The looser your boundaries,

the bigger the disrespect.

(4 steps to make people respect you)

EFFORTLESS LIFE LETTER 34

reading time - 8 minutes

The fastest way to destroy your self-worth is by allowing people to disrespect your boundaries.

Here is the reality: people only care about themselves.

This doesn’t always come from an intentional or conscious place.

Most people are so wrapped up in their daily struggles and the busyness of their lives that they can’t afford to focus on anyone else but themselves.

Let me give you an analogy to illustrate this.

You got into a severe car accident and broke your leg. You are in terrible pain and desperate to get to the hospital so someone can take care of you.

All your attention and energy will be focused on your broken leg until you get to a place of safety and relief.

Getting yourself out of pain becomes your absolute main priority because the injury now threatens your survival.

At this exact moment, you don’t care about

• Who won the elections
• The bills you have to pay
• Your best friend’s heartbreak
• Improving your relationship with your partner

You only care about one thing: getting any temporal or long-term relief (notice, I said temporal or short-term).

Can I blame you? Absolutely not.

You can’t pour from an empty cup.

Every Monday, I meet a friend for about 1 hour to have lunch together.

It’s a weekly ritual we both decided to commit to, allowing us to regularly catch up and maintain a good relationship.

In the last couple of months, I have come to notice that our lunch breaks look like this:

She tells me about her work problems and I listen.

Our relationship slowly slipped into this dynamic because her workplace gradually became a bigger factor of stress and dissatisfaction in her life.

To the point where it affects every other aspect of her life (this is her broken leg).

Whenever she asks how I am doing, I tell her about the excitement that comes from the early mornings I spend writing these letters, the interesting people I get to work with through my coaching services or the new projects I plan to start this year.

You get it – not the same vibe.

I am happy to offer a supportive ear by making her feel seen, heard and understood not only because she needs it, but especially because I am in a position to do so.

Unfortunately, my friend’s case represents 99% of people.

Most people have at least one or several areas of their lives that negatively affect the overall quality of their life experience.

• Unhealthy or toxic workplace
• Unhealthy or toxic relationships (family, partner or friendships)
• Lack of meaning and life purpose
• Lack of time and personal freedom
• Financial problems and limitations
• Mental and or physical health problems

What aggravates the suffering is the feeling of powerlessness regarding that situation.

You can’t think of a long-term solution that will fix the painful situation you currently find yourself in (aka your broken leg) so you end up just accepting the pain until you get used to it.

Over time, it becomes the standard you adapt yourself to as we all convince ourselves that this probably is how good life can get.

You may now wonder how any of this relates to boundaries and respect.

Respect is earned, not given.

Accepting the standard of a dissatisfied life due to the lack of persistence, creativity and courage required to get out of the pain you are experiencing won’t just make the pain go away.

It will actually make you bitter, frustrated, resentful and very selfish with time.

It’s the main reason why most people only can care about themselves.

An unhealed leg after a severe car accident doesn’t just magically get better. It deteriorates and festers until it starts affecting every other part of your body.

Expecting people to respect you or care about your boundaries whilst everyone is focused on trying to escape the pain of their broken leg is just not going to happen.

You have to command respect by giving them a reason to care about anything else than themselves.

You make others respect you by respecting yourself.

Here is how you do that (and why it matters):

1. Respect your time.

A bit earlier in this letter, we spoke about the struggles and businesses most of us face in our daily lives.

What you will notice if you take the time to observe people, is that we all fall behind with our long to-do lists, the million promises we make to everyone and the high standards we would like to think we are capable of achieving.

The truth is, a lot of people don’t even master the basics.

By basic, I mean efficiently managing your time.

If you are:

• Regularly arriving late
• Constantly stressed and in a rush
• Getting upset about never having enough time
• Taking forever to reply to messages and emails
• Struggling to keep your promises and meet deadlines

You are not in control of your time.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.” – SENECA

How many of us fill up our days with:

• work that we don’t want to do
• places we don’t want to be
• people we don’t want to be around
• commitments we don’t truly care about

only to complain about how frustrating it is not to have enough time for the things you actually want to do.

Let me remind you: time will pass, and at some point, you will die.

If you don’t value how and where you spend your time and who you spend it with, you will have a hard time respecting yourself for deciding to waste life’s rarest commodity.

2. Respect your attention.

You can only afford to get distracted for two reasons:

1) You don’t have a goal worth important enough to focus on

I work with a young lady who is used to going out, drinking and partying on weekends.

Not too long ago, she set the goal for herself to participate in a half-marathon that will take place in a couple of months.

During our last session together, she expressed how surprised she is to realise that going out on the weekend doesn’t feel that important anymore because it wouldn’t support her running goals.

She swapped her party evenings for early bed nights so she could fully enjoy her morning weekend runs.

This is such a meaningful example of how your goals (or the lack thereof) direct how you decide to invest your attention.

2) You are seeking temporal relief

At the start of this letter, we spoke about seeking short or long-term relief from the suffering caused by our broken leg.

I get it – no one wants to be in pain.

But choosing distraction (trying to feel better short-term) is actually choosing avoidance.

And whenever you choose to avoid a problem, you are also walking away from the opportunity to solve that problem.

It’s like choosing to live off analgesics (medication that relieves pain) as soon as you are reminded of the pain your broken leg is in, instead of taking all the necessary steps to fully heal and recover from your accident properly.

Where you focus your attention matters way more than you think.

It’s the second most important commodity you can choose to invest in yourself if you respect your desire to create a life for yourself, you fully want to live.

3. Respect your own boundaries

You need time and attention to start fixing and healing your broken leg (unless you want to stay in pain for the rest of your life).

And you won’t be able to achieve that if you don’t take your recovery process seriously.

You do that by saying YES to everything that supports and aligns with your healing journey and saying NO to everything else.

• NO to constant distractions
• NO to places you don’t truly want to be
• NO to commitments you don’t care about
• NO to things you know you don’t want to do
• NO to people you don’t want to spend time with

No one will respect your time and value your attention more than someone who you repeatedly said NO to because they simply weren’t worth it yet.

If you want to gain clarity on everything you should say NO to, sign up to my free Emotional Minimalism course and head over to the Decluttering Process section.

4. Respect your uniqueness.

There is something I truly hope you can accept about yourself.

You are supposed to be different.

No one cares about respecting your boundaries, your time or your values or ideas if you are easily replaceable just because you are like everyone else.

You earn people’s respect when they realise that you have something unique to offer they can’t get anywhere else in the world.

It’s one of those rare occasions where people are willing to care about something else but themselves because they know that what you share will inspire them to alleviate the suffering they are in.

Accepting what makes you different from everyone else is the ultimate form of respect for who you truly are.

Leaving the world without any other option than to reflect that level of respect back.

I will see you in next week’s letter.

Until then, take care.

Oli