Boundaries with Self-Part 1

        It is the start of a new month and therefore, I am going to try and have a theme this month at least one day per week and then I will write whatever I want on the other days. That theme will be about the book: "Boundaries" by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend and what I am learning from it. I have been in a Women's Bible Study with it and we are getting to the parts where it talks about setting boundaries in certain areas in your life. This week it was about setting boundaries with yourself which I needed really bad and is probably is the reason I act the way I do now. I will admit.
        Then there are 7 boundaries that we need to think about in life. The 7 are family, self, spouse, children, friends, work, and God. Two weeks ago, we went over having boundaries with our family, which was good and I could see some areas that I need to work on but this past week we went over boundaries with self like I already said and boy, do I need help with that one?! It should interesting for me I could learn what not to do and what I need to do on all of them now and in the future. There might be a lot of parts from me in this blog. Like there might be 2 or 3 parts on just self because I don't want to make a entery too long where people get bored reading it.
         There are 7 ways that our soul can be out of control and you might be able to guess some, if not all, of them. They are eating, money, time, task completion, the tongue, sexuality, and alcohol and substance abuse. I will admit that I might tend to get a little personal here so please don't judge me. We all have our own mistakes and mess up. One thing I'm learning through all of this is that I'M MESSED UP SO I NEED JESUS! I'M SORRY. You can take it or leave it. I would say my worse two ways are time and task completion. I will admit sometimes my tongue can get in the way too.
           There are four reasons that time can be a problem that we need to fix. If we don't have boundaries on time this is what can happen or does happen. When people have no boundaries on time, they can be:
           1. omnipotence (have bigger views of what they can get done on certain amount of time).
           2. Overresponsibility for the feelings of others (think how the other person feels when leaving a party or somewhere too early.
           3. Lack of realistic anxiety (They live so much in the present that they forget to plan ahead for things like parking the car or dressing right for an outing).
           4. Rationalization (They make the distress and inconvenience on others small like they won't care if I'm late because they are my friends).
            Here is a verse that we want to say and how we want to feel with our time well spent after the day is over and it is Proverbs 13:19.
            There are 6 reason that task completion can be a problem for many people. The book calls them "poor finishers" and they are pretty much self-understanding. They are:
            1. Resistance to structure-Can be a putdown if limited to a way of doing things.
            2. Fear of success-They don't want to lose their friends because of what "big people" they have become due to their success.
            3. Lack of follow-through-They like the idea of starting a task but not finishing it. They would rather put the finishing on other people.
            4. Distractibility-They are not able to focus on a project til it is done.
            5. Inability to delay gratification-They can't work through the pain of the project to experience the happy ending of getting it done and doing it well. They want to go right to the pleasure.
            6. Inability to say "no" to other pressures. -That one is self-explained. Unable to say "no" to other people.
            Here are a couple of verses having to do with task completion that the book gave- 2 Tim. 4:7-8 (we want to be able to say that about one task not ten million tasks), and John 19:30 (3 simple words that would be so nice to say after being done with one big task).
            Hope it's not too long for you to read and think about. If it is I will try to shorten the next one but you have to admit it is so good stuff to think about. I recommend the book to anyone and everyone. No matter the age or stage of life you are in.