Question:
I loved your article about manipulation, but you mentioned that good personal boundaries are important in a healthy relationship. Could you explain that in more detail? What do good personal boundaries look like? How do I know if my relationship is healthy? Answer: I am so glad you asked this question, because a lot of people have boundary issues, especially if at any time in your childhood you experienced abuse (of any kind), teasing or any other experience forced upon you. You may subconsciously feel that you can’t say no, set limits or demand better treatment. You may feel you have to take what you get. You may have lost your voice. When this happens, you may accept inappropriate behavior from others. You may allow someone to make decisions for you. You may feel forced into situations you don’t want to be in. You may have trouble saying no. You may betray your own needs to get approval or love. The problem is that your weak boundaries don't make people love you, they make people lose respect for you. So, you must constantly evaluate your relationships to make sure they are healthy. Is there room in this relationship for both parties to be themselves and be honored as individuals? Deborah Day said, “Evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of any relationship is your responsibility. You do not have to passively accept what is brought to you. You can choose.” I second this. You should never feel stuck with what you are getting. If you aren’t happy, it is your responsibility to explore those feelings and figure out what’s not working for you. You may need to create some healthy boundaries (limits or rules) to protect yourself from unacceptable behavior. Brainstorm each of these four ideas on a piece of scratch paper and come up with some rules that would honor your rights and needs. Think about ways you have been hurt in the past. What rules might have protected you? (I have included some example boundaries — but you must brainstorm the boundaries needed in your situation.) People may not …
You can go overboard with boundaries though and get overly protective of yourself. This is also unhealthy in relationships. If your entire focus is on protecting yourself, you won’t give enough love to keep your relationship alive. We are going for balance. Remember, enforcing boundaries is not about saying you are more important that other people. It is about saying you are as important as other people. You only expect to be treated the way you will also treat others. This is about giving and taking. It is about respecting and caring for yourself and your partner too. In a healthy relationship both parties have varied interests and give each other room to be who they are. They honor and respect each other’s opinions, even when they are different. Good boundaries prevent you from becoming too dependent on (or melded into) the other person. You want the person in your life, because you care about and respect that person, but you don’t need him or her. In a healthy relationship, you don’t depend on the other person for your self-esteem. If you have low self-esteem, and do not have a clear sense of “who you are” and your infinite absolute value, you will often let other people define you, determine your interests, and even your thoughts and emotions. If you struggle with low self-esteem, being pushed around or walked on, you may need to do some work with a coach or counselor to get your power back. Becoming a stronger person with good boundaries will either be the end of your unhealthy relationship or the beginning of a more healthy one. A healthy partner will respect (and even like) your independence and confidence. This is the bottom line, “You determine your value and teach the world how to treat you.” If you don’t protect, defend and care for yourself, you will attract people into your life who don’t do those things either. Real love has to start with a love for self. If you don’t love yourself, then you aren’t capable of a healthy relationship. That is why the best thing you can do for your relationship is to work on you. Hope that brings some clarity. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a life coach and speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem.
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I was having a conversation with my ill husband yesterday about all the challenges in our life and feeling defeated. For the first time in my life ... I feel utterly defeated. How would you address this kind of despair with a non-religious person? Answer: I am so sorry that you have been dealt such a tough hand. I do have some advice and I know it can help, but is it going to require you to stretch a bit. The one thing you absolutely must know is that “despair is optional” even when things are really bad. You have the power to change how you feel about this situation. If you choose to claim that power. You don’t have to experience this situation in a negative, defeated and painful way — even though it seems logical and justified to do so. Despair, defeat and discouragement are choices and there are other options. (A lot of people are resistant to this idea, though. Every time I talk about this principle, someone leaves a comment saying Coach Kim obviously doesn’t “get it” because it’s not that easy.) I agree that it’s not necessarily easy, but it is possible. I could also tell you some of the difficult experiences I’ve been through to prove to you that I do “get it” but you may still not believe me. So, take it from Viktor Frankl who survived being a prisoner in concentration camps during World War II. He knows about suffering better than any of us, and he agrees with me. Frankl believed you could choose a positive mindset and find meaning in a situation, and that in choosing this you might literally suffer less. In his book, "A Man’s Search for Meaning," Frankl said to find this meaning you must figure out what your unique life challenges are asking of you. What are they here to teach you? How could they serve you, other people or the world? He said, “I can see beyond the misery of the situation to the potential for discovering a meaning behind it, and thus to turn an apparently meaningless suffering, into a genuine human achievement.” He continued, “There are no tragic, negative aspects which could not be, by the stand one takes to them, transmuted into positive accomplishments.” He believed that every challenge or trial could be turned into an accomplishment, by simply choosing a positive perspective around it. Let me give you an example. An old man was suffering with great depression because his wife had passed away leaving him alone. Dr. Frankl asked him what would have happened if he had been the one to die first, and his wife had been here alone. He replied that she would have suffered greatly. She would have been even more miserable than he was. Dr. Frankl then asked this man to imagine that he had volunteered to stay here on Earth alone, to spare his wife that suffering. Would that idea change how he felt about his situation? It did, because now there was purpose and meaning to his suffering. When it means something, it is easier to bear. I battle chronic pain on a daily basis. I choose to believe this pain is serving me, because it gives me empathy and helps me connect with other people. It makes me a better coach. You can choose to see your situation in a positive way, too. You can decide to let it shape your character and give you compassion. You can use it to make you stronger, wiser and more loving. You can use it to teach those around you how to be positive in spite of difficulties. Or you can choose depression and defeat. It is totally up to you. Please understand that making this choice is not about positive thinking or mind over matter — it’s about logic and common sense. If you get to choose your mindset and one option will make you more miserable, and the other less miserable, isn’t it just common sense to choose less misery? Whenever I find myself feeling defeated, I take a minute and let myself experience the feeling. Then I decide between two choices. I can continue to think “I can’t help feeling this way,” or I can replace it with, “I don’t have to feel this way.” Which mindset serves you more? Get out some paper and write down your mindset options. You could choose to be angry, defeated, bitter, jealous, depressed or hopeless. You could also choose to trust there is a reason this experience showed up in your life. You could choose to be determined, optimistic, loving, wise and resolute. Then, write down the results each mindset would create in your life. Then, decide who you want to be. Frankl would often ask his patients to imagine themselves at the end of their life looking back at this moment. “How do you want this next chapter to play out?” The answer is usually behavior you could be proud of. I know telling you to dig deeper inside yourself, choose a positive mindset and turn your struggles into a human achievement may not be what you wanted to hear, but you can do it. If it feels impossible, you may want to work with a counselor or coach to help you overcome the subconscious fears that are pulling you back into despair on a daily basis. The library is also full of books that teach you how to turn suffering into a positive, and the more positive material you expose yourself to, the easier it will become. You ought to read "Man’s Search for Meaning" if you haven’t read it. Hope this helps. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. Question:
I think I might have Facebook depression, because it seriously makes me feel bad about myself. I know I should just cancel my account, but I can’t get myself to do it. I keep looking at it, even though it is discouraging. Facebook feels like a big popularity contest where the person with the most friends and the most interesting life wins. Why can’t I just cancel my account and stop looking? Answer: You are not alone in this frustration. Facebook makes a lot of people feel depressed and inadequate. A study conducted bytwo German Universities found that Facebook created rampant envy and an unhealthy level of social comparison in many users — yet we can’t stop looking at it. Most of us started using Facebook because we wanted a connection with other people, but for many it now feels like a competition where we must constantly prove our value and define our existence. There is no doubt life would be less stressful if you cancelled your social media accounts. You would get more done and spend less time comparing yourself with others, but we all get why you can’t do it. You might miss something. You probably have what is now being called FOMO: the Fear Of Missing Out. A recent JWT survey said 70 percent of adults have FOMO, and it causes a serious amount of stress for most of us. Researchers at Edinburgh University said that one out of 10 Facebook users admit the site makes them anxious (and they feel an unhealthy amount of pressure to come up with inventive status updates and stay up to date on everyone's lives). But in spite of all of this, most people refuse to cancel their accounts. The fear of loss is a powerful force. You are afraid something important might happen and you would be out of the loop, but this fear shows up in other areas of life, too. It may compel you to record the new episode of your favorite show so you don’t miss it, even though your life would go on just fine if you missed it. You may buy things you don’t need if there is an amazing price for a limited time. You could struggle with ordering in a restaurant because you are afraid you might miss something you would have liked better. You may stay uncommitted on your weekend plans because you want to check all the options before you commit. You might struggle with making all kinds of simple decisions because every choice means missing out on one of the options. This fear could also cause problems in your relationships. You may hesitate to marry this girl or that boy because you might miss out on someone better who could come along later. But, if you don’t marry that person and decide to wait for a better one, you might regret that and wish you’d taken this one. (This is FOMO at work.) Here are a couple suggestions for easing FOMO and having a healthy mindset on social media:
Hope this helps. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. Question:
My husband has many serious health problems that developed after we got married, and this is taken a huge toll on me. I have to work, take care of our house and our three children basically by myself. I guess I have become disillusioned with what I thought life would be like for me. He complains constantly and I am always tired. It is getting hard for me to be very excited about life. I want the spouse I married, but now things are so different and I have at least 50-plus years to go. What can I do to enjoy life again and make it through this? Answer: Everyone who reads this article will relate to you on some level, because most people are disappointed with their lives and tired of the problems. So what can you do to experience more joy and peace, if you can’t change your situation? There is only one thing you can do. You can change your attitude about your situation by changing the way you see it. To see your current situation in a more positive way, you may have to change your policy on the purpose of your life. Take a minute and think about what you currently see as the purpose and point of your life. You may think life is about being successful, being wealthy, proving your value to God or raising the perfect kids. These are worthy goals, but they aren’t your real purpose for being here. You are primarily here to learn and grow. You are here to experience every aspect of the human condition and gain knowledge and empathy from these experiences. I believe every single thing that happens to you happens to serve your unique process of growing and learning. I believe your life is your perfect classroom. I do not believe in accidents. I believe that every situation in your life is a perfect part of your divine process of learning. I developed this philosophy when studying the work of Viktor Frankl, the author of "Man’s Search for Meaning." In a concentration camp during World War II, experiencing unimaginable suffering, he discovered that a person can, through changing his attitude, change the way he experiences suffering. He said, "Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it." You just need to see your situation in a different context. What if you are in this situation — with a sick husband — for a reason? What if it’s not bad luck that brought you here, but this situation was hand-created for your journey, because it would facilitate your growth? If there was a reason for your suffering, you might feel differently about it. I think this situation is helping you to become the person you are meant to be. I think it is forcing you to find out how strong you are. If life had given you a healthy husband, you would not be pushing yourself this hard and you would not be growing the way you are. On your own, you wouldn’t have stretched to become what this situation is forcing you to become. I am sorry that the universe signed you up for this particular struggle, because it is a really difficult one — but I truly believe you are where you are supposed to be, and this situation is serving you in some way. I believe some day you are going to be proud of yourself for surviving this and becoming a better and stronger person in the process. Frankl said, "I can see beyond the misery of the situation, to the potential for discovering a meaning behind it, and thus to turn apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement." He was talking about you. Your struggle is not meaningless, and it is creating opportuntites for amazing growth. I realize that this doesn’t make your days any easier to handle, though, so I would like to make one more suggestion: Take it one small moment at a time. Don’t focus on the weight of carrying this burden for the next 50-plus years today; that will crush you. Instead, focus on this moment and this moment only. Stay really present and let tomorrow, next month and next year go until you get there. Have you heard the joke about how to eat an elephant? (One small bite at a time.) That is how you must approach your life when it is this difficult. Just make it through this moment or this hour. Focus on what is in your control right now. You can carry the weight of this moment fine. It is the weight of all the moments piled together that gets too heavy. Do not borrow suffering from the future and let it ruin today. Do not let your thoughts get away from you. You have control over your thoughts. You can choose to focus on this moment and trust your future will be what it is meant to be, and you will handle it when you get there. If this is really difficult to do (because you are really good at fear and discouragement), you may need a coach or counselor to help. That may be the very best advice I could give you. There are amazing tricks to healthy thinking you have not had the chance to learn, which could make a big difference. I hope this helps. Hang in there! Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. Question:
Life has not been a picnic for me. It has been mostly full of disappointments and hard knocks. It isn’t turning out anything like the life I had planned. Hence, I experience a lot of jealously and resentment toward others. I’m trying not to be bitter and feel like a failure, but I can’t see I’ve accomplished much and don’t have much to show for all my work, pain and suffering. Not sure what my question is, but I guess I could use some advice to feel better about life? Answer: Your question might be: What is the point or purpose of this difficult life? Is there meaning in the painful and often fruitless experiences I’ve had? Is my difficult journey benefiting me in some way? I often quote Viktor Frankl in my articles because his discoveries in the concentration camps during World War II have greatly influenced my philosophies on life. He found that life did have meaning and purpose, even when it consisted of nothing but horrible suffering. He believed that every man must, at some point on his journey, find meaning in his individual experiences, especially the bad ones. He said, “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” Personally, I believe there is meaning in the difficulties you have experienced, because I believe you are here in this world to do two things. You are here to learn andlove. I believe this purpose is hard-wired into all of us. We seem to innately know life is about growing, learning, stretching and becoming the best version of ourselves we can become. We also seem to know we are here to love others and help as many people as we can, along our way. (Most people who find a specific mission in life find it around one or both of these two ideas.) I believe — as part of the learning process here — we must experience many different aspects of the human condition, including suffering, grief, disappointment, joy, happiness and peace to learn what each of these experiences can teach us. Unfortunately we learn more from the difficult experiences. Suffering gives us empathy and understanding; shame teaches us compassion; disappointment teaches us to shift, change, adapt and persevere. Miserable, heart-breaking and discouraging situations usually serve us and refine us. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. It is important you remember this truth, though — the amount of difficult experiences you get here is not a reflection of your value or your abilities, as much as it is about the specific lessons you were meant to learn. You must remember that your value is the same as everyone else’s. Every human being on the planet has the same infinite and absolute value, no matter how successful or unsuccessful their life may appear. This means they aren’t better than you just because they accomplished more. They just got signed up for different classes and different lessons than you did. No one on this planet got signed up for the same classes you got. So you cannot compare your journey or your results with anyone else. When you say you have nothing to show for your efforts and your life has been a failure, all I hear is you apparently got signed up for some really hard classes. But your results here don’t affect or determine your value. You are an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind, divine, amazing human soul. You are basically an irreplaceable diamond, which has the same value no matter it's setting or where you find it. If a diamond is thrown in the mud, it still has the same value. If it is thrown in the garbage, it still has the same value. You have the same value no matter where you end up. Do you get this? Your journey has nothing to do with your value. Some of us get signed up for harder classes here in the classroom of life than others. I don’t know why things are unfair here, but I believe there is a reason. I’ve often tried to drop a few of my more miserable classes, but apparently they were required courses because the universe didn’t let me out. I was not happy about this, but I realized that stuck in that situation, I only had two choices. I could choose to trust the universe that this difficult path was serving me in some way, focus on the lessons and let the experiences make me better, stronger and more loving, or I could dwell in fear, anger, jealously and bitterness — which would only push other people away and create more negative in my life. These are your only two choices when you are stuck in a required class. I highly recommend choosing trust and love! Here are a couple more things you could do to change your perspective on life: 1) Write down as many positives as you can about what your journey has given you, things you have learned, qualities you have gained, traits you’ve developed. Then write down some things you could be gaining or developing if you tried a little harder. 2) Remember your value is as infinite and absolute as a diamond, no matter your results or performance. Claim your power to determine your own value and see it this way, despite your results. 3) Remember, life is really about what you learn, understand and develop through your experiences. It is not about what a smooth ride you had. It is about who you become on the inside not what you have to show on the outside. 4) Whenever you feel jealous of others, remember that their hard classes are probably still coming and you have things (empathy, understanding and wisdom) they may not have yet. 5) Don’t live to please other people — follow your heart and your intuition. Make sure you are doing what feels right to you in every situation. Honor your truth and your values no matter what. 6) Choose to be grateful for what is good in your life, for every small blessing or moment of happiness. Choose joy in every situation you possibly can. 7) You may not be able to change your situation, but you always have the power to choose how you will experience that situation. There are two choices: fear or trust and love. Fear will create more suffering — trust and love will create peace. You get to decide where you want to live. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” Frankl said. He continued, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” I recommend that you work on changing the way you are looking at your life. When you look at it from a new perspective, it may totally change the way you feel. If this is proving difficult, you may want to seek a coach or counselor to help you. I hope this helps. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. Question:
How do I stop beating myself up for past mistakes? I made some bad choices that ruined an important relationship, and I made some bad choices that caused me to miss opportunities, which will never come again. I could beat myself up forever about those choices and what might have been different in my life, if I’d been smarter. How does one get past those kinds of mistakes? Answer: “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.” Kurt Vonnegut penned those words, and they sting every person who reads them. Almost everyone on the planet has regrets (decisions they wish they had made differently over the course of their lives). If you spend too much time here, these regrets could rob you the happiness you should be experiencing today. You can't let this happen. It doesn’t serve you to punish yourself over and over for past transgressions, especially because you can't change them. Spending time here would mean borrowing suffering from your past and letting it ruin today. The question is how can you eliminate these feelings of shame and regret? Here are six things you can do to change the way you feel about your past and change the way you create your future:
Don’t waste another minute of today dwelling in fear over things that are over and gone. Focus on being the person you want to be. Choose to focus on the future only because it's more productive. You can do this. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a life coach and speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. Question:
How can person fight anxiety (without the use of medication) when they feel it coming on? I heard there was a way to change your thinking that might help. Can you explain how I can do that? Answer: First, let me clarify that the term “anxiety” can be used to describe a whole range of experiences, from just feeling overwhelmed to serious medical conditions. Anxiety can also be caused by a large number of factors — everything from genetic conditions, brain chemistry problems, substance abuse or just trying to do too much too fast. In this article I am addressing the more common, non-medical condition type. If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, you should talk to a medical professional for advice. The one commonality these anxiety experiences share is that they all get worse when you experience stress. Stress, by the way, is a fear problem. (I know some of my readers are bothered by the fact that I believe every problem is a fear problem, but I assure you it is. If you can't see that yet, keep looking at it.) Facing fear The next time you feel anxiety, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” You are either afraid of looking bad, being rejected and failing, or you are afraid of losing something (reputation, money, opportunities, etc.) Once you clearly define the fear, you can process your way out of it with better thinking. Learning how to think situations through in an accurate, positive way will make a huge difference, no matter what kind of anxiety you have (though some forms of anxiety will require medical or professional help along with better thinking). The fastest way to change your thinking is to choose trust in two truths that are the opposite of the two most common fears. The two most common fears that cause anxiety are:
The power of choices Remember: The one power you have in every situation is the power to choose your mindset. We learned this from Victor Frankl, a Viennese psychotherapist who was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. In spite of everything in his life that went wrong, he chose an attitude of trust and love. What many people don’t know about Frankl is that he went on to become the father of logotherapy (a kind of therapy that encourges people to choose how they want to experience each situation). “Logos” is the Greek word that means, “To make meaning out of something.” Frankl believed that you get to decide what each event in your life means, because events don't mean anything until you apply meaning to them. You get to choose your attitude and how every experience will affect your life — but if you don't make this choice, your subconscious mind will choose for you, and it will usually choose fear. Frankl believed that you should reframe each experience in whatever way best serves you (still within the framework of reality, of course). If trusting the process of life and seeing it as a safe process with meaning and purpose gives you peace, you should choose that outlook. I believe choosing to trust that everything happens for a reason serves your process of growth, eliminates fear and makes life better. The formula This is my formula for eliminating anxious thoughts in the moment:
"Nothing in life creates more deep-seated anxieties than the false assumption that life should be free from anxieties and problems." –Unknown You cannot control life and you won't always be able to make it the way you want it, so you might as well just trust it. You can do this. Kimberly Giles is the founder and president of ldslifecoaching.com and claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in repairing and building self-esteem. |
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AuthorKimberly Giles is the president and founder of Claritypoint Life Coaching and 12 SHAPES INC. She is an author and professional speaker. She was named one of the top 20 advice gurus in the country by Good Morning America in 2010. She appears regularly on local and national TV and Radio. Archives
March 2022
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