Hey girl, I am so excited that you’re here. And honestly, I’m always so excited that you’re here because I am currently sitting in my dining room with my dogs and my mic by myself and your, I don’t know where you are. You could be at the gym, you could be commuting to work or making your dinner doing laundry, or literally doing anything during your day. And how fun is it that we get to connect over this intimate platform and talk about things like we’re girlfriends. Like we’re basically chatting over our favorite lattes or a big glass of wine and just spending some quality time together.
And honestly, regardless of where you are and what you might be doing, just know that I am so grateful that you chose to spend time with me. So thank you so much for being here. I am really excited about this episode, because if you’re anything like me, you are a busy woman that wants some actionable tips on how you can set better boundaries in your life.
Let’s get real” highlight reels don’t show the full story
So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode, but before we kind of start things off, I want to clarify a few things. Um, I’ve received a few DMs on Instagram lately, commending me for how I’m balancing things in life really well and maintaining this level of productivity in my business and in my life. And honestly, I really appreciate each and every one of you for reaching out and for sending these notes. But I want to clarify for a second and just say that honestly, I have definitely dropped the ball on some things lately.
Don’t get me wrong, I am super excited about the things that I’ve been working on, and I’m so very grateful for all of you and the support that you’ve shown me in my recent launches, but I definitely don’t want you to think that I somehow just magically have everything together because at the end of the day, all of the things that I’m working on, I’ve made a choice to work on and the things that I’ve chosen to not work on, I’ve also made the choice to put those things on the back burner.
And I’m making a big choice to honor my own personal boundaries, because just like we talked about in one of my recent episodes, which I’ll link to in the show notes, every choice that we make comes with a trade off, right? So every day when I’m deciding how I’m going to spend my time, I’m also acknowledging and recognize the things and I’m not going to be spending my time on.
Let’s talk about personal boundaries
So I want to talk about personal boundaries today because this is something that I’ve been struggling with lately. Because really right now I am in a season of my life just as each of us, everyone else listening to this podcast, we are all in our own unique seasons of life. And regardless of the season that you’re in, you know, each of us still only has so many hours in a day. And at the end of the day, we just can’t do it all.
I really think that all of us can do a better job of setting boundaries in our lives and just as the seasons of our life change. So will the boundaries within those seasons of life. And so it’s so important for us to not only recognize what season we’re in, but to also spend time reevaluating our boundaries and what we need those to look like in order to feel like a whole incomplete, happy person.
What season of life are you currently in?
So I want to chat with you a little bit more about the season of life that I am currently in, and basically where the inspiration for this episode came from. And then I want to chat with you about how we can actively choose to set better boundaries in our lives. And then leave you with a few questions for you to think about for yourself on how you can start implementing some better boundaries today.
So honestly, where I am right now and what I’m going through. If you follow me on social media, you will see that I just built out a new website. I launched this past week and it was so incredibly important for me to create a website based on my new brand and this podcast and the community of women that we’re creating while I love my photography website.
I want to create a space for women to grow, thrive and feel supported
You know, it’s a great space to showcase my photography work, but I wanted a space that gave more attention to each of you. And I wanted to have a space where I can connect with each of you on a more personal level. So launching the site was a huge accomplishment for me. I did it in like, I think less than three weeks, it was something that I just wanted to get out there and get out into the world and to share it with all of you.
And it’s been so incredibly exciting. I’m also in the process of creating a monthly membership site. There will be a lot more information on this to come, but essentially it’s going to be a space where women within the, she calls her shots, community can come and connect and engage with each other.
It’ll be a space where I’m going to spend time researching and gathering new content for our members where we can learn. We’ll have some amazing guest educators come in to help teach their craft and provide a space for all of us to connect one-on-one through virtual happy hours and other fun live calls, and honestly creating these sites and gathering these ideas, content and building momentum has been so much fun and it’s been so exciting learning new things and kind of feeling like a beginner again, and figuring all of this out. But I’ve also been severely neglecting my own personal boundaries with all of the excitement of everything that’s happening.
Are you so far into your work that you forget to honor your own personal boundaries and priorities?
And for those of you that might have followed me for a while, you know, that I thrive being an early bird. I honestly love nothing more than going to bed early, waking up before seven, getting my workout in first and then starting the rest of my day. But I can tell you honestly, over these last few weeks with building everything out, I have not been doing these things and I’ve been staying up working way too late.
Sometimes I’ll have, I’ve been staying up like past midnight, which for me honestly, feels like 5:00 AM. Like I am not a night owl by any means. And it causes this ripple effect that, you know, over time has just completely thrown off my morning routine. And it’s so interesting because when these things happen, you almost realize that setting boundaries for ourselves is sometimes even more difficult than the boundaries that we set with. Other people.
Choose your “hard”
Like for me, I have an easier time saying no to someone or taking something on, but then I have a really hard time saying no to myself and making myself like go to bed early. When I know that I need my rest or just like putting down the computer and turning my phone on silent and just letting myself like, not work for a certain amount of time. Like these are things that are actually almost harder.
And when we talk about boundaries, I really think that we should better define like what that is in our life. So basically boundaries are, they hold the things that we choose to either let exist in our lives or choose to not let exist in our lives. And I don’t know about you, but…
The whole concept of boundaries still feels fairly new to me in life.
Like, not that I hadn’t heard of them before, but I just never really did a very good job of implementing them. Like when I was growing up and even within, you know, my twenties, I held this concept that my goal in life was to keep other people happy and feeling at peace. Remember I’m in Enneagram nine. And at my core, I thrive feeling like a peacemaker. So the idea of setting my own boundaries, not only felt like a, you know, a foreign concept, but honestly it was something that I never spent any time thinking about in life and not to mention the idea of my own setting, my own personal boundaries.
That was equally just as hard to set because I’ve like I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, I created my photography business when I was like 22, 21. And so I was building my business while also going to school while also working while also like, you know, trying to navigate life as a 21, 22 year old. And I had the like early twenties energy, right?
Like I could stay up a little bit later and I could thrive off of five or six hours of sleep. Like I didn’t feel the need to have to set those personal boundaries because I was young and I didn’t really feel like I needed to now I’m in my early thirties and I definitely feel the need to get like enough sleep at night. You know what I mean?
So how do we set boundaries when we’re an early entrepreneur or when we’re taking on new projects that we’re excited about?
You know, we’ve got businesses to build and we’ve got clients to engage in an audience to grow and how are we supposed to also keep time to ourselves when we’re not working on our business? But one thing I want to kind of call out that I think is really important to be aware of, especially when it comes to boundaries is boundaries are so important in our life because none of us want to go around in life feeling like a victim to our surroundings.
And I don’t know if you can relate to this, maybe you can, but there have definitely been times within my own life where I let my circumstances determine not only the value in the self worth that I placed on myself, but I also felt like I was a victim to my time.
I wore busy as this badge of honor, and I didn’t feel like I owned my time in my energy.
I felt like it owned me. And so as an adult, you know, I say that, I mean, as a 30 something, you know, when I really kind of started to finally realize that I can have a say as to what I let exist in my life, it unlocked this amount of freedom of choice that I had never really experienced before. And I think it’s so important for all of us to recognize the season of life that we’re in and accept the stage of life that we’re in so that we don’t play the blame game with other people.
It’s so important to recognize that we are responsible for the things that we allow into our lives and that the ownership really is on us. If we need to set better boundaries with ourselves or with other people, because at the end of the day…
The life that we’re living right now is a reflection of the choices that we make
And when you think about that, doesn’t it sound really powerful. Like, I, I kind of hope that you hear that and you feel inspired and motivated by that because you and I are responsible for the things that we let into our lives. That’s so much power. And that also means that we have a say. So knowing that, you know, and kind of recognizing that we can’t balance everything in life, right?
Like going back to my earlier statement where, you know, some of you have just been so impressed with the things that I’ve been doing and you see me maintaining multiple social media accounts and, you know, greeting weekly podcasts and launching the new website and all of these things. While yes, on the surface level, all of that might sound really impressive, but you’re not seeing the behind the scenes of the really late nights spent working the lack of sleep that I’ve let myself have the time spent creating drafts for the podcast that I eventually erased and recreated.
Even more importantly, you’re not seeing or hearing the thoughts that have passed through my mind when I start to do these things. They start to sneak in and they say, oh, you know, you’re not good enough, or you should be better at this. These thoughts often lead us to feeling more burnt out and overworked because we’re trying to maintain this image that people see of us.
Choose the things that you are spending your time and energy on wisely.
So honestly, one of the things that’s helped to keep me sane through all of this is just recognizing and being aware of the things, you know, obviously I’m spending time and effort on, you know, certain things in my business and in my life, but I’m also taking time to recognize the things that I’m choosing to not spend time on, because maybe I’m not posting as often on my Instagram stories, or maybe I’m not sharing a cute and fun photo on Instagram every day.
And, you know, maybe I’m just not feeling some of that social, you know, or fulfilling some of my social duties that I normally like to maintain in my business, but you know what I am doing, I’ve been working my booty off to make sure that I answer Instagram messages. I’ve been staying up late creating these like amazing freebies for my website that will help you level up your own business.
And instead of getting upset or bogged down by the fact that I wish I had more hours in my day, and I wish I could do the fun stuff like posting on social media and like having more creativity and like thinking of fun, cute things to post, instead of feeling frustrated by that I’m going to instead choose to feel really freaking grateful that I get to choose to spend time on the things that are truly most important to me and recognize that this is the season of life that I’m in right now.
Choose gratitude even when things feel crazy
Even though right now I might be in heavy content creation mode right now I might be in just like, get in the zone, put on my headphones and like get to work. And that doesn’t mean then in a couple of weeks, I might not have the time and energy. Maybe I have the time and energy then to like put more effort into social media, but this is the season of life that I’m in right now.
And so it’s so important to evaluate what season you’re in and what your boundaries should currently look like. And so this episode comes straight from my heart because I want you to know that you are not alone in any of this, like boundaries are especially hard to create when we’re working on things that we’re passionate about. Like it’s so hard to go to bed early when we’ve been making progress on a new website, or to give ourselves time to read a personal development book, to fill our own cup.
When we’re working on creating freebies that will help other people build and grow their businesses or to let ourselves rest and just put away our computer. When we know that we could edit more, you know, engagement sessions or wedding galleries for our clients, it’s so hard to say no, when we feel like what we’re working on is going to make a bigger impact in someone else’s life.
Sometimes you just need to say “no”
But here I am, I’m speaking from my heart because I am feeling the effects of not saying no. When I know I probably should, because honestly, the energy that you get from like momentum and excitement from starting something new, or, you know, for like taking on new projects or kind of going, you know, crazy layered, letting yourself go crazy with work for a week or two, the energy that you get from that only last for a very short amount of time.
And eventually you start to feel the effects of letting other people or letting yourself slip away from your boundaries. And so let’s chat about some ways that we can not only identify our boundaries, but ways that we can learn to know when we need to start implementing better boundaries within our life.
So let’s figure out, you know, number one, how often do we need to fill ourselves up on a regular basis or put another way, how much time, you know, at a minimum, do we need to be spending, filling our own cup and investing in our own personal development. And number two, let’s figure out when we’re going to be on. And when we’re going to let ourselves be off and number three…
Let’s figure out what we need in our lives right now in this season in order to not only feel productive, but to also feel fulfilled and happy.
So first I think we have to get comfortable setting our schedules ahead of time and making sure that we’re honoring our priorities. We have to make sure that we’re setting aside time at the beginning of the week to write out the things that are most important to us, because I think we all know too well, if you just like leave things up to chance, or if you just see how things unfold during the week, the things that fill you up the most are likely going to be the things that you forget to make time to do.
So for me, one of the things that I’ve realized lately is that I set aside my priority for going to bed early and waking up early, which not only affected my sleep habits, but it also interfered with my regularly scheduled morning time where I fit in my workouts and work on all of my personal growth habits.
So maybe for you, you might like to spend time on Sunday, mapping out your personal priorities and your schedule for the week, or maybe you like to do it every night. Like every night before you go to bed, maybe you look at your schedule for the next day and figure out, you know, when you’re going to have time for yourself and when you’re going to have time for work, whatever it is that you feel like makes the most sense for you in this season.
Remember, your priorities will change with the seasons
And remember it might change this season. It might, you know, make more sense for you to do it the night before. And you might have some seasons where you can do it on a more, just weekly basis, but make it a priority to determine when and how you’re going to spend time filling yourself up every single day. And number two, we need to figure out when we’re going to be on and when we can let ourselves be off, because for many of us, we have a hard time separating our business hours from our personal hours.
I think, especially with the world right now, as it is with COVID and, you know, lots of people either working from home or working extra hours at their job in order to make ends, meet the lines, have become really blurry around when we’re on and when we’re off. And like for, for anyone else, that’s feeling the effects of working from home. It’s very difficult to separate your business hours from your family time when, you know, both might involve working from the couch or working from the dining room.
And honestly, these are hard choices for us to make because sometimes, you know, saying yes to something at work might make the difference between, you know, just getting by for the week versus, you know, letting ourselves or our family, you know, like have something nice. If up until this point, you’ve let yourself be available to other people at any time of the day, or like on your days off.
If that’s the expectation that we’re setting for other people, we can’t be upset when they expect us to be available.
When you decide that you’re going to be off, put away the computer, turn your phone to silent and just let yourself be present because being kind of off or kind of unavailable doesn’t end up working very well in the long run.
So number one, just to recap, scheduling, when you’re going to fill your cup, number two, when you’re going to be on and when you’re going to be off and then number three, figure out what you need in your life in order to feel like a productive and fulfilled and happy person. And for you, that might look like something different than it does for me. And that’s okay because at the end of the day, you and I were girlfriends were chatting over coffee.
Defining your priorities will help you shape your boundaries
We each have different things going on in our lives. And we each have different projects and relationships and things that we might be working on. But I can tell you for me, my boundaries and what I need in life to make me happy at this season of life is a few nights a week where I can deep dive into my business and work on things that I’m currently launching, or, you know, maybe having at least one night a week where I have an unplugged date night with my boyfriend and what it’s also going to look like on a regular basis is going to bed early and making sure that, you know, some nights I let myself go to bed, maybe put a face mask on or hop onto a, you know, into a warm bath and read a book, but for going to sleep.
And for me, these are the things that I need because I know that not only will they help me feel more fulfilled and happy, but they will also lead me to feeling more productive in the long run because I’m taking that time for myself on a regular basis while still letting myself have nights during the week where I can work on my business and I can stay up a little late if that’s what I feel like I need that day, but still making sure to honor my priorities, going to bed on time and having a few nights a week where I might be a little bit more unplugged.
Your boundaries might look very different from everyone else’s — and that’s okay!
And for you that might look like something completely different and that’s totally okay. You know, maybe you need more family time or just simply spending time outside and being in nature and going on hikes, whatever it is that you might need, scheduling something every single week that fills you up while still honoring the season of life that you’re in, knowing that you might have some nights where you work, but you’re also going to have some nights where you’re more unplugged.
And let’s imagine if you showed up in the world to someone who felt truly fulfilled and happy, and as someone who is honoring their priorities every single day, imagine how incredibly powerful that would be for not only just you, but for those that know you personally in your life and imagine how much more productive you’ll be in the long run when you’re honoring your boundaries
And you’re keeping things more leveled on a weekly basis. Like girl, imagine how you could start showing up every day by doing those things. And I know you’re like me and you want to, like, you can do it all. And while you might be capable of doing it all, it doesn’t mean that you have to, or that you should. So don’t forget to let yourself relax, take a night off, and don’t forget to listen into your body on a regular basis to see what you need in order to feel happy. I am so excited for us to start setting better boundaries in our life. And I would love to hear what you’re going to start doing first. So send me a DM and let me know…and I will talk to you soon, girl
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View the Full Transcript:
Hey girl, and welcome to the She Calls or Shots podcast, where we are all about making a bigger impact while learning how to live bolder, brighter, and happier lives. My name is Krista, and I’m a photographer, creative, and an entrepreneur, and I am so excited to navigate through this journey together as we deep dive into creating a life, business and personal growth journey.
Journey that we are totally obsessed with. And in this podcast we are all about real talk and having honest and open conversations as we share insights and tips on how to play a bigger game and live a life that we truly love. So girlfriend, let’s make some moves and start working on our dreams.
Hey, girl. I am so excited that you’re here, and honestly, I’m always so excited that you’re here because I am currently sitting in my dining room with my dogs and my mic by myself, and you are, I don’t know where you are. You could be at the gym, you could be commuting to work or making your dinner doing laundry, or literally doing anything during your day.
And how fun is it that we get to connect over this intimate platform and talk about things like we’re girlfriends. Like we’re basically chatting over our favorite lattes or a big glass of wine and just spending some quality time together. And honestly, regardless of where you are and what you might be doing, just know that I am so grateful that you chose to spend time with me.
So thank you so much for being here. I am really excited about this episode because if you are anything like me, you are a busy woman that wants some actionable tips on how you can set better boundaries in your life. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. But before we. Kind of start things off.
I wanna clarify a few things. Um, I’ve received a few dms on Instagram lately, commending me for how I’m balancing things in life really well and maintaining this level of productivity in my business and in my life. And honestly, I really appreciate each and every one of you for reaching out and for sending these notes.
But I wanna clarify for a second and just say that honestly, I have definitely dropped the ball on some things lately. And don’t get me wrong, I am super excited about the things that I’ve been working on, and I’m so very grateful for all of you and the support that you’ve shown me in my recent launches.
But I definitely don’t want you to think that I somehow magically have everything together, because at the end of the day, all of the things that I’m working on, I’ve made a choice to work on. And the things that I’ve chosen to not work on, I’ve also made the choice to put those things on the back burner, and I’m making a big choice to honor my own personal boundaries because just like we talked about in one of my recent episodes, which I’ll link to in the show notes, every choice that we make comes with a trade off, right?
So every day when I’m deciding how I’m going to spend my time, I’m also acknowledging and recognize the things that I’m not going to be spending my time on. And I wanna talk about personal boundaries today because this is something that I’ve been struggling with lately. Um, because really right now I am in a season of my life, just as each of us, everyone else listening to this podcast.
We are all in our own unique seasons of life. And regardless of the season that you’re in, you know, each of us still only has so many hours in a day. And at the end of the day, we just can’t do it all. And I think that all of us can do a better job of setting boundaries in our lives. And just as the seasons of our life change, so will the boundaries within those seasons of life.
And so it’s so important for us to not only recognize what season we’re in, but to also spend time reevaluating our boundaries and what we need those to look like in order to feel like a whole and complete happy person. So I wanna chat with you a little bit more about the season of life that I’m currently in and.
Basically where the inspiration for this episode came from. And then I wanna chat with you about how we can actively choose to set better boundaries in our lives, and then leave you with a few questions for you to think about for yourself on how you can start implementing some better boundaries today.
So honestly where I am right now and what I’m going through, um, if you follow me on social media, you will see that I just built out a new website. I launched this past week and it was so incredibly important for me to create a website based on my new brand and this podcast and the community of women that we’re creating.
While I love my photography website, you know, it’s a great space to showcase my photography work. But I wanted a space that gave more attention to each of you, and I wanted to have a space where I can connect with each of you on a more personal level. So launching the site was a huge accomplishment for me.
I did it in like, I think, less than three weeks. It was something that I just wanted to get out there and get out into the world and just share it with all of you, and it’s been so incredibly exciting. And I’m also in the process of creating a monthly membership site, and there will be a lot more information on this to come, but essentially it’s going to be a space where women with.
In the she calls or shots, community can come and connect and engage with each other. It’ll be a space where I’m going to spend time researching and gathering new content for our members where we can learn. We’ll have some amazing guest educators come in to help, uh, teach their craft and provide a space for all of us to connect one-on-one through virtual happy hours and other fun live.
Calls and honestly, creating these sites and gathering these ideas and content and building momentum has been so much fun and it’s been so exciting learning new things and kind of feeling like a beginner again and figuring all of this out. But I’ve also been severely neglecting my own personal boundaries with all of the excitement of everything that’s happening.
And for those of you that might have followed me for a while, you know that I thrive being an early bird. I honestly love nothing more than going to bed early. Waking up before seven, getting my workout in first thing, and then starting the rest of my day. But I can tell you honestly, over these last few weeks with building everything out, I have not been doing these things and I’ve been staying up, working way too late.
Sometimes I’ll ha I’ve been staying up like past midnight, which for me honestly feels like 5:00 AM Like I am not a night owl. By any means, and it causes this ripple effect that, you know, over time has just completely thrown off my morning routine. And it’s so interesting because when these things happen, you almost realize that setting boundaries for ourselves is sometimes even more difficult than the boundaries that we set with other people.
Like for me, I, I have an easier time saying no to someone or taking something on. But then I have a really hard time saying no to myself and making myself like go to bed early when I know that I need my rest. Or just like putting down the computer and turning my phone on silent and just letting myself like not work for a certain amount of time.
Like these are the things that are actually almost harder. And when we talk about boundaries, I really think that we should better define like, What that is in our life. So basically boundaries are, they hold the things that we choose to either let exist in our lives or choose to not let exist in our lives.
And I don’t know about you, but the whole concept of boundaries still feels fairly new to me in life. Like, not that I hadn’t heard of them before, but I just never really did a. Very good job of implementing them. Like when I was growing up and even within, you know, my twenties, I, I held this concept that my goal in life was to keep other people happy and feeling at peace.
Remember, I’m in an Igram nine and at my core I thrive feeling like a peacemaker. I. So the idea of setting my own boundaries not only felt like a, you know, a foreign concept, but honestly it was something that I never spent any time thinking about in life. And not to mention the idea of my own setting, my own personal boundaries, that was equally just as hard to set because I’ve let, like I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, I created my photography business when I was like 22, 21.
And so I was building my business while also going to school, while also working, while also like, you know, Trying to navigate life as a 21, 22 year old, and I had the like early twenties energy, right? Like I could stay up a little bit later and I could thrive off of five or six hours of sleep. Like I didn’t feel the need to have to set those personal boundaries because I was young and I didn’t really feel like I needed to.
Now I’m in my early thirties and I definitely feel the need to get like enough. Sleep at night. You know what I mean? So how do we set boundaries when we’re an early entrepreneur or when we’re taking on new projects that we’re excited about? You know, we’ve got businesses to build and we’ve got clients to engage in, an audience to grow.
And how are we supposed to also keep time to ourselves when we’re not working on our business? But one thing I want to kind of call out that I think is really important to be aware of, um, especially when it comes to boundaries, is boundaries are so important in our life because none of us wanna go around in life feeling like we’re a victim to our surroundings.
And I don’t know if you can relate to this, maybe you can, but there have definitely been times within my own life where I let my circumstances. You know, determine not only the value and the self-worth that I placed on myself, but I also felt like I was a victim to my time. I wore busy as this badge of honor, and I didn’t feel like I owned my time and my energy.
I felt like it owned me. And so as an adult, you know, I say that, I mean as a 30 something, you know, when I really. Kind of started to finally realize that I can have a say as to what I let exist in my life. It unlocked this amount of freedom of choice that I had never really experienced before. And I think it’s so important for all of us to recognize the season of life that we’re in, and accept the stage of life that we’re in so that we don’t play the blame game with other people because it’s so important to recognize that we are responsible for the things that we allow into our lives.
And that the ownership really is on us if we need to set better boundaries with ourselves or with other people, because at the end of the day, the life that we’re living right now is a reflection of the choices that we make. And when you think about that, doesn’t it sound really powerful? Like I, I kind of hope that you hear that and you feel inspired and motivated by that.
Because you and I are responsible for the things that we let into our lives, that’s so much power. And that also means that we have a. Say so knowing that, you know, and kind of recognizing that we can’t balance everything in life, right? Like going back to my earlier statement where, you know, some of you have just been so impressed with the things that I’ve been doing and you see me maintaining.
Multiple social media accounts and you know, creating weekly podcasts and launching the new website and all of these things. And yes, on the surface level, all of that might sound really impressive, but you’re not seeing the behind the scenes of the really late nights spent working. The lack of sleep that I’ve let myself have, the time spent creating drafts for the podcast that I eventually erased and recreated, and more importantly, you’re not.
Seeing or hearing the thoughts that have passed through my mind when I start to do these things and they start to sneak in and they say, oh, you know, you’re not good enough, or You should be better at this, and you don’t think these things, because at the end of the day, we’re all our own worst critics, and these thoughts often lead us.
To feeling more burnt out and overworked because we’re trying to maintain this image that people see of us. Like if I felt the pressure of like needing to continue to maintain all of this all the time, like my body over the last two weeks, I’m so tired and like if I kept this up for like months in order to maintain this like image to seem like I have it all together, like I would be.
Rough because these thoughts that we have start to kind of erode the boundaries that we’ve set with ourselves because we feel that need to keep this image or like keep this facade of having it all together. So honestly, one of the things that’s helped to keep me sane through all of this is just recognizing and being aware of the things.
You know, obviously I’m spending time and effort on, you know, certain things in my business and in my life, but I’m also taking time to recognize the things that I’m choosing to not spend time on, because maybe I’m not posting as often on my Instagram stories, or maybe I’m not sharing a cute and fun photo on Instagram every day, and, you know, maybe I’m just not feeling some of that.
Social, you know, or fulfilling some of my social duties that I normally like to maintain in my business. But you know what I am doing? I’ve been working my booty off to make sure that I answer Instagram messages. I’ve been staying up late creating these like amazing freebies for my website that’ll help you level up your own business.
And instead of getting upset or bogged down by the fact that I wish I had more hours in my day and I wish I could do the fun stuff, like posting on social media and like having more cre creativity and like thinking of fun and cute things to post, instead of feeling frustrated by that, I’m gonna instead choose to feel really freaking grateful that I get to choose to spend time on the things that are truly most important to me.
And recognize that this is the season of life that I’m in right now. And right now I might be in heavy content creation mode right now. I might be in just like get in the zone, put on my headphones and like get to work. And that doesn’t mean that in a couple weeks I might not have the time and energy.
Maybe I have the time and energy then to like put more effort into social media, but this is the season of life that I’m in right now. And so it’s so important to evaluate what season you’re in and what your boundaries should currently look like. And so this episode comes straight from my heart because I want you to know that you are not alone in any of this.
Like boundaries are especially hard to create when we’re working on things that we’re. Passionate about, like it’s so hard to go to bed early when we’ve been making progress on a new website, or to give ourselves time to read a personal development book, to fill our own cup when we’re working on creating freebies that will help other people build and grow their businesses, or to let ourselves rest and just put away our computer when we know that we could edit more, you know, engagement sessions or wedding galleries for our clients.
It’s so hard to say no when we feel like what we’re working on is going to make a bigger impact in someone else’s life. But here I am. I’m speaking from my heart because I am feeling the effects of not saying no when I know I probably should, because honestly, the energy that you get from like momentum and excitement from starting something new or you know, for like taking on new projects or kind of going, you know, crazy, let your, letting yourself go crazy with work for a week or two.
The energy that you get from that only lasts for a very short amount of time. And eventually you start to feel the effects of letting other people or letting yourself slip away from your boundaries. And so let’s chat about some ways that we can not only identify our boundaries, but ways that we can learn to know when we need to start implementing better boundaries within our life.
So let’s figure out, you know, number one, how often do we need to fill ourselves up on a regular basis? Or put another way, how much time, you know, at a minimum do we need to be spending filling our own cup and investing in our own personal development? And number two, let’s figure out when we’re gonna be on and when we’re gonna let ourselves be off.
And number three, Let’s figure out what we need in our lives right now in this season in order to not only feel productive, but to also feel fulfilled and happy. So first, I think we have to get comfortable setting our schedules ahead of time and making sure that we’re honoring our priorities. And we chatted about this in a previous episode, which again, it’s the same episode, it’s the people pleasing episode, which I’ll link to in the show notes.
But we, we have to make sure that we’re setting aside time at the beginning of the week to write out the things that are most important to us, because I think we all know too well if you just like leave things up to chance or if you just see how things unfold during the week, the things that fill you up the most are likely going to be the things that you forget to make time to do.
So for me, one of the things that I’ve realized lately, Is that I set aside my priority for going to bed early and waking up early, which not only affected my sleep habits, but it also interfered with my regularly scheduled morning time where I fit in my workouts and work on all of my personal growth habits.
So maybe for you, you might like to spend time on Sunday mapping out your personal priorities and your schedule for the week, or maybe you like to do it every night like. Every night before you go to bed, maybe you look at your schedule for the next day and figure out, you know, when you’re gonna have time for yourself and when you’re gonna have time for work.
Whatever it is that you feel like makes the most sense for you in this season. And remember, it might change this season. It might, you know, make more sense for you to do it the night before, and you might have some seasons where you can do it on a more just weekly basis, but make it a priority to determine when.
And how you’re going to spend time filling yourself up every single day. And number two, we need to figure out when we’re gonna be on and when we can let ourselves be off. Because for many of us, we have a hard time separating our business hours from our personal hours. I think especially with the world right now as it is with Covid and you know, lots of people either working from home or working extra hours at their job in order to make ends meet.
The lines have become really blurry around when we’re on and when we’re off. And like for, for anyone else that’s feeling the effects of working from home, it’s very difficult to separate your business hours from your family time when you know both might involve working from the couch or working from the dining room.
And like, these are hard choices for us to make because sometimes. You know, saying yes to something at work might make the difference between, you know, just getting by for the week versus, you know, letting ourselves or our family, you know, like have something nice if up until this point you’ve let yourself be available to other people at any time of the day or like on your days off.
Like if that’s the expectation that we’re setting for other people. We can’t be upset when they expect us to be available when. You decide that you’re going to be off, put away the computer, turn your phone to silent, and just let yourself be present because being kind of off or kind of unavailable doesn’t end up working very well in the long run.
So number one, just to recap, scheduling when you’re going to fill your cup. Number two, when you’re going to be on and when you’re going to be off. And then number three. Figure out what you need in your life in order to feel like a productive and fulfilled and happy person. And for you, that might look like something different than it does for me.
And that’s okay because at the end of the day, you and I, we’re girlfriends. We’re chatting over coffee. We each have different things going on in our lives, and we each have different projects and relationships and things that we might be working on. But I can tell you for me, my boundaries and what I need in life to make me happy at this.
Season of life is a few nights a week where I can deep dive into my business and work on things that I’m currently launching. Or, you know, maybe having at least one night a week where I have an unplugged date night with my boyfriend. And what it’s also going to look like on a regular basis is going to bed early and making sure that, you know, some nights.
I let myself go to bed, maybe put a face mask on, or hop onto a, you know, into a warm bath and read a book before going to sleep. And for me, these are the things that I need because I know that not only will they help me feel more fulfilled and happy, but they will also lead me to feeling more productive in the long run because I’m taking that time for myself.
On a regular basis while still letting myself have nights during the week where I can work on my business and I can stay up a little late if that’s what I feel like I need that day, but still making sure to honor my priorities, going to bed on time and having a few nights a week where I might. Be a little bit more unplugged, and for you, that might look like something completely different, and that’s totally okay.
You know, maybe you need more family time or just simply spending time outside and being in nature and going on hikes. Whatever it is that you might need. Scheduling something every single week that fills you up while still honoring the season of life that you’re in, knowing that you might have some nights where you work.
But you’re also gonna have some nights where you’re more unplugged. And imagine if you showed up in the world as someone who felt truly fulfilled and happy, and as someone who is honoring their priorities every single day. Imagine how incredibly powerful that would be for not only just you, but for those that know you personally in your life, and imagine how much more productive you’ll be in the long run when you’re honoring your boundaries and you’re keeping things more leveled on a weekly basis.
Like girl, imagine how you could start showing up every day by doing those things. And I know you are like me, and you want to feel like you can do it all. And while you might be capable of doing it all, it doesn’t mean that you have to or that you should. So don’t forget to let yourself relax, take a night off, and don’t forget to listen in to your body on a regular basis to see what you need in order to feel happy.
I am so excited for us to start setting better boundaries in our life, and I would love to hear what you’re going to start doing first. So send me a dm, let me know, and I will talk to you soon. Girl,
thank you so much for listening in and for joining me on this journey. If you love this episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it with your girlfriends, or better yet, share it on Instagram and tag me. I would love to. Personally say thank you and hear what resonated with you the most. As always, I am so excited that we get to figure all of this out together.
Until next time, I’ll talk to you soon, girl.
