Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix. Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength strategy that can help fix the thoughts, feelings, and actions that can hold you back in life.

You've heard people talk about the importance of setting boundaries. Hopefully you've set some for yourself. But how do you know

if you need more boundaries than what you already have? You don't want to have rigid boundaries.

If you set a ton of rules about how other people should treat you, you're going to alienate

or hurt people if your expectations are unreasonable. But on the other hand, treat you, you're going to alienate or hurt people if your

expectations are unreasonable. But on the other hand, if you don't have enough boundaries or your

boundaries are too relaxed, you'll let other people hurt you. That's not to say people around

you will hurt you on purpose, but they might offend you, hurt your feelings, or make your life

more difficult without ever

knowing it has an impact on you. Boundaries can include anything from telling somebody that you don't

have time to talk right now, to telling somebody that, no, you aren't going to lend them any money.

At first, boundaries feel uncomfortable. You might worry that you've hurt someone's feelings or that they're going to be upset with you.

But when you set boundaries regularly, you empower yourself to create the kind of life that you want to live.

And you'll discover that people are probably not as offended by your boundaries as you think they are.

And those who don't honor your boundaries are simply

reinforcing your decision that you need to establish healthy limits with them in your life. So I did an

Instagram poll to find out how many of you struggle with boundaries. And over 85% of you said that

you have a hard time setting boundaries at least some of the time. There may be times in

your life when you have better boundaries than others. There also might be areas in your life where

it's easier to have better boundaries. Like maybe you set boundaries in your personal life,

...