21 Days to Better Boundaries

21 Days to Better Boundaries is a book that all ages can learn to appreciate. Author Ann Weiser Cornell, Ph.D., does a wonderful job of organizing her book into easy-to-follow chapters that guide its reader through her program. First, she defines what Healthy Boundaries are about: your worth as a person, your right to your own voice, your own needs and values, your mutual connections with other people, and more. Some people reading the book may have never thought about what boundaries they do and do not set. I really appreciated how the author starts off slowly with some anecdotal stories and definitions that anyone can understand.

As stated in the title, this book takes its readers through a twenty-one-day process. Each day’s exercise takes about ten to fifteen minutes a day and then the reader is to practice what he or she has learned after finishing the program.

The steps start the reader off with setting his or her own inner boundaries by exploring emotions and creating relationships with those emotions. I really liked this exercise because it made me feel as if the emotion was something that I had instead of something that took over my entire being and overwhelmed it. Little by little, each chapter digs a bit deeper. Listening to oneself, setting boundaries without anger, blaming, excuses, or apologies, being able to say no without feeling bad, and learning to communicate are all important aspects that build upon one another. I absolutely loved the chapter about sitting down with your “Younger You” (instead of your inner child) to take steps toward healing from past trauma. As someone who has worked with a holistic coach, I know this form of working through past traumas can really help to unblock a person who may not have even known their past is what is stopping them from the future they want. The author does a perfect job of connecting the first chapter’s exercise of identifying emotions and being with those emotions with this chapter on connecting those emotions to something that may have happened in the past.

21 Days to Better Boundaries is such a simple book to read that will change its readers’ lives. I recommend this book to all teens and adults and praise Ann Weiser Cornell, Ph.D., for her hard work touching thousands with her healing practices. Beautifully written and compiled, I will be recommending this book to friends and family.