Foreword: I struggled with whether to share this on hashnode because while this is my 'personal blog'; hashnode is still heavily marketed for technical content. Then I decided even if it was a weird subject to post here, I would post it anyway.

Caring about my mental and personal health helps my productivity at work, and this article is a summary of one of my numerous self-care and personal development journey - listening to healthy podcasts.

Setting boundaries by rob dial

Rob dial categorizes relationships in your life as this - batteries and vacuum cleaners.

I think that this is an interesting analogy. Batteries are the conversations that leave you fired up while vacuum cleaners are the conversations that leave you drained.

Setting boundaries is setting your limit in your relationships and interactions. There are some relationships that you cannot do without and when you do not set boundaries, you start to resent the people with whom you have these conversations.

How do you set boundaries:

1. Know yourself and choose yourself. If you do not show up for yourself and just accept anything, you will not be the best version of yourself to the people with whom you are interacting/
2. Know the kind of relationship outcome you want to have: In choosing and knowing yourself, you would know how you want the relationship - family, friendship, work, social etc - to go and you would be able to communicate this clearly
3. Be the person you desire for them to be first: Rob dial says that many times we put the responsibility on the other person to be better but we should start with an inner reflection and be the person we would want to be in the relationship we desire
4. Have a conversation, no matter how difficult and be sure to not put the blame on them: Finally onto the hardest part, actually having the conversation about your boundaries and limitations. The key here is to not blame the other person or talk down on them but to empathetically set your boundaries - what you would like and wouldn't

In a work environment, this might look like communicating jokes that you actually find funny and not laugh along.

I hope you picked something, there is much to be learnt from listening to Rob Dial