Making Boundaries work with 'Toward A Better Life' Podcast

Kevin Pennel and I talk boundaries—including setting boundaries around your life and systems to help with ADHD.

Kevin: Boundaries. We don't see them modeled in our families. We don't see them modeled in our families. We don't see them modeled in our friends, in the movies, on TV, and very rarely even see them modeled in books.

Heather Claus is my guest today, and she has some incredible practical functional insights on the subject of boundaries. All of her experiences thus far have led her to the belief that boundaries are the key to not only saving ourselves, but our relationships. She's a big fan of amazing people enjoying love, sex, and romance, and happy and functional lives, whatever that might look like from human to human, which is why she's thrilled to share her experience and knowledge of boundaries with us on this episode.

Join Heather Claus and me as we learn about making boundaries work for a better life. I'm going to start off with 2 words and I would suspect that the person at the other end of this conversation might laugh, may not, I don't know, but craptaculous boundaries.

Heather Claus, welcome to Toward a Better life. What a way to start a program.

Heather: Absolutely.

Kevin: if any, if you, if you put a few folks are listening, that would be spelled C-R-A-P-T-A-C-U-L-O-U-S and It is in the dictionary. So look it up. And I think you're gonna figure out what it really means here in a little bit. So we're gonna talk about boundaries today. And it's something that is tossed around and we don't know where to draw the line sometimes and it can be anywhere, anytime. So I'm going to talk to the expert now on boundaries and let her share some of her story. Heather, the floor is yours, so to speak.

Heather: Oh, wow. Okay. So wide open here. Well, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

Hi, I'm Heather. My pronouns are she, her, and I have lived an atypical life.

I've hitchhiked across the country. I've traveled and worked at a carnival for a season. I've roamed New York City with street people. I've explored and taught various alternative lifestyles. I'm non-monogamous. I'm ADHD. And I have learned a lot through my journey and through my relationships about boundaries. I'm also, I had an abusive marriage and so I have recovered from that and part of that recovery was learning about boundaries and how they work in life and in love.

Kevin: Now you have some books out and I'd like to address those if we could, both at the beginning and the end, so that if people get a good, a good way to remember you and know what you do. So let's talk a little bit about some of the books first. And you've got a few of them out there and most of them deal more with interpersonal relationships and close relationships with loved ones and so forth. And I think we're gonna end up maybe branching out on that. And I'm gonna be quiet now and tell us abou your books.

Heather: Okay, so right now I have, "Take No Poop" spelled S-H blank T.

I don't know how spicy I can get on this podcast. So that one is a book. It's all about boundaries. It is build better relationships through discovering, creating, and maintaining healthy boundaries in three, sometimes five simple steps.

Now this book is, it's a passion project. It is probably about one and a half times as long as your standard self-help book, But it's a really deep dive into learning about boundaries and how to set them in your relationships.

My next book, a quick technique for dating called Start With No to weed out all 98% at least of liars, abusers, users, fakes, whatever.

And then I have People Pleaser No More! And that one is focusing specifically in on, well, obviously people pleasing, which I feel is a societal disaster right now. And then Fight Less, Love More. And that is all about reducing tension and increasing togetherness. So yeah, I've had a lot in the works and it's all coming to fruition.

Kevin: What are you doing in your spare time?

Heather: Writing, illustrating, audio recording, the fun stuff!

It's funny because I actually, I thought this year I was like, oh, maybe I'll do that thing where I limit my working hours to like 6 a day and you know, trying to be healthy and balanced. And then I was sitting around like kind of twiddling my thumbs going, well, this is boring.

How about I write some more? So here I am.

Kevin: Well you're just enjoying life. You're passionate about what you do and because you're passionate about what you do and you enjoy doing what you do, you don't work. You really don't.

Heather: That's the truth. I mean, let's be fair. You know, some of it, no matter how much you're passionate about it is actually drudgery. But I try to get that done during the 6 hours I would normally work. And then the rest of it is fun.

Kevin: There you go. That's perfect. Yeah. You can always divide it up. You can you can divide it up by left brain, right brain, too. You know, and with me, it's the other way around. I like to do right brain first thing in the morning or up till about noon and after 12 noon I end up going into more left brain. So why do I record people in the afternoon? I have no idea probably because it works with my schedule but I still let the creative stuff go and it seems to work well. So I'm curious, one of the ones you mentioned and just finished the title for me, people pleaser what?

Heather: People Pleaser No More!

Kevin: People pleaser no more.

Heather: Reclaim your life and relationships by putting yourself first without guilt.

Kevin: Oh, beautiful. That's awesome. I'm gonna have to buy a copy of that. That's been a number 1 for moi for as long as I can remember. And probably in the past several years, I've been able to overcome a lot of that stuff. And sometimes you look on Facebook or sometimes you look in a paper, people read papers.

Sometimes you look at other stuff, emails, what have you to come across And they talk about, you know, well, when you get older, you just don't take any crap from anybody because you don't have time for crap in your life. And you say, well, that's a pretty narrow minded point of view.

And I said, yeah, but I'm not, I'm pleasing myself. I'm not pleasing everybody else. And I'm thinking that's kind of getting away from people pleasing because if you're moving around a lot as a kid, you have no choice but to adapt as quickly as you can because you don't know how long you're gonna be there.

You could be there a year, but you could be there 6 months So you latch on to as much as you can as quick as you can and you become the chameleon so that you can Become anything to anybody and be pleasing to people

Heather: There's I mean we in the book I talk about in the section called The Heart of the Matter, I talk about why, like all the reasons why. But really, when it comes right down to it, the why matters a lot less than the harm it does not only to us, but to our relationships. Right?

Because, you know, let's let's think about it this way. You know, if you ask somebody, hey, would you like to do this thing with me? And they said yes. And then later you found out that they didn't really want to do that thing with you.

They were just trying to please you. Right?

See how awful that just like, that's just an awful way to think about things.

I call this a mental health crisis because a survey done in 2022 found that 50% of those surveyed identified as probably or definitely people pleasers. And 39% of the total respondents said that their people pleasing made their lives harder.

Kevin: Yeah.

Heather: That's 39 to 50% of people in that survey. Now, granted, I'm sure some people self-selected in a way that made it more likely, but Still, that is a huge number. And what people do to please others and to harm themselves is beyond calculation.

Kevin: It's debilitating.

Heather: Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: So have you got a step-by-step process of how to wean yourself away from that on this wonderful book?

Heather: I actually kind of do.

But it's more than just 1 step-by-step process. It's many different tools and techniques, including find a buddy, right?

Get a buddy system in place because we all have friends who have either been there or who are there now and we can support each other and we can like say no you know yes I know they said you were mean for doing that but no you were you were doing the right thing don't let them get you down you know there's so many things like that's just that's just one. Right.

Another one is learn the art of pausing. When somebody asks you something, pause for a moment. And if you need to stall, "Oh, hey, I'll have to check on something. Can I get back to you?"

Right? Give yourself that space if you need to so you don't feel pressured right that moment to do the thing that you're not ready or willing to do.

Kevin: Okay. Where did you learn all this stuff?

Heather: Well, like I said, I was in an abusive relationship. Which is actually pretty shocking because I'm not, I mean, okay, to me, it was shocking because I was raised by fairly progressive people who taught me that I could be anything I wanted to be, that I was beautiful, that I was smart, that I had a right to, you know, the world and whatever. And I totally believed that.

And somehow, and those of you who are listening, who have felt this experience, once I married, it's like a different set of societal rules took over my brain and I was no longer fully autonomous. Now I could have been, I just was not prepared.

I didn't realize like how programmed I was for certain thoughts and attitudes about marriage and love, and I found myself in the weeds.

So when I got out of that for the second time, because I tried once and then, yeah, anyway, y'all know what that's like. When I got out of that, finally, when I finally got out of that, I spent about a year doing research, love, sex, and romance. I wanted to know everything that was out there.

And this was about 15 years ago, the heyday of online stuff, online dating sites, everything. And so I ended up reading over 500 books. Some I got from the library, some I bought from Barnes and Noble at the time, some I bought online.

And that led me into the Pick-Up Artist community. And I learned a lot about how people manipulate other people in order to get what they want and that people are actually teaching this and learning this sort of thing. And that taught me a lot.

And then I met some people who were like what I consider good guys, right? Like that were out there trying to teach men who wanted to have intimate, deep, lasting relationships, right? They were kind of plucking them out of the cesspool of the pickup artist community and saving them. And I worked with them for a while.

And for that first year, I didn't go out socially at all.

Really. I worked. I walked my dog. I got groceries. That's it.

I just really worked on myself. Like didn't want to do that again. Right. So how do I get my head screwed back on straight before I go out and inflict myself upon others. And then the next year I went on 127 first dates and

Kevin: Why 127? Is there a significance?

Heather: No, no, there was no significance.

I literally said "I will go out with anyone." I joined a bunch of dating sites and I said "I will go out with anyone who asked me that doesn't creep me out."

And so I did.

And I learned a lot about what I didn't want in a potential partner. I learned a lot about how people present themselves online and how they show up. I learned a lot about how people use language, right? Like the words that they say and the syntax and so on and so forth. And I started really digging into that stuff. And During that time and then for the past 15 years, I have been sharing my experiences with others through journaling and blogging and speaking and teaching and going to workshops and going to classes and going to weekends and so on and so forth.

And about a decade ago, I met the most amazing human I have ever known. And that skyrocketed my learning because there was absolutely no way I was going to let that fail if I had any choice in the matter. So again, it was like digging down in and reading and trying things and looking for where the successes were and then working with others.

People would write to me and ask me questions. And I would say, "In your situation, here's what I might do." And they would write back and tell me, "Oh my Lord, that actually worked!"

And then It just kept on going. And so I don't have any formal training, but what I do have is a different way of looking at things that a lot of people don't think about when the default hasn't been that bad.

Kevin: So do you call yourself a life coach or anything or anything?

Heather: I do coaching. I don't call myself a life coach. When I do coaching, it's more about, authenticity and intimate relationships, finding those connections.

Kevin: What do you call it?

Heather: I mean, I call it coaching because there's no other term for it, but I don't call myself a coach.

I'm an author, right? Like I'm an educator. I'm an enthusiast, you know, it's just, honestly, I just, I have this deep belief that if more people felt accepted and loved and like they belonged to either a special someone or multiple special someones or to a core group of people that they knew really had their back.

Acceptance, love and belonging. If more people felt that, the world would be a much more pleasant place. And ultimately, that's my goal, is to foster more of that in the world. Whatever that looks like from human to human, right? Because sex, love and romance looks different for everybody. And my goal is to help people find their version and the people that love them for that, not in spite of that.

Kevin: That's some pretty powerful stuff, Heather. It's great. I'm enjoying this. I'm just listening. Everybody else says, be quiet, let her talk.

Heather: Yeah, you said something in the pre-show about rambling, so hi. I'm Heather.

Kevin: But what you just shared is so much what I want to see in people. I mean, I've said it maybe once or twice before that the title of my podcast came in what I refer to as my spirit time, which is anywhere from 3 to 6 in the morning and when that time hits I I'm just I'm up I might just as well start writing and Or something and that's what I that's how I do it And and if I don't I'm gonna be awake anyway

So I might just as well go out, get my tea, get my mug and enjoy it because that's the way it's going to be. And toward a better life popped into my head. And I'm saying, you know, so that's it toward a better life, not towards, toward, You're moving toward it. And it's not that it's, oh, it's here. I've got the ideal job. It's here. I have the ideal relationship. It's here.

Yeah, it's a process.

Heather: Always.

Kevin: And when we live that way in our lives today where everything is instantaneous and yet you've been in a relationship for 10 years and I'll bet you still have moments, but it's all growth.

Heather: We had a moment, This is a fun one. So I'm ADHD, which means a lot of things to a lot of people. Not everybody experiences it the same.

For me, yeah, so I have a lack of focus in some spaces. But the thing that really, that I really want to focus on here is blindness, situational blindness. So for me, I have discovered that in my life, if things are totally and completely neat, like the counters are completely clear and so on and so forth, If there is a crumb, if there is something left out, I will immediately notice it as soon as there is clutter. It's like I go blind. It is fascinating to me to notice this in myself.

But so I just spent, I spent about a year, a little over a year going through 4 major surgeries. And obviously that is not easy. Right. And so my partner has been helping a lot and yet, you know, there's a lot on him. There has been a lot on him. And so we've gotten out of like the balance of me just, you know, constantly going through it and just sort of, you know, straightening up and, you know, keeping everything at, you know, this very particular level that allows me to "DING! There's something out of place!"

So not too long ago, I said to him, I said, "Hey, babe," I said, "One of the things that you haven't been doing so much lately is dishes and cleaning up after I cook in the evening. I know you've been stressed. I know you've got a lot going on. This is not a problem. The challenge is that I don't always see that stuff, right? And it'll take me a while to get to it. So I don't want you to not clean up and then also get upset with me that there's stuff on the counter."

And he was immediately like, "Oh, have I been doing that?" And I'm like, "No, not so much. But you know, when you see things on the counter and it's in your way, you do the huffy by yourself in the kitchen thing."

And so, you know, this was a conversation we had to have. And it wasn't so much that he was getting upset with me, it's that he was getting frustrated. And I was giving him a framework to say to himself,

"Well, I can be frustrated like this, or I can try to help out ahead of times.Either one is fine, but I can't blame her because she's already explained this to me."

It's a way of connecting and going over.

Now, I could have been upset. I could have said, "He's not doing anything after I cook and ra ra ra." But why would I do that? I love him and I know that he's been stressed as well and we're both human. So we got to find that way to collaborate on the best experience for both of us.

Kevin: And you just described it Heather perfectly, its situational blindness. Can I push an envelope and say that with Take No Sh*t, 6 steps for boundaries, would it be possible for you to share maybe a highlight of those 6 just so we have some ideas?

Heather: I'll give you all the steps. It's actually 3, sometimes 5 simple steps. So the first step, you got to set it. You got to set that boundary. This is the internal work, right?

Kevin: Okay.

Heather: So in the set it section, we go through the 6 different types of boundaries. We talk about ethics around boundaries. We ask a lot of questions. We start the process of setting the boundaries. And then we move on to step 2.

Step 2 is "Say it."

This is communicating a boundary, right?

Kevin: So who are you saying the boundary to?

Heather: To whomever you need to. I'm focused primarily on romantic relationships, so it might be your partner.

For example, right before my first surgery, we were talking about something and I said, "Okay, so during my convalescence, I figure I'm going to..."

And he says, "Oh, I don't like that word."

I'm like, "What word? Convalescence?"

And he says, "Yeah, it sounds like old people and dying."

And I'm like, "Okay, what word would you prefer? Recovery?"

He's like, "Oh yeah, I like recovery better."

Right. So he communicated. It wasn't a big boundary. It wasn't a major boundary, but it was like, "I don't like that."

And I immediately said, "Well, I don't want to use a word that he doesn't like that makes him think I'm going to die, right? So I'm not going to use that word."

Third step, "Review it."

So this is what I call the AAR, the After Action Report.

Now you can review it yourself and say to yourself, "Well, how did that go? Well, it didn't go so well, blah, blah, blah." Or maybe, "Oh wow, that went really well, much better than I thought it would."

Or you can do it with a partner where you sit down and you've had a big conversation and a couple days later you say, "Okay, now that we've had a little time to think about it, how do we both feel that conversation went? What could we have done better? What can we do differently? Yada yada yada."

So after step 3, "Review it," you might say, "Well, that just went well. I don't need to do anything else," right?

No more steps are needed. If, however, maybe it didn't go so well. That's when you go into step 4 and 5.

Step 4 is "Repeat it."

So the first time you set a boundary, you may not be very ready to set that boundary. You haven't thought about the words, it just came out. Maybe you're in the middle of something and your partner is distracted and they didn't really understand what you were trying to get across.

Anyway, repeat it. You add a little bit more detail. You say how important this is to you, whatever. Maybe you plan this one out a little bit better.

And then you review it again. How did that go? So if the review again, doesn't get you where you want to go, step 5 is "Change."

Kevin: Okay.

Heather: Change yourself, right? You can change what you're willing to accept.

Like for example, I could have gotten cranky about with him not doing the dishes after dinner. I could have yelled, I could have screamed, I could have done a bunch of things. And then if he didn't change because he's in the middle of stress or whatever, I can say to myself, "Okay, I can keep yelling. How's that working out for me? That's making my life miserable." Or I can say, "Well, I freaking love this guy and you know, he just supported me through a bunch of surgeries. The last thing I need to be doing is complaining about there's being stuff on the counter right now."

Right? So I change how I feel about something, not in order to push it down because it's not valid, but because I choose to change it, right?

Or maybe I change my reaction to something, or maybe I change our relationship, right?

Or maybe, so one person, this was years and years and years ago, I was talking about boundaries and one person said to me, he's like, "Well, you know, what if in a relationship I have a boundary of, you know, I prefer the toilet paper to go on one way and you know, they prefer the toilet paper to go on another way. You know, what are you going to do about that?"

And I'm like, "Okay, first of all, if that is affecting my relationship, then I'm a bigger a-hole than, you know, whatever, but I'm not even going to talk about that. Okay, let's say that this is absolutely a thing, right? Okay, so change it. In our home, our condo, we've got 2 and a half baths. Okay, so 1 of them has the toilet paper 1 way and the other 2 has the toilet paper the other way. Maybe none of them have toilet paper on a horizontal roll. We install vertical rolls, so neither 1 of us gets it exactly that way, but we get it away that neither 1 of us hates. Maybe we don't have toilet paper on a roll at all. Maybe we put it in a basket on the back of the toilet. Right. There's so many different things that we can change if we want."

Kevin: Okay. So side note humorous as it may be, have you ever seen the patent report about toilet paper rolls?

Heather: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I believe that anybody who disagrees with it is a monster. Luckily, this is not a problem in my household.

Kevin: Okay. I have no idea how many people responded to that once when I saw it, because I said, oh, this is gold. See, I told you so. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. This is the way it's supposed to be. Don't tell me anything else. So What is step 6? If there was a step 6.

Heather: There's 5 official steps, but then I have another section specifically about troubleshooting.

Kevin: Oh,

Heather: okay. Troubleshooting would be things like, well, Let's look at the ethics of this. Why didn't you take no for an answer? And we dig down into that, right? Or the harm of saying it's okay when it's not actually okay and not upholding your own boundaries and so on and so forth. So yeah, so there's a lot to dig into. It's quite a book.

Kevin: I'm going to ask another parenthetical thing. I've talked to some other people, might have even had somebody actually interviewed a while back on the show about ADHD. And if you don't mind my asking, did you have any kind of treatment for that or do you just kind of?

Heather: Yeah. So funny thing, even in my generation where a lot of people have been diagnosed with ADHD, and even in the younger generations, women are diagnosed much less because almost all of the work has been done on how ADHD presents in masculine folks.

So it's not recognized in most younger women. Also add to the fact that stress increases ADHD and aging increases ADHD because our hormones start going out of whack and that's what helps keep ADHD sort of like under control.

So when I was diagnosed, I was given a prescription to Adderall to take as needed, which I do, like I get up in the morning and I work for a couple of hours and if I'm feeling particularly, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, then I will take it.

But I have a very, very, very low dose and mostly my ADHD is managed through, you know, the same types of things I've been doing all my life. I've got lists, I've got trackers, I've got, you know, a million different projects going on at once so I can hop from one to the next as soon as my brain starts to unfocus. I've got, I use coworking online for very particularly focused type things and so on.

Kevin: Okay. That answers the question. I was just curious because you seem to have, you know, all a lot, some of the, you have the signs, but they're not, I'm going to say this in this way. They are not out of control.

Heather: They have been during COVID during, and some of the stress that I was going through preparing for the surgeries that I was planning to have and so on and so forth, it did get like a little bit, like there were days when I would sit and I could not get anything done.

Like I could work for hours and hours and hours and not have a thing to show for it at the end. Most of my life though, I've been able to manage it unmedicated and now I manage it sometimes medicated, rarely, but sometimes.

Kevin: What advice would you give to somebody who's struggling with ADHD that doesn't want to take medication?

Heather: There's a couple of different things. One, if you are older, if you are aging, say above 45 or so, get your hormones checked. That's really important.

Make sure you're eating good foods like sugars and things that will spike your blood sugar will absolutely get you kind of into that. Caffeine can actually help. It's a stimulant. Also, though, co-working, body doubling, especially for those people who work at home. ADHD can be really challenging for some people that work from home because they feel like isolated and there's nobody there to like sort of like ground them. And so I use online, I use something called flown, FLOWN.com And it's you literally go in, you sign up for, you know, what they call a sprint or a deep dive or whatever. And you are on something like a zoom with a bunch of other people. You state your intentions at the beginning. You deep dive, you keep your camera on while you're working. So you're there sort of like being accountable to others. And I use that for a lot of like every single morning almost, I do at least 2 hours like that. I get a ton of writing done, outlining, you know, book design, book covers, illustrations, whatever, just dig right down into it immediately.

Kevin: Has a matter of setting boundaries helped ADHD? Oh, absolutely. That's what I'm-

Heather: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's a big part of like, so it helps. ADHD is really good with routines, right? So like on school nights, I call them school nights, but on weeknights where I work the next day, I am almost always 90%, 95% of the time in bed between 9 and 10 PM. I go to sleep, I wake up exactly 6 hours later and I start doing whatever it is I'm doing.

That's just how I do. But I've been doing that since I was in my early twenties.

I don't use an alarm clock. I don't like, you know, force myself into anything. I just make sure that I give myself a routine.

Same thing, get up in the morning, always have your water ready, always be ready to do this. I have timers on my phone to let me know, oh, hey, don't forget to take your meds if you want to or whatever it is so that I don't forget. Absolutely.

And setting boundaries around that is critical. If you know you have to do something, otherwise it will disrupt your entire week. Do it. Don't like, or, and this is, this is the part of boundaries or go ahead and disrupt your entire week, knowing that that's going to be the result. Don't just like ADHD and just going with the flow is the best way to make it much worse for yourself.

Kevin: Oh, that's one of the biggest ones for me is I always talk about going with the flow. I like to go with the flow. So that's not a good thing. Is that what I'm hearing?

Heather: It is very hard on ADHD. Now, here's the thing. Here's a great thing. One of the things that I've discovered with my ADHD, and of course this is gonna be different for everybody,

But one of the things that I've discovered is having blocks of things you need to do. So if you sit down and you say, okay, during a normal day, I spend, you know, 15 minutes on email and this and this and, you know, 2 hours on whatever book project I'm working on, you know, right now and whatever, and you set those blocks in place, then for me, it's about flowing between those based on wherever my brain happens to be.

So I might do a 2 hour deep dive working on a book, right? And then after that, I'll do 15 minutes on Facebook and 15 minutes on email, and then I'll have another 30 minutes of doing something that's not quite so difficult, but is definitely a little more challenging. And then another 2 hour or 1 hour block and doing something that I really need to do.

Right? So I can flow between those based on my brain.

Kevin: So do you actually set up a schedule for something like that? Or can you make more or less mental schedules of that?

Heather: What I do is I set up a checklist.

Kevin: Okay.

Heather: And I say, "These are the things I'm attempting to get done today. This is how long I'm going to give each 1 of them." And then throughout the day, whenever my brain goes, DING! I'm like, okay, that's done. I go in, I make a note, and I look for the next thing that I can work on.

Kevin: That's interesting because inadvertently that's what I do.

Heather: Yeah.

Kevin: I, yeah, I have a, I have a mindset that I will say, okay, I'm going to edit for the next hour and a half and it might go short or it might go long, but you know, depending on, I really want to get to 20 minutes of this program and be done with that portion of the editing before I move on to another project.

I did that last night and ended up being 10 minutes of the program instead of 20 because it was just like oh my goodness.

Heather: That's exactly the feeling that for me, like the body doubling and co-working online really gets me through because there are other people they're concentrating. So it's like my brain is like, oh, they're concentrating. I should be concentrating as well. And it sort of superpowers my process.

Kevin: So that's really interesting. That's fascinating. So one of the things that I want to look at too, you listed the books. I'm going to do them again. Take No Sh*t. And then you have People Pleaser No More! There was one in between those two, I think.

Heather: Start With No: For those who give too much—a new plan for dating. 

Kevin: Start with no. That's right. It's like a dating thing. Start With No, I like that.

Heather: I will tell you this. There are so so many people of all genders who give I mean, again, 50% of people said they either probably or definitely are a people pleaser. And you know what? If somebody is a people pleaser and they say probably there are people please doesn't matter why, how, yeah, you're there.

Kevin: Can I call myself a recovering people pleaser?

Heather: Absolutely.

Kevin: Good. That's all. And then let's see, Fight Less, Love More. that's the other book. So we have 1 2 3 4. Is that it?

Heather: Well, right now, I mean, I've got like 8 or 9 in the works for the year. So

Kevin: that's okay. And how long are these books? That's a curiosity because some people would say, great, it's like a 500 page book.

Heather: Take No Sh*t is exactly like 537 pages, I think.

Kevin: Okay.

Heather: So it's a significant book. That's a biggie. Start With No is actually fairly short. I think it's like 88 pages. The point of that book is one point. This is what I want you to learn and I want you to then go out and date successfully. It's about an hour long when I do the audio. People Pleaser No More! Reclaim Your Life And Relationships By Putting Yourself First—Without Guilt!  is about one and a half times that length. The fight book is not complete. I am in the finalizing the outline stage. And then I'll have to illustrate it and lay it out and do all of that stuff while I'm getting all the other books through the process.

Kevin: All righty. Usually I like to also make sure that people are aware of how to get in touch with people. So have you got a website?

Heather: Yes, my.curiouser.life. Like curiouser and curiouser from Alice in Wonderland,

Kevin: My curiouser dot life. Mm-hmm. Okay, we'll have it in this in the show notes everybody just look it up If If someone wanted to get in touch with Heather for some insight, for some help, for I'll say it, some coaching or whatever you want to call it, how would they go about doing that? What's the best method of doing that, Heather?

Heather: We have a contact form on my.curiouser.life. We also have links to social media. We have links to podcasts just like this one so that you can listen to me talk about boundaries and stuff in a bunch of other ways and situations and so on and so forth. So yeah, that's my.curiouser.life is the easiest and it's going to be the most complete.

Kevin: Oh, I just saw something that was in your little bio section here.

Heather: Okay.

Kevin: And I think it's a novel thought. "Why wasn't I taught boundaries when I was growing up?" That is one heck of a question and I have to think on it and I'm going to let you do it because it says, this is a question you can answer. So I'm waiting. We're waiting.

Heather: So it's not even just "Why wasn't I taught boundaries when I was growing up?" It's that most people were actually taught the opposite, right?

So in one of my chapters in my book, I say "Craptaculous boundaries are not your fault. They are your responsibility though, because they are how you take care of and protect yourself, the 1 person who's going to be with you your entire life."

But most of us have grown up with less than ideal boundaries, right? Very few people are taught healthy boundaries because our parents don't know them, right? We don't see boundaries modeled in our families. We don't see them modeled in our friends. We absolutely don't see them modeled in the movies or on TV or in books.

And to make things worse, when we do exhibit our personal boundaries, We are often taught that it's wrong, right? That we need to do what's expected, that we should be nice, that we should do as I say. Not as I do.

When we stand up for ourselves in our first relationships, our first friendships, and we say, no, I don't like that.

And they say, "Why are you so mean to me?"

"You don't appreciate anything I do for you."

"You don't love me."

And we learn erroneously that boundaries make us unlikable, unlovable, unwantable. And the challenge is, you know, we then end up believing not like, oh yeah, this is what I believe, but deep back in the lizard brain where we want to survive and thrive and belong, We believe that life and relationships are control or be controlled. Right?

So we try to use everything that we have, all of our strategies to get people to do what we want because otherwise we're going to end up doing what they want and that's not going to be any good. Right.

And we're told these things, we're taught these things by people who love us and we're taught these things by people who benefit from our lack of boundaries and we can't really tell the difference.

So it is my goal to turn that story around.

Like you, let me just ask you this:

Do you have, imagine in your head, a friend who seems to have like that joie de vive, right?

They are totally and completely authentic. Like, you know exactly what they're thinking. If they tell you, you know it's the truth. You know, they're not going to fib to you. They are quirky. They are weird and people love them or they hate them. Right. But they hold space for people. They stand up for what they believe is right, and they have a magnetic charisma about them.

Those people have boundaries, because boundaries are not just, "I don't want that," "Oh, no, thank you," "Stop."

Boundaries are also, "I am protecting the things I love about myself. I am prioritizing the things that matter to me. I am maintaining my personal energy so that I can give it to the people and things that matter most."

And that is why having solid boundaries actually makes us more lovable to the people who will love us for who we are, not the people who love us for what we can do for them.

Kevin: Well, I'm speechless. That sums it up so well because you're establishing, I'm gonna say the word, you're establishing the boundary. And in so doing, you are maintaining your wellness, you're maintaining your space. And in the long run, people will say, Oh yeah, I've heard about this before, because that way you have more respect and blah, blah, blah. And that's why some people say respect isn't something that's just given us respect is something that earned. And I can see that.

Heather: I'm 50 years old. I go to bed between 9 and 10 in the evening most nights. And I have been picked at about this in fun joking ways my entire life. I've always been an early bird, you know, like when, especially when it's winter outside, they'll be like, "Oh, it's getting dark outside 5:30. Is it your bedtime yet?"

You know, but really when it comes right down to it, everybody knows that that's my bedtime. And unless like I've specifically said, I'm happy to be up past my bedtime.

I will be like my partner might have friends over, you know, and they'll be like, they'll stay for dinner and they'll be, you know, lingering a little bit and I'll get up from the table. I say, "Hey y'all, it's past my bedtime. I'm heading upstairs. Feel free to continue, you know, hanging out or whatever. Y'all have a good time."

And I'm gone, right? This is a boundary. I don't have to say, "This is my boundary. Y'all are bad. Get out." I don't have to do that.

All I do is I say this is what it is. And then I protect that because it gets me sleep. And sleep matters to my mind. It matters to my soul. And frankly, it matters to our bodies. We cannot function with practical sleep either.

Kevin: So Where's a place to start when it comes to boundaries? I'm going to say somebody really wants to start doing this. Is there a particular boundary where you can get started? Like, ooh, this is the best boundary to start with. Is there any such thing as that? Or you just kind of look-

Heather: It's going to be different from person to person for sure, because each person is going to have like their own needs.

Like I just mentioned one, you know, to me, my bedtime, that is a time boundary. There's 6 different types of boundaries. You got emotional boundaries, intellectual boundaries, physical boundaries, sexual boundaries, material boundaries, and time boundaries. My bedtime, that's a time boundary. That is almost sacrosanct, right?

But I would say when we're talking about my smaller book, Start With No, right? So for people who are looking for their next best relationship, Start With No.

When you meet somebody new, don't hesitate to disagree with them. Right?

Don't hesitate to say, "No, I cannot do that evening. That's a school night and I'll be in bed at 9. I can't meet you at 8PM for dinner," right? "But I could meet you over the weekend or I could meet you at an earlier time on Thursday night, right?"

And you will learn so much about the people in your life if you say no to them. Like some people, as soon as you give them either a hard no or a soft no or a no with a different option, they will get upset that they're not controlling the situation.

You will see that side of them and then you can say, "Thank you so much for being exactly who you are. We are not a good fit."

That's great because then you're saying it to somebody who, if you're my age, 50, they haven't been in your life for 50 years. So them not being in your life 20 minutes from now isn't a big deal.

Like it's a very small place to say no.

And if you're already in a relationship or with your friends, start with things that don't matter so much, right?

Or start with a soft no. Like, "I'm not sure about that. Maybe later."

One of my favorite boundaries for my personal self is "I will not be in a relationship friendship family or otherwise with someone who makes me feel less than," and that can be a wide range of experiences and yes I also subscribe to the theory that no one can make you feel a thing, right?

But for my personal mental health, if I'm spending time around with around someone and I often feel less than that's a boundary that I'm going to examine because there's something.

Maybe we're just not good communicators together. Maybe they have something that just rubs me the wrong way.

There has, as we call them locally, a BECky or BECkam, B-E-C, a female dog eating crackers. It's somebody who annoys you so much that all they have to do is stand around you eating crackers and you'll just be like, "Oh, I just hate that."

But as soon as I feel less than around somebody, I have to examine that. Is this something that I need to change? Or is this something that I'm picking up that is going to be a not good fit for my life and my relationships.

Kevin: It's a good place to start. So Heather, you mentioned the 6 types of boundaries and you rattled them off and it's fine. But which book is that in? Or do you mention that in every one of your books?

Heather: That's in Take No Sh*t. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And we go into each one of them in detail and we give you a ton of questions to ask yourself about the different types of boundaries so that you can find the places in your life that you really need to set those boundaries.

Kevin: Okay. Is that a book that is like, I can read it from cover to cover? Or is that a book that is you can read through it, but it can also be used as a reference for later?

Heather: Both, really. It's meant to be. So one of the challenges with writing that book wasn't even just writing it. It was also the fact that I feel that while boundaries are an infinitely fascinating topic to me, They are also a very deep topic that touches on a lot of potential like trauma and, you know, painful memories.

And so the book is illustrated with fun, you know, pictures and whatever all the way through to keep your attention, to keep it feeling from like it's it's beating you down with information, even though it's so big. So I've had people, I mean, right now it's got all 5 star ratings on Amazon. And I'll tell you the moment that 4 star rating comes in, because you know, it's going to happen. I'm going to be like, "Oh, what did I do wrong?"

But right now it's all 5 star ratings because it is a really good book.

I mean, I did a fantastic job on this book and it's entertaining and it's fun and it's silly And we really get into the heart of what we misunderstand about boundaries and what we don't know and what we're not taught so that we can build these functions for ourselves.

Kevin: Well, just talking with you for the amount of time that I have, I can say without a doubt that your books are going to be phenomenal just because of the way that you handle stuff. And it's a matter of fact, and at the same time, it's light enough that it's palatable. We live also in a society where everything has to be very specific when it benefits somebody else.

Heather: Absolutely. And that's why Take No Sh*t is a long book. It is a masterpiece for sure.

And I've got a couple more long books in my pipeline, but the smaller ones, the, the Start With No, the People Pleaser No More!, and Fight Less, Love More: Those are smaller and those are designed to get in and target a particular issue that you're having without you having to read a billion things.

And those are also available in audio books. So you can like listen to them, like, you know, to while you're, you're commuting to improve your life or whatever.

So I believe that, like, I'm a reader. I used to pick books by the size of the spine, because if I was going to spend that money on a paperback, like, I wanted it to be thick enough to entertain me for a while. I can read a hundred pages in less than an hour. That's not going to entertain me for very long.

So the big book is like, that is something, that's my pride and joy.

The little books though, I want to be able to reach and help and affect and teach and inspire as many people as possible. And that means using this language and the things I've learned about, you know, of sex and romance and putting it into different formats.

So the smaller books and then a little bit later in the year, I'm going to start running like little 5 day challenges, like sprints for our relationships on different topics, to help people like dig into, you know, what you're going through and like how to, you know, think at it from a different perspective because we don't really realize how many beliefs have been installed in us that harm us on a daily basis.

Kevin: Are these gonna be like steps that you can attend through your website? Is that I'm guessing?

Heather: I'll be running them primarily through like social media, like Facebook, like that. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. All right. And do you do any kind of workshops?

Heather: I do. Semi-regular workshops, just like I'll pick a topic based on a lot of questions that I'm getting. And I'll say, "Hey, I'm going to go live next Thursday at 8 PM Eastern. If you'd like to get in on it, here's where you can go register. It's XYZ price in order to be there live and it's a teeny tiny price to be there live. But then if you don't show up live, it goes into the vault and you can only get it for ABC price."

Because I want people to come live. I want them to ask questions. I am energized when I am there with people talking to them. So my goal is to get them talking to me.

Kevin: So these are Zooms?

Heather: They're like Zooms. Yeah, I don't actually use zoom for them, but same difference.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other points of interest that you would want to share before we close up for today?

Heather: I'm just going to ask a question. Right.

Kevin: Do I have to answer it?

Heather: You do not, you do not have to answer it.

It's so I've actually asked this question to people like all over the world and they are often just completely taken aback when I asked this. So you've inspired me to ask this question.

What if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that your partner would never ever try to use your words against you, try to turn things around when you try to speak your feelings, try to invalidate your thoughts or ever, ever, ever want to harm you on purpose. How would that feel? How would your life change if you knew that? Like if you knew that with every atom in your body that your partner was 100% like team you, How would that change things?

To me, that scenario is exactly what boundaries are made for.

Kevin: That's phenomenal. That's grand. And I would say after 24 years with someone, I can say that. I honestly could. Not could, I can't. She's in the other room.

And there are times where, you know, I'm not going to say that there are times that it doesn't rub the wrong way. Oh, sure.

But when I step back and I look at it and I say, oh, it rubbed the wrong way because it rubbed the way that it needed to be rubbed because that part needed to be gotten away with, done away with.

Heather: And sometimes it rubs up against like our bad memories, right, From previous relationships and whatever. And that's the part where like we can all like sort of take a close look and say, are we collaborating in our lives?

Collaborating in our lives or are we contesting the people that hold the closest and that trap that combat contest, you know, and ultimately compromise that trap is the 1 that we've been taught to constantly focus in on compromise, compromise, compromise.

Whereas if you look at it from the standpoint of, "I know this person is on team me and they will never ever harm me. How can we collaborate to create the best possible relationship for me, for them and then for us together, right? What makes life the best possible?"

Kevin: So the other question that I have for you, What does Heather do to create a better life for herself?

Heather: I do this.

Seriously though, like I've tried not doing this and it doesn't work. Like my life just keeps inextricably, you know, pointing me back in this direction. And I am, I love this. It plus also, you know, I'll tell you what, working with people gives me even more insights into my own life and my own relationships and gives me additional tools and perspectives to make it better. So yeah, I'm happy as a clam, right? Like I'm 50 years old. I'm healthy. I got through my surgeries. I'm in love. I live in an amazing place. I have amazing friends. I get to travel. I get to teach. Like, There is nothing right now to complain about.

Kevin: So you're living your better life.

Heather: I am, and hopefully it will continue getting better and better and better.

Kevin: Sure. This has been delightful, Heather. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. And let's really think about this, everybody, about boundaries and how important they can be and how they can change our life towards the better if we just listen and listen and listen and reach out to Heather through her website.

Heather: My.Curiouser.Life

Kevin: I didn't even read it right. My.curiouser.life. That'll be awesome. Heather Claus, thanks so much for being our guest today on Toward a Better Life. It's been a true delight. Thank you.

Heather: Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin: I do hope you enjoyed this episode about making boundaries. You can contact Heather Claus through social media and her website, My Curiouser Life. That's my.curiouser.life.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, if you're seeking insights and advice on how to create a better life for yourself over and above the podcast, I am offering free Toward a Better Life mentoring sessions.

Just send your request to me, Kevin, at TowardABetterLife.com for the details. Join me next time on Toward A Better Life as I welcome Kimberly Braun, TEDx speaker and former meditation faculty at the renowned Omega Institute. Impelled from earliest childhood experiences, Kimberly has spent over a decade as a monastic nun exploring the path of presence. With a master's in theology, she lives to inspire others to connect to and live from divine love at their center.