can’t stand on its own to hold up an entire house; you need many bricks, and they need to be laid carefully so your house can stand the test of time and your chosen responses become second nature, replacing the old dusty ones.

This week, we are dismantling the old structure and building our new one from the ground up. We are going to dive deep into this topic and lay out some basics on boundaries for you to implement, ensuring your new choices are protected and integrated. I hope you’re as excited as I am! Grab your favorite beverage, note-taking tools, and get comfy because this post is about to help you solidify the life you are choosing!

Part I: The Integration Gap: Why Structures Fail

When we integrate new choices, we need to realize that the rest of the world is not going to respect them immediately. This is because they are used to you behaving and existing in a certain way, and the new behavior is not "normal" to them. For the people around you, your change is an anomaly to their comfort zone, meaning they might subconsciously feel threatened by your evolution.

As humans, we are naturally very resistant to change; to put it simply, change equals danger. So when someone around us begins to act differently, it can trigger a deep ancestral fear that lives within us all. This fear is the true threat to your new life choices, which comes from outside of you. The push-back you receive from others is the thing you need to be aware and understanding of. Because we are social creatures, we may take this rejection very personally, and it can become discouraging for us to work through it, only making our job that much harder.

To help with this, it is important to use The Free Will Foundation (boundaries) to aid these transitions and to help you really solidify what you can do to provide yourself with the necessary space to allow that change to take root and become permanent.

The Choice-Foundation Loop

Each choice you make to change your life needs its own boundary to protect it. As I stated earlier, a single brick can’t be expected to hold up an entire house, and it won’t fare well on its own. If the continuous choice is the brick, and the house is for said choice, then boundaries are the blueprint and the structural framework to ensure all goes well.

For example, a boundary I have for the current choice I’m making effort to change is to slow down when I eat. If I need to do something after eating, I make sure I eat early enough to allow myself time to slow down and take my time. So, in practice, if I need to communicate this with someone else, I would tell them, “I need at least 45 minutes to eat my food, because I don’t want to rush through my meal and miss out on enjoying it.” It’s clear, to the point, and difficult to misinterpret. I understand the deep meaning behind it, and the other person can understand my desire to take my time eating without going into the intimate background of the choice.

Protecting the Pillars of Change

These boundaries create a safe space for your new choice to take hold. It takes time, energy, and space for emotional engagement for these changes to take root. You can’t time these things, so you must be patient with yourself and your choices. The time you take will depend on how ingrained the past response is and how consistent you are with deciding on that change. Don’t rush yourself; you have never successfully done this before. It’s like expecting a baby to speak their native tongue immediately after being born; it’s just not done. These things take time.

Boundaries also provide you with the ability to take your energy back from situations that otherwise drain you, leaving you compromised and unable to put in the effort to choose change. When you decide not to feed into draining activities and instead feed into yourself and your self-growth, you begin to make long-lasting changes. You essentially communicate to yourself and others that you are serious and intentional about the choices you’re making. This also provides you with the emotional space needed to make said changes. You can’t fully comprehend what is needed for these changes to become permanent if you don’t allow the structural space to actually enforce the change. Boundaries allow you a safe space to express and experiment with what works best for you. Your emotions matter, and they are the gauges that will guide you to fulfilling your intended change. Emotions are messengers, not the enemy.

Part II: Building the Integrated Foundation (The 4-Step Formula)

This section will cover four actionable steps you can take to make your new choices a permanent fixture in your life, and allow you to change as you grow.

Step 1: Identify the Integration Threat (The What)

First and foremost, we need to identify the threat—the specific element that will hinder us from consistently acting upon our new choices. Is it the people around you, certain situations, social expectations, or other existing habits you have that pose the most risk?

• Be Honest: Figure out what it is and be honest with yourself. Not every threat is something that you’d expect.
• Internal vs. External: When I was trying to figure out how to express my need to eat more slowly, I thought the people I lived with would push back, but instead, they encouraged me. My biggest threat was really the old habit of filling my mouth with food until the food was gone. My biggest threat was myself and my own mind. For many of your choices, you will find that the most difficult adversary isn’t an external thing but an internal one.

Step 2: Define the Structural Boundary (The How)

Next, we need to find a structure for the boundary that best aids your journey. The boundary is not dependent on others; it is dependent on you and your actions in defining and upholding it.

• Focus on Self-Action: Instead of me telling the people I usually eat with to make me eat slower, which wouldn’t be fair to them, I need to tell myself that when I notice my mouth is full, I need to chew everything into mush before eating more. After I do so, I then take smaller bites of food in and begin the process of chewing my food more thoroughly. None of this can be done by someone outside of me.
• Internal Example (Criticism): One choice I began working on in the past was my reaction to criticism. Because I was bullied by others with criticism when I was younger, I have a deep problem with separating myself from my work. It’s obvious when I get defensive because I become hostile and angry, but it’s not up to someone else on how I should handle it. In those situations, I need to take a step back, remind myself that I’m safe, and communicate that I need time to think about what they said. They cannot decide what is right for me when I begin to think irrationally; relying on them would only add fuel to the fire.

Step 3: Communicate, Not Control (The Delivery)

Now it’s time to communicate your needs with others, like I just stated in the previous step. You need to be clear, concise, and consistent.

• Guard Your Energy: Sometimes you need to state your boundaries multiple times, but you should never feel the need to explain yourself to the same people every time you remind them of your boundary. If they cared, they’d only need a reminder, not a whole essay about why you’ve made this choice.
• Act of Sovereignty: Explaining everything over and over again leaks your energy and makes it harder to focus on what you are trying to accomplish. Most people don’t deserve that much effort, energy, and time. This is an act of personal sovereignty, and that means other people’s opinions do not matter here. It’s all about you.

Step 4: Consistent Enforcement (The Integration Repetition)

Finally, every time you uphold the boundary, you reinforce the new neural pathway and integrate the choice. This is the act of laying down bricks to support your choice and to give it a home.

• Rewiring the Brain: You are essentially taking materials from your old response’s, choice’s, or behavior’s home and putting them into the new house. You are breaking down the connection to that old habit and building a strong and resilient connection to the new habit. Your brain will begin to favor the new pathway over time, and the old pathway will begin to weaken, becoming obsolete and no longer preferred.
• The Test: When you face opposition to this boundary, whether that be with yourself or with others, you must calmly, with intention, repeat the boundary. This is where your patience is most tested and where you will either make or break this new choice.

Part III: The Integrity of Choice

When you decide to enforce a boundary, it reinforces your chosen response, and it strengthens your Free Will Foundation. Conversely, when you fail to do so, you’re essentially telling yourself that your Free Will Filter efforts are optional, which damages your self-trust and ability to sustain the structural change.

Having strong boundaries is essential to having a high quality of life. They build self-trust by default because you stand up for and protect yourself from things that may damage your ability to be true to yourself.

Boundaries Are Fluid, Not Rigid

It’s important to realize that your boundaries are meant to change and evolve as you do, so keep them fluid, like water. You can "freeze" them (make them solid) for as long as you need before "melting" them and changing their shape and thickness to better suit your evolving needs.

Boundaries are not rigid structures meant to block out everything. To force yourself to have rigid boundaries is the same as locking yourself away in a box where you become untouchable. Allow yourself to breathe by not cornering yourself to uphold the same boundary that served you in the past, but now needs adjusting to better suit your present growth.

• (If you want to dive deeper into the concept of boundaries being fluid and how to communicate them gracefully, check out my previous post: Setting Boundaries: Prioritizing Your Self, Protecting Your Peace)

Integration Complete

Each time you decide to work with yourself to enforce a boundary and be open to the changes happening in and around you, you are allowing yourself to evolve. This allows you to really get specific on what you do and do not tolerate. It opens up options for how you express your needs to uphold your choices, making the integration look seamless and less constrictive.

Once the boundary is consistently upheld without conscious effort, the integration is complete—the new choice is now the new, strong default foundation. The house has been completed, and the pathway to living your choice is now solidified.

Setting Up Week 4: Embodying Your Future

Next week, we will explore how fully integrating your choices and consistently upholding your boundaries—the Free Will Foundation—propels you into the Embodiment Phase. This step is all about living from that place of conscious choice and becoming the powerful life you envision, setting the stage for the final phases of our resolution. This phase is crucial for making resolutions, new year's or otherwise, stick for the long term.

Conclusion: The Sovereign Self

The Free Will Foundation is the structural element protecting the chosen identity you built. It is the cornerstone to concluding and solidifying any and all efforts in changing who you are at a fundamental level. These changes that you are learning to integrate create ripple effects upon your life in profound ways that empower you to become all that you desire and to not allow others to influence who you are.

You are who you are with or without the people in your life. When you integrate these changes, you become a sovereign person able to make and break habits and behaviors with intention.

The Final Step

What is one boundary you are committing to build this week to integrate and protect your new chosen response from the Free Will Filter? Let me know down in the comments—I'm eager to witness your journey unfold!

Until our next Mindful Adventure, my dear friends.

My goal is simply to be a vessel, sharing the lessons and insights from my own path in the hopes that they may serve as a guide on your own. If this message found you at just the right time and resonated with you, I consider our connection a profound success. Whether our paths cross just this once or intertwine beautifully, know that I am here as a comrade and a friend on this journey.

I truly hope you feel seen, supported, and hopeful as you continue on your way. You are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments below or reach out directly to me. If you feel called to support this work and its mission, you can find the donation page linked in the site's footer. I look forward to connecting with you on this magnificent adventure.

With Love, Light, and Fire,

Jamelah Luckett

Link to Companion YouTube Video