a rough upbringing or a rough childhood in some way, you'll experience it well into young adulthood as well. One way of looking at it is simply it's just insecurity. It's like you're very needy or you're very status-driven or you're very emotional and dramatic. Whatever it is, you latch on to the people around you to help you feel like an individual, to feel like somebody who is clearly defined. when these insecure people come across secure people the secure people are like ew yeah ick you're so needy oh my god you're so insane like you need to be validated constantly dude stop texting me what the so insecure people

03:16:13by definition, kind of scare a lot of the secure people away. What they do is they attract other insecure people who also need to emotionally rely upon somebody else to feel whole, fulfilled, validated, like they have some self-esteem. And so what you get – and this is not only romantic relationships, but this can also be through friendships. You get two people that come together. They suddenly, they press all each other's buttons in the right way. They validate each other all in the right way. They basically become extremely emotionally dependent on one another. And if you think about it, if you are emotionally dependent on another human being to feel normal, feel good, feel good about yourself, then it makes sense that you want to remove as many boundaries as possible. Between you, yourself and that person, right? You don't want it to be hard for them to come see you. You don't want it to be difficult to get along. You don't want to argue about where you're going to go for dinner. You want to make it as like clean and seamless as possible. So it's like, yeah, move on in. Yes. Fusion is what you're going for. Exactly. It's like, yeah, yeah, I am into that band. Oh, yeah, I totally love that movie. OK, sure. Yeah. No, your friends are great. Like it just you start melding into the same person. It's kind of a sad irony that this this enmeshing that happens, as it's often called this, this, this deindividuation that happens. It is motivated by. Yeah.

03:17:49a desperate attempt to get closer to each other, to remove any boundaries, to remove any distance between the two of you. But the problem is, is that no matter what you do, you are now emotionally dependent on a person that you cannot control. And so the closer you get to them, the more you remove boundaries, the more dependent you become upon them, the more desperate you are to control them, to make sure like, oh shit, she didn't call me back tonight. Oh my God. Like something as simple as somebody, as the person not returning a call to a secure person, like to an insecure and enmeshed person, it like... You spiral out of control. It's an identity crisis. It is. It's literally an identity crisis. It's like, I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. My world is falling apart. Right. And then it like it turns out that, you know, they fell asleep in a movie theater or something. Right. Forgot to call you back. What happens as a result? You get lots of drama. Lots and lots of drama. And with the drama, you get lots of manipulation because again, if I'm emotionally dependent on a person to feel healthy and normal and I don't control that person, well, what's the next best thing?

03:19:05manipulating them. This is where you get into guilt trips. You get into the scorecard, right? It's like, hey, last week I did this for you and I paid for that. And this is how you repay me, right? It's jealousy, you know, demanding, like, I don't want you to talk to her anymore. Demanding time and attention. And yeah, right, right. It's, that's disrespectful to me. You know, control can be, aggressive and overt it can be you know rage it can be screaming it can be making demands it can be setting rules and it can also be subtle and covert right it can be you know creating drama is a form of control Right? Like if my life is always a mess and my partner is always consoling me and telling me it's going to be okay and supporting me and intervening to try to save me, that's also a form of control. Needing this can be a form of control. If I'm always desperately anxious and lonely and, oh, my God, I'm like, I hate being alone and I hate it when you go out of town. I'm so miserable without you here. That's a form of control. Demanding affection, demanding attention again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

03:20:25And so what ends up happening in these relationships is they tend to fall into a handful of patterns. Ten years ago, I grouped them into three patterns. And all three patterns are kind of similar. And honestly, these are not exhaustive. There's plenty of other patterns too. But the three groups that I identified back when I was a dating and relationship coach is the victim savior. Right? So one person in the relationship is always getting screwed over, is always being hurt, is never being respected. And then the other person in the relationship is constantly showing up, taking care of them, sweeping up, being the hero, the knight on shining armor, all that. The second one is the breaker and the fixer. So the breaker is somebody who's just always finding problems. This is wrong. That's wrong. You didn't do this right. Oh, my God, I can't believe you make us live in this apartment. This is disgusting. You know, it's just like everything is nothing is ever good enough. And then the fixer is like, oh, I'm going to make it good enough for you. And then the third pattern is the runner and the chaser, right? The runner is always like finding reasons like, you know, I don't know, like it's a little too much. And like I got things to do and, you know, they're probably cheating on you and going on a lot of business trips. And then the chaser is like, well, I can just love them a little bit more. Maybe they'll come back.

03:21:51Maybe they'll show them. Yeah, maybe if I can just, you know, when he comes back to town, I'm just going to like, I'm going to throw him the best birthday party and then he'll never want to leave again. And then, of course, three days later, he leaves again. And the funny thing about all three of these dynamics is that – no matter which role you play in each dynamic, you get to feel needed all the time. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, there's a sick, perverse, fucked up, like two-way street going on there. Yeah. And each one of those, yeah. Yeah, so it's like- Speaking from experience. Yeah, right. Just from, you know, friends tell me that this is what it feels like, right? So it's like when you're the victim, obviously it doesn't feel good to be a victim, but when you're in a relationship dynamic like this, and you discover that anytime you feel victimized, your partner shows up and gives you a lot of attention and affection, well, guess what? you're probably going to find more reasons to be a victim. Yeah. If you're the breaker, right, in a relationship, and you discover that anytime you're unhappy, your partner is showing up and trying to make you happy, guess what? You're going to find more reasons to be unhappy, right? It just, each role in the relationship reinforces itself. And then if you're the rescuer or the fixer,

03:23:08Man, you get to feel needed all the time. You're like, man, I'm making this person's life so much better. I'm this person's hero. I'm the best. I'm so admirable. Oh, my God. I'm like the best boyfriend or girlfriend ever. You get to feel great about yourself. Yeah. Because there's always another fire to put out. Yeah. And you don't have to think about your own shit because you're constantly thinking about their shit. That is a great point too. Right? And again, it kind of comes back to it's like it's a form of avoiding, you know, dealing with your own insecurities, developing your own identity, deciding who you are for yourself on your own terms. I almost visualize this as like, you know, imagine a couple in a house and there's like one person in the relationship is just walking into each room and like setting something on fire. And then the other person in the relationship is like sprinting into the room with a fire hose and like putting it out. And then by the time they put it out. The partner has gone to the next room and set another fire. And he's like, oh, shit. And he runs in with the fire hose. And you just kind of repeat that over and over. The emotional intensity of these dynamics is extremely powerful. Extremely powerful. Like it's when the highs are so high. Yeah. Like it's just you are almost drunk on love. And then the lows are so low. Like you just...

03:24:26It's scorched earth. It's just a bleak, abysmal existence when things are bad. And you kind of ride this roller coaster up and down and up and down. Now, the reason boundaries never get set in these relationships is because it interrupts that dynamic, right? Like let's say I'm a savior and I'm dating a victim. Right. And my partner calls me and she's like, you won't believe what happened to me today. It's so unfair. Like people are so mean to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now imagine if I was like, well, you know, that's – you kind of have to take responsibility for yourself at a certain point, you know. maybe deal with it. You're like, deal with it yourself. Go tell them how you feel. Like that just interrupts the entire toxic cycle, right? Because now she's that, now I'm victimizing her, right? Like now I'm part of the problem. And now my love supply gets cut off and my, my addiction can't be fed anymore. So there's like an incredible incentive for the, for each person in the dynamic to can keep the dynamic going and not erect, uh, any sort of boundary to, to interfere with it. the chaser chasey situation. If you're the chasey and you're the ones kind of like, eh, I don't know about this. And the person is always kind of chasing you. As soon as they cut that out, the other person says, I'm going to put a boundary down and I'm going to stop chasing you. Yeah. That also throws that cycle off too, right? Because then the other person's like, wait, I was getting this validation that I didn't even have to work for really. Yeah. And now I don't get it anymore. And now that throws them off too. So again, it's that sick two-way street that's going on here. Back when I used to coach. Yeah. Yeah.

03:25:56I talked to so many people in these sorts of relationships and essentially if I was to boil down hours and hours of calls and consultations into like a couple sentences, really what it came down to was this. Is I would tell them you have to set a boundary. And when you set that boundary, one of two things is going to happen. Either. it's going to heal the relationship, right? Because it's like, let's say you're the chaser and you're dating a runner. And then one day you tell the runner, you're like, I'm not chasing you anymore. Now the runner has two decisions. Either they can come back and stop running. Right. or they can run away forever. Right. And it's like that with all of the dynamics, right? It's if you tell the breaker like, I'm not fixing your shit anymore. You need to deal with it yourself. Either they start fixing their own shit or they leave you and go find another fixer. Right. And and so what I would tell all these people is I'm like, one of two things is going to happen. Either the relationship is going to heal or it's going to end. And in both cases, you're better off. So you might as well do it. People don't want to hear that though, do they? No, they don't. How receptive were people to that, I guess? I mean, I'm sure it ran the gamut, but generally speaking, because I think what a lot of people want is like, no, no, no, tell me how to keep them from running. Yeah. Just tell me how to keep them from running. Exactly. That's all I want. Just give me that hack, the tip, the tactic, the whatever. Make them stop running. Yeah, that's basically what they want. But no, no, no, no, no, no. You get two choices here.

03:27:26Well, so here's the funny thing about this dynamic too, is that it's like any drug, you need a larger dose to get the same high each cycle. So when a couple first starts, maybe their breaker fixer dynamic makes them feel really loved on a pretty meager situation. But you run that play for two, three, four years and it gets pretty extreme. like to get that same high, that same level of romance, that same intensity, uh, things get very messy and dramatic. This is why toxic relationships are ultimately like not sustainable in the long run, because they burn themselves out. My answer to you is that the clients that I worked with who were like towards the end of that cycle were like, dude, I've been doing this for five years, like I can't fucking do this anymore. They were way more receptive than- Just exhausted, yeah. Yeah, than people like six months in, they were like, well, just tell me how to get them to stop running away from me. And I'm like, yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. It's not that simple. Yeah. You know, I've written quite a bit before about how people tend to mistake drama for intimacy. Yeah. And I think it's just because of the intensity of the emotions. But the truth is, is that intimacy and drama are like...

03:28:46Not related at all. Polar opposites. Yeah. It's like real intimacy. I would describe more as like peaceful and calm. You know, it's intimacy is when you can, like if you can sit quietly on a couch with somebody doing different things and still feel loved. Yeah. And close. Yeah. That's intimacy. Yeah. you know, if you need to like literally set the house on fire to feel close to one another, like that's not intimacy that you are in a drama spiral. You're in a sick like codependent And it sounds silly and obvious, but so many people get wrapped up in that. Yeah. And you see it all the time too. And even people will say like, oh, look how much they care, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like treats me like shit because he cares so much. Exactly, because he cares. I mean, you hear this all the time too with like jealousy. Yeah. It's like, well, he's just that jealous because he loves me. And I was like, no, I'm pretty sure that's not it. I'm pretty sure he's just really insecure and controlling. Yeah, and needs that validation back from you. Yeah, exactly. I want to touch on... a little bit, not as much, the dynamic with parenting around this as well. We've mentioned parenting and passing a couple times. You know, this same toxic cycle can happen with a parent or a child. And a parent who lacks boundaries is not individuated, has not health, like, fully developmentally matured, psychologically speaking. In a lot of cases...

03:30:18they will decide to enmesh themselves with one of their kids. And that becomes their supply of validation and self-esteem. This also does not turn out very well. It's not always as dramatic. It's not as explosive as a toxic romantic relationship. But what ends up happening is that because the parent is emotionally dependent on a certain child's affection or performance or validation or becoming a certain person, That child never properly individuates themselves. And there's like plenty of like famous child celebrity examples of this. If you think about somebody like a Michael Jackson or basically anybody. I remember, so there's like a really famous jazz guitarist named Joe Pass. He was incredible, but he was active in like the 60s, 70s, and 80s. incredible, incredible guitar player. I studied him a bunch in music school. But he had, like, a very sad personal story, which is essentially that, like, his dad just decided, like, when he was, like, six, like, you're going to be the best guitar player in the world. And basically, like, locked him in a room and made him practice for 12 hours a day and would beat the shit out of him if he didn't. And it's...

03:31:36It's that sort of thing, like you're emotionally preventing the child from exploring the world to a certain extent, from running those experiments, seeing what works for them, what works for their personality, seeing what fails for them, experiencing the rejection and the failure. Um, they based, they never developed that, that personal identity. And on top of that, what you tend to see with these, these children is that they are emotionally unavailable well into adulthood. They're basically emotionally unavailable either until a, they set a boundary with that parent or B the parent dies. Mm-hmm. And like, I hate to say it, but I've met and know a number of adult men in particular, because I think mothers probably do this more often. I've known a number of adult males that are well into adulthood, and they're still completely unindividuated and still enmeshed with their mother. And basically... have never had a long term relationship, have never settled down with a woman, have never had healthy boundaries in any of their relationships. And it's pretty clear to me from the outside that it's just like, yeah, this dude's still enmeshed with his mother. And he's like, until she passes away or he like sets a boundary, becomes aware of it and sets a boundary, like he's never going to have a healthy romantic relationship. Yeah. What happened with it? Was it Joe Pass? You said? Yeah. Yeah. What do you know his story? How did that play out?

03:33:09He became a world famous guitar player. Yeah. Yeah. But like, was he like emotionally stunted all through that? That's all he did, you know? Because you hear about that sometimes. I'm sure he was. You know, maybe he wasn't. I mean, Michael Jackson's probably a much better example there. But I mean, there's a lot of examples of stuff like that. Tiger Woods' story is super interesting. There's a documentary about him that's fascinating. Like... There's also like, there's part of me is just, it's when I hear stories like this, I'm like, okay, it's, it's fucking nuts. This parent is insane and irresponsible and arguably like very immoral. But at the same time, like, like Tiger Woods, his father decided that Tiger was going to be the best golfer in the world before he was born. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know. That's another podcast. But yeah, I mean, you look at, obviously, Tiger had a very public failing marriage, sex addiction, all sorts of stuff. You can see the pattern that happens. And I would say, too, that this doesn't necessarily require an enmeshment of the parent with the child. This can simply – this can be a result of both abuse and negligence, right? It's like you – the child never feels enough safety or security to explore and to take risks and to try things for themselves.

03:34:37Or the parent overprotects the child and never exposes them to any sort of failure or setback or whatever. And we talked earlier about your dad being wise enough to tell you I'm not your friend. One of the more troubling things that you see happening more recently is that parents, particularly wealthy, educated parents, have started defining good parenting as being their child's best friend. Yeah. The problem with that is that as children grow up, they need, again, limitation is what creates freedom. They need defined structure. Like the child is not aware enough or experienced enough to know what sort of structure or framework that they need for themselves. It's the parent's job to say like, look, Here's the guardrails. You know, go experience life within these two guardrails. And then slowly as the child gets older, like slowly expand those guardrails. If you're trying to be your child's best friend, like you're not setting guardrails. You're basically just trying to make them feel good all the time. Yeah. And as we said earlier, good boundaries don't protect feelings. They protect values. So if you want to instill good values in your child, then you have to be willing to let them feel bad sometimes.

03:35:56But if you wanna be their best friend, then you're just gonna be trying to make them feel good all the time. All right, a couple shout outs to some research and frameworks around this. A lot of what I just described is attachment theory, which comes from Bowlby and other researchers. We'll do a full episode on attachment theory at some point, I'm pretty sure, in the next year. It's just like, it's too foundational to human experience in general. I think it's also interesting to mention John Gottman here. We haven't actually talked about him a whole lot, but John Gottman is the preeminent relationship researcher in the world, him and his wife, Julie. And he has this thing called the four horsemen of the – marriage apocalypse, which is basically like he analyzed thousands and thousands of married couples and recorded them having fights and arguments. He then tracked which ones stayed together and which ones got divorced. And he tried to find patterns in their communication styles. Basically, over the course of like 10, 20 years, the conclusion he came to is that there are four forms of communication that deteriorate intimacy and trust within a relationship. And it's interesting because – so the four factors are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

03:37:15And I was looking at this and I was like, you know, criticism and contempt are porous boundaries. It's basically a lack of respect for the other person's boundaries, right? It's like if you say something like, hey, I need alone time and I'm like, well, you're stupid for that. Like, why would you need that? I show contempt or I critique you. I'm not respecting your boundary. I'm disregarding it. The other two, defensiveness and stonewalling, is I think being too rigid, right? It's like if my partner is criticizing me, I'm like... I don't care. I'm not listening to this. I'm not changing. I'm not doing anything. Right? So it's interesting. You could look at it and kind of see it as like a lack of boundary flexibility. Harriet Lerner has a book called The Dance of Intimacy. She basically just talks about how autonomy and closeness are actually intention and like they kind of play off one another. Esther Perel has a similar thing around this where she talks about how like, you know, eroticism demands separateness. Like she calls it as like how the same way fire needs air to grow. In a lot of cases, like you need distance and separation from your partner to maintain or rekindle the intimacy and the excitement, the romance. Yeah.

03:38:34So again, that enmeshment, when you remove all boundaries between two people, you remove all surprises and you basically- Familiarity breeds contempt, right? Exactly. It's by getting away from each other and becoming your own person that you like re-attract each other to each other. It's funny because my wife and I, you know, we were digital nomads together. So we traveled everywhere together. And then I forget what happened. There was like a situation where I think she couldn't get a visa or something. And so I just decided to do the trip by myself. And at first she was like pretty bummed out, kind of pissed. And she was like, all right, well fine, I'm gonna go do this trip by myself. And I was like, all right. And then we came back and we were like, it was such a good thing for the relationship. Like it was so healthy. And that's actually something that we've tried to maintain throughout our 15 years together, which is like every year or two, one or like, I'd say pretty much every year, one of us does a trip by ourselves and for ourselves too. Like not like a business thing or whatever. It's like, she'll go somewhere with her girlfriends or I'll go on a surf trip or something. You know, the last thing I'm gonna talk about is The concept of Western romance. I really do think that romance idealizes enmeshed, unindividuated, toxic relationships. Yeah. You want to be against the world, right? Yeah, exactly. It was like, oh, it was meant to be, we're going to be together forever. Screw everyone else. You know what's really funny? Like, I, you know, I never loved romantic movies, but, you know. Oh, come on, Mark. No.

03:40:11No? No, no, no. I never loved them. But it was funny because I remember once I spent the, as you know, I spent the first four or five years of my career as a dating relationship coach. So I read all these books on relationships and intimacy and sex and love and all this stuff. And then it was funny because towards the very end, I think I met my wife like right before I kind of pivoted into self-help in general. and um and it was funny so i went through this whole period of just like really studying and understanding relationships and and intimacy and then i started dating my wife and she loves rom coms yeah and so we would start watching rom-coms together and it would i i was unbearable because every movie i would like pause and start explaining like why each character's behavior was problematic I was like, no, no, no, she shouldn't have that expectation on him because she's violating his right to autonomy. And she's also not communicating her values clearly. And by the way, he needs to set a boundary around his time because this is not good that he keeps coming to her apartment and sleeping there without permission. Like that's just setting a bad precedent. And of course, she would look at me and be like, shut the fuck up. Right. Just let me enjoy this movie, please. She's like, they're cute. Stop it. If you go back and you watch a lot of those rom-coms, especially from like the 90s, you will see a lot of problematic behavior in them. Not just because like times have changed or whatever. I think there's just more of an awareness around. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It is interesting. And if you go back even further, it gets even... Oh, yeah. Yeah. I watched a Hitchcock movie maybe like five or six years ago called Vertigo.

03:41:50I think it was called Vertigo. And it was basically a love story, but it was so fucked up. Oh, or another one, Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando. It's like literally an abusive relationship. Like he's like literally psychologically and physically abusing her until she starts loving him. And it was like, it's a, like in the fifties, this was considered a romance. You and I, this has been a long time. You probably don't even remember this, but you and I are both Gabriel Garcia Marquez fans. Yes. And I was like, hands down, Loving the Time of Cholera. And you were like, no. No, no, no. So you ruined that one for me too. Yeah. So that one's funny because I read that in high school and I thought it was the most romantic thing I had ever read. Yeah. It's beautiful, right? Obviously. It's gorgeous. And on the surface, on paper, it is so incredibly beautiful and romantic, right? It's like this guy who literally waits his entire life to be with a woman. But if you go back and read it as an adult, with a little bit of knowledge about this stuff, It is creepy. It's full of terrible people. Yeah. Oh, my God. Was that his goal, too? Did you just be like, these are awful people and I'm going to wrap it up in a love story? I think so. I think so. I think that's why it's Love in the Time of Colorado. It's like a plague. Oh. Right. It's like everybody sees this as romance, but actually it's really sick. And this guy is...

03:43:18basically stalks a woman for his entire life and is obsessed with her and wears her down until she has no autonomy anymore and is so desperate in her old age that she's like, sure, why not? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Sorry, audience, if you were planning to read. It's actually a great book. It's a great book. It's worth reading. But yeah, sorry to shit all over it. We're rounding out the episode. That means it is time for another session of 80-20. It's the 80 and 20 of boundaries, Drew. What is the 20% of the advice here that probably generates 80% of the result? What would you say? Yeah, well, we've mentioned it a few times. I think the Very first step, getting clear with what you are lacking boundaries, the areas you're lacking boundaries in your life anyway, right? The resentments are the real big one. Those red flags we went through, go through those. Figure those out. Where in your life could you really stand to use some boundaries, right? I would go with really finding and defining a simple no. Like I think boundaries is one of these things that people probably have a tendency to overcomplicate in... amplify in their minds, right? It's like, oh, I've got, my partner and I were having all these fights or, you know, things at work are crazy and it's such a mess and I'm really going to, like, put my foot down and do all these things. You know, it might be as simple as just kind of asking yourself, like, what is one simple thing that is...

03:44:49occurring right now that you you just don't want to occur anymore it could be something as simple as like phones at the dinner table or hey man at six o'clock i'm going home like no ifs ands or buts like just pick a simple no because i think two things happen one is often the resolving the small problem is an 80 20 situation where it's like you think you think you're you're only solving the smallest of like five different issues but actually by solving that one small issue or it like gives you momentum to kind of move into the other things. You're like, okay, now that I've like blocked off my time, let's talk about some of the things that you said to me that I'm like not a huge fan of. Right. And it like kind of opens the door to having other conversations. Do you think too that the, like a gateway into this is, would it be better to maybe start with some of those self boundaries than others? Test them out on yourself first. Or do you think it's better to practice external boundaries with other people first? Yeah. I think that because I went back and forth on this. I think the self boundaries, you can cheat them a little more easier. You can bullshit yourself more. Whereas like there's more stakes when you're kind of setting them up with other people. Yeah. I'm kind of struggling with this because I think there's like different risk reward profiles. Yeah. Like I do feel like interpersonal boundaries are like higher stakes but higher reward. Yeah. Yeah.

03:46:10Self boundaries, they're easier to set, but they're also easier to fuck up. Right. I will say this, though. Like, I'm leaning towards setting boundaries with yourself because I think it gives you clarity on what you want. And then, like, once you've set a boundary with yourself, it's much easier to go to somebody else. That's a good point. And explain it to them. That's a good point. Like, if I have decided for myself that I'm not going to drink alcohol anymore, and I've decided that on my own without anybody's, you know, influencer conversation going on, then when I am in a social situation, it makes it that much easier to like decide or decline or whatever. And then I guess the other thing too is just like, if you feel guilt around boundaries and assuming that's not a shitty boundary and you're not overreacting, that guilt is a sign that that boundary needed to be in place. It's one of the things that I've written a few times and has gone viral on social media a couple of times is, you know, I said that like if you set a boundary and people get upset that you said it, that's kind of evidence that it needed to be set in the first place. Like generally speaking, people who are very respectful of your time and space and autonomy are like not going to get super upset if you tell them like, hey, this doesn't work for me.

03:47:29Worst case scenario, they're like, oh, okay, I guess I'm just going to see you less or whatever. But it's the people who are in it for the wrong reasons who are going to get like really up in arms and defensive and guilt trip you and tell you you're being selfish and all this stuff. Yeah, for sure. I would say to another kind of high impact one is, you know, we went through all the different kinds of categories of boundaries. I would say that starting with your own time, like starting with a time boundary somewhere in your life where it's like, OK, this part of my life is a mess or I need to get this, whether it's work or, you know, even your leisure time or whatever it is. is actually like going in and setting a very concrete boundary around some block of time that you do actually have control over and trying to stick with that too. Yeah. So that's kind of a self boundary, but it's also an external boundary at the same time. So it gives you some practice around that. I don't like for me is like the boundary around like bedtimes and then like keeping phones out of the the bedtime boundary has got to be a little bit stronger for me. That's one I need to work on. And I think that's a pretty that's a good way to get into this anyway. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, yeah, time is probably the easiest one because it is like purely rational. Right. Like there's not a whole lot of emotional involved in it. And then it has a nice downstream effect of like once you've established it for yourself, you get to go to other people. And you're like, oh, no, no, I have this rule. I go to bed at 9 p.m. Sorry, I can't come to the thing. Yeah. You know, and then you don't feel guilty about it or upset or whatever. Right.

03:48:58Yeah. And I mean, it's cliche at this point where you hear like CEOs and people saying I protect my mornings or protect this block of time or whatever it is. And there's a big reason for that is because they realize that's a huge leverage point in their life. Yeah. And I think you can do the same as just a normal person, too. All right, what are the hidden costs of boundaries? Oh. I mean, we've been sprinkling these in all throughout, I think. You probably should have picked up on some of these. I do want to bring to light a little story, though. Okay. You all probably remember back in the 2020 Olympics, this occurred in 2021 because of the pandemic. Simone Biles, right? She withdrew herself from some of the events in the Olympics during that year. And there was, for mental health reasons, really, is what it was. There was a safety aspect to it. She said she was getting the twisty. She was losing orientation in some of her... And some of her flips, whatever they do on gymnastics, I don't know what they call them. But yeah, and so she was a little bit concerned, but she realized what it was. It was a mental health underlying cause to all of that. So she withdrew herself and there was a big uproar about it. Yeah. Right. If you remember this. She caught a lot of shit for that. She did. She got a lot of shit for that. There was a lot of people supportive of her too. Right. At the same time, she caught a lot of shit for that. Yeah. She put down a boundary saying, hey, my mental health at this point is more important than the gold or than competing in the Olympics. Sure. In interviews later, what I just found really interesting was she read a book. Yeah. Yeah. She read a book that helped her. I was wondering if you- Helped her set this boundary. Yeah, I wanted to embarrass you just a little bit here. Mark, what is it like to ruin the Olympics?

03:50:43She read a book called The Subtle Hour of Not Giving a Fuck. This is what she told a reporter. And I guess like her teammates saw her reading it and stuff like that and they're like, wow, you really just don't even give a fuck anymore, do you? And she's like, look, I'm protecting my mental health now. Yeah. And then, yeah, Mark won the Olympics. I remember when that came out and I was like super excited and proud. I was like, my god, Simone Biles read my book and was like doing this very courageous thing. And then everybody started shitting on her and dogpiling on her and like hated her and said she wasn't patriotic and didn't care about her country and had no pride and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, ooh, oh. Quietly tiptoe away. Yeah, the homer such thing going back in the bushes. Yeah. Exactly. Shout out to Simone Biles if she's listening. No, it's super cool. And it is – that is a – that's a perfect example of – Perfect example of this. Hidden cost of boundaries. It's like a lot of people – a lot of people just are not going to understand or appreciate like what you need. And I guess this is where like the Instagram cliches get it right where it's like if they don't get it, if they don't appreciate it, if they don't respect it, then like fuck off. Yeah. There is a certain element of that. Like you have to know what's right for yourself and you have to enforce it. And one way to look at boundaries is they're like filtering mechanisms for the people in your life, right? When you set good boundaries that protect your values, they will automatically filter the right people in and out of your life that match those values and help you live up to those values.

03:52:15And sure, a side effect of that is that you lose some people and some friendships fall away or there might be some fights and drama. There might be tension in the family. It's probably worth touching on just briefly, but with friendships, acquaintances, coworkers, whatnot, if there's a big conflict around a boundary, nine times out of 10, you just lose that friend or you just stop associating with that person. And that sucks, but it's fine. Where it gets really difficult is with family. And generally speaking, when in a family, if a boundary is not being respected, it becomes more a question of exposure and management, right? It's like you have to set boundaries within the relationship or the familial relationship of like, okay, this is how much time I'm willing to spend with my parents. These are the topics I'm willing to talk about and the topics I'm not willing to talk about. These are the activities I'm willing to do and the activities I'm not willing to do. And anybody who has kind of a strained relationship with people in their family, like that's a process that you have to go through at some point. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the relational conflict is really that that will come up. Yeah. When you, when you create new boundaries, that's going to come up the relational side with this mobile story too. You have the social backlash. Most of us won't have to go through that, thankfully, but it can feel just as intense too, when you're going through those relationships that are coming back at you, like you're putting this boundary down. Like we talked about with a, if you're in a codependent relationship or something like that, it's like, you're taking a leg out from under them and they're going to get pissed off.

03:53:43and defensive about it. They're afraid. They're scared. And you have to prepare for that. And knowing that ahead of time, I think, helps a lot. There can be a workplace backlash, especially within certain industries. I mean, it's funny because on the one hand, you can look at this and be like, that's so shitty, right? Like, let's say you work on Wall Street. If you try to tell your boss on Wall Street, like, hey, don't text me after 7 p.m., he's probably gonna laugh at your face. Yeah, and shortly before firing. So there's certain industries where it's like, look, man, if you're not available at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, you're in the wrong place. You shouldn't be working here. Hopefully you're getting paid for that. Hopefully you're at least getting some sort of, yeah. There's a reason you're making that much money. And it's one thing to, like, yes, draw a line in the sand, say this is when I'm not available or whatever. But like if the company comes back to you and they're like, hey, man, this doesn't work for us. then you might be at the wrong company or you might be in the wrong industry. And like, that's a factor here too. Like you can't just, you can't have everything. Oh yeah. Or you might not advance in that company the way you thought you might at some point. And you need to accept that or move on. And again, this comes back to the values piece, right? Like if you are somebody who highly values your leisure time and work-life balance and mental health, what the fuck are you doing in an investment bank? Like that is- Get aligned.

03:55:06What are you doing? Right. Yeah. On the surface, it's like, wow, that's really shitty. That's not fair. And but like if you zoom out, you're like, no, that's not the right fit for you. And actually the boundary, it comes back to what I said. It's like one of two things is going to happen. Either it's going to heal or it's going to or it's going to go away. And in this case, going away is often the best the best outcome for sure. You also have like the cultural conflicts that might come up. We didn't really get into individualist versus collectivist cultures, but that's one way to look at the cultural conflicts that might come up. I think especially, I think one of the reasons we mentioned this at the top of the show, you know, that boundaries have kind of become a thing just within the last 50, 60 years, and it's come from kind of self-help culture and therapy culture. more so in the Western individualist cultures. Right. And those are that's seen as a good thing. In more collectivist cultures, you might find that putting up a personal boundary. That's kind of I mean, wow, that's a little bit rude. If not all out against offensive. Yeah, it's it's it's an offensive act, especially with like family. Yeah. Yeah. So again, we went through all those different categories and everything like that. Each time you're going through one of these, you have to plan for that blowback at some point. And contextualize. In the US or Germany, it may be totally fine and inappropriate to ask your mother to not call you every single day. But if you're in India, it might be completely inappropriate to ask your mother to not call you every day. So just be aware of where you are.

03:56:42I think one way of looking at all this too is just like it is the cost of freedom. It is the cost of being independent, being your own person, defining yourself. Like it's easy for us to come on a podcast like this or to throw stuff on social media being like, yeah, be yourself. Stand up for yourself. Be your own person. Like all that stuff sounds nice. Yeah. This is actually where the rubber meets the road. Being yourself, having personal freedom, having personal autonomy, it requires having difficult conversations, being willing to disappoint other people, being willing to be disliked by other people, being willing to let certain things in your life go, being willing to make hard decisions. This is what it takes. Again, it comes back to the Kantian freedom versus, I guess I'll call it the childish freedom, right? The childish freedom is all the candy in the candy store anytime I want it. There's no mommy and daddy are never going to tell me no. I can have what I want when I want it and there's no repercussions or consequences. Kantian freedom is like, no, you get to define your own limitations because you have to have limitations at some point. And either you define them for yourself or the world is going to define them for you. So you might as well start defining them for yourself. And as you define them, that's going to come with tradeoffs and costs.

03:58:04What you, what you let into your life is just as much, uh, just as important as what you keep out. Right. When it comes to defining who you are, your autonomy, your freedom, your, um, your identity, it's just as much of what you keep out. So any big personal takeaways for you on this episode? Well, the point I kept hammering all the way through this was the flexibility. Like, I think I kind of knew this to some extent. Like, oh, yeah, you know, rigid boundaries are just as bad as like no boundaries to some extent. But the contextual flexibility to me, that was kind of like, oh, OK, it's. Um, it gives you a little bit of freedom itself, right? Like it gives you a little bit of, um, okay, I'm going to set this boundary and it's okay if you're going to change it a little bit, or it's okay if there's exceptions for it. It's okay if you communicate that flexibility to other people too. Like, um, that was a big one for me. I think, what do you got, Mark? Let's go with you. Um, You know, it's funny. I the relationships. I mean, I've been right. Yeah. Literally writing about this relationship stuff for like my entire adult life. So, you know, none of that stuff was new. I've known for a long time that I had bad boundaries in my relationships pretty much through most of my 20s. I think I finally started getting decent at them and maybe my late 20s.

03:59:22I guess I never really – it's such a simple thing but like the self-imposed boundaries, like the boundaries with yourself and with your relationship with yourself. Yeah. I think prepping for this episode made me realize, like, how bad I was at that. Like, I was a very indulgent person for a long time. I was the kid in the candy store who was like, no, mommy's not going to tell me no. I do what I want. I can have it all. Yeah, exactly. And I guess, like, I think I kind of got clarity on that, like, how childish and unrealistic that is in my personal relationships. Like... at a pretty good time. You know, as somebody who I think grew up without any strong role models with boundaries, I think I figured it out pretty well by like a relatively young age. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like very proud of that. But... Yeah, it probably took me another 10 years to really get a handle on setting boundaries with myself. Like respecting my own time, respecting my own health, respecting my own energy, and not just like mindlessly indulging or, you know, compulsively doing things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll tack onto that, I guess, too. The other big one, which you mentioned early on, is that actually, like, that freedom comes through the limitation. It comes from the boundaries. Yeah. And that's, like, whenever I look back, and even now, the things I struggle with right now, it's like, I wish I had more time in this area. I wish I had more freedom, or I wish I had more, like, freedom to do the things I want to do. And it's usually because I have a lack of boundary somewhere else in my life. Like,

04:00:57especially around my own time, especially on my own personal boundaries with myself. I tend to have pretty good external boundaries with other people. It's the ones with myself that I struggle with more. And that's really where like that freedom and autonomy comes from, I think. Yeah. Protecting your time, doing what you're saying, the health stuff too. Like I was saying about the sleep, you know, I don't have very good boundaries around my sleep, hygiene and my sleep routines. And It's interesting because I feel like people are, they tend to be very good at one or not the other. Like they do, they appear to be different skills. Like I have a few people in my life who are extremely regimented with themselves, like have great boundaries with themselves, total messes in relationships. A complete clusterfuck. Yeah. The two influence each other, but they are different muscles. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Anything else? Any other words of wisdom you want to leave the world with, Drew? I think that's it. Boundaries. Boundaries good. Boundaries good. After like three weeks of research and five hours of recording. My brain's mush right now. Summarize this. Boundary's good. Boundary's good. Me true. Boundary's good.

04:02:12Big supporter of boundaries. Go back to Nebraska. Yeah. Oh, my God. All right. That's it for another episode, everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating, a review, subscribe, follow the show wherever you're listening to it. It helps us out a ton. It helps us get the word out. We will see you again in a couple of weeks. Good. That's a wrap.