The Vital Importance Of Your Nose And Toes
Creating effective personal, professional and social boundaries is of vital importance to your social, business and personal wellbeing.
I think we can all agree that responsibility is a good thing. Taking responsibility ourselves, insisting on others being responsible at work, teaching responsibility to kids… are all respected and respectful ways of being in the world.
The ‘nose and toes’ thing is a handy metaphor for where your responsibility ‘for’ ends, and your responsibility ‘to’ begins and ends. But what’s this ‘to’ and ‘for’ business?
Imagine you are standing facing a glass wall, so close to it that your toes are up against it and consequently your nose is touching it too. This imaginary glass wall creates the boundary for what you are responsible ‘for’ – you are responsible for yourself your side of the glass – your thoughts, feelings, behaviours, communications. And that also means you own those things… they are yours to change!
The things beyond that glass wall – other people and their thoughts and feelings, stuff happening in society, politics, your work, etc., are related to you only by the ‘contract’ or ‘agreements’ that are in place. The ‘contract’ defines your responsibility ‘to’. So, you are responsible ‘to’ staff, customers, colleagues, bosses, team members, etc., at work as defined by the contractual agreements in place. You are responsible ‘to’ other people in society, the environment, the council, etc., as defined by the ‘agreements’ of law, implicit and explicit rules of society, accepted politeness, rules of good taste/accepted social norms, etc. You have the power and choice to conform or not conform to these. As a side note, remember that some of these things have a responsibility ‘to’ you as well – you have rights in society and under law.
Beyond responsibility ‘to’ and ‘for’ there are things like the weather, traffic, seasons, etc., over which you can exert no control.
Things get messy when we lose track of or blur this boundary. If you take no responsibility ‘to’ others, etc., your relationships break down and operating effectively in society gets difficult. But that’s not the worst of it… It gets emotionally and psychologically really hard if you extend your responsibility ‘for’ beyond your nose and toes. To do this would be to try to be responsible ‘for’ other people’s thoughts and feelings, ‘for’ the actions of people and situations beyond your control. This leads to all kinds of everyday pathologies, worries, and upsets. It also sets you up for being manipulated and controlled by others. So, keep good boundaries!
But having said all that, the cool thing is that if you take full responsibility ‘for’ yourself, your mind, behaviours, responses, etc., in any situation, you always have personal power and ownership – and that’s a really good thing. Responsibility then becomes response-ability, the ability to choose your responses no matter what the world throws at you. That’s powerful but it takes Resilience, and excellent Communication Skills. It also takes critical thinking to be able to distinguish when other people are trying to manipulate or control you. Keep an eye out for my upcoming course, Critical Thinking For Everyday Life.