How to Do High Agency Boundary Setting

You guys, it’s all the rage. If you’re not setting boundaries, are you even living? Okay, all jokes aside, consciousness is elevating. Adults are elevating themselves and facing ineffective generational behaviors and it’s glorious. Some significant part of the elevated “Adulting Pie” is, in part, setting boundaries. 

Setting boundaries can be bastardized. 

As a culture that speaks about leadership and personal agency, we were relieved to learn about a high agency definition of boundary setting. It comes from Dr. Becky Kennedy, who is the renown educator, author of Good inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, and founder of her company by the same name. Here’s her definition of an effective boundary as:

-something we tell people we will do that requires the other person to do nothing. 

What makes this a high agency style of boundary setting? Well, if we look at the mechanics of this definition, the boundary setter can hold a boundary that maintains their personal power and choice because it doesn’t require behavior of someone else (which is never in our control, therefore, having low agency) to maintain the boundary. 

Life is a challenge, but it will feel more empowering if you own your part of it. This empowered state gets discounted every time you offload your reality to the behavior of others.