Walls or Fences - A Boundaries Metaphor

It is 5 am in the morning, I am operating on maybe 51/2 hours of sleep. I am supposed to meet my personal trainer today. And I was so afraid that I wasn't going to be able to be on time that I tossed and turned throughout the entire night because I thought, if I don't wake up, I'm going to sleep through my first session with my personal trainer and that is not going to send a good message.

And now I'm standing in the gym with my trainer, and I am so tired. I'm looking around at this gym. It's a fairly small gym, there is a rack of weights. There's a medicine ball, there's a treadmill and a bunch of other things that I'm fairly familiar with, because I've been going to the gym for several years by myself.

I have decided that I needed to do something more intense for me because, unfortunately, as the years continue to go by, I continue to put more and more weight on my body, which I know physically is not healthy for me. And I want to be able to stick around for awhile and spend time with the people that I love the most. And so I've decided to hire this guy to see if he can help me take better care of my body. And I've asked him, in particular, if he can help me holistically, not just working particular muscles, but I want to be able to work more holistically mind, body, and spirit.  I chose him because he is a jujitsu instructor in addition to being a personal trainer, and he told me that his master, who taught him about jujitsu, believed in that holistic part of healing the mind, body, and soul. So I felt that this was going to be a really good experience for me.

He's showing me around the gym, give me a little bit of a tour of his place. He has just moved in a couple of months ago. And he's really excited about this new building, He's telling me about the history of the building and as he's talking, I ended up stepping on to the mat where he teaches jujitsu.  He says to me, "Hey, you got to get off of that. That is sacred ground."

And when he said that, I immediately stepped off of the mat. I didn't want to be disrespectful. But what struck me more was how immediately he reacted in a way that said, Hey, dude, this is sacred space, and no one is allowed to be on the sacred space until they're instructed to do So because sacred work, beautiful work happens on these mats. And so there's formality to it. And that made me really think about a question that a buddy of mine had asked me just three days earlier. And this is the question
of the podcast.

Can you help me understand the difference between walls and fences?  

Listen to the answer on this podcast and deepen your understanding of what makes boundaries more effective.

 

If you want help connecting to your deepest value, click here to check out the Finding Peace Workbook.

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