People can be very cruel. There are some people with a goal to make your life a living hell. These individuals do not care about you even though you think they do. Whenever they are around you, they smile, laugh, and act as if they have your best interest in mind. However, the minute you turn your back, they will be the first ones to stab you. That is why setting healthy boundaries will help you to have healthy relationships. Without proper boundaries in your life, everyone will take advantage of you.

If you do not set healthy boundaries in your life, here are some things that are guaranteed to happen:·

People will take your kindness for weakness ·

You will get hurt more ·

Lack of respect ·

Guilt ·

You will become bitter ·

It makes letting of your past difficult ·

Satan’s entry way

Let us look closely at each of these:

People will take your kindness for weakness

There are certain people that only come to you whenever they need a favor from you. You are the first one they come to ask for money. You are the first one they come to ask for a ride. You are the first one they come to for everything. However, the few times that you need a favor from them, they are nowhere around.

You have to be extremely careful when dealing with these kinds of people. People that always want to receive, but never want to give. These selfish people want to abuse your kindness. It’s okay to want to help people, but you also have to learn to say no sometimes.

You will get hurt more

People who don’t set boundaries in their lives get hurt more by others because without any boundaries, people don’t know where to stop. Some people will subconsciously take advantage of you because you haven’t made known to them your likes and dislikes. For example, I am a laid back person and I like my serenity. Even though I can be in environments that are loud, there are moments that I let it be known that I don’t like noisy environment.

Lack of Respect

More people will respect and admire you more when you set boundaries. Why? Because it communicates to them that you are a person of integrity, self-respect, and not to be taken advantage of. Not only does setting boundaries gives you respect but it also shows that you respect yourself. When people see that you don’t respect yourself, they will not respect you. If every word that comes out of your mouth needs to be bleeped, that shows a major character defect and a lack of self-respect. There are several things that I have learned to tolerate, but disrespect is not one of them.

Guilt

As I have mentioned it repeatedly, if the word no is not in your vocabulary, you are setting yourself up for failure. Here is what I mean: For example, you have a “friend” that always asks you for a ride to work and you give it to them. Occasionally, they do something nice for you. However, when your “friend” asks you for a ride to work particular, you said no because you had to do something. Some people will use the few times that they did something for you to make you feel guilty about not giving them a ride. Because you are so use to saying yes all the time, you will feel guilty and that will make you to change your mind. When you do, that person will do that every time you are not able to help them. It is better to let them say what they have to say and walk away, rather than for you to change your mind.

You will become bitter

In the example I just used, if you allow your decisions to be altered because of guilt, you will become bitter and remorseful towards that person subconsciously. Your attitude and mood will change towards that person. Bitterness, anger, frustration, animosity, will eat you inside. Moreover, one day when that person says something that offends you, you may say or do something that is unlike you. This is because you had allowed negative feelings to reside in your heart for such a long time. There is one thing that most people misunderstand about bitterness and that is, bitterness will continue to grow as long as you continue to feed it. How do you feed it? You feed it by holding things that hurt you but you didn’t let the person who said it know that it hurt you. You feed it by smiling when you really feel like crying. Some many people spend the rest of their lives in jail because of bitterness. Families, marriages, and relationships are broken because of bitterness. Don’t let your bitterness control your life. Stop it before it’s too late.

It makes letting go of your past difficult

We have all done certain things in our past that we regret doing. Many of those things came back to hunt us because we know we should known and did better. We did not set healthy boundaries to avoid that thing from happening. Or maybe we did set a boundary, but we just didn’t stick to it. Regardless of what happened, the point is that we regret it.

Open doors for Satan entry

The word of God say that the devil comes to, “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10); why give him any more opportunities to destroy you. If you don’t set healthy boundaries in your life, Satan will use your mistakes against you. He will use any of the six things I just mentioned above against you. All he need is only one shot.