Why you should learn to stand up for yourself

Wisdom from my Mother

“It took me twenty-five years to say enough is enough”

Those were the words my Mother spoke to me when she felt a heavy weight lift off her chest.

She gleefully told me that you should not be afraid to set up boundaries. Those who truly care about you will love and appreciate you no matter your boundaries.

A trait most associated with our Greek culture is hospitality, as depicted historically and in mythology. Our upbringing reflected this since I was a second generation Canadian while my mother was a first generation Canadian from Greek immigrants. We worked hand in hand with each other for our family business and always prioritized saying “Yes” instead of “No” to create a harmonious environment.

This harmonious environment was not indicative of our true feelings and was truly doing more worse than good. By appeasing the needs of others, we forgot the importance of our own.

As a young adult who was used to saying “Yes”, I learned that my hospitable nature and agreeable personality traits could be taken advantage of by those who wanted to exploit them. I regret to say that it took twenty-one years to learn this.

To set up healthy boundaries, I learned to challenge any behavior that ultimately made me unhappy. I was particularly unhappy about being exploited for free labor by an uncle of mine. The effects of COVID-19 had negatively impacted his business and he was struggling to pay his overhead costs and sustain a positive cash flow. He reached out to me to ask for assistance on the odd occasion since he dealt with high employee turnover. I felt bad for him and wanted to help him out.

An odd occasion turned from once a month to once a week quickly…

I was dedicating several hours per week assisting him without receiving any pay. I am a student and am on a student budget where money is tight. I was sacrificing time that could have gone towards my own home detailing business. This was making me quite unhappy and I wanted to take action to let him know that I would appreciate some small payment of $20 per session that I assisted him.

It took a lot of courage to ask my uncle for a raise and his response indicated why it was such a difficult endeavor. He told me that he could not afford to pay me regardless of the business I brought him. I had to decide at that point. I learned to put my foot down and chose to stop working for him for free.

Draw a fine line between friends and acquaintances

Another instance in my life when I learned to stand up for myself was when dealing with a good friend from my youth. We had different trajectories in life with drastically different priorities, but I tried my best to ensure that they did not divide our friendship.

Three of my good friends and I travelled to British Columbia and Vancouver. He was quite rude and uncaring of the actions that one of my friends did out of the goodness of his heart. It left a sour taste in my mouth and created a separation between us. We have not spoken on the phone or seen each other since the end of August.

I created a very firm personal boundary with him. He has not reached out to me and I had not either. To check off a box in bingo, I reached out to him over the phone. He answered and we had a very brief call since he was busy. I left it at that. I was not rejected but I also did not try to address our issues from the summer.

I tried to swallow my pride and address the issue but it was too overwhelming since we have a large friend group in common. I didn’t want to create a rift in our friend group based on our disagreement.

As a result, the friendship was not mended ultimately because I created a boundary with him that I have stuck with. I hope that he eats well and is happy in life, however, I have decided to not sit at his table.

Seeking Validation

Over the weekend, I attended a socially distanced gathering with some of my friends alongside their friends of friends. I noticed a lady who was eccentric and funny which sparked my interest in striking a conversation with her. We had a great chat and debated hot topics that may create uneasiness for some.

After our conversation at the gathering, we exchanged phone numbers to continue our conversation. I didn’t realize how much we had in common until we spoke for a second time. I was a little starstruck to say the least.

I asked her to compliment me regarding the bingo challenge, which she laughed about and later asked me how she could enroll in this course. I made sure to show her about the beauty of outside of the box courses offered in our program. She told me that “You’re very real and down to earth.” This was by far the best compliment that I can recall throughout my lifetime. I’ll admit that I was feeling fuzzy and warm.

Later that evening, we had spoke about her busy schedule regarding exams and papers that she needed to complete within the week. She told me her priorities regarding academics and that we should focus on those until we have time to hang out again. I didn’t consciously realize that she had set up a boundary due to these academic priorities.

I realized that it’s not only my boundaries that matter, but, truly to respect others boundaries as well. So I wanted to exercise my recent epiphany about respecting boundaries.

If you love something, let it go. If it returns, it’s yours; if it doesn’t, it wasn’t.

We’re all human, aren’t we?

A less drastic form of standing up for yourself was when I called my credit card provider to ask for a lower interest rate. I took on the role of a student who had previously worked at a financial institution in their cards, payments, and banking team.

This task was not nearly as difficult as I imagined. They provided an easy solution of upgrading my card to a higher bracket and told me that I simply needed to spend more money to be eligible for a lower interest rate.

I laughed at this matter since I am not in any position to spend more money. I was rejected when trying to receive a lower interest rate on my current credit card plan.

I learned that we can all find similarities with each other rather than outline our differences that may separate us. We both had tight budgets and bonded over this.