Having healthy boundaries that nourish, protect, and support your growth includes having psychological and intellectual boundaries.
What Are Psychological and Intellectual Boundaries
Any information you encounter in the world is coming from a specific mindset. The flows of information you encounter are created and shared by individuals with unique perspectives and specific beliefs. This is an unavoidable reality.
Everyone has a unique way of looking at the world, different levels of psychological and emotional development, different experiential and educational backgrounds, different views about culture, society, spirituality, or science, and a wide range of other points of variation.
Everyone forms their version of what things are and what things mean and communicates these interpretations with a certain degree of certainty. Each person holds their own version of what’s true, the key and necessary distinction is that it is what’s true for them at this time.
The question is, does it need to be true for you as well? You get to decide that!
To maintain the integrity of your authentic self, your unique vibrational signature, you have to exercise asserting your psychological and intellectual boundaries. Exercising your psychological and intellectual boundaries means you evaluate and question the information being offered every which way you turn before accepting it to be a truth you incorporate into your unique view of the world.
There are verifiable truths, and there are opinions. In today’s digital world, there is a lot of communication, conveying various beliefs and mental positions about where we are, what’s happening, what should be happening, and the like.
To stay true to your values and standards, to honor yourself and your unique intelligence, to value and respect your own unique internal space of ideas and beliefs, it’s important to evaluate the information you’re coming across before you automatically integrate it into your view of the world.
You can be curious and exploratory about the types of ideas others share. It's healthy to be open to different perspectives while having that psychological and intellectual filter that helps you evaluate the information you're exploring.
You can remain open and neutral without automatically accepting and integrating every stream of consciousness you come across. Instead, you can opt to evaluate the information first and then decide to accept it, reject it, or seek out additional data before making your decision.
Questions to Help You Exercise Your Psychological and Intellectual Boundaries
There are key questions you can ask yourself to evaluate the information you encounter:
Does the information accurately represent multiple perspectives?
If not, then it is one-sided. Information that represents multiple perspectives is usually more balanced, inclusive, and objective than information that is only one-sided, presenting just one mental position out of the many possible on every topic.
Does the information present verified data?
No data = subjective opinion. Verifiable data is neutral information. It is numbers and statistics without an overlay of meaning and interpretation on that data. Verified data allows you to make conclusions. Whereas subjective opinion, which is usually emotionalized, tells you what to think within a narrow and usually closed loop of information flow.
If subjective opinion, is the source credible? Who made this source an authority on the subject matter?
You can question the credibility of the source of information without being distrusting or disrespectful. You’re simply being curious about what makes the individual sharing the information the authority or an authority on the topic.
What kind of emotion (if any) does the information evoke?
Emotions are contagious. If some information or communication you’re paying attention to is emotionalized, if it has a charge, you’ll unconsciously “take on” or resonate with that charge. This is another reason why it’s important for you to evaluate the information you’re coming across. Empowerment means you’re in charge of what you will feel or not feel, instead of automatically being influenced by someone’s communication into feeling a certain way.
What does the language pattern reveal?
The word choices used in the communication will usually reveal what internal state the communication came from. Language patterns that convey empowerment and collaboration are drastically different from language patterns that are skewed.
Conscious discernment can help you stay in your power. By evaluating the information you encounter in this way, you can exercise your power to control what inputs you allow to influence you and your vibration.
Kidest OM is a manifestation and consciousness evolution author and teacher with indispensable books and online courses designed to help you attract and manifest what you want. Her books include "Anything You Want" and "Nothing in the Way: Clearing the Paths to Success & Fulfilment" which are available globally in eBook and print through online book retailers.