Performance, Boundaries, and Baggage: Learning how to soar!
Is it your desire to reach your true potential?
Do you feel an itch to push harder, test your limits and see just how far you’re able to go? I do. Maybe that’s why I love driving fast and dream of being behind the wheel of a Lamborghini on a long, deserted stretch of road. As a psychotherapist, I’ve had the privilege of hearing many diverse life stories and life struggles. Some of these are from prominent community leaders and others from those forming the bedrock of our culture such as bus drivers, teachers, nurses, and restaurant servers. Occasionally, I’ll be sitting across from a surgeon, CEO, lawyer, or business owner. I can tell you unequivocally that reaching the apex of performance is not possible without practicing healthy boundaries.
What do boundaries have to do with performance?
Basically, practicing healthy boundaries involves owning and managing what belongs to you (thoughts, feelings, actions) and refusing to own and manage what does NOT belong to you (another’s thoughts, feelings, and actions).
For example, if you need time to study for an upcoming test but you choose, instead, to play video games until 4am, then more than likely your test performance will be poor and you will receive the natural consequences of that choice (passed over for a promotion, loss of raise, etc). Additionally, if you cannot say “No” to a coworker who repeatedly asks you to “cover” for him and you are fatigued working extra hours doing his work then your performance will suffer. He may end up with a raise and promotion while you get dismissed.
Additionally, our private lives and personal relationships absolutely impact our professional performance. I’ve had many conversations with patients who had the potential to be rock stars in their field, but their wheels were wobbly due to instability and insecurity from their personal relationships. Of course, we can always compartmentalise at work, refusing to acknowledge thoughts and feelings surrounding the dumpster fire of our personal life. However, compartmentalising requires mental bandwidth much like holding an inflated ball under water. You can do it with 1-2 balls, but you also don’t have full access to your arms/hands while doing so.
Rather than continued relegation of valuable mental bandwidth to compartmentalising personal dynamics of dysfunction, set healthy boundaries.
- Practicing healthy boundaries allows you to own your own thoughts/feelings even when others don’t understand, accept, or approve them.
- You also have the right/responsibility to verbalise your upset as opposed to denying it and building resentment. (Note: fostering resentment, much like holding a grudge, also requires ongoing mental bandwidth).
- Healthy boundaries also provide liberation from managing another’s feelings or actions. If you respectfully speak your truth and someone reacts with anger, that anger is theirs to manage. Although being the recipient of someone’s anger is not pleasant, we can still give them the freedom to feel whatever they need to feel. Their anger is not ours to own or manage.
- Applying that boundaries concept is truly liberating and frees up a tremendous amount of mental bandwidth.
Now that your mental bandwidth, that had previously been allocated for compartmentalised, is available your potential performance has significantly expanded!
It truly will be exciting to witness how far you can soar once healthy boundaries have helped you jettison dysfunctional baggage!
