Boundaries |
Boundaries, Balance, & Business Bliss
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Victor Frankl
~~~
Boundaries are the foundation, the underpinning, to the ‘balance’ we seek, the belonging we crave, and the impact we’re here to make. Without boundaries, we’re building our business on a house of cards, easily disrupted by some hot air…
Boundaries are the bridge that connects us to our self-worth, and as a result, our net worth.
Here are three ways to help you across that bridge:
Boundaries & Self-Worth
Boundaries & Self-Worth
…go together like peas & carrots.
Forget the question, “How would your friends describe you in three words?” The question to ask is, “How would YOU describe you in three words?”
The first question is about how other people view you. Far too often this is what we’re concerned with and focused on, and why our boundaries (and self-worth) continue to feel negotiable.
When we live life through how other people view us, we’re making choices based on how we THINK other people view us. This impacts our confidence, our choices, and (most of all) trust within ourselves.
We’re second-guessing ourselves before we even get out of the gate.
How can we ever feel enough, that WE ARE WORTHY enough to take up the space we seek if we don’t ground our choices in self-trust and intuition?
From the quote at the top, in that space “between stimulus and response” a dynamic tension is created, inviting us to choose wisely so that we can move in the direction of our power, personal alignment, and greatest impact, rather than away from it.
We’re so focused on getting ahead or not falling behind that we forget we have the right to choose what we want and what we don’t want.
Focus on building your self-worth and your net-worth will naturally follow. Clear boundaries help to create, support, and sustain both.
Boundaries & Stress
Boundaries help reduce stress.
The challenge is, setting healthy boundaries can be a bit stressful! But it’s short-lived stress rather than the long-term stress of anger and resentment that can take over when we lack boundaries.
Up until just a few years ago, I was the queen of saying yes; doing for others first and putting my, and my business, needs on the back burner (as an aside, this is a very hard way to build a business…). It’s what was emulated for me growing up and the lens through which I saw and experienced life. Like gravity, it was there but I didn’t recognize it…it just ‘was’.
Continually adding to my already overflowing plate created a great deal of stress and overwhelm, and a healthy serving of resentment. I would then get pissy at the other person, all because I chose to say yes. Any of this ringing true for you?
Once I realized and owned that I am always at choice, I committed to choosing what brought me joy. This, ultimately, brought more joy to those important to me…and a lot less stress for everyone involved.
You know the old proverb, “hindsight is 20/20?” #truthbomb
Boundaries play a pivotal role in creating the work-life balance we’re so desperately seeking. With almost 1.8 billion searches on Google for work-life balance, there’s no arguing we’ve got some serious stress and overwhelm going on.
Establishing clear boundaries, and sticking to them, helps alleviate stress and frustration. They’re what support you to say no to what’s throwing you out of balance, or as I prefer to say, out of alignment.
Just because people want to put things on your plate because you’re good at something (or they just don’t want to do it) doesn’t mean you need to say yes.
Imagine what life will be like when you’re more empowered and less at the mercy of circumstances and other people’s expectations, needs, or demands.
Yes, there are a lot of things you CAN do, so the question needs to shift from “How do I achieve more” to “HOW DO I WANT TO LIVE?”
Kind of feels like a Calgon moment, right?
We all need space and support to do our best work. Boundaries help you find and connect with a community where you can be who you are and grow into who you want to be…a place where you can be seen, heard, and belong instead of pinching off parts of yourself to fit in.
Community Is Important
Finding your Sisterhood, your community, will be critical to your thriving. We all need some #boundarybearing sisters around us.
Boundaries & Emotions
Expect disappointment and anger, but don’t accept it.
I call it, The Toddler Effect. You know that toddler in the grocery store who knows exactly what pitch he needs to reach to make the parent uncomfortable enough to throw him a candy bar AND bag of marshmallows to appease him?
When we start establishing boundaries and changing things up, it can unleash some serious emotions for the people around us. Again, expect it, but don’t accept it.
Be transparent in your new direction and boundary setting. If you’ve always picked up the kids after school or been the one to stay late and wrap up the project, you’ve agreed to participate in that dance. Be clear, intentional, and thoughtful when you share what you will do and won’t do, that’s your responsibility. HOW the other person reacts is not.
People are allowed to be pissed off or disappointed just as you’re allowed to align your choices, goals, and behaviors with the life you want.
Our boundaries are not about others. Ultimately, they’re about us. It’s our opportunity to align, or rather realign, with who we are and who we want to be.
Other people’s emotions are not yours to own or fix.
Communicating clear, effective boundaries will help you to unlock your most powerful potential, without apology.
Boundaries Bonus Point:
What one boundary would make the greatest impact on your happiness, and hence, success? And, when will you commit to it?
I’d love to hear what you choose. If you’re willing, comment below or shoot me an email!
Boundaries ARE the Bridge…
Time Management |
Breaking Plates & Establishing Priorities
“Fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging.”
– Brene Brown
Brene Brown’s quote jolted me awake as I was leisurely sipping my coffee and enjoying my morning reading a few weeks ago. It stopped me mid slurp and made me think deeply (no easy feat at 5:30am) how the need to fit in over the years has at times pinched me off from my gifts, my success, my happiness…my authenticity.
It’s not something I’m comfortable admitting.
To be honest, it makes me cringe a bit.
But I believe it’s more important to share because as a woman who is confident, independent, and most definitely boundary bearing, I still find myself on occasion choosing to hustle for my worth…putting my priorities on the back burner while accommodating the expectations of others.
My ‘fitting in’ of choice over the years was the belief I needed to do it all to be a whole woman as a person in business.
Run a successful business, chauffeur my kids to multiple events (a day), always make family and friends a priority, keep a clean house, work out, keep my shit together, and, of course, make it look easy. And still get a good night’s sleep. Is this ringing true for you too?
I’ve experienced this many times in my 27-years as a business owner.
It’s something I see and hear consistently through my work with women.
We continue to add more and more spinning plates in the air, believing that we can balance them all.
I call BS.
We can selectively choose which plates to set down (instead of break) and which to keep as a priority.
It’s important to choose. It’s important to stay one step ahead of dropping a plate, or three. Or maybe the whole damn lot.
Don’t let the breaking plates determine what you do and don’t do.
You get to decide what’s a priority, where you place your focus, and what drops out of focus, instead of stopping to clean up the pieces of broken plates that inadvertently fell.
You’ve got to be clear on your priorities because let’s be honest, ‘WHO’ are those breaking plates? Your children? Your aging parents? Your clients? The people you lead at work? YOU?
Which plates are you breaking each time you add to the plethora you already have up there spinning when you say yes to someone else’s priority? When you accommodate, adjust, fit in, ignore your intuition, and move your boundaries…again?
Priorities
It’s important to say, “these are the things I need to do to accomplish everything I want to accomplish…and there simply isn’t enough time. AND, I get to decide what goes into the priorities and alignment of my life.”
Give yourself the gift of slowing down for an afternoon so that you can get clear what and who you want to be, what you want to create.
There are 24-hours in a day for everyone, no wiggle room there.
How will you prioritize and structure those 24-hours?
How will you fit in your self-care? How will you build in your work, parenting, family & friends, personal and professional growth…your belonging?
What do you need so that you can say no to what’s pulling you off course from your goals and putting your priorities on the back burner, adjusting yourself for the expectations or needs of others?
It’s about aligning with your priorities.
It’s not about balance.
It’s not about keeping 457 plates spinning in perfect balance.
Create your vision then align your goals and daily actions with who and where you want to be. Without apology.
Powerful possibilities come with prioritizing. This I know for sure.
As a result of my epiphany that morning, it has put a megawatt spotlight on the work I do with women, as well as my WHY.
Clarity is a beautiful thing. It’s impossible to make intentional and aligned choices in our life, and business, without it.
It can also be a double-edged sword at times… highlighting areas that we’d prefer to keep out of view, from others as well as ourselves. This was the case for me as I was enjoying my coffee that morning.
Digging deeper, becoming more grounded in my gifts and my brilliance (how dare I claim my brilliance for fear of getting too big for my britches…), I was able to see I was the one getting in my way, choosing to experience life through a lens that kept me over-balancing and out of alignment.
When I read those eight little words that morning, it jolted me awake and into alignment, like a chiropractor…with no copay. Win-win.
Vision |
Joy Happiness Fulfillment
As business owners, we’re often seeking more of each (and money as well, but that tends to be a result of creating a life full of joy, happiness, and fulfillment, not the cause).
In last week’s blog, I shared studies on the importance of self-care and how it improves our physical, emotional, financial, social, and happiness levels.
Ya gotta love studies that show self-care helps improve our well-being as well as our bottom line. That alone increases my happiness quotient.
This week, I bring a touch of the Velvet Hammer to my message.
To increase joy, happiness, and fulfillment (and yes, $$) in our lives, we need to take more of an active, intentional role in creating it. We need to make it a priority and align our actions with what we want to experience.
It’s not a “Well, that would be nice”, but more of a…
“Oh hell yeah, that’s a non-negotiable” feeling of fulfillment.
We need to deliberately align with and CHOOSE joy, make room for it…and that sometimes means making uncomfortable decisions.
Decisions that also make others uncomfortable, frustrated, and let’s be honest, pissed off.
As a result, we tend to step back and choose their comfort over ours.
Their joy and happiness over ours.
Their success over ours.
It’s not sustainable…or authentic.
Ouch.
Again, making your happiness a priority WILL INCREASE success in every area of your life, even if at first it may ruffle a few feathers.
Taking an active role and being intentional will help you feel more empowered and more in control of your life and business, and less the mercy of circumstances or people.
You’ve got to be willing to sit with the discomfort of choosing your Self, your joy, and your SUCCESS before you’ll be able to confidently and consistently unhook from the reaction and discomfort of others.
Joy, happiness, and fulfillment are on the other side of discomfort.
Ready to get comfortable with the uncomfortable so you can create more of what you want? Let’s set up a complimentary Alignment Review call and get you moving where you want to go.
Self Growth |
Self-Care Improves Your Bottom Line
One of the things I often hear from women about their self-care is:
“Someday I’ll schedule time for self-care, but right now I have to…”
- Finish this proposal
- Get back to a client
- Post on social media
- Write a blog
- Do laundry
- Get to the grocery store
- Pick up the kids
- …you get the picture
In my 27 years as an entrepreneur, and my work with women, what I’ve discovered is:
When we feel better, we do better, physically, emotionally, AND financially.
That means, if taking the day off to go skiing, digging in the dirt, going for a run, hitting the gym, making a pot of soup, or simply taking a nap makes you feel better, PUT IT IN YOUR BUSINESS PLAN.
What gets scheduled gets done. Put self-care in your business plan and mark it on your calendar.
Schedule your self-care like you’d schedule time with a client, picking up your kids, or doing your taxes.
Need even more reasons to improve your self-care? I’ll get right to the “heart’ of the matter:
Self-Care
Physical: Your body is the only one you’ve got. One of the most important resources for any human is their energy. If you don’t schedule time to focus on your health now, you won’t have the energy later to enjoy what you’ve worked so hard to achieve. It’s better to take time for self-care now than make time for illness later.
Emotional: Self-care helps us have the confidence to establish healthy boundaries so we can say ‘YES’ to what we want more of, and ‘NO’ to what we want less of. This increases our joy, satisfaction, and self-worth.
Friendships
Social: A 2016 article from the Mayo Clinic states, “Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). Studies have even found that older adults with a rich social life are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections.” So yeah, go ahead schedule that get together with your friends. It will help you live longer, be happier, and prosper.
Financial: When we’re stressed, it puts our amygdala on high alert while at the same time decreases our hippocampus function, making us a wigged out forgetful person. Never good for our bottom line, self-confidence, or relationships.
Happiness: The Journal of Neuroscience published a study on happiness and our ‘vision’. The study showed when test subjects who were unhappy (aka, in a bad mood), their visual cortexes, the part of the brain responsible for sight, were not able to process information properly and had difficulty seeing things in plain view (like for example, your keys hanging right on the rack where you last placed them but didn’t see them as you were tearing the house apart looking for them…that ever happened to you?).
The study also showed that happy ‘test subjects’ found what they were looking for 50% more of the time than the unhappy subjects. The next time you’re in a bad mood, put on your favorite music, or whatever puts you in a good mood, so you can be more present, connected, and happy. Your family and clients will thank you.
So, on a scale of 1-10, how did you score on each of these for showing yourself some love and attention?
As Brene Brown says:
“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”
Work-Life Balance |
Work-Life Balance: Vision Required
1,800,000,000
That’s the number of results that come up when I Googled Work-Life Balance.
Dayyy-yum.
Clearly, A LOT of people are working on their Work-Life Balance.
How about you? Have you ever searched Google for some guidance, wisdom, and (or most of all) clarity on how to gain control of all the moving pieces of your life?
Let’s admit, the secret to success isn’t working harder and producing more. The law of diminishing return comes into play, and we wind up working more hours with less to show for it. Not exactly the result we’re looking to achieve.
When we come from the perspective of constantly needing to work harder, it leaves us feeling like there’s never enough time, or worse, that we’re not enough.
As a result, we can become consumed by scarcity- not enough time, money, support, tools, sleep, love, etc.- and we can quickly lose our perspective of the woman we want to be, the business we want to build, the life we want to live and the relationships we desire.
Too often our motivation for action is to feel the relief of checking things off our endless to-do list rather than focusing on our long-term vision of what we want; making sure our actions and words are aligned with our vision for work-life balance.
So many women I speak with want to feel like they’re intentionally choosing their life, instead of continually reacting to it.
They want work-life balance but don’t know how to achieve it.
Can you relate?
If we’re playing whack-a-mole all day, totally overloaded and overwhelmed, then go home to more juggling and feeling depleted, it’s nearly impossible to think about the future, or create more joy, fulfillment, ease, and ‘balance’ in our life.
And here’s the big kicker, our thoughts and images of the future, affect the future we experience.
So, I ask you, what is your vision of a fulfilling life? Again, your VISION for your future will affect the future you experience.
Do you want to feel more empowered, like you’re choosing your life, and less at the mercy of circumstances and other people’s expectations, needs, or demands?
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve heard me talk (a lot) about the importance of having a compelling vision for the business you want.
For us to create the business of our dreams, we need to be crystal clear in our vision of what we want our business to look like. To feel like. To provide. To BE.
Working to achieve balance in our lives is no different.
A long-term vision helps us with short-term decision making for Work-Life Balance.
This vision helps us so that we can say ‘YES” to more of what we want and ‘NO’ to what’s keeping us out of balance.
Far too often we say yes to ‘more’ in our lives without making room for it by saying ‘NO’ to something else.
These choices lead to a life out of balance.
Now, I’ll admit, I think balance is a fallacy. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s bullshit.
But clearly, work-life balance is what people are searching for…1,800,000,000, no arguing with that number.
Though I will say, I’ve yet to work with a woman who wants all of the pieces of her life to weigh the same.
It’s not about making everything even; it’s about aligning our actions, thoughts, and priorities with our Vision of a truly fulfilling, intentional life.
Intentionally choosing aligned actions, words, and beliefs, moment to moment, is what will consistently move you closer to your vision so that you can achieve the work-life balance you seek.
Keep in mind as you start moving towards aligning your actions with your desires, old habits die hard, as do old beliefs, stories, and way of relating, or reacting, to others.
As you move from your old habits into a more aligned and empowered way of being, you’ll feel a strong pull back to the familiar when things get uncomfortable (for example, saying no to a really cool opportunity because you realize it’s actually taking your eye, and precious time, off your goals).
It takes a while to embed new habits into daily practice so have some compassion for yourself along the way. With each new choice, opportunity, or request, ask yourself:
WTF?
That is, ask yourself What’s The Function of my goal, action, belief, choice that’s in front of me? Is it adding to my vision of work-life alignment, or is it pulling me away?
Here’s a work-life balance activity that will help you align your actions so that you can achieve your vision:
Alignment Activity for Work-Life Balance: AKA Work-Life Alignment
If you don’t clearly define what work-life balance looks like for you, odds are you won’t achieve it.
Take some time to get clear in these four areas:
- Define your Vision of what ‘balance’ is for you in each, work and ‘life.’
- Get clear on what your non-negotiables are in each.
- Understand the trade-offs that will come with the changes required as you align your actions, beliefs, and goals to your vision.
- Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize.
Prioritize your vision for Work-Life Balance or chances are, it won’t happen.
Remember, your images of the future affect your future experience. Be sure to define the vision and images you want or someone else will define them for you.
If you know of anyone who is seeking (or has Googled…) work-life balance, please feel free to forward this email to them. And if you found this helpful, please share.
