agency development starts with boundaries
The Toward Wellth mission …
To revolutionize the social experience of a bar by creating a safe healing environment which improves mental health and agency of patrons.
…intentionally includes improving the agency of patrons as a principal goal.
If you’re not familar with personal agency, it is about recognizing that you have choices in life, even when situations are difficult. You are the director of your own movie; you decide how to play out the scenes life presents to you. Agency means you have more capacity to accept that you might not control everything that happens, but you can control your response to what happens.
Building up your ‘agency muscle’ takes time and it doesn’t happen magically if you lack boundaries.
Boundaries are crucial to give space for things that matter to you.
Are your lines between work, digital engagement, and personal life blurred together, chaotically, leaving you often feeling stretched thin?
Time is the ultimate resource in your personal wellth. This chaos, this disorder, this blurring of boundary lines steals time from you. Boundaries are a way you can subtly yet powerfully align your finite time with your values.
Stated differently: Boundaries allow you to better align available time to your values.
In the next couple of sections, we’ll look at how you can “fine-tune” your boundaries c to lead to a more empowered and balanced life (toward greater personal agency).
I may be overly obsessed with digital wellness, although I cannot ignore the observations about the impact that hours and hours of screen time and media consumption steal time from things that people value the most, so we’re going to start with digital boundaries.
Fine-Tuning Digital Boundaries
Engrained in our culture is the observable truth that, for the vast majority, devices are extensions of ourselves. They provide the sense/feeling definition of connectedness, but often fall short of the being definition of connectness. (my inner monologue wants to have the ‘perceptions are reality’ argument make a cameo appearance, but these posts attempt to be readable in 4-8 minutes).
Unbalanced reliance on devices/apps/digital resources can lead to digital burnout.
Setting digital boundaries means being intentional about how and when you use technology.
Ultimately the goal is to rebalance your time in ways that increase your being connected to what you value in more meaningful ways.
There are plenty of strategies that you can employ to reduce the time you spend digitally. A recent post on this substack has several resources.
Fine-Tuning Relationship Boundaries
Establishing relationship boundaries is tough for many, as their parents may have never modeled healthy relationship boundaries with family and friends. This could have been a result of their own traumatic boundary violations that were never healed - the concept of intergenerational trauma and its transmission impact across generations: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42843-023-00096-7.
The link - https://www.scienceofpeople.com/how-to-set-boundaries/ - has a powerful chart that serves well as a ‘quick self assessment’.
While that article may serve as a beginner starting point for assessing what boundaries you might enforce in healthy ways, a better resource is the following link:
14 Worksheets for Setting Healthy Boundaries
If you want to learn more with a 9 minute youtube video on relationship boundaries, this is a succinct and information rich resource -
Fine-Tuning Work-Life Boundaries
Work-life balance is really about setting boundaries that allow you to thrive both professionally and personally.
Easier said than done, right?
When work-life boundaries are soft, you likely don’t feel safe to switch off from work mode and give yourself permission to enjoy downtime. You may even be in a job where leadership or peers have an unhealthy work-life balance — similar to the above transferred intergenerational familial trauma — where you may be unconsciously conditioned to accept violations of boundaries.
This Forbes article does a good job of laying out strategies:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/02/01/16-ways-to-achieve-work-life-balance-by-setting-better-boundaries/
Which include time management and goal setting - which starts with having a strategy for each day - which was previously covered on a TowardWellth post here:
The Yield for Your Effort?
Once you’ve put additional boundaries in place, you have the space to grow and time for real ‘self care’. You are prepared to speak your truth if a boundary is being violated. You have a greater respect for time, creating the time and energy for activities that nourish you, like pursuing hobbies or practicing mindfulness..
Setting boundaries is self-care as you give yourself the space to grow. It’s less about saying no and more about saying yes to a more meaningful and balanced life.
So, take a moment to reflect: Where can you start setting or readjusting boundaries today to live a more fulfilling tomorrow?
The Toward Wellth physical and expected behavior boundaries are intentionally designed to help support your personal boundaries - or at minimum a safe environment for you to practice self care and improve your agency.
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