The past few weeks have provided me with a lot of time for self-reflection. Breaking my talus bone has left me stuck in bed pretty much the entire time, with a lot of unknown steps ahead of me.

I’m someone that loves knowing as much as I can, about almost everything. I had so many questions going into surgery and coming out of it, but a lot of them were left unanswered.

That meant that for the first time in my life, I have truly had to take one day at a time. I can’t make any plans – in fact, I’ve had to cancel almost all of them. At the very least, postpone them. Every day, I would be grateful for feeling ok, or noticing any little improvements.

I’ve always believed that things happen for a reason, but, as per usual, doing that in the moment is a challenge. It’s usually in hindsight that you can understand how a difficult moment in your life actually brought about such positive change.

There’s definitley things that I’ve already learned about myself during this time, but one big thing is setting boundaries.

We all know the theory of being assertive, and setting boundaries, but actually doing that in practice is a different thing. What I feel confident in though, is that if I had of respected my boundaries and enforced them, my foot wouldn’t be broken.

Growing up, a number of people had labelled me as difficult, too much, weird, annoying, etc. Those are the sorts of words that encourage silence to overcome a person. It’s a form of people pleasing; at least that’s what I’ve come to believe.

Being a people pleaser is not in my nature, but silencing yourself is a form of that. You don’t want to be seen as the problematic person.

The thing is, if something happens as a result of silencing yourself, you become the person that has to deal with that consequence. Not the people that you pleased in the process. I can honestly say that it’s shocked me that the people who were there during the accident haven’t checked in on me over the weeks, or to see how surgery went. It doesn’t matter how many years there were in that professional relationship, I’m now out of their world.

As I said before, I believe that these challenges bring about good things. I started to look at all the instances in life where I compromised on my own boundaries so that I don’t cause a fuss and it’s surprisingly quite a lot. But doing so only caused unpleasant things for me.

Ultimately, we have our own internal compass that we shouldn’t have to silence. We know what’s right, and we know what’s wrong. People may act that they know better than you but that’s not necessarily true.

As an adult, you are entitled to make your own choices. Of course, you’ll probably make mistakes along the way, but at least you followed your instincts and can learn from it. Don’t let others lead you to your own downfall simply because they have conviction in their voice that they know better. Listen to them, hear them and then make your own conclusions.

Setting boundaries in your life is like fencing off your own garden. It allows you to keep other peoples mess out, and work on making your own safe haven. Yes, you may get the occasional weed, but at least other people won’t move in.