Hello, my loves. I was recently scrolling Instagram and Facebook and, you know…procrastinating, avoiding my responsibilities, all that fun stuff. And while I was doing that, trying to come up with some more things to talk about on my podcast and such, I started thinking about all these women that talk about how they’re showing up in relationships and telling guys, “This is my standard, this how I wanna be treated,” but then not actually receiving that treatment or not having their standards met. Not just once—repeatedly.

Clearly, something is going on here, right? So I decided we needed to talk about this, because something’s breaking down in this. And here’s what I have to say: the reason this happens is that people are not responding to your words. They’re responding to your energy.

Now, I do not mean that you have to be positive all the time, you can never have a bad day, you can never feel insecure or whatever. That’s not what changing your energy is about. That’s part of being human. You can totally have a bad day, but overall, people are responding to your energy, not your words. So how do you go about changing your energy to have your boundaries respected? Let me tell you.

What Does Changing Your Energy Mean?

So what I mean by that, in the context of love and relationships, is that they’re not responding to what you say your standards are. People are responding to what your standards actually are.

Hear me out. You can say all fucking day that you highly value communication. “I will not tolerate a lack of communication.” Great. But if your partner or the person that you’re dating won’t communicate—like, they leave your texts on read all the time, not just a one-off bad day—then your standard actually is that you do tolerate a lack of communication. In fact, you welcome it.

The same goes the same for boundaries, too. People are not responding to what you say your boundaries are. They’re responding to what your boundaries actually are. This is why changing your energy to reflect this is so important; if you don’t commit to changing your energy, no one is going to respect the boundary you’ve set in place. Here’s why…

Here’s an Example

I’m gonna give an example that can be triggering, but I’m going to use it because it’s a very black-and-white example that makes a lot of sense, at least in my head.

So, if your partner cheats on you—and I’m not talking about a one-time thing, I’m talking about a scenario where they cheated once and you’ve decided to stay. This is totally fine, by the way. I’m not against working through a relationship after infidelity, actually. I think every relationship is different.

But if your partner cheats on you and you’ve come back and said, “I will not tolerate this.” You’re willing to work through the relationship, but if it happens again, you’re gone. And then it happens again, and you have that same conversation, right? “If you do this again, then I’m gone.” And then it happens a third time. This is where changing your energy comes in.

So you’ve said your boundary is monogamy, right? But if you’ve said that and then you’re continuing to stay, your boundary is actually, “I don’t care if you cheat on me.”

So people are not responding to what you say. They’re responding to who you are, to what you be, to the energy you bring to a connection.

We’re All Connected to Energy

So are women, we’re all connected to this…I think women would call it intuition. I’m super generalizing here, but women would call it intuition. Men might call it a gut feeling. And if you’re like, “Well, no, I respond to people’s words. I don’t respond to energy. I’m not sensitive to energy,” fine, but think of it like this: you can sense something when you ask someone, “Are you okay?” and they say yes, but you know something’s wrong. Their words are saying yes, so if you only responded to words, you’d go, “Oh, great.” But you’re not. You’re like, “Something’s not lining up.”

We’re all connected to energy, whether we think we are or not. And so this comes down to this piece of like, if you’re saying you’re worthy of love, but you’re still entertaining bullshit, your energy says otherwise. We need to make decisions that act in alignment with someone who feels worthy of love.

This isn’t about you just looking in the mirror and shouting affirmations at yourself. If you’re a person who is worthy and deserving of love, what actions would you take? For me, something that I’m looking at is that I feel really good about the choices that I make in relationships.

My relationship with my partner, my relationship with my friends. I’m pretty good—not perfect, but pretty good—about leaning in and making decisions and pausing. I’m getting better at it every day. I’m trying to be kinder to myself. So I’m trying to own the parts of myself where I’m doing really well.

How to Hold Your Boundary

So if you’re going to have high standards, which you totally should, you need to abide by those standards and work on changing your energy. You need to uphold them. Often we don’t uphold our standards because we are afraid that we’ll never get someone as good as them. But if someone is repeatedly not abiding by your boundaries, is that really what you want? Is that enough to not commit to changing your energy? Is that really the best you’re gonna get? If you believe that’s the best you’re gonna get, that is not someone who fully believes and knows that they are worthy of love. That is someone who says, “I will take what I can get,” and that’s not the fucking vibe. You need to work on changing your energy if that’s what you believe.

Whatever you say you want in someone else, you better be damn sure that you’re doing this for yourself. So many of us are like, “Okay, well, how do I get him to meet my standards? How do I get him to uphold my boundaries? How do I get him to connect to himself? How do I get him to connect to me?” Start by changing your energy and upholding your standards. Be willing to walk away when they are not met. And that’s not an ultimatum. That is just the standard that you uphold for your life. We don’t make exceptions. The standard is the standard. And when you start changing your energy to anchor in that, people respond. A conscious man wants a woman with high fucking standards. He doesn’t want a little girl. He wants a queen. So changing your energy to queen energy will get you where you want to be.

Are You Ready to Start Changing Your Energy?

If this idea of changing your energy is resonating for you, there are a few different ways that you can work with me. You can join The Connected Woman, which has already started, but you can watch the replays and then you can join us live moving forward. Or you can come work with me one on one. You wanna be held to your standards? I will hold you to your high fucking standards. I will not allow you to drop them. You will have your human moments, of course, but we’re not playing in the realm of little girl wounding. We’re playing in the realm of actually being a queen, and having someone to hold you through all of that is actually priceless. So I’ll put all the links for these things down below. Thanks for coming along, and I’ll see you in the next one, yeah?

Be sure to connect with me over on Instagram. I’d love to hear what you thought of this post and what your major takeaways were. Or head over to my website to learn more about how we can work through your relationship journey together.

And don’t forget to join my signature 12-week program, The Connected Woman, if you’re ready to go from anxious & insecure in your relationships to setting boundaries, healing yourself, and living your dream life!

Or maybe you want some one-on-one action? Try out The Intimate Woman for some private coaching realness: https://michellepanning.com/the-intimate-woman if you’re ready to go deep. Go hard. And dive into creating the life you’ve always wanted, with me by your side with calls, motivations, and most importantly, calls on your bullshit. Stop getting in your own way, and let’s do this.