Episode 10 - Cleaning Out Your Closet: Boundaries, Self-Worth, and the Heroine’s Journey with Joan Perry

By Jessica Garrison

We have another crossover this week with our fabulous guest, Joan Perry. Melissa recently guested with Joan on The Heroine’s Journey, and now it’s Joan’s turn in the hot seat. She is joyous, prosperous, free, insightful, and credible. Joan is also passionate about women’s journeys and their paths forward, which connects her so well to our network.

In discussing confidently setting healthy boundaries, Joan says there are four pillars to create stability: financial, life force energy, self worth, and people. Her biggest hurdle was people. She says that she had to clean people out of her life the way she would clean out a closet. Those who are supportive and have a strong connection in her life stay and those who only want to take from her need to go. Joan says she was shapeshifting into whatever people wanted her to be, and I think that’s a skill many women have, even if they don’t realize it. People pleasers especially morph themselves into whoever they need to be depending on who they’re with.

There’s no way to live authentically if you’re constantly changing yourself to please others, so take a page out of Joan’s book and come up with some criteria for how people need to treat you in order to stay in your life. It may seem harsh at first, but at the end of the day you have to prioritize yourself, and that’s the best way to do it. Joan goes into more details of each of the pillars, but I wanted to pull out her example of which area she needed more work in, and it goes beautifully into our other talking points.

Joan also discusses a victim mentality that people can fall into, especially after it seems like one negative event after the other. There are always options for yourself, even if it doesn’t seem like it. You have choices to make and consequences to face, but it’s all part of the journey (both the heroine’s journey and the embracing layers journey). I remember a very clear distinction between a victim and a Victim that I learned in one of my intro college courses. The instructor said there is a victim, and then there is a Victim with a capital V, meaning that they are always taking on that role. One example she shared was a student not studying for an exam, but blaming the teacher for the outcome rather than taking responsibility. We’ve all met someone in our life that is never responsible for what happens or they constantly have an excuse. People like that have to do the work for themselves to pull themselves out of that mentality, realizing that they always have a choice in their actions. If you have a Victim in your life, maybe it’s time to clean out your closet.

Joan is an incredible speaker with so much knowledge that she has shared over the years, and we’re thrilled to bring her to you as one of our guests and resources. Remember this episode as a great reminder of just how worthy you are of peace and love.

Ways to Engage: Write your story from your own perspective, the way you experienced it, and how it has affected you and your layers. Then, write your story from the perspective of someone watching your life as a movie and seeing the scenes play out before you. Use Joan’s technique to compare these stories, get a new perspective, give yourself grace and make the best decisions for yourself.