8 Types of Toxic People and 5 Steps to Setting Stronger Boundaries

Would you believe me if I said toxic people don’t exist? You’ve probably got someone in mind right now... But it’s true, people aren’t born toxic - it’s their negative habits, conditioning, and behaviors that installed these toxic characteristics. This doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it just means you need better boundaries. In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty identifies the 8 types of toxic people and the 5 steps to setting boundaries in all of your relationships. Achieve success in every area of your life with Jay Shetty’s Genius Community. Join over 10,000 members taking their holistic well-being to the next level today, at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process, and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. And if you've been thinking about a wardrobe refresh, this can make it feel a little more worthwhile. You're not just letting go of clothes, you're getting more value from what you already have.

• 0:43Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and is clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. When we don't set down boundaries that are clear, people often violate them unknowingly. If you say upfront, "I'm happy to help with this one project, but because of work and wanting to spend free time with my kids, that's as much as I can do in a year." I'll turn down any other requests. So if there's a specific project you want my help on more than others, please ask me about that one. Was that unkind? No.

• 3:30Jay Shetty?

  Was that aggressive? No. Was it assertive? Yes.

• 3:40Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thank you so much for being back here. And if this recording is not as beautiful as all of our other recordings, it's only because I'm traveling and I'm having to record this through my computer. So please bear with me. Today, I'm going to be talking about the nine types of toxic people and five tools to create healthier boundaries. Now, I just want to start off by saying that there is no such thing as a toxic person. There are toxic habits. There are toxic... Conditionings, there is toxic karma, there's toxic behavior. But a person is not inherently toxic.

• 4:22Jay Shetty?

  No one is toxic in their soul, no one is toxic in their being. But we take on toxic behaviors, toxic conditioning, toxic habits in our life. And when we are going through our own transition, when we're going through our own purification, it is harder to be around those that are still practicing toxic habits. So that's what I mean by toxic people when we're referring to that. Now, I want to give you an example. When I first got involved in spirituality after I met the monk and I realized that I wanted to live a certain way. I wanted to live a life of service. I wanted to stop certain habits as well in my life.

• 5:03Jay Shetty?

  And I started to realize that I couldn't be around people who enjoyed those habits deeply. So if someone was completely immersed in some of those habits that were no longer habits that I wanted to have, that's where I had to set a boundary. And it was tough because it wasn't that I didn't want to be around those people. It's that I didn't want to be around them when they were practicing that habit. This is a really key part of detachment and setting boundaries. Is people think setting a boundary is cutting someone out of your life. But setting a boundary doesn't mean you have to cut someone out of your life. It just means you cut out that part of their life that you don't want to be a part of. Right? Think about that.

• 5:46Jay Shetty?

  Setting a boundary doesn't mean that you cut someone out of your life. It means you cut out the part of their life that affects you. Right? It's really, really important to remember that. Now, here's a shocking statistic. According to a 2019 survey from OnePoll and Evite of 2,000 people, the average American hasn't made one new real friend in the last five years.

• 6:13Jay Shetty?

  We keep talking about the pandemic and how it's affected our friendships and our relationships. But even before that, five years, so many of you tell me you're feeling lonely or you're feeling like you're not part of a community where you feel you belong, or who say you struggle developing relationships. And this is true, as we get older, it becomes more and more difficult to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships. And often, our long-lasting relationships are no longer meaningful. They're not moving in the same direction as our life is today. How many of you have had that experience? Isn't it fascinating that sometimes our long-lasting relationships aren't meaningful, but we struggle as we get older to create those meaningful relationships?

• 6:57Jay Shetty?

  Now, most of those in the study said that two factors characterize a good friend. Someone with whom you can have trust and honesty. How many of you can agree with that? What would be your two characteristics right now for a good friend? I'm pretty sure trust and honesty would be high up on the list. The average person in the survey had sixteen friends of different types. Three, they would call friends for life. Five people they like enough to spend time together, one-on-one. And about eight people they like, but don't necessarily make a special effort to hang out with. Does that sound pretty equal to you? And that's the funny thing. Sometimes we're like, oh, my gosh, I've only got a few friends. But that is actually reality.

• 7:40Jay Shetty?

  Most of us can count the amount of friends we have on our two hands. Now, a different poll of adults, eighteen and older, showed that twenty-seven percent of them reported having no true close friends. Maybe we know people, perhaps even lots of them, yet we feel unloved or unseen for who we truly are. I have one friend that I constantly, constantly am so grateful to have in my life because she's always reminding me of my worthiness. She's always reminding me of feeling seen. And, and those people, keep them close. I mean, it's so rare. One of the reasons for problems in our friendships and other relationships is poor boundaries. Today, we're talking about nine types of toxic people you meet and how to recognize their behavior, and five tools to build better boundaries

• 8:26Jay Shetty?

  so you can create stronger, more authentic relationships.

• 8:30Jay Shetty?

  Nine types of toxic people. Number one, there's a great quote whose origin is unknown that goes, "Some people create their own storms and then get mad when it rains." When I said that, did someone in your life come to mind? Perhaps someone in your present or your past, from work or a family member, or perhaps a friend? This is our first type of toxic person. The catastrophizer. For the catastrophizer, everything is the end of the world. Even the most minor inconvenience. They had to wait in a long line at the coffee shop. They got a flat tire, or they didn't get the assignment they wanted at work. And now their career is over. In their mind, the catastrophizer lives on the edge of a cliff. And even the slightest wind can threaten to blow them over.

• 9:15Jay Shetty?

  They lack perspective. And if you try to gently help them reframe their situation and be more objective, they often resist your efforts to help. Now, the catastrophizer is usually that way because they weren't given much attention when things did go wrong. So maybe in their past, when they had really difficult situations, when they had really difficult challenges, people didn't really take notice. They didn't really care. So now they try and use anything to get that attention. So while we're doing this podcast, I also want you to use these examples as ways of creating more compassion and empathy. Often, we have bitterness, resentment, or hatred

• 9:56Jay Shetty?

  towards toxic personality types or toxic behavior. But actually, we want to have compassion and empathy because that's the truth. That people have been given so much pain and so much hurt that they are now responding in a way or reacting in a way that makes them come across as bitter and, you know, hurt. Now, the second type of toxic behavior is the complainer. The complainer is never pleased with present circumstances and feels powerless to change them. If the sun's out, it's too hot. If it's cloudy, it's depressing. The food is always too salty, or too spicy, or too bland. There just seems to be no pleasing a complainer.

• 10:40Jay Shetty?

  Think of the character Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live, who always found a way to ruin the fun. When you come to the complainer with good news, like about getting the new job you wanted, they're quick to point out how hard it can be to adjust to a new workplace or how you'll be leaving your old work friends behind. I remember when I first launched my first ever video, and my first ever video, I had about 250 subscribers. And I then got to 500 and to 1,000 subscribers in about a month. And I was really pleased. I was really happy that people even cared about the stuff I cared about. And I remember my friend saying to me, Jay, this is probably the peak, right? Like, this is probably the most you're going to be able to get. And every time I would reach a new milestone,

• 11:25Jay Shetty?

  they would think it's the peak, and they would always try and remind me of that. Now, this habit, again, to create more compassion and empathy towards a complainer, we have to realise that for them, they might have had someone in their life who always pointed out the negative in their growth. They might have been someone who's been surrounded by another complainer, and now complaining is contagious, and so they've taken on their habit. It might have been someone who is so scared of seeing the goodness in life. They're so fearful because they're just so against seeing things in a positive light. They've experienced a bit of pain or stress or pressure, and now they don't want to ever consider that life could be anything but.

• 12:10Jay Shetty?

  The third type of toxic person is the critic. The critic is always criticising other people, usually behind their backs. "Did you hear about Alison?", they say. "I can't believe she and Danny are having another baby. How are they going to afford that? What are they thinking?". Or it can be more insidious and not quite as blatant. Things like, "It's so good that you and Sasha worked out that issue around your vacation, because you know how he holds a grudge when he doesn't get his way." To the critic, people who don't see the world exactly as they do are never right. Now, critics are often created because they've been criticized themselves. A lot of these habits are so, so contagious.

• 12:54Jay Shetty?

  I talk about and Think Like a Monk, my book, about a monk that I was so upset that he would always be critical of others. And guess what? I would then criticize him to others. The behavior that I didn't like in him is the behavior that I adopted from him in my resentment for him. It was incredible. That quality was like a mirror. I was almost mirroring his habit that I didn't like and didn't appreciate when I would talk about it. We get so consumed by it that we start to believe and we start to think that we're doing something right by criticizing someone else who's doing something wrong.

• 13:37Jay Shetty?

  Actually, by criticizing them, we get dragged into the same space. The fourth type of toxic person is the curmudgeon. Curmudgeons are withholders. They're reluctant to give genuine support and to offer compliments. They may brush off your announcement of your engagement with a comment like, "How much does that change things, really? You've already been living together for years." They are notorious down players. Yeah, I did hear about Rhonda getting her piece published in The New Yorker. She must have had a connection there. They're always got that follow-up comment, right? They've always got that added piece of information to make something feel less worthy, right? They're always wondering, "Well, how did you pull that off?

• 14:20Jay Shetty?

  Maybe it's because of this. Maybe it's because of that." And it's a really strange one because they lose out on the opportunity to grow because they always believe that some other people have got a benefit that they don't have. Now, how does one become like this? Often, it comes from parents not complimenting them, parents not actually noticing the good in them. It can also be when someone has become envious and not allowed to live to their full potential. Maybe they've been limited by other people. Now they want to limit you. Please, please, please do not judge these people yourself. I've made that mistake so many times where I've judged people.

• 15:03Jay Shetty?

  Because of these habits, when I've actually realised that the answer is to be compassionate to them, because if you judge them, you'll judge yourself. But if you're compassionate to them, you will also be compassionate towards yourself when you're having that issue. Please, please, please understand this point that if you judge them for their mistakes, if you judge them for their habits and behaviour, you will judge yourself and you will feel guilty and you will break yourself down. The fifth type of toxic person is the opposite. They are the ceaseless celebrators. These people are always happy. And while there's nothing wrong with a positive and optimistic attitude, the difference with the ceaseless celebrator is that they push away negative emotions, refusing to acknowledge them.

• 15:46Jay Shetty?

  I used to be one of these people. Probably about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I was one of these people. Whenever someone was negative, I'd be like, oh, there's nothing to be negative about in life. I wouldn't even explore my pain points. I wouldn't even explore any of my difficult emotions because I just believed that they were unworthy and useless. How can an emotion be useless? How can it be useless to not understand an emotion? Right? An emotion is information. An emotion is a signal. It isn't who you are and it isn't the end of the world, but it is a signal. It's like missing a phone call with some important information. You can ignore, or you can choose to ignore the phone call,

• 16:30Jay Shetty?

  but then you miss out on the insight. They're the person who offers Kleenex and says, don't cry, or turn that frown upside down when someone else is upset. They cut off people's feelings and emotional experiences if they're not positive. Another tactic they use is diversion. When an uncomfortable feeling or subject comes up, they quickly change the topic to create a distraction. Maybe you're standing around with some friendly coworkers and someone asks how your partner, who's recovering from chemotherapy, is doing. When you try to respond, the ceaseless celebrator cuts you off. Hey, the falafel truck is here today. I'm obsessed with their fries. Let's go grab some lunch. Now, it sounds crazy, but you'll start to notice this. Again, compassion. Compassion because this person doesn't have the emotional capacity.

• 17:15Jay Shetty?

  To look at their own challenges, to allow themselves to discover their own weakness. Maybe they've really been hurt in the past. Maybe they've been through something really traumatic and painful and no one's ever asked them about it. Or if they were asked about it, they thought that it would be considered weak if they shared it or expressed it so that they've hidden it the whole time. Please feel compassion and empathy for this person. Do not judge them. The seventh type of toxic person is the consumer. The consumer can be notoriously hard to spot and yet somehow after you interact with them, you feel terrible, like your energy or your positivity has been sapped. You may be in a bad mood where you were in a good mood before. The consumer is also that person who has ongoing problems and asks for your advice,

• 18:00Jay Shetty?

  yet never takes it. You end up putting lots of time and energy into trying to be supportive and it's energy wasted. Instead, they feed off this energy and the attention. Another thing the consumer can do is overtake. They feel free to ask for and take favors, help or support, but fail to give these things. They may say things like, "Oh, I'd love to help, but I'm just so swamped right now." Or they say, "Yes," but then pull out last minute. Of course, these things can happen in the normal course of a relationship, but the consumer behaves this way far more often than not. Now, the consumer often ends up like that because they've never been given any validation or any attention or any affection. And now they look for it from everyone. They ask everyone, "What should I be doing in my life? What do I need to do?"

• 18:45Jay Shetty?

  And then they don't take the advice because they don't have the courage, they don't have the time to do that. But we've all experienced this before.

• 18:53Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide.

• 19:25Jay Shetty?

  Less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making and that extends to the practical stuff too. Like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 20:09Jay Shetty?

  Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market. Who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in store or online.

• 20:53Jay Shetty?

  The eighth type of toxic habit is the changer. The changer is a different person to practically everyone they talk to. Maybe you're talking politics and the changer supports everything you say. Then you overhear them supporting someone who says the exact opposite. The changer feels hard to pin down. You feel like you never really get a sense of who they are, what they believe. And the truth is they don't know. Compassion for the changer comes from the fact that they don't know who they are. They're lost themselves, they're trying to figure it out and they just want to feel a sense of belonging. Maybe they haven't had a place that feels like home, a community that feels like home their whole life. And now they feel this great sense of loss and emptiness and they're seeking it wherever they go.

• 21:37Jay Shetty?

  And the last type of toxic personality is the courtroom expert. No matter what you bring up with the courtroom expert, they have an opinion and they're convinced they are right. Even if you don't want advice and just want to be heard, the courtroom expert can't help themselves. They're addicted to advice giving and often they get angry and frustrated when you don't do as they advise. I've been one of this too. This was probably like about 12, 13 years ago. Where I thought my advice was the best advice in the world. And as time's gone on, I've just realized how wrong I was over and over and over again. And I just was constantly lost. And I wasn't giving people the best advice, or I was giving people the best advice for me, not for them.

• 22:22Jay Shetty?

  And that's why I'm sharing all these personality types with you as, as we've been going through this podcast. I hope you can think of people, but I hope you can see in yourself as well. And when you can see in yourself, you can really, really start to increase that empathy. And the more you notice this, the more you notice what triggers you, the more you're aware. So that you can avoid having this negative feeling towards that person and create a distance to form respect. In our spiritual tradition, we would often say respect from a distance. You have to be really spiritually mature to respect someone from up close. Why? Because from up close, you see all of them. Whereas respecting from a distance is something you practice. Where at first you learn to respect someone by only seeing the good in them.

• 23:06Jay Shetty?

  Then as you get more aware of their challenges and their flaws. You can deal with that because you also see your challenges and your flaws. An important thing to note is that most people aren't toxic hundred percent of the time. Right? And it doesn't mean they're bad people. Toxicity is a bad pattern, not a bad person. Remember that toxicity is a bad pattern, not a bad person. Now, I want to share with you the different types of boundaries that you can create with people. This is fascinating for me because often when we think of boundary, we just think of distance. We just think of like, oh, well, I won't spend time with them. But when we talk about boundaries, there are many types. Here are some of them.

• 23:49Jay Shetty?

  Time is one type of boundary, probably the one we think of the most where we say, oh, well, I better spend less time with them or I don't want to see them this Saturday. There's also financial boundary, right? How much we spend on that person? How much we spend when we go out with them? Where we go out with them? What we consider our financial boundary with someone? Often, someone in our family can take advantage of us when we are overly giving financially. Physical boundaries exist. Emotional and mental boundaries exist. And legal and property boundaries exist. If someone puts an arm around you and you don't want to be touched, that's a physical boundary. If they borrow money and they don't pay you back, that's financial.

• 24:32Jay Shetty?

  Or if someone borrows a possession without asking, that's a property boundary. Now, notice how you can have a healthy relationship with someone with a healthy financial boundary. Because you have a financial boundary with someone doesn't mean you have a personal boundary with them. And just because you have a personal boundary with someone, we don't have a financial or physical boundary with them. So we, again, create these binary views of people, like we're either friends with them or we're not because they made one mistake. But actually, you can have a healthy boundary with someone in just one area. You may have strong, healthy boundaries in some areas but feel more challenged than others. That's common. Or you may feel more challenged with certain people but not others. Like, you may have an easier time

• 25:16Jay Shetty?

  laying down a time boundary with your kids. Be ready for school on time, so I'm not also late for work. You have a hard time telling your boss you can't work weekends because spending time with your family or just taking care of your health and recharging is a boundary for you. When we think of boundaries, we often think of a solid line like a fence or a brick wall. That's actually one of the reasons people have trouble with boundaries. They hate the idea of fencing people out. Especially when we want to feel more love and connection in our lives, we're often willing to extend ourselves. And that's wonderful. But we don't want to extend ourselves beyond what's comfortable for us, beyond what we need to feel safe and respected and to create true bonds of trust and honesty. We don't want to overextend ourselves.

• 25:59Jay Shetty?

  Instead of thinking about boundaries in a way that's black and white, they're there or they're not, let's look at more scientific view. Think way back to cell biology and the types of cell membranes which are organic cells' boundaries. There are permeable, in which lots of stuff can easily pass in and out. There are semi-permeable, in which some things can pass in and out but not others, or only under certain conditions. And there are impermeable, which are essentially sealed off. If I were to ask you which type of boundaries you usually have, which would you say? Permeable, semi-permeable, or impermeable? Often it varies person by person or circumstance by circumstance, right? Think of when is a good time to have each of these boundaries.

• 26:43Jay Shetty?

  Parents of young kids have pretty permeable boundaries around how much sleep they get. That's not ideal, but they prioritize attending to their kids' needs and they know it's for a relatively short amount of time, so they compromise. For me, a semi-permeable boundary is playing tennis every morning. I really try to get my tennis in every single morning, but once in a while, something comes up that just can't be scheduled at another time, and so I compromise. But I do that as little as possible. An impermeable boundary might be something like an absolute intolerance for racism, homophobia, or other types of discrimination. As you can see, what boundaries we want to have and when are highly personal. Even though on some of them, many of us would probably agree when it's important to draw a firm line. Now, before we look at how to create strong boundaries,

• 27:28Jay Shetty?

  let's look at five signs that your boundaries are being violated. This is a first critical step to realizing where we need to put a boundary in place. Now, number one is you feel resentful. Either it's being tired of always being the one to pick up after the kids or to do the dishes, to always get stuck with the drudgery tasks at work no one wants, or being asked to stay late yet again, you start to feel resentment. Number two, in addition to resentment, you might feel anger, irritation, or frustration with others, with your job, with family, or in general. Number three, boundary violations can feel physical: headaches, anxiety, stomach aches, and digestive problems, problems sleeping. Often these are forgotten or ignored for quite a while.

• 28:13Jay Shetty?

  Number four, you can flat out start to avoid people who are violating your boundaries or with whom you have trouble holding a boundary. Number five, and even less obvious sign that you have boundary challenges, is that your relationships frequently seem to end or become problematic or stressful, and you're just not sure why. Right? These are all signs to look out for, because if you're experiencing any of these things, it just saves you and supports you from a lot of headache. So, let's talk about how to create better boundaries and honor the ones you put in place. Let's be honest, that's the hardest part, is really honoring them. And partly that's because we don't create them well either. So, number one, clarity. There's a saying I love in this regard, "Clear is kind."

• 28:58Jay Shetty?

  When we don't set down boundaries that are clear, and instead are murky or fuzzy or totally invisible, people often violate them unknowingly. That school administrator who keeps asking you to help may not realize how irritated you're getting and how limited your free time is. If you say upfront, "I'm happy to help with this one project, but because of work and wanting to spend free time with my kids, that's as much as I can do in a year. I'll turn down any other requests. So if there's a specific project you want my help on more than others, please ask me about that one." Was that unkind? No. Was that aggressive? No. Was it assertive? Yes. Setting clear boundaries can be done in a way that's both clear and kind.

• 29:40Jay Shetty?

  And when you're clear, people know where they stand and can plan accordingly. This one has been huge for me. I've, I've really been practicing this in 2021. I get asked for so many things that come my way, and I feel blessed to be asked, but I'll always be honest with people. And clear and kind has become my new mantra, because I never want to hurt anyone, I never want to upset anyone, but I don't just want to run to please people and cause pain to myself. Often, we please others and cause pain to ourselves, or we cause pain to others to please ourselves. And the idea is to just be clear and kind. I think of clarity some ways like I think of my schedule. My daily calendar is full of boundaries. And yet, that's not at all restrictive.

• 30:22Jay Shetty?

  In fact, it creates freedom for creativity because I know how much time I have and when. And I know what needs to be taken care of will be. Number two is communication. Admittedly, one of the biggest challenges for all of us in creating clarity is learning how to communicate our needs with kindness. We think when we're asking for something or saying no, it's got to be that hard no. But a no can be kind. It just takes thought and practice about how we want to say what we want to say. Yet, most of us never grow up specifically being taught to learn how to set boundaries. So, start small and practice. Declare a small boundary. "Honey, I'm happy to cook five nights a week because I do love cooking, but I'd really love if you could take the other two because sometimes I need a break."

• 31:05Jay Shetty?

  Saying no can be especially hard when we want to be a team player and we want to be helpful. But remember, if we don't honor our own boundaries, we can end up experiencing frustration, depression, health problems, failed relationships, or even worse, really start to mess up our own health. Number three is consistency. When you're consistent with your boundaries, a lot of that toxic behavior I described will fall away. People will start to see that you're not willing to receive what they want to give, or that you're not willing to give what they want to take. Number four is consent. When you do have that occasion where you decide to bend a boundary, you need to ask for consent, your own. Ask yourself if it's truly okay with you to bend the boundary this time. Can you do it just this once?

• 31:50Jay Shetty?

  Or will doing so set a dangerous precedent where it'll be harder to stick with the boundary in the future? We don't always have to be rigid, but if we really struggle with boundaries, impermeability in some areas can be the better way to go. Also, of course, we want to respect other people's boundaries. Consent in this respect can be its own podcast episode. But for now, I'll leave it at that. Just as you wish your boundaries to be respected, we want to be aware of when other people are laying down their boundaries that want to be respected. And number five, compassion. One of the things that enables kind communication and clarity is compassion. Again, here I'm talking about the types of boundary violations that are more everyday and not those that involve, obviously, assault or violence or other types of aggression.

• 32:35Jay Shetty?

  There's a proverb popularized by Robert Frost poem, Mending Wall, that says, "Good fences make good neighbors." Remember, boundaries don't have to be bad or negative. They can be beautiful. Robust boundaries regularly reinforced make for reliable, rewarding, powerful relationships. If you loved this episode, make sure you leave a review, share your realizations on Instagram. I can't wait to see what you've learned and I can't wait to read some of those amazing reviews and to hear what you thought of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

• 33:14Jay Shetty?

  Hey guys, this is Jay again. Just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good everyday and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly Wisdom is my newsletter where I jot down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically, little bits of goodness that are going to improve your wellbeing. This short newsletter is all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox. Read it with a cup of tea, forward it to a friend, and let these words brighten your day. To sign up, just go to jshetty.me and drop your email in the pop-up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page and you'll see the sign-up. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my Weekly Wisdom newsletter.