Most of us realise that to live a healthy flourishing life, we need to have personal healthy boundaries. However, even for those of us who are aware of the need for healthy boundaries, we can find ourselves on occasions, allowing unhealthy ones to creep in. A few ways we can protect ourselves from this happening to us is:
1) Keep a check list in front of us by physically writing a list and putting it up somewhere where we see it every day.
2) Put a reminder on our phone with a message to ourselves saying something like 'check your boundary metre.'
3) Have someone you trust keep you accountable to staying committed to self-care.
You know what works best for you. The main thing to remember is this; You have the right to implement healthy boundaries in your life and it's never to late to start putting them in place.
Here are just a few ways that we can maintain a healthy boundary lifestyle.
Examples of Healthy Boundaries:
Put value on your own opinions
Don't compromise personal values for others
Think before sharing personal information (don't over share).
Know your personal wants and needs, and communicate them
Accept when others say “no”
Stay focused on your own growth and recovery
Decide whether a new relationship will be good for you, as opposed to imprinting onto the first person who shows interest
Choose friends who will accept and encourage the healthy boundaries you have made for yourself
Keep track of red flags, as opposed to sweeping them aside
“Boundaries are guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify for themselves what are reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave around them and how they will respond when someone steps outside those limits.”
- Out of the Fog Organisation
Debbie Walker reports from her Mississippi USA course: "What an incredibly courageous group this was. One of the participants in the training was quite quiet at first but during the course began to open up about her story of loss and abuse. This person identified that the Flourish material was helping her process some long-standing issues, but more importantly she was planning on sharing what she had learned with her students as they too experience the same kind of issues as she has. Another participant shared a story of her abuse also. At the time when she opened up she seemed even more surprised than the rest of us were! Painstakingly, she identified that “brave” had a different meaning for her. She said;" “In addition to ‘brave starts here’, I may add, ‘courage starts here.’ I have never identified with bravery, because brave is to do something without fear. But as a person who has struggled immensely with fears and anxiety, I can’t own that definition of brave. But I can say I’ve had courage, because courage is doing something despite our fears, because the end result is more important than our comfort.”
"I so appreciated her insight, especially as she had experienced significant abuse when she was younger. Honestly, I was so inspired by these gutsy women! They have taken loss and turned it around to gain—by being involved with women and girls in their spheres of influence, in their community—they are beauty for ashes individuals to me!"
Taking FLOURISH to Central Asia In just two weeks time Bek and I take off to Central Asia. We feel honoured to be training FLOURISH with a group of women from several nations in this part of the world. As many of these women work and live in very challenging environments, we will need the wisdom from above as we journey FLOURISH with them. We really would appreciate your thoughts for us and these women over the next few weeks Note: Generic photo
Fourteen nations and growing!
We, the Flourish team continue to be amazed at how far and wide FLOURISH is spreading, and we are equally amazed at how many more enquiries we are receiving on a regular basis for FLOURISH to come to their nations also.
We celebrate this milestone and know that Flourish's foundational message, 'Founded on the belief that each girl or woman of any culture has been born to thrive and have the opportunity to fulfil their life’s purpose and dreams regardless of their background, heritage, or situation', is why we are seeing such a demand for this program. In saying this, we know that Flourish is not the answer, but it is an answer to seeing women of ages move closer to a life of wholeness.
We love that Flourish can be contextualised to different settings but we also have a duty of care to the Flourish content and message, that it stays true to it's original intent as it goes across the globe. We appreciate you our Flourish coordinators and facilitators who continue to do this.
Recently, you would have received an email from Bek regarding renewing of licences and feedback on any courses you have done of late. We appreciate those who have responded so quickly. Thank you. For those who have not responded as yet, we would really appreciate you doing this as soon as you can. Again thank you. If you didn't get the email, please let us know.
Just as a lovely sweet reminder to you from the last Flourish Connection, your stories and your feedback are important to us. We want to be able to resource you, keep you up to date with all that is happening, but also gauge how we are going in the different countries and contexts. As a global network we want to be able to share resources, stories and concepts with each other. We also want to be a support network for those just starting out and in particular, for those working in contexts or cultures which are more sensitive and may need guidance and experience from those in similar situations.
After each course, we would really appreciate you filling in your feedback forms including a photo of your course, whether that be a TTT course (training others to run Flourish) or a participant course (taking girls on the journey of Flourish for themselves). Be assured that information you share is secure and not shared publicly without your permission.
In the 'Feedback and Evaluation' section of your Flourish Facilitator Guide, you will find the resources you need to provide us with your feedback.
If you have any questions or need assistance, we are here for you. You can contact us on flourish@keystoneintl.org
