E047 - The Power of Boundaries in a Group Setting

Have you ever walked into a meeting of heavy hitters or people you want to impress? Maybe it’s a family lunch, a team meeting or your own birthday party. 

Whatever the situation, it can feel like A LOT. Your nervous system might start getting activated. You might start feeling excited, nervous, or even shut down, losing your words.

What if there was something you could do to move out of that nervous state and into a state of confidence? To feel relaxed, and settled, be able to flow and say what you mean; showing up and sharing your ideas in a way that feels good and authentic.

The power of boundaries can help.

So how do we work with a sense of a boundary in group settings to feel more confident, calm, and settled? Watch the video below (or read the full blog).

For those who prefer to read…

Why is this work important? 

So many of us walk into group settings and our nervous system just happens to us. In other words, these feelings come over us, and that's just what happened, "I got overwhelmed, I got nervous, I spoke too much, I spoke too little. Once again, I didn't share." This can be a pattern that started for us in our childhood, and it can continue through adolescence, into university or our 20s and 30s. Then just becomes, "This is my personality, I talk too much, I talk too little, I'm shy."

But actually, these are nervous system states that happen to us. And we can use a boundary to help us get back to a place of safety.

What do I mean by boundaries?

If you played games as a child where you had a ‘safe’ sphere around you or a shiny magic orb of some kind, that’s exactly what I mean. A boundary is an imagined shield of protection we can visualise around ourselves to help us feel safer.

Imagine for a moment that we’ve escaped to a safe place to explore this.

I want you to imagine that you've got a sphere or a bubble around you that protects you. And make it separate you from the rest of the world, while you can still see through it. While this might seem like silly imaginary fun, this technique is a best practice psychologically for developing a sense of safety around other people. 

So let's imagine these boundaries around us right now. Take a deep breath and feel safe inside your castle. Everyone else is out there, you’re in here. Now, let's just imagine walking out into a situation where there are 50 people and everyone's talking loudly, and it's a lot, our nervous system's starting to get a little activated. And what we're going to do is just move inside our bubble, take a deep breath, and bring all of our awareness into ourselves. So just take a breath for a moment.

Because what happens is that we tend to over-focus on the situation around us, abandoning ourselves and moving out. Instead, we want to move in, inside our beautiful, safe bubble, and then hang out. And from here, interact with everyone else, bring awareness inside, inside our bubble, and calm down. And then from there, once you feel calm, start interacting and speaking with people. 

If you checked out the video, thank you for watching. Please like and subscribe to the YouTube channel, and share the video. And please put these techniques into use out in the world. 

My wish for you is to feel deeply safe, happy and confident in your own skin wherever you go.