When my husband and I decided to move to Spain for half a year, many of our friends, family and other people in our lives expressed a wish to come visit us. To be honest, this freaked me out a bit. Because when I sat down and counted each and every person who wanted to visit us I came to the conclusion that we would have about three weeks of half a year on our own as a family and would be entertaining other people for the rest of the time. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I found it really difficult to say this openly and honestly to everyone.

I am so grateful for all the wonderful people in my life, truly! I love to hang out with them and create memories together. But in this specific case, I chose myself over them. Even as I now write this, it makes me feel a bit nauseous. Because it is important for me to open my home and make people feel welcome when they want to come visit or stay over. But exactly at this point in my life, mi casa turned out not to be really su casa.

For me, moving to Spain is all about quieting myself for real and to then see what happens from that space. This is such a unique time for me in my otherwise pretty busy life, so I cherish these months of alone-time very much. Even though I like entertaining other people the fact remains that for me, regardless of how close we are, this still takes energy from me. And during these months in Spain I made a conscious decision to mostly keep that energy to myself.

The author Anna Taylor said:

Love yourself enough to set boundaries.
Your time and energy are precious.
You get to choose how you use it.
You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.

When I look back at it, I feel a bit ashamed that I didn’t feel strong enough to stand up and be clear about my boundaries. It should be such a simple thing, just to tell it like it is. But for me in this case, it really wasn’t.

I think setting boundaries is really important. Regardless of what they are about! Because I believe that if we violate our own boundaries, we will exhaust ourselves in the end and that does not help anyone. I think difficulty in setting boundaries has on a deeper level to do with us being fearful of people leaving us/not loving us anymore/us ending up alone in life. I know for me they are connected anyway! But I also know that I don’t have to let these types of fears stop me because they are old and Lennart (the voice of my mind)-related. And for that insight I’m really grateful!

Again this brings me back to the importance of awareness in life. By being aware, I can see clearly how setting boundaries in some cases is difficult for me. And when I see this clearly, I can do something about it. The more awareness I bring to a subject by inquiring into it, the more clear it becomes and the more I realize and deeply feel that I have a choice in how I want to live. Love that about life!

Photo: Michael Mroczek – unsplash.com