What do you do when there is an obstacle in your way? How do you set your boundaries in life and how stretchable they are? Do you usually cross the per-defined social borders or you constrain yourself strictly in them?
My wife, and me, we come from completely different backgrounds and the way we were brought up, the way we had lived our lives before we met could be easily described as parallel. She was and still is, artistic and free, while I was and still am more focused and methodical. So recently when time came to introduce our adorable 2 years old to life essentials, we stumbled upon some impediments. We realized that we need to spend tons of hours discussing and working our way up towards construction of a common understanding of what is good, bad, right, wrong, how to define happiness and sorrow, when to say wholehearted YES, and when firm NO. To this day we are still struggling to find what is the best way to tackle these challenging issues. What we had agreed so far is to give her as much freedom as possible in some broad, but per-determined boundaries - a structured frame in which she can operates and feel secure, loved and appreciated. A frame, a set of bollards. Beautiful bollards. Check the project that we did here.
We preach that usually there is more than one way of doing things in life and if you live with that mindset it will help you make better choices, including setting more meaningful restrictions.
Here are few books that has helped us to shape our understanding on boundaries:
1. "Thinking fast and Slow" - Daniel Kahneman (brilliant book on how mind works)
2. "Gut feeling" - Gerd Gigerenzer (beautiful hacks, pointing on how to make decisions. Speaking about perspectives, this book contradicts in many ways with the first one)
3. "The development of personality" - Carl Jung (classic book on how to behave and approach life in general)
4. "The art of learning - a journey in the pursuit of excellence" - Josh Waitzkin (useful ideas on how to develop one's attitude towards studying and achieving).
5. "No!: The art of saying No! with clear conscience" - Jesper Juul (must read if you want to understand how to operate and be adequate during the first years of the child's upbringing)
6. "The seven good years" - Etgar Keret (adorable short stories and comprehensible life philosophy)
Enjoy!
Bollard Yoga Bag
