Internal Boundaries

Everywhere you look you can see boundaries; our houses have boundaries keeping them separated from other houses, our school has boundaries keeping us in the correct class for our year group and indeed all of the countries over the world are separated by walls, rivers and oceans.

What some people may forget, however, is that there are also boundaries that cannot be seen. You might see a person walking along the pavement, and you would just see the person walking down the pavement. You wouldn’t see their internal boundaries – the things that keep them from putting their hand up in class, from initiating conversations with people they don’t know, from giving their personal opinion to a group of people. The things that keep them inside their comfort zone.

And that’s the thing about a comfort zone, isn’t it? It matters so much to the person who is inside it, but the people on the outside don’t see this boundary that you have built up – it’s entirely in your mind, something which has been fabricated by your brain, a fear of what might happen. Although nobody else can see this boundary, it can be very difficult to break down – even harder than many actual barriers.

But internal boundaries are just as valid as external boundaries, and they take up a lot more brain power. You probably worry far more about stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something that frightens you, than you do about walking into a wall. A wall is a hard barrier - something you can see; you can look at it in front of you and, most of the time, you can avoid walking into it. If you do collide with an external boundary, then you would immediately know it. The problem with internal boundaries is that they have a tendency to creep up on you and before you know it, you’re on the other side of the boundary, doing something that you would rather not be doing, but are unable to get out of.

Often, the thing that seems so daunting is really not so bad after all. Whilst it might seem like the biggest and scariest thing in the world, often we regret not stepping out of our comfort zone and breaking down that internal boundary. Usually, after we’ve done it, we feel much better than if we had stayed doing what we were comfortable with.

You can change your internal boundaries, you can shape them and mould them depending on how often you test them and try new things. The hard, external boundaries that you can see, can’t move. There will always be boundaries keeping schools, buildings and houses separated, and that won’t change, but you have control over your internal boundaries, over how you change them and how they change you.

You can break the boundaries.

M Marshall, Year 11