How to Set Relationship Boundaries and Be Self-Loving: 5 Ways
Setting boundaries with friends and family is always tricky! I’ll be sharing 5 habits of women who set healthy boundaries in this blog post. I hope you will feel more empowered and confident about your relationship boundaries after reading this!
These are 5 habits of women who set healthy boundaries to feel empowered and confident.
Setting boundaries is always tricky for us.
If we are too rigid, we will be seen as ‘selfish’.
If we have weak boundaries, we will be very frustrated with ourselves.
Some people will be happy with us, though. Because they get us to do what they want.
Self-love is needed in times like these. You can learn the 5 habits of self-love from this blog post.
If you learn better with videos, you can watch my video on setting boundaries below:
The trick about boundaries is to know when to give and take.
Being flexible takes some pressure off our shoulders.
It’s a matter of personal choice, but we decide where our boundaries are clearly drawn and where our boundaries can be a little more…fluid.
If you need a shortcut to help kick start your boundaries, you can download my Set Healthy Boundaries action sheet below.
I’ll be sharing 5 basic habits which can help us set basic boundaries so that we feel more empowered.
Habit #1: Get Rid of our Excuses
This needs us to be self-aware.
How many times have we made excuses for other people and allow them to overstep our boundaries?
Below are some examples:
”I don’t like my sister coming to my house 4 times a week. But she is lonely and has no family, so I…”
“I don’t want to lend my cousin $5000, but she is crying and begging me. She has a tough family background and comes from a financially-strapped family. Meanwhile, I have $20,000 sitting in my account. So I will…”
”I don’t want to answer my friend’s call at 11pm as I am sleepy and it’s not urgent. But she wants my input now and it will only take 10 minutes. So I…”
The first step to healing is always awareness.
Once we can pinpoint when we are making excuses for other people to crash our boundaries, we can take the next action. And implement some boundary rules.
Habit #2: how to Set Your Boundary Rules
When we set boundaries for the first time, our loved ones will react.
They may admire us and respect our boundaries or attack us for it.
If you set your boundaries politely and that cousin attacks you, you may want to cut back on the time you spend with her.
It’s good to be aware that conflict may happen when we set boundaries in our relationships. Just brace yourself.
You can choose to tell your loved one about your boundary face-to-face or in written form.
For example:
”Hi Sarah! It’s great that you came over to my house today. In future, is it okay if you call me first before coming over? I have some projects to take care of.”
”Hi Natasha! I’m sorry to hear about your money problems. I can’t give you $5000 as I need the cash myself. Is there any other way I can help you?”
”Hi Laura! I’m afraid I am very tired right now. Can I talk to you tomorrow instead?”
(Sometimes, a white lie or two is needed to preserve our sanity…oops!)
You can also text the above scripts to the person who flouts your boundaries.
Texting is good if you don’t like confrontation.
Or if the other person is aggressive and may attack you back.
We don’t want to be bullied into submission!
Habit #3: Be around SUPPORTIVE people
It is crucial to spend time with positive and uplifting people.
Check your feelings after meeting up with someone.
Do you feel drained, exhausted and uninspired?
Or do you feel joyful, motivated and in high spirits?
Don’t spend too much time with people who don’t care for your privacy or those who don’t respect you when you say ”Not now.”
It doesn’t matter if you have been friends for 20 years. If a friend does not respect a simple “No”, it’s time to relax the friendship a bit.
Habit #4: Be Comfortable with Not Explaining Yourself
This requires massive self-esteem.
You don’t have to explain yourself if you don’t want to. Please don’t!
If the person is pushy and keeps asking “Why don’t you want to tell me?”, you can laugh it off and say “I’ll tell you next time.” And then change the subject.
If you are gutsy, you can say something along the lines of: “I don’t think I want to share personal matters right now.”
You have the right not to answer questions you don’t want to.
You don’t owe anyone an explanation.
Again, a white lie may be needed if the other party is extremely pushy.
Or if you have to answer an unwanted question in front of an audience (I feel sorry for you).
Habit #5: Accept that Some People will STILL be Offended and Disappear
When we put our foot down or show our authentic self, some people will flee from our lives.
That is okay, because they are the ones we don’t have a genuine friendship with, in the first place.
We want to be with friends and family who love us for our true selves. And respect our likes and dislikes.
Your true friends will understand your boundaries.
Selfish friends and family will test your boundaries all the time.
You will lose friends by setting boundaries but that is when you find out who your true friends are.
My last thoughts on setting boundaries
If you need to kick start your boundary-setting, you can download my Set Healthy Boundaries printable below.
If you want to know 5 habits of self-loving women, read this blog post.
Meanwhile, have a good week.
Shikah
(Free Printable) How to be Intentional and Feel Calm if you are very busy
I’m sharing 5 habits so you can practice intentional living even if you are very busy. Intentional living takes effort. To make it easier for you to practise intentional living everyday, you can adopt these 5 habits as soon as possible. You can feel relaxed and calm even if you have a busy lifestyle!
How to practice intentional living with these 5 habits even if you are very busy.
I love being intentional everyday. I make better choices, I am calmer and I am happier with my life in general.
But when we are busy, being intentional takes too much mental energy.
I am sharing 5 habits to help you practise intentional living as much as possible. Even if you are busy as heck.
If you are new-ish to intentional living, you can get a clearer idea with this Intro to Intentional Living blog post from SimplyFiercely.com.
If you like a more hands-on approach, you can check out my Top 7 intentional living worksheets you can download for free!
Let’s start learning the 5 habits of intentional living for busy babes like you.
Habit #1: Start with a clear mind in the mornings
This is so important.
“Yeah Shikah, but how do I keep a clear mind in the morning?” you ask.
Step 1: Ensure you have at least 7 hours of sleep at night.
Sorry, this sounds boring, I know. But when your mind is well-rested, your day becomes almost magical.
You are in a good mood, you take on work challenges like a pro and you even eat better food.
Step 2: Wake up 30 minutes earlier. And do any activity which calms your mind.
Some examples are:
Meditation (Jason Stephenson’s guided meditations on YouTube are good)
Listening to binaural beats on Spotify
Yoga (Yoga with Adrienne on YouTube is a good start)
Journaling
Going for a run
Sipping on a cup of coffee slowly and mindfully (with no gadgets around)
A clear mind is what stands in between having a mouth-watering, wholesome meal in the morning and grabbing a sugar-laden frappuccino for breakfast.
If you need 25 small ways to start intentional living, you can download my printable below:
Habit #2: Shake up your routine everyday
Some ideas are:
Try a new style of outfit. Wear a colour you’ve never worn before. (Pore over ‘best-dressed celebs’ lists for some ideas)
Try a new makeup technique. (Go to YouTube for inspiration!)
Run along a different route or take a different route to work.
Get coffee from a coffee place you’ve never tried before.
Have a meal at a cafe you’ve never been to before.
Listen to a genre of music you’ve never tried.
I think you get the drift.
If you are quite new to intentional living, you can get advice on 5 intentional habits for beginners in this blog post.
Habit #3: Journal 15 minutes before sleeping
I will admit that I am bad with this habit.
On some nights, it takes too much effort to reflect on my day (I just want to sleep!).
But…on the days that I journal before sleeping, I feel so good and in control of my life.
Habit #4: Do a tech detox 60 minutes before bedtime
I know many of us will struggle with this. But it’s life-changing, girls.
The first time I did a 60-minute tech detox at 930pm (I sleep around 1030pm each night), I was struggling to find things to do!
I will list down what you can do for 60 minutes without your phone or laptop:
Take a long, elaborate shower. With essential oils, scrubs, body masks and all.
Journal!
Read something. A newspaper, a book, a magazine, an Ikea catalogue (no joke).
Talk to your partner in person
Go exercise! Yoga or some stretching.
Visualisation. I have read that visualising for 10 minutes a day can manifest what you desire faster.
Lie down in bed and rest
Before you realise it, 60 minutes is up. This is when you tuck your phone away and go to bed.
(Warning: Don’t give in to the temptation to quickly scroll through your emails or messages! Leave that for tomorrow morning)
Habit #5: Plan every single day!
This habit sounds really obvious isn’t it?
But sometimes, days have gone by without me planning anything.
No elaborate planning is needed: just list 3 things you want to accomplish the following day.
I will advise you to plan your days the night before, not on the day itself.
Once we’ve listed the 3 priorities to accomplish the following day, we will sleep better.
And wake up all geared-up with a sense of purpose.
My last thoughts on intentional living if you are busy
Intentional living needs some effort.
In this blog post, I share 5 intentional living advice for beginners to help you kick start your intentional living journey.
If you want to take action immediately, you can download 25 simple ideas for intentional living which you can start today.
I believe that if we practise the 5 habits I shared in this blog post, we can be intentional on most days!
Share with me below: What are your challenges with intentional living?
Shikah
Free Printable Daily Planner to Help You Get Organized and Be Intentional
I created this free printable daily planner to help you get organized, achieve your daily goals and be more intentional everyday! Being intentional is not easy - it needs prompting! In this planner, take note of things which make you happy everyday. And plan how to make tomorrow even better than today. Print it out or type directly on it!
A free printable daily planner to help you get organized and be more intentional. Print it out or type directly on it!
It is exhausting to be intentional for every decision everyday.
Sometimes we need prompting.
That is why I created this free printable daily planner - to help us get organized and be more intentional. And make it easier for us to do so.
Focus on what went right today. And how we can make tomorrow even better.
I wanted a printable daily planner which is simple and useful and makes me feel good.
Oh, and it has to be easy for us women on the go. So I created this for you to either
print 7 copies every Sunday in A4 size and staple them
or type directly on the planner and save it!
So how do we use this daily planner? Let’s start!
List Only 3 Goals for the Day
Keep our goals at 3 every day. Any more than that and we will feel overwhelmed!
Keep the goals intentional. Make sure these goals are something you TRULY want to achieve today.
Write the small things which made you feel good today
Write ANYTHING which made you feel good today. Genuinely good.
Maybe you saw a stylish lady on the street who made you feel inspired about dressing up.
Maybe you saw a handsome stranger who looked like Liam Hemsworth on the train and you felt dreamy.
Maybe you were at a boutique which had killer views and you felt at peace being there (me at an Apple studio a few days ago).
Seek out the things which make you happy every day.
This makes every day feel special.
And trains us to have a positive and intentional mindset.
It can be as simple as feeling the sun on your face as you walk through a park.
Write as many as you can.
Think how you can make tomorrow better than today
Keep this list to 3 activities so they seem achievable!
My list for this will usually include a couple of these:
Sleep for 9 hours
Do a tech detox 60 minutes before bedtime
Watch a rom-com or funny sitcom
Try a new eyeshadow technique
Every day is different. So your list for today will look different from yesterday’s.
My last thoughts on this printable daily planner:
This daily planner looks simple.
But if we intentionally write in it every day, we will have a positive mindset.
That’s how powerful habits can be.
Print 7 copies of this daily planner in A4 size every Sunday and staple them to keep life simple.
Or just type directly on the document and save it!
Type your email address below and I’ll send it to your inbox.
Featured in this post
(Free Printable) How to Overcome Perfectionism and be Productive
I will be sharing 5 tips to tone down perfectionism and be productive with your work! You can also download my Pause Perfectionism & Feel Relaxed printable to help you feel calmer during your perfectionism moments.
5 ways to let go of perfectionism and be more productive.
If you are a perfectionist, you can relate to this:
have started and not finished many projects
taking twice or thrice as long to finish something
keep double-checking, changing and re-editing your work. (Till it never gets completed.)
If you want to feel more relaxed and less anxious during your perfectionism moments, you can download my Pause Perfectionism & Feel Relaxed cheat sheet below.
My perfectionist streak is something which annoys me to no end.
That’s because it slows down my progress work-wise.
It has something to do with self doubt, self-worth and confidence.
We are doubting ourselves and our work quality too much.
Wait till you spot someone who has half your experience and no qualifications being ballsy enough to do something you want to do. (Such as launching a business and charging sky-high amounts for their work.)
Then we get frustrated with ourselves.
And wondering why on earth we didn’t overcome our perfectionism, pursue our dream (and stick to it) one year ago.
I have 5 small, beginner strategies to help us all overcome perfectionism in our daily lives.
Perfectionism needs a mindset shift. But mindset shifts take time.
So I’ll share practical, everyday strategies to manage our perfectionism in this blog post.
So you can start overcoming your perfectionism and being more productive today.
If you learn better through videos, I have created one video for this blog post. (full volume needed!)
If you prefer reading, let’s start!
Advice #1: Work within time limits!
Doing work at cafes is great because many of us get bored sitting in one place for hours.
So we have no choice but to whip out our laptops and start working away.
If we know that we get bored after 2 hours, we know that we have 2 hours to finish our work in that sitting.
My favourite trick is to do work on my laptop (and leave my charger at home).
My laptop battery dies after 1.5 hours, so I’ll have no choice but to produce something high-quality within 1.5 hours.
I’ll start working and researching at the speed of light.
Trust me, you’ll be surprised to see the type of quality work you can produce if you are under time pressure.
Some people swear by this free productivity and time management app.
It buzzes off every 25 minutes so we are forced to focus for 25 minutes. It worked for me, but makes me a tad anxious. I prefer longer time limits such as 1.5 hours.
Also…if you are a perfectionist, chances are your work is always a little better quality than non-perfectionists (don’t shoot me!).
Because perfectionists are naturally self-critical and hardwired to produce half-decent work, anytime and anywhere. (Again, please don’t shoot me.)
Advice #2: Stick to your decision
If you are the type who changes her mind multiple times in the middle of a project, it helps to stick to one decision.
Yes, better ideas will hit us along the way.
Yes, our project will be ten times better if we add X,Y and Z to it.
But if we follow our every whim and every urge to improve our project, it won’t be done!
And we add unnecessary stress on ourselves.
Right now, I’m in the middle of writing A Beautiful Mindset ebook to transform women from being self-critical to self-loving.
I wanted to add 101 mindset strategies to this ebook. I have too many ideas.
But if I add all these strategies, I will never be productive and never finish writing this book.
So you can try being satisfied with a modest - but solid - project.
Advice #3: Put Yourself Out There
This is scary but works for us.
Put ourselves out there. Tell people that your project, business, presentation will be done by “31st October” or some other specific date.
Announce it on social media (if it’s relevant to you).
We will be hard-pressed to finish it by its deadline to avoid embarrassment.
If we have to scale down our project to hit the deadline, so be it. At least we are productive and the work gets done!
We can always create another project another time.
Once we finish one project, we will be motivated to finish another one.
Instead of planning one big project after another, we can start by planning and pulling through a couple of small projects first.
Advice #4: Mistakes are not life-threatening
“Many of us live so cautiously just to arrive at death safely.”
I don’t remember where I got the above quote from, but it hits home doesn’t it?
This is my favourite but most difficult mindset shift.
“Mistakes are not fatal.”
“Mistakes are part of life.”
“Mistakes are learning lessons.”
“If we don’t make mistakes, we’ll never learn.”
We’ve all heard the 4 phrases above before.
If you are a perfectionist, the idea of making mistakes makes our skin crawl.
(Making mistakes is for weaklings - that’s the first thought that pops in my mind. Oops)
The only way to embrace mistakes is to make as many mistakes as possible.
Try a new approach.
If we screw up, oh well. Take a couple of days to recover from our embarrassment and try something else.
The most successful people in the world make more mistakes than the average person.
Advice #5: Remember your little successes
I have written a blog post about this before.
Create a success log for yourself.
The idea is to write our most meaningful successes on paper.
Nothing boosts our self-esteem faster than that.
You can download a template for creating your own Success Log here.
My last thoughts on overcoming perfectionism and remaining productive.
Perfectionism needs mindset shifts.
Perfectionists link our self-worth with our ability to avoid mistakes.
Don’t hold off starting or completing a project because it’s ‘not perfect enough’.
There are many other people with half your talent and half your skills enjoying much success doing what you want to do.
Let’s accept that we are all valuable yet imperfect human beings.
If you want to feel relaxed and less anxious during your perfectionism moments, you can download my Pause Perfectionism & Feel Relaxed worksheet below.
See you in my next post!
Shikah
Featured in this post:
A Beautiful Mindset eBook - From Self-critical to Self-loving
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(Free Printable) How to Start Finding Your Purpose and Improve Self Worth
I’ll be sharing 4 strategies to help you find your life purpose and improve your self worth! You can download ‘My Life Purpose’ action sheet to bring you 1 step closer to finding out your bigger purpose in life.
I’ll be sharing 4 ways to help you find your bigger purpose and increase your self-worth.
The reason I want to write about finding your purpose is because it will help you feel worthy in life.
You may be jobless, single, an ‘outcast’ or ‘weird’ but if you know your bigger purpose, those labels won’t bother you.
Finding our purpose is simple but not easy.
Because nobody can tell you if your purpose is right or wrong. So we’ll fumble through life trying new things until we feel inner peace.
If you learn better by watching videos, you can watch the video I created specially for this blog post:
If you want a shortcut and get one step closer to finding out what your purpose is, you can download ‘My Life Purpose’ Action Sheet below.
Let’s begin!
1. Purpose and joy are interlinked.
I am not a spirituality expert.
But the experts always link ‘finding your purpose’ with what gives us ‘joy’.
According to them, our emotions act as a compass in our lives.
So if we feel joyful, free and light doing something, that activity is linked to our purpose in this life.
If we feel dread, heaviness and fear, we are probably not supposed to do that thing.
It sounds rather simple.
I want to add ‘fulfilment’ to this:
Joy + Fulfilment = Our Bigger Purpose
If you can find work which give you BOTH joy and fulfilment, you are lucky.
I want to be practical here and say that in all the work we do, there will be aspects we dislike.
But if overall, you feel joy and fulfilment 70% of the time, you are in a good place!
2. What are your natural talents?
Aha. Do you know what your natural talents are?
Your natural talent(s) is something:
which is easy for you to do, but challenging for other people
in fact, sometimes you are bewildered at how other people do not know what you know!
which you love doing since you were about 6 years old. (Take note that you may be suppressing these talents during your childhood if your parents disapproved of them)
Sometimes you discover your natural talents when you are much older.
And that is okay because all our life journeys are different.
Again, if something is effortless for you to do but difficult for some other people, it may be your natural talent.
3. Ask people for their opinions!
I like this suggestion.
If you are truly clueless, start asking your trusted friends, family members, colleagues for their perspective on your talents.
You will notice some similarities in their responses.
If you feel embarrassed asking people “What do you think I’m talented in?” you can tell them your perspective on their talents and then asking them to return the favour.
If you still can’t get yourself to ask other people what your talents are, you might find my article ‘How Not to Care What Other People Think and Live Your Purpose’ helpful!
4. Complete ‘My Life Purpose’ Action Sheet
I created ‘My Life Purpose’ Action Sheet to help you get 1 step closer to finding your purpose.
I feel strongly for women building their self worth!
Self worth will ensure you stay comfortable in your own skin even if life throws curveballs at you.
You will remain calm and level-headed even if you don’t fit in. Even if you lose your job. Even if you lose a relationship.
Because you know that you have a much bigger purpose on this Earth.
My last thought on finding your purpose and improving self worth
Everyone has a ‘medicine’ which helps heal the people around them. What’s yours?
It’s time to find out!
Meanwhile, have a good week.
Shikah
