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Cloud computing helps businesses by delivering on-demand computing power and resources swiftly, in many instances minimizing or eliminating the need to buy, install, and maintain new and expensive physical hardware and infrastructure. But at the same time, organizations still need to keep their most valuable data and IT systems within their own on-premises data centers due to key considerations such as security, privacy, safety, and meeting regulatory mandates.
That is why enterprises have adopted a hybrid cloud architecture across their IT operations that provides in many use cases greater software-as-a-service application flexibility, increased cost savings, more efficient processing, and storage capabilities, as well as broader options when it comes to governance and privacy. We see hybrid cloud as integral in the accelerating adoption of data warehouse platforms that function as a containerized application for developing highly performant, self-service data warehouses in the cloud which can be scaled dynamically and upgraded independently.
With hybrid cloud, in alignment with their multi-cloud implementations, organizations can continue to have their own private, on-premises IT infrastructure for their most mission critical data and systems, while also bringing in public cloud resources to advance their hybrid data and data architecture modernization strategies.
The hybrid cloud trend runs in parallel with broader multi-cloud adoption as it allows organizations to use more than one public cloud service, with each public cloud service typically supporting different applications. However, hybrid cloud challenges must be addressed to realize hybrid cloud’s benefits.
Key Hybrid Cloud Challenges and Trends
Organizations are increasingly compelled to distribute and spread data throughout their data centers, private clouds, and public clouds to meet the expanding demands of collecting, storing, analyzing, and managing massive amounts of fast-growing data volumes usually in real-time. Plus, with more data now created and originating outside data centers, they are finding overall data administration more complex and creating new cost containment, performance, and integration challenges.
In addition, legacy data warehouses frequently lack granular control over resources allocated to jobs and tasks as well as the ability to support multiple versions of tools and engines. Accordingly, we see that users, groups, and workloads are required to use the same versions of query engines and tools. Such interdependency muddles operations and the upgrade process and can suppress innovation, especially across hybrid cloud environments.
Why Hybrid Cloud? Attaining More Hybrid Data Optimization and Flexibility
One key benefit of hybrid cloud is that it can provide more technological and process freedom for businesses. Instead of being limited by existing on-premises data center capabilities, using hybrid cloud allows organizations to quickly respond to their unique business needs by accessing additional compute resources through public cloud platforms, creating more data workload optimization and management flexibility.
The value of this option is that public cloud services can be available at the push of a button and configured automatically according to customer data workload demands and policies, including elastic up/down scaling capabilities. This kind of flexibility and measurable cost structure is especially critical today, as intricate macroeconomic conditions continue to challenge businesses around the world.
By having a hybrid cloud strategy, growing businesses can move quickly on their topmost compute needs rather than having to wait until costly infrastructure is budgeted, planned, and eventually installed. Opting for hybrid cloud can mean optimizing compute resources in areas such as streamlined upgrade processes and operations, accelerating time to market and innovation, as well as keeping operational costs manageable.
Hybrid Cloud Helps Address Data Storage Complexities
Hybrid cloud also enables organizations to make better business decisions by giving them a more flexible storage framework. Today, organizations typically store data in individual repositories maintained for each data center, creating a complex and fragmented data storage system that leads to bottlenecks and inefficient data operations. This is why we see organizations rapidly adopting the data lakehouse across their hybrid cloud architecture.
The data lakehouse blurs the line between structured and unstructured data, enabling organizations to store all types of raw data in one location, while still having a storage layer on top to provide transactional views of data and structured data management and analytics when needed. And by transitioning to hybrid cloud, enterprises can attain advantages through being able to bring together and pool all those isolated repositories together to create a unified data lakehouse as well as distributed data warehouse implementation.
This hybrid data approach allows access to more insights and information through streamlined access and administration of their overall data. While we are seeing versions of this from a number of data platform providers such as AWS, IBM, Oracle, Teradata, and Snowflake, a robust example of what I am speaking about is the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP).
CDP provides its users with a unified platform that offers portable, interoperable data analytics essential to optimizing the entire data lifecycle and more efficient management of distributed data. This applies to any data running across the organization’s hybrid cloud including public cloud, on premises, and edge environments. CDP’s common security, governance, metadata, replication, and automation provided by Cloudera Shared Data Experience (SDX) also enables the platform to operate as an integrated system.
Different vendors each have slightly different approaches to offering the tools and technology required for enterprise data leaders. It’s important for enterprises to carefully select the right platform to meet its data and analytics needs, but the benefits of a hybrid data approach should be a key consideration.
Flexibly pooling is another feature critical to a hybrid data strategy. This feature pools critical business data together, regardless of where it is physically stored, and is another major benefit of the hybrid cloud approach to break down data silos within organizations and deliver unified data management. Improved data management delivered by hybrid cloud is a huge boon for enterprises that are seeking to modernize their aging business operations.
Hybrid Cloud Helps Organizations Improve Business Outcomes
Immense flexibility is one of the greatest strengths of hybrid cloud. Growing businesses, including small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, can be thwarted when their internal IT operations are unable to meet their hybrid data requirements. But by being able to flexibly access power, performance, storage, and networking resources, organizations can react more quickly to growth opportunities and improve business outcomes.
Another benefit of hybrid cloud is that it is not an either-or decision. For many companies, moving their operations to the cloud can be worrisome due to factors such as regulatory and legal concerns. With hybrid cloud, that either-or decision is less onerous since it can allow organizations to use hybrid cloud according to their technical and business priorities.
Another part of the hybrid cloud value proposition is that going the hybrid cloud route means that organizations can avoid vendor lock in. Organizations opting to embrace a hybrid cloud strategy can gain more flexibility in balancing and optimizing their on-premises and public cloud data resources. Workloads and data can be distributed across public cloud platforms, allowing for more choice based on both IT operational and business priorities.
Other Hybrid Cloud Benefits for 2023 and Beyond
The popularity of hybrid cloud is continuing to gain steam in post-pandemic 2023 as organizations are looking at a wide range of strategies, including hybrid cloud, to boost their IT operations and modernize their data platforms to improve competitiveness and better respond to uncertainties such as supply chain issues and macroeconomic pressures.
By adopting hybrid cloud, organizations can be better protected against downtime and data loss related to data center disruptions as well as from non-data center sources. With a hybrid cloud approach, organizations can improve the load-balancing and distribution of their critical operations during troubleshooting cycles.
As cloud computing continues to evolve and deliver more data management demands hybrid cloud will also continue its own unique growth by meeting data workload optimization goals across on-premise, public cloud, and edge environments, allowing organizations to avoid the fragmentation and limitations of a single environment approach and potentially debilitating trade-offs across any of their data realms.
By bringing both essential services together for customers, hybrid cloud is solidly positioned to deliver the flexibility, cost savings, security, and on-demand compute power needed by today’s IT organizations.
The brain is an extraordinary organ, with many wonderful qualities, including the ability to forget — which may actually be a good thing. “If we remembered everything that we experienced, our brains would be hoarders, clogged with all sorts of useless crap that gets in the way of what we really need,” says Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California Davis.
In today’s constantly plugged-in, always-on world, people are faced with a barrage of information — emails, news, pointless meetings, traffic updates, chitchat from family members — far more than anyone can process, Ranganath explains. “Instead, evolution favored quality over quantity,” he says. “We get good quality memories for the stuff that we are paying attention to, and that is often the important stuff.
But if we’re not paying attention to something, we will never really get a good memory of it to begin with.” These issues with remembering often rear their heads at the least convenient times: when you’re in a rush and can’t find your keys, when you enter a room and don’t know what you came for, when you’re talking with an acquaintance whose name escapes you, when a friend refers to a nice moment you shared and you have no recollection.
This kind of forgetting is completely normal, Ranganath says, but is frustrating nonetheless. (Other, more severe conditions can cause memory loss and interruptions to memory recall, such as trauma, Alzheimer’s, and ADHD. Strategies to address these disorders may include therapy and medication, more intensive than the tips outlined here.)
Generally, though, hope is not lost if your recall is a little rusty. Memory is an active process, not a passive one, says clinical neuropsychologist Michelle Braun. “Which kind of undermines a longstanding myth that brain health is just a product of genetics and there’s really nothing we can do about it,” she says. Paying a little more attention and savoring special events can help you remember life’s moments, big and small.
Start paying undivided attention to important events and interactions
The responsibilities of modern life mean there are more priorities than ever vying for your attention. How many times have you walked away from a conversation having no idea what was discussed because you were distracted by your phone? “You can get impoverished memories for past events because you were never really there in the first place,” Ranganath says
Absentmindedness is one of memory researcher Daniel Schacter’s “seven sins of memory,” common weaknesses in memory everyone experiences. This is when you don’t pay attention to where you put your keys or are so scatterbrained you miss an important doctor’s appointment. “If we’re, for example, engaging in multitasking, we may never really encode the information about where did I just leave my keys or glasses,” says Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. ….Continue reading
Assumptions can be dangerous. For instance, because I am the co-founder of a fintech company, some might assume I’m pretty tech-savvy. But in reality, I look to Carolyn Rodz, my visionary co-founder, for the technical stuff.
I’ve seen others making similar assumptions about “frivolous” social media platforms like TikTok. Much more than a place for teenagers to share dance challenges, TikTok has become a very real magnet for small-business owners looking to connect with customers. But what factors are motivating this shift to the new platform, and what kind of results are they seeing?
To get to the bottom of these questions, Hello Alice sampled a portion of our more than 800,000 small-business owners to see how entrepreneurs leverage digital marketing platforms for growth. The resulting research report focused on major social media players, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat as small businesses’ primary digital marketing platforms.
At a high level, we learned that most businesses pursuing digital marketing are young (less than five years old) and more likely to sell products, particularly in the beauty and self-care industries. Unsurprisingly, most entrepreneurs are hedging their bets by using multiple platforms to reach their digital marketing goals.
But the most significant finding confirms what can only be called the TikTok shift. Despite its status as the youngest player, TikTok overwhelmingly stands out as an emerging digital marketing leader. Our research found that it was the platform small-business owners were most excited to try.
Among small businesses already on TikTok, 78 percent said they plan to increase their investment in the platform. Clearly, something is driving owners to shift their attention — and budgets — from the established players to new options.
According to our research, here are the three primary trends surrounding small business digital marketing today.
Affordability Is the Number One Factor for Small-Business Owners
When you’re running a small business, every dollar counts. This is especially true with the pandemic, inflation, and supply chain shortages not going anywhere soon. According to our research, the majority of businesses leveraging digital marketing platforms are new or emerging businesses, which also tend to be the most vulnerable to cost pressures. In practice, this means that entrepreneurs favor the platforms perceived to offer the best ratio of value to results.
Market leaders such as Facebook and Instagram came first and second in terms of perceived value for their marketing dollar, with YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat trailing behind. However, this is for paid efforts, and nearly half (45 percent) of owners said they don’t engage in any paid marketing at all. When we measure the perceived value of each platform’s purely organic reach, TikTok comes in a close third to Instagram and Facebook.
The takeaway? Entrepreneurs are willing to invest their dollars in paid marketing that delivers proven results. However, despite devoting comparatively little time to the platform, entrepreneurs are finding a high chance of organic success via TikTok. Achieving real results with little or no monetary investment makes TikTok a clear winner for any small businesses deciding where to focus their digital marketing efforts in the future.
Creativity Has Become a Key Differentiator in Small-Business Marketing
Every business owner should be familiar with the concept of a key differentiator — the element that sets them apart from the competition. In a world of endless banner ads and Instagram posts, it’s no surprise that digital marketers are looking for easy-to-use features that enable dynamic storytelling in a variety of formats.
Our research found that approximately two-thirds of small-business owners believe that TikTok helps them tell stories in a creative way (67 percent), outpacing established competitors including Instagram (65 percent), YouTube (58 percent), Facebook (55 percent), and Snapchat (51 percent). Whether it’s a new video filter or a viral audio clip, TikTok’s robust creator tools go beyond the usual arsenal of text and images to help entrepreneurs forge novel connections between consumers and their brands.
Even better, TikTok’s creative boost seems to come without much of a learning curve, with 81 percent of TikTok users telling us the platform is easy to use and 73 percent saying it is fun to use. There’s no underestimating these sentiments; when you’re a busy entrepreneur, fun and easy-to-use are going to win out every time.
Marketers Are Following Their Audiences to New Platforms
It’s only natural that Facebook and Instagram historically received the lion’s share of attention from small-business digital marketers, given that they are the most popular social media platforms. Marketing is, after all, a game of eyeballs. However, this is changing as Facebook usage declines and TikTok usage dramatically grows. Entrepreneurs are simply adapting platform strategies to follow their customers to the platforms where they spend time.
According to the data, the word is out that TikTok has huge potential for small-business marketers. Our survey revealed that 43 percent of small-business owners are now likely to join TikTok because they’ve heard of positive results from fellow entrepreneurs; only 23 percent told us the same about Facebook.
Some might assume that the TikTok shift is entrepreneurs simply chasing a shiny new trend, but the research resoundingly suggests otherwise: Fifty-nine percent of small business owners said TikTok helped grow revenue, 42 percent said TikTok helped them safeguard their business against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and 32 percent said TikTok helped them raise capital.
There’s only one thing to say with results like that: Where do I sign up?
In the ongoing battle between bosses and workers over returning to the office, recent data shows ... [+] getty
In the ongoing battle between bosses and workers over returning to the office, recent data shows more people are trudging back to the workplace. In the first week following Labor Day, office usage in 10 major metro areas neared 50% of 2020’s pre-pandemic attendance, reports Kastle Systems, a key-card property management company that tracks entries into office buildings.
There were more workers in the office last week than there have been since the pandemic started. However, in-office attendance is still lower than what it was before the virus outbreak. The in-office numbers may be low since Kastle’s data doesn’t include many of the city’s biggest real estate owners, including large law firms, banks, financial services and Wall Street firms.
Separately, the Partnership for New York City, a business industry trade group, surveyed more than 160 major Manhattan office employers between August 29 and September 12 to take the pulse of how many employees returned to the office or are still working remotely. Results indicate that 49% of Manhattan office workers are currently at the workplace on an average weekday—up from 38% in April.
Under 10% of employees are in the office five days a week. The number of fully remote workers fell from 28% in April to 16% as of mid-September. Train ridership is another indicator reflecting a return-to-office pickup after Labor Day. Many companies used the long weekend as the last gasp of freedom before ordering their employees back to headquarters.
After the long holiday weekend, 200,000 passengers rode the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan. The number of riders was the highest level since March 2020. Commuters from Westchester and surrounding suburbs riding the Metro-North Railroad in the City hit a high point compared to the pandemic period with 174,900 riders. Additionally, New York City public transit data showed an increase in returning workers with subway ridership, having 3.7 million riders for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
The Partnership for New York City predicts that there will ultimately be a tipping point when the majority return to office. According to the Partnership’s analysis, 54% of workers will ultimately return to an office setting by January 2023. Even the tech industry, which has been the most resistant to going back to an office, is nearing the tipping point. Currently, average daily office attendance by tech professionals is at 47%, and that number is expected to increase to 50% by January.
Shifting Power Dynamics
There is a power dynamic shift taking place between the employee and employer. Throughout 2021 and early this year, workers were in high demand. Desperately needing staff as the economy reopened, companies catered to the workers. Seemingly overnight, the mood dramatically changed. As inflation raged, wreaking havoc on the economy, along with other geopolitical and macro events, thousands of people were downsized, hiring freezes put in place and job offers rescinded.
Americans now find themselves in a period of austerity. As this plays out, the dynamics between employees and employers will dramatically change. Companies will start clamping down and wielding their power, and the first order of business will be the return to office. A study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that supervisors have “negative perceptions” of the work-from-home trend and said they’d prefer their staff to operate from an office setting.rity
The managers who responded to the survey were brutally honest. Nearly 70% replied that remote workers are “more easily replaceable than onsite workers.” About 62% contend that “full-time remote work is detrimental to employees’ career objectives and 72% say they would prefer all of their subordinates to be working in the office.”
The Hybrid Model
The dominant style of work is the hybrid model, promoted by tech companies, which calls for people to work from the office two or three days out of the week and the rest of the time from home—or wherever they so choose. However, while tech leadership offered fully remote and hybrid options, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google scooped up commercial real estate after prices plummeted, due to the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The companies are making a bold contrarian bet that Manhattan will bounce back and there will still be a need for people to work in offices. Facebook leased enough space in New York City to triple the amount of people that can work in the city. Apple, which has been in New York for at least a decade, plans to expand its footprint there. Google and Amazon are snatching up space in the city more than any other place in the United States.
Amazon recently paid about $1 billion to acquire the Lord & Taylor flagship building in Midtown Manhattan from WeWork. Collectively, the tech behemoths can accommodate over 20,000 workers. In hindsight, it looks like the tech giants were hedging their bets by offering flexible options, while scooping up real estate in case they needed to change their work style.
The Showdown: Workers Will Continue To Push For Remote Work Options
You will likely soon see a showdown. Many surveys over the last year or so show that employees adamantly responded that they would rather quit than commute back to an office. People have grown accustomed to a better work-life balance by being at home. They appreciate the autonomy and freedom that comes with the flexibility of choice. Their productivity and hours spent working are above reproach.
Runaway inflation has driven the costs of commuting into big cities. The prices of fuel, automobile maintenance, food, business clothing and other necessities will eat into their paycheck, which is already depressed, due to inflation, making the money worth less than it was only six months ago. The long, exhausting, soul-sucking and expensive commute, along with random acts of terrifying violence, is keeping workers from returning to their offices.
In the ongoing tug-of-war battle over companies pushing people to come back into major cities, such as Manhattan, business executives conveniently gloss over these real issues and pretend they don’t exist. If you are commuting into the Big Apple from one of the boroughs, Westchester, Long Island, the suburbs of Connecticut or New Jersey, your commute can easily take two-plus hours door-to-door roundtrip.
The timing is generous, as it doesn’t include the daily frustrations of train delays, constant work being done on the tracks and mechanical issues with the bus where everyone needs to get off and is left stranded on the side of the road until another bus can pick them up. When you come home, you’re tired and burned out.
You also have to worry about your physical safety. New York City can be a dangerous place. According to data from the New York City Police Department, “crime increased by 34.2% in April 2022,” compared to the same period last year. There has been a “43.5% increase in grand larceny” and “burglaries also increased by 39.4%,” compared to last year, which was high to begin with. In April alone, there were 1,261 robberies, 2,044 felony assaults, 3,867 instances of grand larceny and 105 shootings. These represent the reported acts, and the number of unreported incidents is likely much higher.
The most recent data from the New York City Police Department showed an overall increase in crime during August 2022 by 26% compared with August 2021, 38% increase in robbery, 34.7% increase in grand larceny and a 31.1% rise in burglary.
Rationale For Businesses To Promote In-Office Work
David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, epitomized Wall Street’s view of not being in the office, saying remote work is an “aberration.” Wall Street banks are the most ardent proponents of getting people into the office. It’s reasonable that the leadership feels this way. The securities industry is highly regulated. They need to consider money laundering, insider trading, ponzi schemes, churning client accounts for higher commissions and other inappropriate activities. If all the bankers, brokers and traders are under one roof, it’s easier for the compliance, legal, risk, audit and regulatory personnel to keep tabs on them.
There is another rationale at play too. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has been a strong proponent of businesses getting their employees back into the office. As crime and violence escalated in the Big Apple, as there were fewer people around, Adams contends that with commuters coming back, there will be safety in numbers.
There is also an economic reason. If commuters from New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut suburbs won’t return, the ecosystem of restaurants, mom-and-pop shops, retail stores, nail salons, gyms and other small businesses will likely fail. This would cause job losses, empty streets, invite more crime and deter both workers and potential tourists from coming into New York City.
The Benefits Of Returning To An Office
Starting a new job is stressful. It’s even harder when you’re doing it remotely. If you’re just beginning to build a career, working remotely may serve as a roadblock to your future success. After over two years of being at home, you most likely lost touch with some or all of your social contacts. If you remain remote, you run the risk of feeling isolated and it will be difficult to cultivate a group of like-minded people.
For young adults, going to the office has positive social benefits. You will meet new people, make friends and build a network of alliances that could help you throughout your career. There are a host of benefits to being at the office. You can find mentors to help navigate your career. There will be serendipitous meetings in the hallways, cafeteria, elevator and bathrooms. These impromptu interactions add up over time. It makes your work life better—or at least more tolerable—by having cohorts that share the same experiences.
Your parents may have taught you that “no” is a complete sentence, but actually saying it — or setting a boundary in general — can be tricky. Sometimes, you feel uncomfortable setting the boundary; sometimes, the other person hates it and has a strong reaction. But the fact remains that in your romantic relationships, at work, in your family, and in friendships, you’re going to have to set some boundaries one way or another.
Boundaries are a way to value yourself, and they don’t have to be scary. Or at least, that’s what our guest today, Nedra Glover Tawwab, writes about in her new book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace. Nedra is a therapist, bestselling author, and relationship expert. We talk about what boundaries are, why they’re so important, and I get some strategies for setting and keeping boundaries even when other people in my life don’t seem to want me to.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Julia Furlan
I want to start with a question that you use to open your book, which is basically, what even is a boundary?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Boundaries are statements that make you feel safe and comfortable in your relationships. Sometimes it is behaviors that make you feel safe and comfortable. A woman asked me today on Instagram: “How can I set boundaries with my drinking socially?” So that is a behavior. How do you drink less socially?
Sometimes it can be my mother-in-law keeps popping up at my house and you may need to say something to your mother-in-law. So it works in both ways.
Before writing this book, and for many years, I thought of boundaries as saying no or cutting people off. I have learned that it’s a lot of gray areas. It’s all of these situations that we feel very uncomfortable about in our relationship, it is bigger than “no,” it is bigger than just cutting people off.
Boundaries preserve relationships. Cutting someone off is like the ultimate boundary, right? There are 1,000 other boundaries we can set before cutting people off.
Julia Furlan
Right. Sometimes people think that it’s, as we say in Portuguese, oito oitenta — all or nothing.
But, in fact, there is a lot of flexibility. There’s a lot of space that you can give both yourself and the other person when you’re putting in a boundary. One experience that I’ve had is that if the other person has fewer boundaries or doesn’t really live their life with a lot of boundaries in a particular area, there is resentment.
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Yeah, I think in general, we feel best when people do as we do. You don’t answer emails on vacation. It’s now problematic because it is different from what I choose to do. So it’s really important to acknowledge that boundaries are preferences. It’s not a rule. It’s not a fact. It is just what we choose to do.
I choose not to work after 7:00 pm. It is a preference for me because this is what makes me feel comfortable. There are tons of people who love working in the evenings. It makes them feel fulfilled. Keep doing it, if that’s what you like. I’m saying, I don’t like it. And it’s okay for me to think differently about this thing. And it doesn’t mean that I’m lazy because I’m not doing things like you. It doesn’t mean that I’m inefficient. It just means that my time is my time.
Julia Furlan
One thing that I want to go back to that you said is that boundaries are statements or behaviors that make you feel safe and comfortable in your relationships. I would love to know the range of some of those things. What’s a small one and what’s a big one that’s not cutting someone off completely?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
I think a small one is something we did at the beginning of this conversation: making sure we’re appropriately pronouncing each other’s names.
That’s a really small one that can get really annoying, right? If someone’s mispronouncing your name or mislabeling you, sometimes people might be using the wrong pronoun.
It’s never too late to set a boundary. I think we really program ourselves to think like, oh, it’s too late. The moment has passed. You’ve let this person do this thing for six months. You might as well let them do it forever. But now I am recognizing that this is an issue for me.
Julia Furlan
What are some of the larger boundaries that you have guided people on in your work?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
One significant thing that I’ve helped with a ton is helping clients become adults in their relationship with their parents. That is a really big one because it is a struggle to get people to accept that they want to spend holidays differently. They want to maybe not do that yearly family vacation anymore.
They may not want to talk to their parents every single day. There are so many different things that we continue to do just because we’ve been doing them, but they have always bothered us. Like, I don’t want to go over to uncle so-and-so’s house.
Family relationships have been a huge part of the boundaries work that I’ve done. With couples, it has been communicating what your needs are, communicating what you like and what you don’t like because if you are agreeing to spend even this moment, this week with a person, you need to be very clear about what is bothering you. We’re hoping that our partners sort of figure it out. We’re hoping that there is some signal that they receive, that we are secretly bothered by something, and they don’t typically get it.
It’s a lot of gray areas. It’s all of these situations that we feel very uncomfortable about in our relationship. It is bigger than “no,” it is bigger than just cutting people off.
We get our needs met by communicating them. And that can be really hard. There is this huge, huge, huge thing that I see all the time on social media. I saw a girl saying that when people really love you, you don’t have to tell them how to love you. It’s like, what fairy tale was this in?
Julia Furlan
One of the things that is really hard about boundaries is reckoning with your own feelings around saying it aloud or writing it down. It feels like just the communication of it itself can be its own huge thing.
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Yeah, by unpopular opinion, I do suggest getting it out whichever way you can, in person, by phone, via text or email. Whatever it is, because it is better out than in.
Julia Furlan
People don’t always respect your boundaries, even if you’re specific. Even if you’ve worked really hard to articulate it. There is sometimes a whole dynamic, where the person loves to get under your skin or enjoys the experience of making you upset or teasing you.
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Yeah. I think when people habitually disrespect our boundaries, we have to try something different. I’m thinking of a relationship with someone who could not keep a secret. A solution that you can manage is to not tell this person anything that’s secret because they’ve demonstrated that they cannot respect that boundary.
So how do we change the way we behave with people who demonstrate that they can’t respect your boundaries? There are times where people say, “You know, I know you told me that you didn’t wanna hear me talk about all the terrible things happening in my relationship anymore …” but that’s a wonderful time for you to jump in and say, “I will not listen.”
Julia Furlan
One thing that I want to recognize here, though, is that especially when you’re putting up a boundary with someone that you love and that you really care for, you’re changing the way that something’s going. You’re changing a dynamic. You’re trying to get out of a pattern. There is a grief that can come up, and I’ve felt this grief before where that boundaryless relationship was also a symbol of some special closeness, and you’re having to let go of some of that closeness. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Is it that you’re letting go of the closeness because you have to let go of the relationship, or are you letting go of the idea that this person could respect the boundary?
So there’s a disappointment that you’re dealing with. You know, I think in being in relationships with other people, the unfortunate risk is being hurt and being disappointed by people. No matter how much people love us, in some way big or small they will disappoint us because it’s so unintentional.
Usually when a person isn’t respecting your boundaries, it’s because they can’t. It is really because they just can’t do this thing you’re asking, or at least I feel like they can’t.
You’re right. You do have to grieve the loss of who you thought that person could be for you and reconstruct what’s possible with the person that you actually have. Sometimes we will stay in those relationships. We’ll keep doing the same thing, place in the same boundary over and over. But it’s really on us to change the way in which we engage.
I often hear people say, ”My friend always calls me to complain. Every time we talk, they’re complaining.” And I think, every time you talk, are you picking up the phone every time to be complained to?
And I know that’s a really hard boundary to say, “Instead of talking to this person every day after work, I will talk to them on Tuesdays like that. That is what I can manage without being overwhelmed.”
And it is really hard to think about, oh my gosh, we used to talk every day, and here I am, intentionally stepping back because I’ve set this boundary over and over and this person refuses to listen to me.
Julia Furlan
Can you speak a little bit to the things that might open up? What do people gain by putting up this boundary?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
A relationship that’s less stressful, a relationship that seems less contentious, a relationship that you receive more joy from. Sometimes we get burnt out with people doing some of the things that we’ve asked them not to do. And then we start to complain and get upset and become anxious about having to engage with them. So stepping back could be the healthiest option.
Julia Furlan
Sometimes people in general, not specifically me at all, in no way is this about me, might be a little conflict-averse. They don’t want to have a big conversation. They get really scared. And then they bail. How often do you have to have boundary conversation about ghosting?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Ghosting is an interesting topic because I don’t think people believe that they are the type of person who might be hard to communicate with. But there are some people, when you bring them a boundary, it becomes an abusive situation. Belittling may occur. They may become really defensive. It may just be a really unhealthy interaction.
And there are other situations of ghosting where it’s like, “I really can’t say this to the person. I hope that they just start to get the picture when I stop answering them because I don’t have the words. I don’t feel comfortable.” Ghosting is never an easy decision. It’s not the best solution, but it is a solution.
We can’t control how every relationship ends, and many of our relationships don’t work out.
The friends you had in elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then college or wherever you used to live, a lot of these things, they just sort of fizzle out. There’s this low level of non-harmful ghosting,
Julia Furlan
How do you talk to your followers who are conflict-averse? Are there any tips to pump yourself up before setting a boundary?
Nedra Glover Tawwab
I would say don’t pump yourself up. When we pump ourselves up, we deflate ourselves later because we think about all of the things that could go wrong. We get into this very spirally way of thinking. We think about very black-and-white outcomes. Practicing beforehand in the mirror and on paper, I think it can really work us up into an anxiety spiral that might not even be useful. The world is very flexible and we cannot add those black-and-white principles. And I think when you are averse to conflict, you are thinking of one outcome and it is very bad. You are thinking about one way of saying something.
It’s really healthy to think about the flexibility, that you can’t control how this person feels and you don’t know how they would feel about you. I would say in most cases, when we set boundaries and relationships, it actually goes well.
They’re not like, oh my gosh, you’re not my friend anymore. It’s not as big as we think. Keep it simple. If you can whittle your thoughts down to one simple sentence, I think it will be easier. Don’t think of it as “having a boundaries conversation” as much as it is just talking to someone and just letting them know.
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