Having managed multiple blogs for the last twenty years, one lesson the internet continues to teach me is how to set healthy boundaries.

Because despite the dopamine rush that floods your brain when a new comment or email comes in from a reader, the truth is, you’re under no obligation to entertain anybody’s opinion.

Especially if people insist on leaving impolite and ugly remarks, sticking a pin in every word you say. They may have freedom of speech, but you don’t owe hostile, anonymous strangers your attention. You can just delete the message and get on with your life.

Or better yet, disable the comment feature on the blog and avoid the whole rabbit hole in the first place.

This comment policy extends beyond the digital realm, too. On any given day, there will be people who try to leave the equivalent of a trolling or spammy comment on the discussion board of your mind.

And you don’t have to stand for it. You can set boundaries by not rewarding people’s rude behavior. Rather than expressing your moral outrage, going toe to toe with idiots, responding with logic, or using deescalation tactics, simply demonstrate that people’s words are unworthy of comment.

Parents learn to do this whenever their toddlers throw tantrums in the aisle of the grocery store. By simply walking away, they remove the audience from the kid’s performance. That’s a boundary too.

The goal here is to remind others, and more importantly, remind yourself, that fueling people’s fire is not your responsibility. Nor is throwing water on it. Nor is warming your hands by it.

Their fire is their business.

My graphic designer friend has her own version of this. Whenever starting a new project, she sends the client her collaboration guidelines. This document lists her communication expectations and professional policies for responding to requests, emails and other messages.

Another strong boundary.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Have you calculated the specific psychological cost of not having boundaries?

Ego boundary is a psychoanalytic term that refers to the emotional function of distinguishing between self and other.

It’s that sacred combination of knowledge and trust. Not only knowing who we are, but feeling that it’s safe enough for us to be who we are, without the fear that the other is going to engulf us.

Hartmann, the psychologist who coined the term in the early nineties, proposed that there were people with thick boundaries and people with thin ones. And he suspected there were real brain and body differences between the two, so he developed a questionnaire to gain more insight.

Since the eighties, over five thousand people have taken his questionnaire, and hundreds of scientific papers have referenced it. What was most fascinating to me about the research is, older people tended to score somewhat thicker than younger people.

The research found older people didn’t necessarily feel their feelings any less, they simply learned how to compartmentalize them. They made it a practice to brush aside their emotional upset in favor of handling the situation and maintain a calm demeanor.

It’s actually one of the best things about getting older. If somebody around us is deeply stressed, angry or upset, our ego boundaries are thick enough so as not to absorb and embody their drama.

There’s no fear of putting ourselves at the mercy of people. We can calmly and confidently sit with the other give them the support and love they need, with no fear of getting sucked into the vortex.

Practicing hot yoga has been a holy arena for deepening this practice. Because when the room is a hundred degrees and the sweat is pouring out of pores and your muscles are quivering, you stay calm by threading your breath through every movement. Even if your heart is racing and your hands are hot enough to heat soup, on the surface, you appear unruffled.

Even if the yogi next to you is huffing and puffing and sucking back water like they’re lost in the desert, you breathe through it.

It’s knowledge and trust. You know who you are, it’s safe to be who you are, and who other people are isn’t going to change that.

You are safe and protected within, and you can open up to the world and what it has to offer without fearing that your personal space will be invaded.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are your boundaries thin or thick?

All we have is this moment and our attitude toward it.

It’s too late to add anything to make it better. Despite our stubborn demands that life comply with our preconceived version of how it should be, whatever is happening right now, this is it. This is as good as it gets.

One of the mantras that helps me practice this principle is the simple and gentle phrase, here we are.

Saying these three words, out loud, standing next to another person, grounds us in the fertile soil of acceptance and connects us intimately to each other.

Saying these three words reminds us that no matter what herculean effort we made to control life, no matter how many expectations we had about how things could have or should have turned out, no matter how deep the dislocation between our present state and what we hope will make life easier, well, here we are.

This moment is going to be what it is. There’s no failure and there’s no mistake, we both live here, and whatever happens, happens.

Xavier has a cool paper on the topic of metaphysical realism, where the authors break down the philosophical and interpersonal implications of this mantra:

Here we are is a phrase that bespeaks a relational expanse in which you exist, we exist, as well as a third, for the field in which the here lies, it binds us into a we. Within this meeting ground, this zone of adhesion, we breathe intersubjectively the native air. In all of these situations the encounter does not take place in each of the participants, or in a neutral unity encompassing them, but between them in a most exact sense, in a dimension inaccessible to them alone. The process consists of a gradual unfolding of prior unity. Concrete acts of experiential intercourse occur, and we become simply us. We can imagine no contact more real and more thrilling than this.

All together now, here we are.

It’s a beautiful practice for developing our acceptance. And not just as an individual, but collectively.

Because that’s the only way we successfully stumble through this circus of a world.

By activating the collective involuntary nervous system between each other.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What do you say to yourself to remind yourself that you are not a god?

Wearing a nametag is a small, simple and subtle thing.

It’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. Which most people aren’t.

Baristas almost never notice it, since most of them still ask for my name to write on the side of the cup. That always makes me chuckle.

Not to be a jerk or anything, but my name is literally in front of your face.

But that’s okay. I don’t expect people to notice me, and I don’t get too upset when they don’t. After twenty years, thus sticker has become a bit of a fixture. Fades into the foreground most of the time.

But it is fascinating to watch the arc of people’s curiosity play out over time. Because during everyday conversation, most won’t ask about the nametag the first time they encounter it. Or the second time. Or even the third time.

And after several interactions, there’s this great moment where their curiosity can’t contain itself anymore. Somewhat annoyed and confused, they turn to me and say, okay, so I have to ask, what’s the story behind the nametag?

This is typically the first in a series of about seven questions, which I’m happy to answer. And once those basic details have been addressed, people are satisfied, their brain cramp goes away, and we can move forward with the relationship.

Now, this exchange is not specific to wearing a nametag. When any of us start new relationships, certain details about each other that deserve to be revealed.

Everyone had some version of, well, glad we got that out of the way.

This identity disclosure is not a requirement for successfully connecting with others, but it certainly helps remove that pesky asterisk from people’s perception.

Without it, interpersonal uncertainty can go on too long, and it always feels a smidge uneasy between people.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What brain cramp might people have about you, and how could you relieve it for them?

All human conflict has its root around the same question:

What can’t you be more like me?

But the irony is, that’s the last thing you would ever want. Because if everyone was like you, that would be a nightmare.

Can you imagine if all the employees at your company started thinking and acting the same way as you did? You would quit your job by lunch.

Or what if your spouse suddenly woke up one morning holding your exact same preferences and opinions? You would be divorced by dinner.

Point being, the world is overpopulated enough, it doesn’t need a clone of you. Don’t set up a toxic pattern for yourself. You’ll end up resenting people for not morphing into miniature versions of you.

The healthier and more life giving practice would be to practicing giving and receiving love without trying to project your autobiography onto everyone your meet. Trusting that who they already are is enough for us.

Deida writes about this in his insightful book about romantic relationships:

Both men and woman demand the other be more like themselves. And the message is, unless you are more like me, I can’t love you. But in order to give love to one another, they must meet in the common ground of the heart.

This type of connection requires compromise and humility and surrender, but it’s worth the price of not feeling resentful at each other.

In a world where it’s already hard enough for people to be themselves, don’t give them additional homework trying to become like us too.

Love them in ways they only dream of being loved, by loving them exactly wherever they are.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Who are you still trying to make just like you?

In an increasingly fragmented world, we all try to build reliable identities for ourselves.

It reinforces our sense of a stable self. It makes us feel special and in control. After all, who wouldn’t want their individuality celebrated rather than crushed?

No wonder wearing a nametag every day is so much fun.

But the interesting thing is, there are certain times when you’d rather not have any label. Because that’s actually far more accurate than trying to find the perfect word for everyone to call you just so they have a convenient portfolio of ideas for how to classify your way of thinking.

Reminds me of a fascinating interview with a multiracial, ethnically ambiguous standup comedian who says audiences are always asking him to justify his background to them.

His theory was, people want to know who you are so they know how to hate you. They need the label so they can put you in a tidy box and decide which words you can and can’t say, which ideas you can and can’t have.

From that perspective, not having a label sounds like winning a tiny little lottery. Considering that labeling causes people to make all sorts of unflattering and untrue and unfair assumptions, and considering the world is dead set on pinning all of us down into a single category, it sure would be nice to not be anything for once.

Maybe then we might finally catch a glimpse of the unnamable.

The other side of the identity coin is, we’re not supposed to be one thing in life. Most people require multiple identities.

And so, there’s nothing wrong with wearing diverse labels to celebrate the many parts of our humanity. The world is a big enough place for each of us to be fully human.

Fox wrote in his provocative book about pretentiousness that people’s mainstream identities are themselves an act, not a fact of nature.

That’s helpful to remember. Because all of us, at some point or another, will experience our own identity moorings temporarily loosening.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Shedding off our identity like old skin, it’s cleansing and liberating.

And it makes room for a new layer to grow.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What label used to describe you has become more toxic than useful?

My yoga teacher used to remind us that the practice doesn’t get easier, we just get stronger.

Her mantra has broad applications both on and off the mat.

Because whether we’re breathing through the discomfort of camel pose, or breathing through the stress of daily life, one thing is for certain.

It’s not like we get to some place where the suffering ends. We just get better at handling it. But only if we’re willing to do the hard work of training the heart.

Louie, during his early years as a standup comic, trained in a boxing gym. His theory was, every artist should learn how to do the grunt work, the boring, constant training. That way they’ll be fit enough to take the beating.

Are you training yourself to persist through the pain? Or are you burning out early, thinking that the hard part is behind you?

Buddhists and stoic philosophers have been practicing this for centuries. They call it voluntary suffering.

Which is different from suffering the pangs of existence in this life to prove ourselves worthy of later life. It’s about counteracting hardship by scheduling in advance. That way, we become accustomed to it.

The theory is, the more of that suffering you build into your life intentionally, the less it will affect you when it happens involuntarily.

Which may sound masochistic, but in a world where most people are using denial and addiction as futile attempts to avoid the painful facts about life, it might do us some good to introduce a little voluntary suffering.

Best case scenario, we build up an emotional callus that serves us well when everything goes to shit.

Worst case scenario, we were miserable for a little extra time, by choice.

Either way, we never get to some place where the suffering ends. May as well learn to live with it.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you burning out early, thinking that the hard part is behind you?

Let’s assume that the attachment to desire is the most dangerous generator of dissatisfaction and frustration.

Then the quickest path to better mental health is the moderation our longings.

The tricky part is putting ourselves out of the reach of the seductive powers that be which aim to hypnotize us. Because they are now attacking us from every angle.

Even before we realize we have been attacked. Carlin famously referred to this as the advertising lullaby, since the whole purpose of marketing is to lull the customer to sleep.

That’s how this machine operates. Every marketing message, one way or another, is making the following announcement:

Excuse me, but you are forgetting, you have this problem, and it hasn’t gone away, and if you want to make it go away, you need to buy this thing from me, right now.

That’s what causes us to feel the overwhelming sense of urgency that we are one purchase away from happiness.

But if we’d rather not be completely dragged around in the dirt by our desires, there is a way to defend ourselves. Because what the machine doesn’t want us to know is, their power only exists because of our wants.

Change that, and we’re free.

Here’s an interesting question to think about:

What is one thing in the past year you have grown in your ability to live without?

Everybody has some kind of answer to that question. It doesn’t have to be anything substantial. Attachments of all sizes are worth giving up.

It’s good practice. Every time we let go of our attachments, the truth of who we really are unveiled just a little bit more.

We unencumber ourselves from the weight of want and we empower ourselves to become freer and freer from the institutional chains that seek to bind us.

Maybe that’s all life really is.

A game to see how many things we can live without.

Only to find that we already had everything we need.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What you liberated yourself from desire’s choke hold?