How a Life Coach can Help you Set Boundaries and Build Strong Relationships
Relationships are all around us. Neighbors, coworkers, friends, family members, clients… Everything we do with others is a relationship. “Relationships” are not just what you have with your significant other, it’s what you have with everyone!
In order to “play well” with others, it is important to know how to build strong, lasting relationships. Do you want to get a promotion? That may depend on your connection with your boss. Go for a family vacation? Your sanity may depend on how you and your mother interact for the week. Wanna lose weight? Your relationship with your trainer, and most importantly yourself, will be critical.
Below are five ways a life coach can help you create, build, and maintain the relationships in your life!
Understanding Your Needs and Values
What really matters to you?
A life coach can help you really nail this down. Your own personal needs and values should be at the forefront of the relationships you choose to build. To be clear, we aren’t saying to be selfish, but it is important to know where and when to set boundaries in your life!
The first step is to learn what is important to you. This could be affected by your past experiences, religion, culture, and so many other aspects of life.
This will help you know what to look for in others, but more importantly, it will help you build a sense of self-awareness.
Building Self-Awareness
Being self-aware is the difference between deep and surface-level relationships. Let’s get some DEPTH!
Self-awareness is important because it helps you recognize any blind spots or patterns in your behavior that could be negatively impacting your relationships. It will help YOU be the person you defined in the first section. This will help you align your actions and behaviors with the values you said were important to you!
Creating a deeper sense of self-awareness will help you make conscious decisions about how you show up in your relationships.
Setting Boundaries
Now that we know what is important to us and are working to align ourselves with those beliefs, we can set boundaries with others.
Boundaries are both important and challenging to set and maintain. Without them, you may end up feeling “walked all over” like a welcome mat at the local coffee shop. By working with a life coach, you can create a plan to navigate what you will and will not take from others.
Once you have a plan of what those boundaries will look like, you’ll need to communicate them effectively with others.
Improving Communication Skills
Now that we have focused on ourselves a bit, let’s take a deeper dive into how we can work with others.
Communication is crucial in any relationship. Whether we are talking with our spouse, presenting an idea to our boss, or expressing a boundary to a family member, being able to communicate in a way that works for both parties is critical.
A coach can help you learn to improve your communication skills over time. They can help you plan how you WILL say something, and, if something doesn’t work, can help you workshop what to do next time.
Resolving Conflict
Conflict in a relationship is as inevitable as the ending of “Marley and Me”, and while we wish we could stop both before those moments hit, it’s part of the way it is.
This begs the question, “What happens when we get to that point?” We can recommend all the tissue brands in the world, but that’s just a temporary relief to a longer-term problem. When it comes to conflict specifically, how you communicate with the other party is most important.
By working with your coach, you can determine a proper strategy to handle conflict when it comes up. It’s important to remember that you can only control your own actions. A coach will help you create ownership in how you show up in those situations.
Conclusions
Relationships are the spice of our lives. Building meaningful relationships will require self-awareness, effective communication, and the ability to set clear boundaries. Working with a life coach can help you understand your personal values and needs and express them in meaningful ways!
Invest in yourself and those around you to build a healthy and happy life. Remember that relationships are not just what you have with your spouse. It’s what you have with everyone. Take the time to nurture and grow them, and you will reap relationships worthy of remembering. You’ve got this!
At Within Range Life Coaching, we specialize in helping our clients break past their barriers, reduce stress, and achieve their goals so they can live a life worth remembering. Fill out the form below and learn how we can help you achieve your full potential.