Boundary Bootcamp

Self-Paced Course

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Stop nagging, yelling and putting yourself last.

Learn to set health boundaries with ease.

Life is full of stress lately. Your life may have even been full of stress long before the world added a pandemic to your plate.

If you’re feeling pushed to your edge lately, you’re not alone. But you might feel alone as you try to juggle a family, work, household needs, your health—and who knows what else tomorrow might bring―without completely losing your cool. 

(Or more likely, you’re already losing your cool. Or burying your feelings at the expense of your well-being. Sound about right?)

This isn’t your ordinary boundary training.

Boundaries begin inside you when you sense a need and make a decision to care for yourself. Boundary Bootcamp is a self-paced course that shows you step-by-step how to reclaim the areas of your life that you want more of, even when that feels impossible. 

This isn’t your ordinary boundary training. It’s not about taking drastic actions and ejecting people from your life. It’s not about creating your “perfect day” and living a life of butterflies and rainbows. (Reality check: You’ll only feel worse when you can never quite achieve “perfect.”)

We do boundaries differently here at Circle Up. We begin by deliberately creating awareness of our internal pressures, which we learn to do by observing the natural world.


“What do animals and nature have to do with my boundaries?”

Everything! Over the past century, we humans have become out of touch with our natural rhythms. This separation has resulted in a complete upheaval of the inter-dependent nature of our communities and families.  

Along the way, we’ve lost our ability to communicate our needs and to accurately read the needs of others. We’re no longer attuned to one another. 

It’s no wonder we’re feeling at the end of our rope. We weren’t designed to “do it all” ourselves. 

Setting healthy boundaries looks like this:

  • No longer feeling guilty when you ask for what you need

  • Being okay with saying no even when it’s uncomfortable

  • Expressing hardships and needs with a sense of ease

  • Being respected by the people who matter most to you

  • Reading your family’s needs gracefully and responding appropriately

  • Designing your life to fit you, and not the other way around

  • Taking care of yourself first, without hesitation

  • Establishing a comfortable pace for yourself

  • Creating space to communicate freely

  • Connecting with your natural instincts

Create Sanity in Your Life and Relationships

There is usually a pattern that leads to overwhelm and burnout. We call it the “doormat-to-dictator” pattern. It wreaks havoc on our relationships at home and at work. 

You might be a people-pleaser. Or you tend to avoid conflict. Or maybe you’re a perfectionist who wants everything just so. 

You end up doing EVERYTHING. (Okay, not everything. But it sure feels like everything.) You put your needs last because, well, there just isn’t any time for that. You’ll get to it later. Yet later never comes. 

You start getting irritable. Especially when things are EXTRA stressful. (2020 anyone?) 

You sigh. You nag. You yell. 

Your family members mostly ignore your requests and roll their eyes. Or they flee the scene when you reach a boiling point and turn into a sharp-tongued dictator (which gets you nowhere). 

You’ve lived like this for a while. In fact, this is part of your life story. It shows up in friendships. At work. You’ve been catering to others for a long, long time.



Something Needs to Change.

You know that something’s gotta give. You can’t keep doing life this way. But you might not know what needs to change. Or how to actually make it happen. 

That’s why we created Boundary Bootcamp. 

Learning to set boundaries is a basic life skill. Yet most of us were never taught how. 

In this self-paced immersion into healthy boundary-setting, Beth Anstandig will guide you through the exact steps to identify and communicate your needs with confidence and in a way that honors your relationships. 

  • You’ll discover your own needs and learn to express them to others in a way they actually hear and care about.
  • You will learn a daily practice of shaping your day and your relationships so that the people you love finally understand their roles. 
  • You’ll also become better at respecting others’ boundaries, making communication more authentic all around.


It’s time for your needs to matter. But first, they must matter to you.


How it Works

This course is solution-focused, practical, and immediately impactful. You can expect to start seeing improvements right away as you work your way through the following modules:

  • Module One: Core Concepts and Our Foundation

    Learn the truth about boundaries—what they are (and what they aren’t). Discover your natural leadership awareness and how it helps shape your boundary-setting. Understand the phenomenon of pressure and cultivate the ability to identify your own internal and external pressures.

  • Module Two: You Have Needs

    Get to know yourself better so that you can easily identify your needs before they’ve gone unmet for too long. Take a deep-dive into Circle Up’s self-care inventory to determine exactly what you need, and how you need it, so that boundaries can be set in the context of your relationships.

  • Module Three: Your Boundary Laboratory

    Identify clear goals and set intentions for your boundary work. You’ll begin with a bite-sized piece of your life to work with so that you can develop your boundary-building “muscle” most effectively. Using a balance of emotion and thinking-brain, you’ll work on a particular situation or individual to practice boundary-setting skills. But most of all, you’re building a competency with yourself.

  • Module Four: Negotiating Needs

    Learn how to communicate your needs effectively with others using specific language and techniques that guide the process. Learn the boundary cycle, and understand where you are in the boundary cycle and what must happen next for your needs to be met. Learn what it means to communicate your needs from the heart.

  • Module Five: Teaching and Shaping

    Setting healthy boundaries is really about relationship shaping. Everything you’ve learned up until now has prepared you for the continual work of teaching and shaping, which is how you hone your skills. Learn how to fine tune as you go, and stay engaged with feedback so that your boundaries stick.

  • Module Six: Living with Boundaries

    Learn how to check in with those you’re closest to on a regular basis so that your needs remain clear and your boundary-setting continues in a bidirectional pattern. Develop a common language that makes this process a natural part of your day and life.

What to Expect

You’ll move through the course at your own pace, utilizing various means to immerse yourself in this work. The following are some of the ways you’ll learn:

  • Fun exercises and experiments to reflect on your current situation and facilitate immediate change. 
  • Printable PDFs so you have a summary and inspiration on hand at all times.
  • Access to a private Facebook group to connect with Beth and a supportive community of like-minded women.  

“The steps we learned work. They work in all situations, and that gave me more confidence to try things because I knew that I had a way to work through failures and upsets. I feel stronger, braver, more competent, and comfortable in my life.”

MariaElena

“I have to say, the last couple of days I’ve been slowing way down and waiting before I speak. If I feel annoyed or frustrated, I take a walk to the animals. I’m trying to spend more quiet time in my garden too. I’m feeling more relaxed.”

Boundary Bootcamp Member

“I have struggled with setting boundaries throughout my nearly 50 years on earth! Beth’s humor, compassion, and willingness to be vulnerable by using herself as an example helped me see what setting boundaries looks like in daily practice.”

Katie

“I already feel I value myself more and have consideration for myself as I recognize my needs and express them in business interactions.”

Boundary Bootcamp Member

“I joined Boundary Bootcamp after many years of wanting to have better boundaries, yet having trouble recognizing when to set them and feeling blocked to set them. The boundary course has helped me to make great strides forward.”

Jamie

The more you practice this boundary work, the easier and more natural it becomes. But the truth is, it takes a while for adults to change behaviors. And even then, you have to consciously check in with yourself to make sure you are committing to living in accordance with your values. 

We get it. 

That's why we created the Boundary Bootcamp Facebook group where you can ask questions and share experiences.



Hi! I'm Beth Anstandig

Beth Anstandig

Circle Up Head Cowgirl, Owner

Beth Anstandig is changing the way organizations, leaders, and individuals use their power. As a life-long cowgirl, writer, professor, and licensed psychotherapist, Beth has 25 years of experience developing, implementing, and training people in Natural Leadership—a model she pioneered. Natural leadership helps people awaken their innate awareness so they can live and work with more authentic relationships and connection. Beth owns Take a Chance Ranch in Morgan Hill, CA providing leadership, culture, and well-being programs through The Circle Up Experience. Together with an ever-growing menagerie of animals, Beth works with human herds onsite and online. She’s trained thousands of leaders and teams from some of the most renowned corporations, universities, and nonprofits. Beth’s fresh perspective and work integrating basic animal practices into everyday human life have been featured in global media including BBC World Service, PBS, and Forbes. She is a frequent podcast guest, contributing writer for MomsRising, and an advisor and content creator for Kahilla: A Basecamp for Women on the Rise. Beth has an MA degree in Clinical Psychology from Santa Clara University and an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. Beth is the author of A Garden of Forking Paths (Pearson Longman, 2006) and upcoming The Human Herd: Awakening Our Natural Leadership (Morgan James Publishing, 2021). She lives on her ranch with her daughter and an expanding community of animal herds.

Ready to Have Some Room to Breathe?

What would it feel like to respond to life’s current craziness with calm and resilience rather than nagging, yelling, and putting yourself last? 

  • Like a nice long breath of fresh air. 
  • Like enough time and space to respond at your own pace.
  • Like everything, you want right now yet somehow can’t quite reach.
  • Like power. The kind of power that nourishes not destroys.
  • Like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.
  • Like relief. 


We are changing the way we feel inside Boundary Bootcamp because we are changing the way we do things. Join us?

Pricing

Self-paced course

FAQs

  • What the heck are boundaries anyway?

    Boundaries are the interpersonal communications that express our needs and preferences so that others can learn who we are and how to relate to us. We use boundaries in our relationships so we can teach others about us and how we want to be treated. Boundaries are fundamental to building trust.

  • Are boundaries just about tough love and rules?

    Boundaries got a bad name along the way. For most people, boundaries sound like a firm no, or look like estrangement in relationships. We talk about boundaries as if it means we draw a line in the sand one day and everything changes. But the practice of boundaries is far more nuanced than that.

  • Is this course actually going to help me with what to do in my relationships? I feel like I need something practical!

    Yes! In fact, setting healthy boundaries is really about shaping relationships. Boundary Bootcamp will give you specific strategies and language to use in order to shift how you understand and communicate your needs with the people in your life. This course is meant to be an immersion in boundary-setting, not simply learning about boundary-setting.

  • How will boundaries help me at work? At home?

    Setting healthy boundaries at work will help you prioritize what’s most important to you so that you can do your best work. Learn how to communicate your needs respectfully and with confidence, so that you’re no longer feeling unheard or taken advantage of. At home, you’ll learn how to check in with family members to give and receive feedback so that you’re all on the same page when it comes to each other’s needs.