Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsHelps you set up boundaries with your friends, loved ones, and yourself to create freedom
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2017
[Note: although I'm not religious, I still found a ton of value out of this book]
Cloud and Townsend do a great job of using boundaries to illustrate why we grew up certain ways. For example, you probably know someone who has a money problem. He spends recklessly and doesn't really think about the consequences of his actions. This can be traced back to his parents never establishing their own boundaries. They would always bail the son out whenever he ran out of money and tell him to be better next time. They never let him "feel" the consequences. And so he never learned.
There's so many other brilliant examples of the importance of boundaries and how they affect the people around us.
I learned a lot about myself through the sections that detail boundaries with friends, family, and work. The one that impacted me the most was the section on Boundaries with Myself. I grew up with parents who while loving, also created situations for me where I was not able to feel the consequences, and so I behave in certain ways that I'm trying to fix.
When I was first referred to this book, I wasn't told this book had a heavy religious undertone (the conflict of setting boundaries and being a good person in the eye of God). I'm not religious, so the biblical references didn't really matter to me much, but that doesn't mean I can't learn from them. The concepts themselves made sense to me and I would recommend this book to anyone who believes they have boundary problems.
