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June 2007 Newsletter: What height
are your boundaries? I was curious about the different heights for the fences. “Fred likes to share a beer with us and he appreciates a chat in the garden and the barbeque. He’s 90, his wife’s gone into a home.”
Joe explained the rationale behind the latticework fences he’s built surrounding his lush new garden. “So, I kept this one high because they’ve got noisy kids and aren’t too friendly. This one is low so that we can keep an eye on Fred and he feels he has company even when he’s out there on his own.”
As coaches it’s a privilege to share in our clients’ dreams, travelling with them through the excitement and the setbacks. Joe is planning to shift from being employed to running his own landscaping company. He’s focused on what he truly wants and feels that every moment he works for someone else he is living a lie, not being true to himself. His ultimate goal is to build a show garden for the most prestigious event in the gardener’s year – the Chelsea Flower Show. Together we’re examining the hurdles that lie ahead and how to jump them. His dream is an expression of his most confident and true self.
In gardens we put up physical boundaries – walls, hedges, and fences. In other aspects of our lives we erect less visible boundaries. Yet they still exist and are important to us. When the boundaries are too low or thin, we can get a sense of violation – of being exposed and violated. Yet when they are too high or thick, we can feel excluded and shut out.
Have you experienced that sense of when your personal space is violated – and what that feels like? Or of being isolated and lonely – when you wanted someone to share your space with you and there was no one?
In building your own self-confidence and holding that, it can help to examine the boundaries you create. What are the boundaries you have between yourself and other people in your life? Are they all the same height and thickness and could it be helpful to change some of that? When do you feel confident to do that?
Another client, the head teacher of an inner city primary school, Lindsay, talks about her ‘work self’ and her ‘home self.’ “I never let people at work know anything about my personal life if I can avoid it. I like to keep that completely private. Those two aspects of me are worlds apart.” The advantage of this is that Lindsay focuses exclusively on her job while at work. She has played the role well. The downside is with the extra-curricular demands of her job that she has given little time and attention to her home self and only now at 39 has realised that she has missed her chance to have a family.
Boundaries have their value. They provide focus, privacy, structure, safety, containment. Yet when they are taken down a new world opens up to view – a new, borrowed landscape emerges.
As a keen gardener like Joe, I (Kate) will confess my bias here. I prefer flexible and open, natural fences to high and solid ones. Sometimes this causes problems for me, but most often it works. Even though I value my privacy and respect others, the distance between my home self and my work self is minimal. As the two merge closer and closer, I find it simplest to just be my authentic self, so what you see is what you get.
This month you might like to explore the fences, the hidden rooms that you create in your own world – both in your relationships with others and with yourself.
In Chapter 10 of ‘Building Self Confidence for Dummies’ we write about ‘Creating a haven for yourself’. A haven is a quiet, comfortable place where you can restore mind and body to a restful, inspired and abundant state, where you can create a vision of your future, and create the space to protect you from your busy life – for maybe 20 minutes each day.
June is a great month to explore wonderful outdoor spaces. Let us know how you get on.
Best wishes
Kate and Brinley
See the extra chapter "Ultimate Confidence: The Power To Get Any Result You
Want" available exclusively through
www.yourmostconfidentself.com.
Building Self-Confidence for Dummies by Kate Burton
and Brinley Platts
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