Boundaries are so 2022

Hi friends!

Kelly here, slowly coming out of her cocoon of having a baby girl?now 1 month ago ??

Having?Mia?has been such a wonderful experience already, filled with ups and downs that I process by writing.?As such, I have quite a backlog! I'll be posting the occasional article to LinkedIn, but to get access to and notified of all of my writing, sign up to receive updates at the bottom of the page here.

And as always, sharing my writing is the greatest form of appreciation. I write for myself, but impacting people in the same breath is incredibly rewarding for me. You can share this latest brain dump here.

---

Boundaries are (yet) another buzz word I have a love / hate (ok, mostly hate) relationship with. Why is this?

Boundaries require putting up walls — which in turn requires a massive amount of energy and resilience. They are a contraction of our energy, rather than an expansion of it.

And yet when anything is going wrong in our lives - whether it’s someone else or ourselves to blame - we default to thinking “how can I create a world that doesn’t allow for this bad thing to happen anymore”.

The good news: boundaries are just one way keep said bad thing away. And in setting a boundary, you likely will indeed succeed at keeping the bad thing away - though likely for just a moment (have a quick reflection on how long any boundary setting lasted for you!).

A personal example of a time I (attempted to) set a clear boundary was after quitting my full time job. I said to myself “I will never take meetings on Friday”. Ha! Funny joke, Kel. As I’m sure 100% of you can relate - you / your company has at some point said something to the effect of “no meetings on Wednesdays” or “no meetings after 6” or even “no meetings on weekends”.

The thing about boundaries (which makes me love & hate them) is that they are absolute. They are clear. They are black and white. As such, boundaries work in cases that equally are extremes. With addictions. With disorders. With moments of overwhelm.

In these cases you might say “I will never give my gambling addict cousin money” or “I will never allow myself to buy unhealthy snacks (given previously disordered eating)” or “I will not check the news for the next 2 weeks (given extreme sensitivity to an ongoing war or political happenings)”.

These extreme all or nothing boundaries make sense in these scenarios. Because the cost of failing at upholding these boundaries is equally extreme. It’s slipping back into severe addiction, disordered eating or panic attacks.

However, in the case of my “no meeting Friday” boundary … if I didn’t uphold this boundary what would happen? Nothing life or death, that’s for certain. I probably wouldn’t be able to take my dog out to the countryside as planned. Or I wouldn’t be able to unplug quite as much as I would have hoped (of note: I wasn’t extremely burnt out at the time). Or I’d have to cancel plans with a friend. All of these are things that are okay to happen at times - and even more so maybe?should?happen at times!

So as I’ve gone through the last few years of my life, I have stopped setting boundaries. Instead, I have started getting intentional. A seemingly simple shift - but it’s a) very hard and b) incredibly huge!

Why is it hard? For many reasons - but mainly because it takes longer to figure out the right lens of intentionality to focus your life through. This is largely in part because very few people are doing life intentionally (vs being boundaried) so there are less role models to learn from.

Secondly, why huge? Because transitioning to being intentional means doing it in?all aspects of your life.?In your work, your relationships, your hobbies, your finances - literally every aspect of life.

I’ll pick one of the trickiest to share a personal story on - finances.

For the last 9-12 months I have known my relationship to money needed work. This became obvious because when I quit my job I gave myself ￡50k of hard earned savings to spend as I wished. And if I didn’t figure out how to stop depleting my savings by the time that ￡50k went to ￡0, I told myself I would need to get a new job.

For more context, this didn’t drain my savings to zero, it just drained the ￡50k - I had an additional safety net. I was not in debt or on the verge of debt (so no boundary was needed).

And yet after a month or so of being job free, I noticed I was penny pinching and was unable to let myself ENJOY this job free life. I had unconsciously set a boundary with myself - one that said “always think before you spend, & spend incredibly carefully”.

The energy contraction in that statement is horrific now recounting it back. I remember moving incredibly precariously. I was constantly disappointed in myself for failing to spend carefully enough (whatever that means!).

After a lot of journaling & coaching, I began to see a new perspective emerge. The perspective of being intentional rather than boundaried. It was solidified when I read the book?The Soul of Money?(run, don’t walk, to buy it!). What I began to see was that my unconscious boundary with my money had formed because of a value I had around money. A value of feeling financially stable (rather than unstable - which my draining bank account gave me the feeling of).

Now that I knew about this subconscious value - I began to explore how I could respect that value in a way that was intentional, rather than boundaried. What I started experimenting with was a perspective of “enough”. First and foremost, do I have enough money to say that I am financially stable (talk about an existential question!). Because if I did have enough, I thought maybe I would be able to give myself permission to spend as I wished (in an intentional way, rather than carefully). For me, “enough” was seeing my retirement accumulate on an annualized basis, having ￡30k liquid cash, and garnering an income that meant I did not need to dip into that liquidity for everyday living on an annual basis.

All of a sudden - against this clear definition of financial stability - I saw that I was in fact financially stable. My grip on my ￡50k slackened, and each quarter I spent money as felt?good. And at the end of the quarter I set aside time to have a look at what I spent (rather than checking every few days). If everything looked good, then I was good to go. If I wasn’t, I evaluated where I could be more intentional next quarter (taking on more clients, or spending less in certain areas that felt less important than my financial goals).

Note how different this is to “don’t spend more than ￡100 on clothes every month”. Or whatever the boundary needs to be. Again, if you have a money problem that is threatening your well-being you may well need boundaries. But if you don’t, learning to drop boundaries & instead work with intentionality can transform your relationship to all aspects of life.

With that, let’s circle back to the no meeting Fridays. What I now say to myself in this regard (through the same lens of intentionality) is “when you are feeling low, tired or burnt out, decline and/or cancel and/or reschedule all non critical meetings for a few days”.

Why? Because the boundary I was trying to hold with no meeting Fridays was set because I never wanted to burn out again (something that may be worthy of a boundary)…but I wasn’t really at risk of doing that. Having that boundary unnecessarily was setting me up to feel disappointed in myself for not upholding it when I felt a Friday call was interesting / worth doing! And to boot… I was finding that sometimes I was tired on a Tuesday rather than a Friday!

I saw my boundary for what it was trying to uphold values wise - a value for always feeling like my best self. When I’m tired or uninspired I am not my best self. Sometimes I have a ton of energy & feel inspired on a Sunday (aka today as I’m writing this) and I go snatch up that feeling and do something with it! Who cares that it’s a Sunday and that “I’m not supposed to work to maintain work-life balance”. Instead, on a Tuesday when I’m not feeling like working I simply just don’t work. Yes I recognize I’m privileged in this sense being self-employed but you can totally do this in smaller ways. When you are not feeling like your best self you can clear your social obligations, or ask colleagues to take non-critical work off your plate, or better yet take a mental health day. You CAN do these things. And you know what makes it easier to do? Remembering what’s important to you - that thing you value. And then taking time to think about what happens if you don’t uphold that value (resentment, anger, exhaustion, etc). It’s so much easier to say YES to your values (feeling your best self) than to say NO to something you dislike (burnout / Friday meetings).

Again, this is abstract stuff and not many people are doing it. So if you want help - send me a note. Or check out my module here on Boundaries (which includes a step by step exercise!). Or read this book (even though it’s on Boundaries, it has good nuggets in it to keep you thinking about this type of personal growth).

Doing these hard things will lead you to that stress-free, ease-filled life you know you’re after. Or keep you there, if you’ve already cracked the code. I can’t wait to hear how it goes ??

A few things to bookmark

Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab?is an easy reads that is equally very helpful in explaining boundaries in depth - plus guiding you to reflect on what boundaries you need in your life.

I’ve got a new product out called?The Stress Free Professional’s Secret. I’m creating these products for my coaching clients, or for people who aren’t ready to commit to coaching yet want to explore gentle self-development. It’s got 4 concepts in it, one of which is called “Trading Boundaries for Intentionality” which literally guides you through the concepts I explain in this newsletter. If not now, bookmark it for a later date! It’s only $195, a fraction of the cost of the 4-6 coaching sessions we’d usually need to explore these topics.

Page 1 of 5