Why Assertiveness is a Divine Calling

The Past: Seeing Boundaries as Restrictions

I was going through my journal yesterday. The old entries, the ones from 2020 and 2021, when I was first learning about boundaries, first trying to practice them.

I sat with those pages for a while.

Back then, whenever I thought about setting a boundary, my mind went immediately to what I wanted to block. What I wanted to stop. The friend I needed to say no to. The habit I needed to restrict. Even around money, my financial “boundary” was really just a ceiling, a rule about how much I was allowed to spend. Every boundary I wrote about was a wall I was trying to build.

And there was so much friction in it. I remember that feeling clearly. Like I was forever writing lists of things I had to shut down, shut out, say no to. It was exhausting. Boundary-setting felt like a necessary chore, the emotional equivalent of locking your doors at night, something you had to do, not something that had anything to do with who you were or what you wanted your life to look like.

That was the word that kept coming back to me when I read those old entries: restriction.

You Have a Right to Want

Five years later, my understanding of what a boundary actually is has completely changed.

The shift started with assertiveness. I’ve been studying Manuel J. Smith’s work and, more broadly, thinking hard about what it means to be a full human being. Not perfect, but not small either. A human being who is, in some real sense, divine. Who carries within them the same creative authority that any other person on this earth carries.

That might sound like a strange place to start when talking about boundaries. But stay with me.

If I am a being with inherent worth, capable of creation, then I have a right to want things. Not just the right to protect myself from bad things, but the right to actively want and to shape the world around those wants. That is not arrogance. Every other human being has that exact same right. We’re all walking around with this same capacity to contribute to what gets created in the world.

A boundary is not a wall. It’s an expression. It’s your mouth and your whole being saying: this is what I want to create. It is how your internal world begins to match your external reality. It is, at its core, an act of creation.

Boundaries as a Dance, Not a Defense

Think about what this means in practice.

Your friend calls and asks if you want to go out this Saturday. Under the old frame, you either say yes (because you don’t want to disappoint her) or you say no (because you’ve decided you “should” protect your time). In both cases, it’s a binary. Yes or no. Comply or restrict.

But under this frame? She’s telling you what she wants to create in the world this weekend. She wants a night out. She wants laughter and dancing and that particular kind of connection. That’s her creative vision. And now the question isn’t “what wall do I put up?” It’s “what do I want to create?” And maybe the answer is that you want something different. Maybe you want a quiet evening that restores you. Or maybe you want to see her, just not at a loud bar. So you find a workable compromise. You co-create something new, something that honors both of you.

That is what a boundary actually is. It’s the beginning of a negotiation between two people who both have the right to shape what they experience. It’s not about winning or defending. It’s about creating together.

And when I started seeing it that way, the friction reduced.

The Spiritual Part

There’s a spiritual dimension here that I did not expect to find.

I had separated the idea of boundaries from the idea of spirituality entirely. Boundaries felt like a tactical, interpersonal thing. Spirituality felt like something else, bigger, harder to name. But they’re not actually separate.

If you believe you are a divine being, that you carry within you something sacred, something that has worth not because of what you produce but because of what you are, then using your voice to shape your reality isn’t just permitted. It’s your birthright. It’s almost a responsibility. To stay small, to never name what you want, to let the world happen to you rather than through you, that would be a kind of betrayal of what you actually are.

Boundaries, from this angle, are not about protecting yourself from the world. They are how you participate in creating it.

An Example

Here is an example of a boundary and how i think of it differently:

I opened my journal to do my boundary-setting practice, a practice I now actually look forward to, and the first thing I wrote down was that I want to travel more. That I want to explore the world.

A boundary about travel. A boundary about expansion.

That would have never occurred to me five years ago. Back then, a boundary was always subtractive. Always about less.

But a boundary as creation is additive. It’s about more of what you want. More of the life you are here to live.

There’s a lightness that comes with this. An openness. An almost electric sense of possibility, because when you’re no longer asking “what do I need to block?” and instead asking “what do I want to build?” the answers are endless. The question itself becomes generative.

It feels like wonder. And I will take wonder over friction every single time.

Your Mind Doesn’t Know the Difference

Your mind cannot tell the difference between what you want and what you don’t want. All it knows is what you’re imagining.

Try this. Don’t think about a black panther.

That’s exactly what just appeared in your mind, isn’t it?

When you say “I don’t want this, I don’t want that,” you are still calling that thing into your life. You are still picturing it, still orienting your energy around it. The mind hears the image, not the negation. But when you say “I want a white panther,” your mind builds that image instead, and from that image comes motivation. Desire. Movement toward what you want.

This is why the old way of setting boundaries was so draining. It kept me focused on what I feared, what I wanted to avoid, what I didn’t want to happen. And in doing so, it kept all of that alive in my imagination.

I felt this recently before meeting up with an acquaintance one-on-one. We usually see each other in group settings, so I found myself spiraling a little. What if it’s awkward? What if we don’t connect? I was building the scenario I didn’t want, scene by scene, in my own head.

Then I stopped and asked myself: what do I actually want here?

The answer came easily. I wanted to connect with her. Hear how her life was going. Share what was going on with mine. Have a relaxed, good time. So I put my attention there instead, and I let that be the boundary I set with myself and with the moment.

It brings a peace that the old way did not, because you are no longer bracing against something. You are reaching toward something. And there is a world of difference between those two postures.

What Boundaries Are Actually For

Boundaries are not only the walls you build to protect yourself.

They are the words you speak to create the world you want to live in.

They are not what you’re against. They are what you’re for.

And once you see them that way, you will never go back.