sister wasn’t being unreasonable. This incident helped her create a new boundary between work and her personal life.
What makes a boundary beautiful? When it empowers you and improves your quality of life. Whether a need for a boundary is emerging on its own or being triggered by an event with someone else, the six steps for creating beautiful boundaries are the same:
Get out of the passive/victim mentality
Let’s say you are finishing up the latest revisions on a major project. Your level of stress and frustration has skyrocketed because it has to be done by tomorrow morning and the constant stream of interruptions is making it impossible to get any work done. With personal plans for the evening, you don’t want to be working late. Since this type of scenario happens quite frequently, your frustration is even higher.
It’s very easy to say “my time is not my own,” or “there is no way I can control my workload.” This is a tempting thought pattern but one that needs to be broken if you are going to make changes. Who is in charge of your time and your life? You always have choices even if they are choices you are not willing to make. Shift your thinking from “I can’t believe this is happening to me” to “what can I change?” The possibilities will be more likely to emerge once you have let go of the victim mentality.
Diffuse the emotion
While anger, frustration, and hurt can be clues that lead you to establish your boundaries, you need to diffuse them so you can plan an effective boundary and implement it well. You have probably run into situations where others have let their emotions interfere with managing their boundaries. The classic example is a sales clerk who tells you with an attitude, “I can’t help you right now because I am off in five minutes.” It’s not the schedule we object to, but the way the sales clerk projected her emotion about her boundary. So before you define and implement your boundary, talk to someone about your feelings, role-play with a friend or partner, or write in a journal.
Follow the pain to the problem
Before you can define a boundary, you have to clearly understand the problem. In the case of the heavy workload that is bleeding into your personal time, you feel like you don’t have control over anything and it impacts your satisfaction with your work. This feeling of frustration and lack of control are the pain, and the pain means there is a problem. Writing down the problem is a great way to make sure you have clearly identified the true issue. Perhaps the real issue is how you schedule your day with meetings right up until the end of the day with no time for wrap up. So, one idea would be to try not to book any meetings after 4:00 p.m. unless they meet certain criteria.
Decide on a “trial boundary”
In the case of the frustrating workload, a trial boundary might be to stay late only one day a week. To do this, you will need to define the criteria that would cause you to stay late. Is it a certain project or assignment that is critical to your boss? You will need to strategize on how you will be selective and what will happen with the work you aren’t going to stay late to finish. Naturally, this takes some planning and may include your overall work priorities and responsibilities. You may have to negotiate with your boss or others but remember that the frustration that got you to this point isn’t healthy for your company either.
Create a boundary support system
Recruit a friend or coworker to be your sounding board and support system when you are implementing a new boundary. Just like new habits take time to develop, new boundaries will feel awkward at first. You may even feel guilty about implementing them, but remember that you are worth it. If it is a reasonable boundary and it is implemented well, it will be a win-win for you and your employer. In most cases, those around you will respect you more for having a boundary.
Implement the “trial boundary” and then evaluate it in 30 days
Successful implementation is the result of all the planning you have done in the previous steps. It also means that you inform others of your boundary with tact and diplomacy. Let’s say you work a compressed workweek and someone is trying to set up a meeting with you on your day off. Instead of saying angrily, “That is my day off!” You could say, “I’m not available that day, would the following day work?”
Once you have implemented the boundary, don’t consider the process complete. Jot notes in your calendar to indicate which days you stuck to the boundary and which days you didn’t. Reflect back on the times when you couldn’t stay with the boundary. Was the boundary too stringent or is there something you are doing to sabotage your success? Debriefing on your own, or better yet, with your boundary support system, will help you to correct any problems.
Although many of the examples given for boundaries were work related, these steps work just as well for other aspects of life. Boundaries are also very necessary in family life and volunteer roles.
Know How to Get Results
Remember that the beast feasts on your time and efforts. So the longer you take to do a task and the more exhausted you become, the more the beast wants to include you in its dining experience. Don’t buy into the belief that being frazzled is a status symbol!
Instead, you need to work quickly and efficiently. Do a good job and do it in a way that is enjoyable and satisfying to you. In some cases this may mean working very hard and giving considerable effort. That’s okay when you see the payoff. The payoff can be knowing that the work helps others, knowing that you have achieved a significant accomplishment, or knowing that it was important to your family or the organization. We’re not saying that all tasks must be self-serving — but you should be able to see and feel some benefit. Look for a win-win situation. Otherwise you just fed the beast for no reason.
You have now learned the seven keys for controlling the corporate beast. Use them to keep the insane, fast-paced world from taking over your priorities and your life. The next step on the journey to Comfortable Chaos is to learn about the third I, inter-related.
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