Former ballroom dancer turned author and life coach Camilla Sacre-Dallerup speaks about boundary setting and finding confidence in saying no
The one thing that I wanted people to know when I was writing my new book, was that it’s OK to take a day off to look after yourself once in a while. My background is in sports and dance, so that way of thinking makes a lot of sense to me. In that world, you need to rest for your body to be able to reach its full potential and perform well. But that way of thinking can also be applied to anything you do in life.
Many people struggle prioritising themselves but it’s all about how you communicate your needs. That’s what I see in a lot of successful relationships. I often mediate between family members and couples, and once people have that difficult conversation in front of each other and listen, more often than not they’ll say “wow, I didn’t know you felt like that”. So that chat that you don’t want to have because you think it is going to be uncomfortable, really needs to happen.
When certain people come into our life, they can highlight something within ourselves that we need to work on. Most of us have felt envious of someone else at some point. But in that instance, we should ask ourselves why we’re feeling that way. It’s like any kind of uncomfortable feeling that we have. Often it’s a call to action and in hindsight, it’s helpful because we can learn something about ourselves and realise that, ‘I’m annoyed by this because this person is what I used to be like’ or ‘I recognise that I want what this person has.’
We can’t change other people, but we can change how we look and react to something and the emotional charge that we have when dealing with a situation. Every day in my coaching and hypnosis business, I work with people who tell me about different relationships they have with people around them and what they want to improve on. But the most important thing is that we love ourselves first. The more we do, the more we can come from a place of compassion. A great way to do this is through affirmations or meditations. Try saying ‘I love myself’. In the beginning, saying that can be tricky, but you can get there with a bit of persistence and consistency.
Having a breathing room in relationships helps, I think. Being in a couple and being able to do things separately from each other and still have a good time apart is important and it makes you value the time that you spend together even more. Often, I have to set boundaries and say, you know, I need this for me. In both my work and my own life, I’ve learnt that you have to be true to yourself and express your needs in relationships.
It’s Not You, It’s Me: How to Heal Your Relationship with Yourself and Others, by Camilla Sacre- Dallerup, published by Watkins Publishing, (£9.99 amazon.co.uk). For more information about Camilla, visit zenme.tv
