“We were not born without boundaries.
We learned that saying no had consequences.”

One of the first words most babies learn is “no.”

Not “yes.” Not “thank you.” Not “I will try harder.” Just NO! And then we spend the next 18 years training it out of them.

Toddlers stomping their feet, refusing peas, asserting independence over absolutely nothing. We call it a the terrible two’s and say they’ll outgrow it. But that tiny human is expressing preference. Discomfort. Ownership. Autonomy. They are practicing having a self. They are (do I dare say) having boundaries.

And then, life gets structured.

Parents create rules because they have to. Teachers create order because they need to. Schools reward the children who follow directions, stand in lines quietly, raise their hands and sit still. Being “good” becomes synonymous with being compliant. You learn quickly that approval comes when you cooperate.

You do not get to say, “This crosses a boundary for me.” You get told what time dinner is. When your homework is due. And most of us adapted beautifully. We start to became responsible. Mature. Reliable. We learned how to make adults comfortable.

Then college comes with deadlines and tests, no one waking you up for class, that’s on you.  Then jobs come with expectations from your boss, performance reviews telling you if you are good enough. The people who get promoted are often the ones who say yes. Yes, to the extra project. Yes, to staying late. Yes, to covering for someone else. Not the ones saying that favorite word we loved when we were two.

What is interesting to me is that we were not born without boundaries. We had them early. Before we cared about being liked. Before we understood rejection. We did not lose the ability to say no. We learned that saying it had consequences.

And then one day you are in your thirties or forties and you realize you are exhausted. Or resentful. Or stretched thin in ways that do not feel sustainable. And someone says, “You need better boundaries.”

So , you give it a try. You say no to a meeting. You decline an invitation. You tell someone that that something upset you or made you uncomfortable. And your whole body reacts like you just committed a crime. Your heart races. You replay the conversation. You wonder if you sounded too mean.

Why does this happen? Because enforcing boundaries as an adult is not just about language. It is about rewiring years of conditioning.

And here is the part we do not talk about enough, most of us are not very good at respecting boundaries either.

When someone tells us no, we take it personally. We feel rejected. We assume it means something about us. We push back a little, maybe get a little pouty. We might ask again in a different way. We negotiate.

It can feel awkward when you start practicing boundaries. You are too blunt sometimes. Or too apologetic. You overcorrect. You second-guess. You feel guilty. Other people feel surprised.

Maybe adulthood is not about becoming more agreeable. Maybe it is about becoming more aligned. Learning how to say no without cruelty. Learning how to hear no without collapsing. Learning that someone else’s boundary is not an indictment of your worth.

Maybe enforcing our boundaries and respecting others is less about building a new skill and more about remembering an old one that our toddler self taught us. 

Remember, YOU GOT THIS!

ONE ON ONE COACHING – Good Things Are Gonna Come  

Buy Jasmine’s book HERE