wellgroundedlife Certification Program Healthy Boundaries 1. Healthy boundaries always begins with clarity within.

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1 Healthy Boundaries Lesson Notes wellgroundedlife Certification Program 1. Healthy boundaries always begins with clarity within. 2. Healthy boundaries and managing expectations are deeply connected. Clarifying Your Role is Key You are being trained as a wellness educator in a specific self care methodology and curriculum. You have put in the work to learn this information and experiment and experience these tools beyond the average person. But you are not and could never be everything or everyone that someone needs along their healing and healthy living journey. You are training to become one part of that village for women whom you will teach and support. Healthy boundaries naturally flow from establishing the right expectations of yourself Boundaries ultimately get breeched when someone s expectations of you ask you to take on a role that is not appropriate and instead of your having a clearly defined role for

2 yourself you allow other s expectations of you to become your boundary lines- which ultimately means you have no boundary lines. Imposter Syndrome Much of the anxiety or worry or fear that comes up in doing the work of a wellness educator stems from a core issue around misunderstanding your primary purpose in that role. As a wellness educator your primary purpose is to share, teach and equip others with tools and information that directly benefit their deeper understanding of themselves and the ways they can bring more positive change in their lives. As an educator you are not writing out a prescription for them to follow. You are not taking the reigns away from them and trying to direct them or make choices for them You are (with their permission) joining alongside them for a stretch, sharing what you know so they can have more options opened to them or they can have the overwhelming amount of options clarified and simplified for them as they determine their next steps and next choices. It is crucial to stand clear in what your primary purpose is as a wellness educator, because anxiety it is often sourced from taking on too much responsibility for the people we are serving instead of empowering them to connect to their own responsibility in the

3 direction of their wellbeing and loving and supporting them every step of the way. Healthy boundaries with others is directly related to clarity within yourself around: 1. the role you are taking on, 2. the credibility you stand on, 3. what you promise to deliver and 4. how you structure your offerings. Role: When you clearly ground yourself in the primary purpose of your role as a wellness educator you understand the container of impact you can provide. You are a wellness educator and the purpose of your role in someone s life is to share, teach and equip others with tools and information that directly benefit their deeper understanding of themselves and the ways they can bring more positive change in their lives. Credibility: You are brining to your teaching specific kinds of training, past education and life experience that you have done the work of distilling and determining is the most impactful and important. You get to choose and trust YOUR teachers, your students get to choose and trust YOU but everyone needs to make their own village choices themselves. You can help someone make that choice by being really clear on your philosophy and perspective of wellness and health and sharing where you were trained and educated.

4 Promise: You are promising that you will deliver smart, streamlined information and real-life tools and strategies of selfcare, well-being and vitality through group lessons or private tutoring and mentoring so women can learn more ways to care, nourish and nurture themselves. Offering: When you craft your offerings and describe your classes, workshops or services you will want to make very clear what role and promise you are communicating. Your healthy boundary with another is really about a very clear expectation of yourself. When you stand in your educator role you are: 1. Being clear that your primary purpose is to share, teach and equip others with information and tools - not diagnose, act in proxy for a medical practitioner or therapist. 2. Being clear that you do not need to know everything in order to know something and something useful at that. You re job is not to become the world s leading expert in a subject in order to be able to teach it and impact other s lives for the good. As a wellness educator you are taking sound, solid information about wellness and pairing that with sound solid tools and practices of self care that directly impact the well-being of those who use them.

5 3. Offering support, guidance, information and tool building within the scope of your training and education but you are not someone s research assistant. If they have questions beyond the scope of what you have prepared to teach it is very important that you learn three magic words and grow in confidence using them as often as necessary. "I Don t Know" I promise you, the person who has the biggest expectation of you in terms of your knowledge is YOU- you have to learn to stand firm in what you know and not try to be a walking Google. When you are questioned: 1. welcome the question, 2. share what you know and 3. feel comfortable sharing what you don t know too. It raises your credibility. It is crucial that from the beginning you establish for yourself what areas of learning are most important to you - where you want to really immerse yourself in more education and knowledge. What to do when you get a question you don t know the answer to. 1. If the question is general:

6 I Don t Know great question. But I don t know enough about that particular research study, or specific area of study to give you an answer to that. And be okay letting it go. 2. If question is general but related to what you are teaching: I Don t Know great question. But I don t know enough about that particular research study, or specific area of study to give you an answer to that but what I do know is." 3. The question is about personal details: For example, I got my labs back and these are my numbers can you tell me how to interpret that? Response: I can t interpret your specific numbers, but what I do know about cortisol is that it impacts every other hormonal body and when we can get our cortisol healthy and balanced the impact is far-reaching so let s return back to some of the tools I m sharing about what balances cortisol and helps it stay in that nice gently sloping range we want it to be throughout the day.. The idea is that you can say' I don t know that specifically but I can share with you more information related and then transition back to what the main topic for you is.' Healthy Boundaries in the Educator/Student Relationship In terms of healthy boundaries with a student or group of students it s important to realize that you will never be able to completely control someone s expectations of you but you can have very clear firm boundaries around your own expectations of yourself and your primary purpose.

7 Then when you are being asked to do something outside of what you have clearly defined you need to shift into clear communication about what you can and can not do as a wellness educator. Boundaries Bumpers and Boundary Predictors. Two ways people figure out boundaries in the world. Boundary predictors: try to make assumptions about other people s boundaries in order to not come close or breech them out of respect. Boundary bumpers: figure out boundaries by bumping into them, instead of assuming they know your boundary, they trust you will clearly communicate it if they are crossing it and wait for that communication before knowing where the boundary is. As soon as I released the judgement that boundary bumpers were doing it maliciously, I simply realized they needed me to tell them. Many times once I said, this is okay, this isn t they adjusted fine. When they don t adjust that is when you need to make decisions around more direct communication and/or removing them from having access to you at all. Asking you to act in a role that is not appropriate

8 This can come up in interpersonal connections - where you may need to reiterate what you can and can not support someone around. "I can share information and tools with you- but I can t make the ultimate decision for you as to whether this is the best choice- it s up to you to use the information I m giving you, explore and experiment with the tools and strategies and decide if they serve you or not. And it is always wise to tap into your other health resources to get more information like a trusted health practitioner work with your whole team to be sure you are doing what is best for you." Asking for more time or attention than is appropriate It can also come up in terms of request on your time or attention beyond the scope of the agreed upon offering. This is where sharing clearly what you will deliver is crucial from the very start. No one can cross your boundary without you having the opportunity to clarify the boundary and/or deciding whether they can remain close to the boundary. It is always good to give the benefit of the doubt in the beginning of any relationship, but after clear communication if someone doesn t honor it, you will need to learn early on to release energetically draining people. I can guarantee you that one person who is draining your energy because they require you to protect your boundaries over and over is keeping you from serving and helping tens or hundreds of others who would be a better fit. Know Your Value

9 At the core this is a value issue. When we don t believe in our value we will try to over deliver and meet everyone s every need to try and get confirmation that what we offer is valuable. When you stand in your value and draw a clear container for what you primary purpose is and the full scope of what you are offering, you can allow that container to offer the highest level of value. When you don t have strong walls, the container gets breached over and over and you end up diluting what you can truly offer because it drains you and no one wins. Quick Recap 1. The first step is always to have crystal clear expectations of yourself as a wellness educator and specifically communicate that when you craft your offerings and services. 2. Ground yourself around your primary purpose, what you expect of yourself and what you do NOT expect of yourself, get very comfortable with the words I Don t Know. 3. Understand that your boundary exists at the place where someone else s expectations of you are beyond your own expectations for yourself and your job is to establish, clarify and protect that boundary in order to keep serving the way you are meant to serve.