Each month, Cary Bayer writes a syndicated column called "Life 101" that runs in newspapers throughout the country. The columns focus on the myriad lessons life is continually offering us when we stay awake enough to learn.

Creating Healthy Boundaries

By Coach Cary Bayer

Great artists—whether sculptors like Michelangelo, composers like Puccini, or basketball stars like Jordan--had to learn their craft. They spent hours alone disciplining themselves, studying and practicing within the boundaries of marble, sheet music and backboard. Working with boundaries freed these geniuses to soar into the boundless, giving us "The Pieta," "La Boheme," and flying reverse dunks.

You must learn boundaries in your relationships, too. When you were an infant, the universe was one amorphous "yours." Your parents taught you, when you were ready to learn, the difference between what’s yours and what isn’t; it was all part of educating you on boundaries. That is, if they themselves knew the boundaries. If they were alcoholics--who loved the bottle more than they did you--or emotional vampires--who needed you more than they loved you--they likely did a very poor job of teaching boundaries. How can they teach what they don’t know, and what was most likely not taught to them either? They can’t; so the ground is prepared for you, as their children, to endure a lifetime of potential abuse--emotional, physical, even sexual--from parents, relatives, bosses, spouses, even priests. How do you reverse these vicious cycles? The answer is knowledge.

If you grew up in a dysfunctional home where a parent drank or raged, chances are pretty good that you thought it was your job to become a peacemaker to make others feel good. (It wasn’t.) This behavior calmed the battle around you for a while, but it robbed you, over time, of your integrity. It also probably attracted angry people into your life for you to heal this pattern. If this is your pattern, you’ve been lacking the knowledge that it’s not your responsibility to make everyone in the world happy. Especially since it comes at the high price of your own peace and happiness.

In the same way that adding a vitamin to your diet helps make up for a nutritional deficiency, adding an affirmation to your mental diet helps overcome errors in thinking.

Here are three I like for boundary deficiency:

I am responsible for my feelings and emotions and everyone else is responsible for his.
I create the pleasure and pain in my life and others do the same in theirs.
I can support others without taking on their problems.

A coaching client of mine, who’s working on improving his marriage, recently told me he’s now committed to "making his wife happy." So he dreams up great things for them to do, and great things to buy for her. I applauded his dedication, then reminded him that it’s not in his power to make her happy. I encouraged him to stay unattached to the fruits of his efforts, and paraphrased a wise saying: "You can lead a wife to the water of happiness, but you can’t make her drink."

So if you want to make the world happy, remember, you don’t have that power. But since you are a part of that world, you can make that part of the world happy. And you can start right now.

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