Resilient and Sustainable Caring Guide: Develop a Personal Sustainability Plan

A path focused on helping others includes a variety of intersections. Many options are good, yet it can be hard to know which are the most effective and sustainable. We can have a route written down, a detailed map showing terrain changes, and the GPS set to give directions, but this only helps if we use these resources.    

Similarly, core values, virtues, and purpose provide great guidance, but only if we use them. You have identified what is important to you, now let us look at how to apply this valuable source of resilience and strength to daily life. You will clarify what your best, balanced self looks like and develop healthy boundaries to promote this.  

Due to the depth and number of strategies, this chapter is divided into three sections. Take breaks to encourage thoughtfulness and creativity. Your effort is vital to developing a Personal Sustainability Plan. Enjoy this time promoting awareness and growth. Your well-being is worth the effort.

Begin with a reminder of what you defined as important by writing your purpose statement in the box below. Decorate it, use different colors, or write in a way to personalize this important statement even more. Remember, your statement is to inspire you, no one else.

My purpose… (fill in here)

Read daily and memorize your purpose statement. Remind yourself of the beliefs, values, and virtues embedded within. Display your statement so you can easily access it, especially when challenged. Help yourself respond with integrity even when tempted to go into emotional reaction mode.  

Nurture Purposeful Awareness

List three things you will do to help yourself remember what is important. Highlight the activity you will commit to daily. Pair activities with something you already do to integrate awareness of core values and purpose in daily living. For example, mentally recite your purpose statement while brushing teeth.

1.                                                                                                                                                        

2.                                                                                                                                                        

3.                                                                                                                                                        

Living a healthy, balanced life is seldom a solo effort. We benefit from having a support crew to cheer us on and help us remember how we hope to live.

Identify a support crew by naming at least 3 people you feel safe sharing your purpose and core values with. Communicate with these individuals what you have identified as important and how they can support you. Perhaps you can be part of their support crew. Next to each name, write how you will share your support crew request.   

1.                                                                                                                                                        

2.                                                                                                                                                        

3.                                                                                                                                                        

Picture the Healthy, Balanced You

Living core beliefs, values, virtues, and purpose are connected to our best, balanced self. This is not our perfect self in a perfect world. Many of us get caught up in perfectionism, but it creates unfair and unrealistic expectations. Your best, balanced self is the healthy you radiating authenticity and goodness with a positive perspective towards self and others.

How do you describe life when you feel healthy, effective, and balanced? Be honest, fair, and realistic. Include values, virtues, and purpose. Do not get caught up in perfectionism. Resist personal, societal, and cultural expectations that move you away from personal wellness by defining a more constructive understanding of the healthy, balanced you. Develop a description you can experience, affirm, and support today.

Clarify what life looks like when you feel balanced and healthy. Write down physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual characteristics that reflect healthy living. Give yourself a good picture of what life looks like when you feel positive about how you are living in all your roles and life contexts.  

When at my best, balanced self…

Physical: (Focus on habits over appearances. For example, “I sleep well and feel energetic.”)

Social: (How we relate to and connect with others. Focus on what you have control over such as your own perceptions, behaviors, and responses.)

Cognitive, emotional, and spiritual: (This includes attitudes, perceptions, feelings, and how we talk to ourselves.)

Fill the space below with words, colors, and images that provide a descriptive reminder of what your best, balanced self looks like. Remember, this is the healthy you, not the perfect you at some elusive future time. Your reminder does not need to impress anyone else, but should help you see the reality of nurturing personal wellbeing. Have fun and be creative. Develop a description that makes you smile and inspires you to embrace your best, balanced self.  

Connect Healthy Boundaries to Best, Balanced Self

We often hear about the need for boundaries promoting the safety of others, but are seldom encouraged to honor boundaries that foster personal wellbeing. People and organizations lacking a healthy sense of boundaries may portray them as being selfish or unreasonable. Such misunderstandings undermine the need for limits and lead to chaotic, relentless demands making it hard to stay on the caregiver path.

Boundaries are limits designating what we are and are not responsible for. They apply to every aspect of life and are vital for healthy families, teams, and organizations. Limits help us know how to use emotional energy, time, finances, and physical space. They promote positive relationships while honoring individuality. Limits helps us say “no” when needed to foster life balance.

See the Need: Consider and write down the areas of helping others you see a need for boundaries. For example, time and physical space are often among the first thought of. Come back and write down others as you think of them.

See the Effects of Lacking Boundaries: Think about times you have experienced or witnessed negatives from a lack of clear boundaries. Write down consequences you can think of.

See the Positives of Promoting Boundaries: Consider the ways healthy limits promote sustainability, effectiveness, and wellbeing for all involved. Write down benefits and add to your list as awareness of limits grows.

Understanding Emotional Responsibilities

Emotional boundaries are among the most difficult to understand, but vital to sustainable caring. They help us understand what we are emotionally responsible for, and what we can let go of. Emotional boundaries promote differentiation between people’s emotional journeys and help us experience more fully the joys, challenges, and hopes of our own journey.

We start by understanding the difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy literally means to feel what another person is experiencing. This helps us connect with others in meaningful ways, but is unsustainable when we forget to distinguish between our own and others’ emotional journeys. Empathy paired with compassion is key to sustainability.   

Compassion moves us beyond emotional connection to identification and action. We notice suffering and experience a desire to alleviate that suffering. Can you see the difference between empathy and compassion?

Compassion honors the distinction between people’s emotional journeys. We can be compassionate without taking on others’ emotions and suffering.

Consider the roles of empathy and compassion in your helping work. Use words, colors, and doodles to describe their differences and what a healthy balance between the two looks like.

Now identify what you are emotionally responsible for. Feel free to use different colors to write, shade, or decorate your emotional responsibility heart. Be honest and fair. Be as objective as possible. Keep in mind others may be pressuring you to take on tasks that are not your responsibility. Or there may be responsibilities you would love to pass on to someone else. Recognize what you’re emotionally responsible for.  

Foster Emotional Differentiation

We each have an emotional journey. Caring about others requires connection, but does not call us to take on their emotional journeys. Mindful awareness of our own emotions helps us increase emotional regulation and decrease anxiety.  

Choose an image you can use to remember emotional differentiation. For example, imagine each person has an emotional bubble. When struggling or challenged, imagine the emotional bubble surrounding you. Using your image increases the ability to respond thoughtfully and decreases the influence others may have on your self-esteem.

Draw or describe the image that helps you remember to differentiate emotionally from others. Have fun. Use colors and various lines or shapes to express yourself.

Practice using this image when calm so you are more likely to think of it during stressful times.

Identify Personal Responsibilities 

Limits can be difficult to put in place, especially when others want us to take on their responsibilities. Clarifying responsibilities helps us to understand and honor limits that promote wellbeing for ourselves and others.  

Imagine you have your own yard that designates what you are responsible for. Your yard includes your emotional wellbeing, social responsibilities, caregiving tasks, professional duties, resource management, physical health, and spirituality. Write down the responsibilities belonging in Your Yard. Enjoy decorating with joyful flowers or pesky weeds that keep popping up in life.

After filling in your own yard, consider the yards of others you interact with. Perhaps family, friends, colleagues, or patients. What belongs in their yards? We can assist each other, but taking on other people’s yards is not sustainable or helpful. What do you take on in other people’s yards? What do you want other people to take on from your yard? What limits can help you respect the boundaries of your own yard and those of others?

Develop and Promote Healthy Boundaries

Remember best, balanced self and core values, virtues, and purpose. Observing what leads you to feel unbalanced is also helpful for discerning important boundaries.

Write down 1-3 areas you need to develop or strengthen a boundary to promote your best, balanced self.

1.                                                                                                                                                        

2.                                                                                                                                                        

3.                                                                                                                                                        

Highlight the area you want to focus on first.

List the benefits for you and others involved by promoting this healthy limit.

Steps to define and promote a boundary:

Write down a boundary to commit to: (Try to keep concise and clear.)

Identify and write answers to the following prompts. 

Your responses will guide and empower you to promote your healthy boundary.                                                                                                                                                  

This boundary connects to core values and purpose:

Ways this boundary will promote best, balanced self and prevent imbalance:

Resources affirm this boundary by:  

Re-write boundary for clarification and conciseness:

Mutual benefits of this boundary include:

Helpful Statements and strategies for promoting this boundary include:

Recognize that promoting boundaries is not easy and requires persistence. Resistance to new expectations does not mean you should give up on a healthy limit. A calm, non-anxious presence can help. List some statements you can use to communicate in non-threatening, but firm ways.  

Name reasons why and how you might allow for boundary changes. Be context specific. Remember your responses to family may be different than those to colleagues.

Write down a brief motivating statement to help yourself remember why you need to promote this limit:

Acknowledging Internal Alarms to Various Boundary Breaches

Healthy limits are not always clear, but we have internal alarms that go off when an important boundary is broken. For example, we may feel sick to our stomach, get sweaty palms, or an internal voice says “something is not right.” Think about and write down your internal alarms. Doing this will help you to respond thoughtfully rather than overreact or dismiss important signals.

Resilience at Work: Imagine…

Describe your best, balanced self promoting an important boundary and the benefits arising from this.

Mentally practice fostering this important boundary in various situations.

Help Groups Understand and Promote Healthy Boundaries

Families, teams, and organizations benefit from healthy boundaries, but often have difficulty promoting them. Group learning is most effective, so if able discuss the following exercises as a group. If the group wants to identify and promote a boundary together, use the steps defined on previous pages.

Even when group participation is not possible, you can prepare to help a group by doing the following exercises on your own. Choose a group you know needs to work on promoting healthy boundaries. Your responses can help you effectively make changes and face conflict involving a boundary.  

Describe boundaries involved in the group’s functioning:

Identify the Effects of Lacking Boundaries: Write down as many negative consequences you can think of when it comes to a lack of clear, healthy boundaries for the group’s functioning.

See the Positives of Promoting Boundaries: Write down benefits you can think of. Add to your lists as awareness of limits grows.

What are some interesting and playful ways you can appropriately describe a boundary? Use humor, movies, art, books, animals, and shows as examples.

Change is difficult for groups. People will resist new boundaries even if the outcome is healthier group functioning. Without naming individuals, identify difficult responses the group may experience. Describe a helpful reply for each challenge.

Difficult Responses                                                  Helpful Replies

Encourage Best, Balanced Self with Care

Values, virtues, and purpose provide the guidance to help us navigate the many twists, turns, and storms of helping others in a difficult world. Healthy boundaries informed and promoted by these core beliefs make the journey more sustainable so we can find nourishment and joy even amid the difficult. We make choices guided by values and purpose rather than anxieties, and promote boundaries keeping us on track. 

Healthy boundaries ultimately remind us that we are responsible for our own wellbeing and care. A wonderful way to help ourselves is through self-compassion. As we offer kindness to ourselves, we expand our ability to give compassion to others.

The next chapter will help you make the path wide enough to include self-care. Get ready to take one step closer to being your own best caregiver and advocate!