Ep #04: Set Solid Boundaries
episode summary
Today we’re talking about boundaries. Having clear, solid boundaries is one of the best ways to prevent feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Creating and setting a boundary is easier than you think. I will walk you through three simple steps for creating a boundary. I'll also guide you through the uncomfortable part - the part where you worry about what other people think and if they'll be mad at you.
Dive in, we got this!
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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What You’ll Learn:
A boundary is simply an invisible line between you and the rest of the world. Don’t think about it as a barbed wire fence, think about it as a wall of hearts that keeps you safe and comfortable.
Three steps to setting a boundary:
What’s the rule? Define your boundary
What’s the consequence if someone breaks that rule? Define what you will do when someone doesn’t follow the boundary.
Who needs to know about this rule? Decide if you need to communicate your new boundary, and who exactly to tell.
Remember that all change feels uncomfortable at first. Stick with it through the discomfort to get the results you want.
We can never know or control what other people are thinking about us. And they probably aren’t thinking about us at all.
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. Hello friends. Thank you for tuning in to listen to episode four of the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you've been listening along with us and you like what you're hearing and find the content useful, I would love if you could go and leave a review.
That helps make sure that other women see this podcast as well, and I feel like no woman left behind. All the overwhelmed working women need to be listening to this podcast. So if you can do that, that would be wonderful. Today we are going to be talking about boundaries. And funny enough, I learned a new boundary that I need to have while recording this episode because I recorded this whole entire episode yesterday.
And when I finished it and I went to go send it to my podcast producer, I was just going to listen to a snippet of it and make sure it sounded okay. And it turns out it was completely silent. The whole thing. And it turns out that my kids, every time they come into my office, they mess with my microphone. It's like the new fun toy on my desk.
They'll take it out. One of 'em pretends she's singing a song. The other one like pushes all the buttons and messes with it. And one of them accidentally just flipped the whole microphone to mute and you can't tell unless you look at the button. So that's fun. I get to record this the second time. And now we have a new boundary, which is, don't touch my microphone no matter what.
You can bet that I will never record a whole episode without checking the sound. Lesson learned.
As I was working on this episode, I was thinking about the fact that there are really two ways to approach having a less stressful, less overwhelming life. The first strategy is to do things in advance that prevent overwhelm and prevent stress.
And then the other way to do it is to treat stress when you're in stress and overwhelm, to figure out what to do to get out of that feeling and to. So, as I was thinking about boundaries, I feel like boundaries are one of the most foundational things that you can do in advance in order to make your life less overwhelming and less stressful.
And today I'm going to talk to you about exactly how to do that. You might hate the idea of setting boundaries, especially if you are worried that people won't like you or you're just naturally a people pleaser. But just stick with me. I'm going to talk about boundaries in a way that you maybe haven't heard before, and I'm going to give you some easy, actionable steps to start setting those boundaries.
So what is a boundary? A boundary is just an imaginary line that separates you from the rest of the world. Instead of thinking about it like a big barbed wire fence with a keep out sign on the outside. Think about it like this. Imagine that you have a wall around you. The wall can look like anything you want.
I like to think of mine as a wall of sunlight that's shining around me. It's nice and it's cozy to be inside my boundary. It keeps me safe, and it's also awesome because I get to make all of the rules in there. So instead of thinking about your boundary as this is how I keep people out, think of it as this is how I keep myself safe.
This is how I keep the rules that I want to have for. Maybe you want to think about your boundary as a wall of hearts that surrounds and protects you. Or maybe you want to imagine yourself wrapped up in your favorite blanket, which is also your boundary Inside. Your boundary. Inside that wall is your rule book for many things.
So, for example, you have physical boundaries. What are your boundaries about people touching you? Do you like to be hugged? How close do you like to stand next to people until you start feeling uncomfortable? Relationships? How do you treat people? How do you expect them to treat you? And then time, what are your boundaries around how you spend your time?
So for example, you might already have a boundary that you didn't even necessarily think about, but maybe you never stay up past. Or maybe you don't get up before seven, whatever it is, you have some boundaries already within your wall, but if you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, there's a good chance that you probably need to add more boundaries.
How do you know when you need to set a boundary? Usually boundaries get set in the first place when there is a problem. So just think right now this week, what's an area in your life that is feeling stressful? And as I'm going through this episode, think about how that problem could be solved or made better by putting a boundary in place.
When I think about my own life and the things that my clients tell me, it seems like we usually have a lot of potential for boundaries in our relationships with our family and at work. Those are kind of two big places where I work on them. One area that I used to struggle with and that my clients often do is around emails, work, emails, where I used to work.
It was very common that people would work at night, even though we were supposedly working day jobs, but people would work at nights. So there were certain people who, if you emailed them at night, you knew that they would always get back to you. And I became one of those people. At first I did it because I was trying to do such a good job, but then people start expecting that, and then you're kind of stuck in a trap.
In fact, I was just talking to a client about this last week. That's a place where it is necessary to set a boundary. Otherwise you're going to feel stressed all night long, either replying to the emails or feeling like you. So here are the three steps to setting a boundary. This will be in the show note. So if you're in a place where you're driving and you want to write these down, just go back and look after.
So first, you're going to ask yourself, what's the rule? What's the boundary that I'm going to set? Then what's the consequence if that rule gets broken? And who needs to know about this rule or this boundary? So in my example of the email, what's the rule? So when you create the rule, you really want to think about what works best for you.
So for me, it's great for me to email up until five, and then I don't want to email until the next morning at eight o'clock. Now I don't work that kind of job, so that wouldn't even be a consideration for my current job. But for those of you who are working in one of those jobs where your email inbox can get filled up just while you're at lunch, you know what I'm talking about.
Think about what times you want to actually be available to reply to emails. So let's say you just choose eight to five, and then what's the consequence if someone breaks that rule. So if someone emails you at six o'clock or nine o'clock or midnight, or whatever time it is, if you're working with people from all over the world, that can definitely happen.
What's the consequence? So this is an important question because it's not like you're going to let your whole company know that no one can send you an email cuz you really can't control what other people do. So if someone breaks your rule of emailing you after five o'clock, it's no problem. You just don't reply to the email until the next morning at eight.
That's how you keep your boundaries solid, and it doesn't really matter what they do, who needs to know about this rule. So think about it. When you are going to implement this rule, are there people, let's say you have a team of people working for you. Do they need to know that you're not going to respond to emails at night?
Are they expecting it and now they shouldn't expect it? Or your boss, or maybe you don't have to communicate it to anyone, you just start doing it. So think about who needs to know this rule and how will I communicate this rule? As with any change, let's just say you put that boundary in place today. And tomorrow night it gets to be six o'clock or seven o'clock, and you sort of feel relieved, but you sort of feel nervous.
Just expect that when you implement a boundary, it will feel a little bit uncomfortable. All change feels uncomfortable at first, so you can expect that it will feel uncomfortable. That doesn't mean that you're doing the wrong thing. Just sit with the discomfort and know that the change that you're making is going to have a more positive impact.
When you get into the habit and a month from now, you never ever check your email at night, it will be so worth it to have set this boundary and go through that discomfort. Sometimes we need to set boundaries with ourselves. For me, I used to work a lot of hours when I was working in the corporate world, and I've been a life coach for five years now, but when I first started, I really felt like I should be working all the time.
After my kids would go to bed, I kind of had this automatic habit to come back to my office and work until I realized, wait, I don't have to do this anymore and this isn't the kind of life that I want to create. I left that world to create a different type of work experience, so I did the same thing. I did those same three steps, so I asked myself, What's the rule?
What hours do I work? What happens when that rule is broken? And who needs to know about this rule? So the rule that I came up with is I want to work in the morning. I used to get up really early and work out at like five o'clock in the morning because I started working at eight and I had to get my kids to school before that, blah, blah, blah.
I don't have to do that anymore. So when I sat down and thought about it, I thought, I want to get up in the morning and be with my kids and get them off to school and then go work. So that's what I do. And then when I come back, I get busy and start working, get ready and get working, and I probably work until about four o'clock every day.
So that's basically what my workday looks like about five days a week. I don't work beyond that. The consequence, if I break those rules and I end up working, let's just say I work six hours on a weekend or something like that, nobody's going to come and you know, arrest me or anything for breaking my own rules.
But what happens is I get exhausted and overwhelmed because I don't get any time to rest like I really want to on the weekends. So the. Is paid by me when I break my own boundaries. And who needs to know about this rule? Uh, my kids basically know my work hours. They know, for example, if they come in from school at three 30 that I'm probably still talking to a client and they just go in the kitchen and get themselves a snack.
They're 12 and 15, so they're, they're fully capable of doing that. Um, my parents. Basically know those rules. My sister, you know, people who try to reach out to me a lot, my family knows that if I don't answer during the day, nothing is wrong. And sometimes my mom will text me and say, hey, call me when you're done with work or when you're not busy.
So everybody sort of knows that. Because I set those boundaries for myself during the workday, I truly am just working. I might stop and grab something for lunch in my kitchen, actually, I always do. I can't make it through the day without eating lunch, but I'm very unlikely to go out to lunch or do anything that isn't work related during the day because I have a boundary and I set that boundary because it works best for me and my life and my kids.
Yesterday, I guess it was, my son came running into my office because my dad sent us all, all three of us electric bikes, and it came during the workday. He was so excited that it came and he had already gotten his the day before and put it together. So he was like, come out, let's put it together. Let's open it up.
I said, I can't. Come on, let's just open the box and look at it. I said, Nope, I can't. And I stuck really solid to my boundary. And that just really worked for me because what would've happened is I would've gotten distracted and gone and spent like an hour probably more, getting that all set up. And it would've been fun, but then I would've had, you know, one or two hours of work to do that night.
And I just don't want to. I mentioned this a little bit in the intro, but a lot of times the reason people are hesitant to set boundaries is because of the guilt that they feel. They're worried that they're going to hurt other people's feelings. Like, for example, I've worked with clients before who wanted to tell their mom that they don't want to come over for dinner every Sunday, just as an example.
And they're worried that they're going to hurt their mom's feelings if they tell the truth and say, this just doesn't work for us anymore. We could do once a month, but every week is just too much. You might want to make sure that, you know, people aren't mad at you, but just remember, and (you can find more information about this in episode three on people pleasing), but just remember that we can never control how another person feels.
You don't have the ability to make someone feel guilty. Or happy or sad or anything, you can't make them feel any way. So for example, if you're worried that your mom's going to be mad at you and you tell her that maybe she's also relieved, maybe it wasn't working for her anymore anyway, you really don't have any way to know.
You have to just do what's best for you, and it really creates better relationships when you are honest. Even if she gets her feelings hurt at the beginning, if you're being honest. It just sets a standard for the relationship. I will say when I was talking about my own work hours, that sometimes I did feel guilty telling my friends that I couldn't go to lunch because they asked me several times and I just couldn't because of my work schedule.
I worried a little bit that they would think I was being a jerk or being too focused or putting my work ahead of them and. The truth is I don't know what they're thinking. They might think that they might think I'm a jerk or that I only care about work, or they might respect the fact that I'm doing that, or most likely is that they're not thinking about me at all.
As my Nana used to always say, don't flatter yourself. Nobody's thinking about you anyway. We're always so worried about what other people are thinking about us, but they're too busy thinking about themselves. They are probably not even thinking about you.
Okay, that's it for today, my friends. I am off to go for a bike ride on my new electric bike, which we have since opened and put together.
We actually did that on the weekend and it felt great. I hope you have a wonderful week and please continue to listen, share this podcast with friends and write a review. That would be so wonderful if you could take the time to do that. I'll see you next week.
Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com
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