Boundaries - How to Stick to Them

This episode continues our discussion of people-pleasing and explores boundaries - we love them, we hate them, we all need them. Not only are we going to explore how to set and stick to boundaries, we're going to take a look at some of the most common boundary violations I see in practicing law as well as some pretty shocking brutal honesty, in part with a few true confessions in lawyering from your host. 

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RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:

• Being on Call - https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/being-on-call-24-7/
• Being Authentic - https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/being-authentic/
• Boundaries - https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/boundaries/
• Doing the Hard Things - https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/doing-the-hard-things/

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Transcript

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0:04  

You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast Episode number 11. And we are talking today about Boundaries: we love them, we hate them, we all need them. 

Welcome to the Lawyer Life Podcast. If you are wondering how to find greater success and peace in your career, how to get more done, and find more time for what's really important, you are in the right spot. At the Lawyer Life Podcast, we dig into the good and the bad parts of lawyering and provide practical tips to help you take back your power and start living the career of your dreams. 

I am your host Autumn Noble. I am a speaker, author, a practicing attorney as well as a life and career coach for lawyers. I have worked in firms of all shapes and sizes I've taught in the universities, and I've built a thriving practice group from the ground up. And I also worked in-house with a Fortune 300 company. Now I've created the Lawyer Life Collective to leverage all of my experiences and learnings to help my clients pave their own way, whatever that might look like. We are so glad that you're here!

1:18

Hello, my friends, if you are new here, thank you for joining us, be sure to check out the prior episode on People Pleasing to set a good foundation for today's topic. If you've been here all along, I am so grateful for you and welcome back. 

In today's episode, we're talking about boundaries. First, we're going to trudge through some brutal honesty before digging into the how of boundary setting, then we're going to tackle the big fear, if I set boundaries, are they going to fire me?! And finally, we round all of that out with some more brutal honesty, a little hot and sour sauce today. 

Jumping right in brutal honesty dose number one: we are the reason people don't respect our boundaries. It's not their fault, and they will never change if we don't.

2:09

In everything that we do, we are expressing our values not only to ourselves, but to everyone around us. In that expression, others will learn to anticipate where they fall on your hierarchy of values. If your choices communicate to them, that they will always be number one, no matter what they will come to expect that treatment every time. Why wouldn't they? When you get that phone call late at night, you are choosing to value it more than the time at home that you may be spending with your family. Or you might be choosing to place greater value on that call and greater value on not upsetting people at work, then you place on getting a full night's sleep. 

So instead you answer that phone call or you step away from your family, and you take the call. You are always making choices, where to spend your energy and how to direct your attention. When we fail to set boundaries, we are communicating to others that we will always choose them first. Your job is not robbing you of the balance that you seek. You are opening the doors and burning down all of your guard towers. We hate getting those last minute projects dropped onto our plates when we're already drowning. Everybody does. Sometimes we even work up the nerve to protest and tell them that we just don't have capacity. But what do we do time and time again? We just do it. We figure out a way to make it happen. We make sacrifices that we don't feel good about. But we get it done. And when it happens the next time we do the same thing. Why then are we so surprised when they keep doing it? 

4:00

They're getting exactly what they want. Why would they ever stop asking you or believe when you say you don't have time? You've said that before, but you always get it done anyway. So we have to first really recognize that we are part of the problem. Our inability, or unwillingness to set those boundaries is why people keep treating us that way. They're never going to change and we've given them no reason to change because they get what they want every single time. You set the precedent by communicating where those types of interactions fall on your list of priorities and your answer historically has been right at the top, above everything else my family, my friends, my sanity. 

The only person that you need to be mad at for constantly pushing your boundaries is you. Other people will not naturally violate our boundaries. They're taught what is acceptable. We teach them what is acceptable by our actions. When they continually do so, it is only because they have become the monsters that we created through our own actions. 

5:13

Consider this, we have all seen those attorneys who just don't give a fuck about not responding immediately to calls or emails. Everybody knows it and everyone gossips and gripes about it. But everyone is secretly jealous that they don't have the guts to do the same thing. Not only do those attorneys still have a job, but they also have the balance we've been craving. People learn not to call them after hours, and they've deduced that they won't respond to late night quasi-emergency emails, unless it's really an emergency. Those types of people, those types of attorneys, they made a choice about what they valued more, not being gossiped about, or having work life balance. For them, having more balance is worth so much more than being gossiped about for not being responsive, all of the time. 

They made conscious decisions about where the demands of the job fell with respect to their values, and they clearly communicated their values and they stuck to their guns. It can be as simple as that, you do not have to respond to every email just because you saw it and just because someone else decided to tack on that little red emergency sign to the email. We can develop the art of cultivating our email, and only responding to true emergencies after hours. We're not ER doctors. There's rarely those kinds of emergencies, but people get used to you treating them and honoring them that that way, because after all, humans are creatures of habit, if we allow others to call on us at all hours of the night, they will continue to do so if it yields the results that they want. And they will stop, if it doesn't get them the results that they want. 

You are not a victim to others, you're only a victim to your own choices. And luckily for all of us, we can start making better choices, choices that are more in tune with our values. Thus, we can choose instead to set some boundaries. And here's how we do this. 

7:36

First, let me say boundaries themselves, they're not that hard. We can simply say no, as a means to protect our time, our energy, our true priorities, whatever it may be, say no for whatever reason resonates with you. And then, if we choose, we can offer some clarity around what we will do if the other person does not respect that answer of No. 

For instance, this may sound something like No, I can't do that project today, I have too many other competing deadlines. We could leave it at that. Or we continue on and say, If you want me to do it, I can get to it next week and if that doesn't work for you, we're going to have to coordinate with the other partners and projects to adjust my priorities. It's pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. Whatever options you're giving them, it doesn't end up with you piling more on top of a full plate. If that person continues to push, then we can simply offer more clarification about the consequences of them not honoring that answer of no when we gave it the first time. You could say something like, I understand that if you need me to do this today, that is going to require me to push XY&Z other projects and I'm going to have to check with the other partners to see if that works for them. If it doesn't work for them, I will get to your project next week unless you want to have somebody else do it because I've already committed to other priorities today and I will let you know where this all lands when I've discussed it with the other partners whose work I'm tied up with. 

If the workload and people pushing projects on you is not part of the reason you feel called to set boundaries, it might be simple day to day interruptions that are making it really difficult for you to focus your energy and focus your efforts. So if you're overwhelmed by constant emails, or phone calls because you're always making yourself available to others, because there's no boundary there, we first have to decide What do I want that boundary to look like so that I'm not constantly on demand to everybody around me? So that's going to require a little bit of self exploration before we figure out how to actually set the boundary. So for instance, ask yourself, are you willing to check your email after hours?

10:18  

I think that's a question that we have to pause and ask. A lot of us just do it and I think we need to decide, am I willing to do that? And if so, what does that look like? Is it within certain hours? Is it a free for all, but really consciously making a decision one way or another is going to at least allow you to take some ownership and power back for how we're feeling so inundated and constantly on call. So get clear on how often you're willing to be available or is this something that just comes up sporadically, you want to be able to go have lunch with your kids, you want to be able to go to a wedding and not feel that constant tug of work. In those instances, consider whether you could use your out of office message or email signature to communicate that boundary that boundary between work and the rest of your life that you want to have time for. 

11:14

If, for instance, you are going to be away for a weekend, potentially at a wedding or a family get together, consider including in your out of office message, the dates and times that you will be checking email so that others are aware that their emails will be going unread during a period of time. Or if you want to implement a practice where you don't check your emails during certain after hours, or maybe over the weekend, every once in a while, consider including that in your email signature to. 99% of the time when I talk through these potential solutions with attorneys, the usual response is, I don't want to feel like I'm annoying people, I don't want to feel like I'm beating other people over the head with this boundary that I'm trying to set. But the most essential aspect of any boundary is communication. 

It's not helpful to the other party for us to have this mental expectation as to how they're supposed to interact with us, but then not tell them what those rules are. It only creates this like quiet fuming and anger on our part, because they're not figuring out what they what we want from them because they're not reading our minds and they have not been able to ascertain how we want them to interact with us. So if there's something that you're wanting, or something that you're needing, like freedom to not check your email after hours, or maybe over a weekend, or not be tied to it constantly, consider leveraging communication avenues, like your email signature, or your out of office message to let others be aware. 

12:58

And yeah, they might be annoyed, and they might not like it. Maybe they will get frustrated, maybe they will think you're beating them over the head with your new fancy boundaries. In fact, you can probably rest assured that some people are not going to like it. But if they're annoyed by it, that means that they've read it and they're aware. Isn't that really half of the battle? Isn't that really the most important part of a boundary is letting people know where the line is for you, and asking them to honor it, and giving yourself the opportunity to react when they have specifically disregarded something that you've clearly communicated to them. 

People are not going to love being shepherded in this way. But it's not about people pleasing anymore. It's about self-preservation and that may often require us to let go of what other people are thinking about us in favor of focusing only on our relationship with ourselves. 

13:59

Other boundary violations I often see with my clients is people constantly calling and treating everything as an emergency, right, like a phone call sort of suggests that it's something that needs to be dealt with, immediately. Same thing when they show up at your door. So if you're the type of person it's struggling with constant interruptions and violations of your time and space and energy from office visitors or phone calls, you might consider implementing a boundary to limit those interruptions and allow you to focus. A few options to consider… You can direct all your phone calls to go to voicemail for a period of time so that you can focus on whatever priority project you want to accomplish that day. 

You can ask your support staff to intercept all phone calls, except you know, maybe carve some out. I only want to receive phone calls from these people because I know it relates to whatever I'm working on. You could silence meaning essentially ignore all phone calls during a stated period of time and you or your support staff could send a follow up email to all missed calls, letting them know that you're working on a deadline and would be happy to get some time on the calendar to regroup, or inviting them to send you an email so that you can get back to them in between things when you come up for air. Either way, you're controlling the time of the discussion and really forcing them to kind of see, they're clearly in the middle of something is what I want to bother them about more important than whatever I'm told they're tied up with, you kind of force them to step back and ask and reevaluate whether or not they want to put together that email whether or not they want to put time on your calendar to further discuss it and that can change the dynamic or the urgency with which they're treating whatever it is they want from you. 

15:57

I once had this client who called me all of the time, and he would call to talk through like new ideas, or he would call every time he wondered about some new aspect of the project, he just kind of wanted to ideate through things with me. Sometimes he just called to vent about the people that he worked with, or the project itself and sometimes he just called to chat. He called when he was frustrated with his team and other times, he would call just to let me know how happy he was, with how things were going. But it was constant. And how I showed up in that relationship really taught me a lot about how I set boundaries in my relationships and how I follow through on them, or don't follow through on them. 

When it came to him, I got in the habit of ignoring most of his phone calls unless I had time, or was in a good mood to chat with him. And once I missed his call, I would follow up with an email and say, you know, hey, I missed your call and tied up for most of the day but if you send me an email, you know, I'll get back to in between things if you need something, you know, basically, like, if you're calling just to chat, I'm busy and if you want legal support, I'm here. And the issue became for me my discomfort with setting that kind of boundary because even when I ignored his phone calls, and sent him a follow up note, I would just be really irritated and distracted afterwards. Why does he do that I'm not supposed to be his friend, I'm supposed to be his lawyer, right? So I really got tied up in wanting him to be different and that was something I had to sort out eventually later but even when I set the boundary, I was just fuming about it because I wanted him to be different than he was. 

So not only was I ignoring his phone calls, sending the follow up email, but I couldn't just let the boundary be and move on. I was frustrated. And then I started to feel guilty. And so I'd feel myself just justifying and rationalizing what I was doing over and over and over in my head. I'm not ignoring him to be mean, it's not because I doesn't I don't like him, I just, I want to be efficient, I want to get this done. I don't want to lose a bunch of time today, you know, just kind of on and on just justifying to myself, like why it was okay for me to do that. There was a lot of guilt that went with it. My brain kept telling me like He's gonna be mad at you. He's going to think that you don't care. He's going to complain about your service. He's going to tell everybody that you're just never available. All of these things, this guilt and kind of self judgments went around and around and so one day I kind of gave in to those nagging thoughts and those crappy feelings. He called me, I declined it. And then he messaged me. And the message was something like, Can you you know, let me know when you've got five minutes. And immediately I can just feel myself getting frustrated. So I decided just to call him like, forget it. I'm just going to call him and get this over with.

18:53  

So I called him and I called him because I felt like I should because I was feeling guilty. I didn't call him because I wanted to and I didn't call him clearly because I was in a good headspace to talk to him. So he answered, I immediately regretted it because I could feel myself just starting to snark. I was not engaged. I was super defensive, incredibly abrupt, and annoyed. And it was pretty apparent. And so after the call was over, I really I felt terrible. I felt worse after the call than I did when I was telling myself that I should be taking his calls and feeling guilty for not taking his calls. It was everything I was trying not to do: I wanted to preserve the relationship with him and that was part of the reason I was setting that boundary but when I let that people pleasing drive me to bulldoze my own boundary, I really set the relationship back. 

19:48

We know if you've been following along that anytime we use “should” to direct our actions. It just never yields the results that we want and that is instance forcing myself to do something that I didn't want to do. I was feeling frustrated, I was feeling rushed, I was acting from a negative feeling, I end up showing up in ways that I'm not proud of. And I didn't in that moment. When I realized that I was not really honoring my boundary, and I was letting people pleasing drive me to erode my own boundary, I started to change the way I was thinking about it. And I chose instead to believe that no one's going to fire me for being busy. And I can ask people to interact with me in a way that's most effective and efficient for me and that's okay. People might not like the approach, and people might get frustrated with it but I am committed to being available in a manner that allows me to show up at my best and I would rather have people frustrated with my communication approach, than frustrated with me for being a jerk, All of those thoughts kind of became my new mantra every time I started to feel uncomfortable with the boundary that I had set. I chose to believe that I never have to answer a call if I don't want to. It sounds really simplistic and we all know that logically, it's true, but it never feels that way, when we're practicing. I also decided to believe that I choose to act when I want to not because I believe that I have to last, I decided to tell myself that I can choose not to concede my schedule in my time to anyone other than myself.

21:40

So I recommitted to not taking his phone calls out of the blue and trying to kind of steer him to a more structured interaction, sending me his issues and questions over email or scheduling time to discuss. And so I also kind of anticipated that he might want more regular access to me than I was wanting to give sporadically. And so I started scheduling really brief check in meetings with him that would provide him an opportunity to kind of funnel whatever it was he was wanting to talk about, into a discrete time that I could anticipate and prepare for and structure my way around. 

After that project concluded, he gave such great reviews of my service. Never once did he say she's too busy, she never takes my phone calls. He was pleased with the service because when I did interact with him, I was present and I was there and I wasn't frustrated with him and I wasn't silently ranting at him for being the way that he was. Instead, our relationship, I was present and I was able to provide good support to him because I wasn't so busy being frustrated. He was happy with the service, not because I was at his beck and call but because I put in the work to show up as my best, despite my discomfort, and kind of the nagging worries that came with it. And having those kind of mantras to reframe it helped me to push through and push past my people pleasing and really stick to it. 

23:17

Because at the end of the day, it's not about pushing people away. It's about honoring yourself and your needs. It's about being committed enough to the relationship, to be honest in the moment. No, I don't want to talk right now. No, I don't have time for that. That honesty is so that you can show up as your best in the relationship. It's truly about being so committed to the relationship that you're willing to do something unpopular. In the end, it's ultimately about being willing to be your authentic self in all of your relationships and letting go of any notion of how you're supposed to act. 

I have found in that relationship with that client and my coaching clients have found in their own situations that when we show up authentically, we set boundary boundaries to protect our energy, our time, our space…when we do those things, our relationships actually flourish it might feel like we're pushing people away, but ultimately, we're allowing the relationship to deepen because we've given ourselves space to show up as our best. 

24:29

But here we go. The question that we all wonder about when we set boundaries, Are they going to fire us if we start setting boundaries, if we say no to work and stop taking phone calls, and responding to emails at all hours of the night? Fair question. 

Most of the attorneys that I work with do not believe that it's possible for them to create happiness within their current environment. They come to me unhappy and overworked. They believe that the only way things are going to get better is if the firm finally changes or partners just stop giving them too much work when they realize that they're overloaded. Or they just leave. Part of the work that I do with my coaching clients is helping them to start setting boundaries and flexing those no muscles. Saying no is always an option that's available to us to make more time for ourselves, to make more time for the things that actually matter to us so that we can find some space and some happiness and start getting more of what we want. 

We know logically, that if we want more time, more balance, more peace, boundaries are gonna be part of the deal. But we're really reluctant to flex those muscles, because we're so afraid of the consequences, which makes perfect sense, like that's that part of our brain that's trying to protect us. Saying, No, and putting up boundaries, it is a change from our past practices and because we're doing something unusual, our brain is going to have some struggles with it and it's going to tell you about all the reasons why we shouldn't do it. 

There is a difference between not knowing how to resolve a problem, and being afraid to implement the solutions that you know, exist. Let me say that again, there's a difference between not knowing how to resolve a problem, and being afraid to implement the solutions that you know. When my clients consider the possibility of not responding to an email at 8:30pm on a Wednesday night, it doesn't seem like it's a real option. And their brains tell them that those kinds of boundaries are going to get them fired, they're gonna get demoted, judged, and they're gonna get into all sorts of trouble.

Which is possibly true, right? I'm not gonna lie and say that everyone's gonna love it and there's no reason you know, for them to fire you. Absolutely, you could get fired for setting boundaries. You could piss off the wrong partners. But we set boundaries because we know what is good for us and that doesn't mean that the other person is going to like, and it doesn't mean that they have to like it, it doesn't mean that the firm has to accept it. But let's explore that. 

27:16

My clients that are learning to set boundaries and say no, continue to meet their hourly obligations, to the extent that those obligations are clear. They continue to do good work, and oftentimes even better work because they're not so overloaded. They continue to be a team player, and arguably an even better team player, because they only take on work for the team when they actually have capacity. And with these changes in their boundaries and their workload, their attitude changes, their energy changes dramatically as well. Is it really reasonable to believe that a firm is going to fire someone performing in this manner simply because they're not willing to be a doormat, on call 24/7? It's possible. But as you can kind of start to see, it doesn't mean that we're just going to stop working altogether. What it means is we preserve our ability to do better work to be a better teammate. 

Some firms might have a hard line on that, it's possible. But there's a lot of reasons in there why doing this might actually prevent us from getting fired. I have certainly met more than my fair share of attorneys who have gotten fired because they're not setting boundaries and they're people pleasing, and they're overloaded, and they're doing shoddy work and eventually, firms have enough of that too and fire people for those reasons. It's possible that even though the firm and the partners might not like this new approach and these boundaries that you're implementing, it's also possible that they will swallow that pill even if they don't like it, because they also like the other side of the coin. 

29:05

Furthermore, when we tell ourselves that setting these boundaries, pushing back and saying no, is going to cause us to get fired, I honestly don't believe that result differs a whole lot from the alternative. I work with attorneys every day, all day long. Attorneys who are burnt out and unhappy attorneys who have implemented the rage quit, and attorneys who are sort of tap dancing on the edge of it. What I submit is this, if we continue the path that we have historically been on where we ignore our boundaries and forget how to say no, the ultimate result is typically that we leave or we get fired. We leave burned out unhappy and disillusioned, believing that practicing law is just not right for us. Or we get fired because our work product suffers because our ability to be a good teammate suffers. That path may take several years to trek but ultimately, the lack of boundaries ends with a sad exit - voluntarily or involuntarily. 

30:13

In contrast, we can choose a path where we speak our truth. We're honest about our availability, we set clear boundaries, and we make time for what's really important to us. If that path were to result in being terminated, we also have to ask, is that so much worse than the alternative? How long do you think you could flex those no muscles, set boundaries, stand up for yourself and make more time for what's really important to you before the firm steps in and decides they no want no longer want to employ you? That even though you're billing enough, you're just frustrating everyone with these new fancy boundaries, and they've had enough. Would that takes six months, would it take a year? What would that time be like for you to have more time more balanced the ability to exercise, spend time with your family, instead of feeling constantly on edge and on call? And actually showing up and being present at work and doing good work because you have time to? 

Wouldn't that six months or one year of balance and peace serve you in a much better manner than those years of being burnt out and frustrated, and cruising towards a rage quit or waiting for the firm to fire you because your work product is suffering? 

31:30

The ending is the same, most certainly. But the person at the end of either of those journeys is absolutely not the same person. And the sacrifices each of them would make during those journeys could not be more different. The choice is always yours, what do you have to lose but what do you have to gain? We simply have to decide which path and struggle we are willing to accept and consciously recognize the choices that we make. So this brings me to a little more brutal honesty: some of us don't really want more balance and less chaos in our lives. 

And here's how you know, asking yourself, Am I willing to do the hard thing in furtherance of my larger goal? Or do I want to accept the struggles attendent to my current circumstances and lack of boundaries? In other words, Am I committed to setting boundaries, pissing people off, feeling uncomfortable, worrying about getting fired, in order to try and get more balance and happiness in my life? Or would I rather just deal with the pain of being overworked and not setting boundaries? Which one do I choose? 

Having the lives we want first requires us to see our role in having what we don't want and the choices that we made to create that life for ourselves to create that life of lacking balance. If we want more space, more balance and less chaos in our day-to-day lives, we have to decide to make it happen for ourselves. We have to commit to doing the hard things that come with it once we recognize that the choices we have been making are part of the problem. 

33:23

So I want to share with you a story about one of the goals that I've had, and how I have kind of come face to face with this realization that maybe I don't really want the goal that bad. 

I have always wanted to be a regular yoga yogi person, incredibly fit and very flexible, all of it. And it always seemed to really fit with kind of my vision of myself - I meditate every day I do some kind of yoga of stretching, I'm a Reiki Master, a meditation instructor and I just love all this stuff and yoga seemed like a really kind of natural fit. But the problem is, I don't really want to do it. Usually like at all! I will avoid it. I'll put it on my calendar, and I'll change my mind at the last minute. Sometimes I'll get really into hot yoga, and then I decided that I don't like it. 

Don't get me wrong. I love my daily yoga, light stretching and my daily meditations and sometimes I actually enjoy going to a yoga class and feel better once it's done. So what is the problem? And why do I not have that yoga body and that daily yoga practice that I really have been wanting for so long? I simply don't want to do it. I don't want to do the hard stuff that comes with it. I love the idea of having a daily intense yoga practice but put simply, I don't really want to do the work. I don't want to hold uncomfortable poses for a long period of time. I don't want to go to another type of fitness class every single day. I don't want to put my leg there or bend in that way like it's just something about it that I just don't want to do. I'm in love with the dream, but I'm not willing to act on it. Maybe someday that'll change but right now, I am really recognizing that this is something that I've wanted but I'm not willing to put in the hard work to do it. 

35:17

And that's it. There's nothing sexy here. There's nothing magical missing. I just am not committed to doing it. And I share this story because we all do this. We're all really good at identifying things that we want and things that we don't have, we've all got a laundry list of things that we want in our lives, but most of us really rarely chip away at those things. Because when it comes down to it, we don't want to do the hard work. Just like me in my daily yoga practice, I just don't want to do it, I'm not that committed to following through. Most of us, myself included, just want to wake up one day and realize that the accomplishment was simply waiting for us, waiting to be unearthed all of this time, that it was always there for the taking. All we had to do was get up and go to that first yoga class and like, suddenly, the heavens would rain down this yoga body on me and this desire to do the practice every day, you know, we just want it to be simple. 

It's no different than setting boundaries and wanting more balance and less chaos in your life. We want all of those things, but we want it to come easily. We don't really want to do all the work that necessarily precedes it. That is why we don't achieve our dreams and chip away at those laundry lists of goals. We just aren't being honest with ourselves about our willingness to commit and actually do it. 

So here's what I will offer to you…If you think you want to have better boundaries at work, or in your personal life, decide whether you really want it badly enough to go through all of the discomforts that will come with acting on it. If the answer is I don't really want to go through all of that, then let it go. Don't continue to long after it and lament your lacking or blame the job or the boss or the work on you not having it. Rather than committing to do the hard thing, so many of us just resign ourselves to being a victim to our circumstances, as if others were just blessed with the ability to do all these things that we just can't do. So we live our lives with this kind of laundry list of wants and wishes. And we tell ourselves if I only had more time or more money or innate ability, or if only I was stronger, you know, and so on and so forth. But the truth is, it's not our misfortune that we don't have these things, it's our unwillingness to do the damn thing. 

37:54

So if you want something to be different, but you aren't willing to change yourself to create it, what I offer to you is to simply own it. To tell yourself, I really want better boundaries in my life but I'm not willing to be uncomfortable to make it happen. I'm not willing to risk upsetting people, and then let that shit go! It honestly feels so much better than wishing and hoping that life will suddenly gift you with the balance that you want. And it certainly feels better than blaming everyone around you  - the job and the work for you not having it. If it's not something that you're willing to do the hard work for, let it go, let it go, honor that and move on with your life. That alone is freeing. And the choice is always yours. 

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That's all for this week, my friends. Please let me know if you're enjoying this content by leaving me a review or rating on your podcast listening platform, I would greatly appreciate it. Or send me an email if there are topics you want to hear on an upcoming episode, you can email me at autumn -AUTUMN at the uncomfortable dream.com. Next week, we dig in to overwhelm the primary sign that you need more boundaries and less people pleasing in your life. See you there and until then, thanks for listening and thanks for telling your friends. 

If you're listening to this and you feel like at times your life and your days are at the mercy of others and you don't have any control, I urge you to reach out and schedule a free consultation with me. Those sentiments are a clear sign that you are not setting healthy boundaries in your life. And how we do one thing is how we do all things. If you aren't setting clear boundaries at work, I can guarantee you aren't doing it in your personal life either. Meet with me and let's get a strategy in place to set and execute better boundaries, you owe it to your sanity to at least try. 

The first thing I do is all my clients that work with me and so really cast the dream, What is it that you want what's working, what's not working? From there, we can start planning and taking action to bring that dream closer and closer and we dive into that righteous discomfort. It's not easy but we plan and we strategize and we execute again and again and again until we get there. If that sounds like something that you need, check out the show notes for resources or to set up a free consultation with me and start taking that type of action that you need to create that life that you're truly wanting. 

If the information in this episode was helpful to you, be sure to check out the show notes to subscribe to our newsletter or sign up for that free coaching consult. The content that we discussed in this podcast is just the tip of the iceberg. We dig into so much more in coaching. If you're at all curious, be sure to reach out, check out those resources in the show notes and let me know if there's anything I can support you with you literally have nothing to lose.