Setting boundaries: Get control of your life for work-life balance
People pleasing while working from home? Reject the demands of others and just do you
Text: Leila Louise Fitton
Setting boundaries is proving a difficult in this age of working from home. While driving one day, the radio announcer advised us to physically set up a workstation at home by putting a tape around a specific area. Like, that’s going to happen. But in lieu of getting the dispenser out, what else can you do to create boundaries and take control of your life?
We used to work from nine to five, had a lunch break, had a life once it's home time. We didn't have emails to respond to after hours, or texts, or phone calls. Well, not in this decade. Unfortunately, living with a distinct lack of boundaries and having work-life blending was our norm even before the debacle brought by the pandemic. And the result is burn out.
No matter if its work-life balance, boundaries when working from home, healthy limitations with social media, or in relationships; setting boundaries is crucial for overall health and happiness. We have limited time and energy for ourselves to start with, so it’s difficult sharing what little we have on the constant demands of others. Life Coach Katarina Stoltz says, "What I discovered as the biggest challenge is to express my boundaries to people who I already know. The people who are triggered by you setting boundaries are the people who in the past benefited from your having none."
Without any boundaries in place, it can lead to feelings of overwhelm, imbalance, dissatisfaction, guilt, and sometimes even shame. These negative emotions bring about a whole extra set of health issues such as stress, anxiety, depression and high blood pressure (that’s just for starters).
Boundaries determine who may touch us
Working in the creative industry, bespoke tailor and fashion designer Joshua Fitton says; "Inspiration comes at the most random times and sometimes out of nowhere. As a creative, the work-life boundary is always a blur." Now it's November and KL Fashion Week is approaching, he says, "Having time to switch off is important. It is impossible to please everybody and there is a limit to what we can do in a day. Breaking tasks down into manageable chunks definitely help in taking control and planning. Managing client appointments and when to have them has been important too, and to make sure that there is a clear boundary there."
Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis, writes: "Two of the biggest sources of anxiety today are social media and the inhuman pace of the modern workplace." She states that without setting an emotional boundary on our intake of social media, "We're not only empathising with (the domestic) stresses of a parent's job loss or a child's rough school year, but also with distant experiences of mass shootings, natural disasters, and fires". In short, we’re taking the entire world’s problems on our shoulders too.
"Don't you just envy those who are irresponsible but happy, whilst you are responsible and miserable?" Henry Cloud and John Townsend address this question in Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How To Say No. Their book describes the boundaries we face daily. "Physical boundaries help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances. Mental boundaries give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions. Emotional boundaries help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others.”
Time to take control
"Being self-aware of our state is important so that we can make 'tweaks' rather than delay until the need for an 'overhaul'," says PetaDiri career and leadership coach, Wendy Wong. “Our time and energy is limited, so it's important to choose how we use it. We have to be aware of what we need and what we want in our lives. Once we know that, we can establish priorities and set boundaries.”
With that in mind, Katarina advises on the way we may set healthy boundaries. Don’t apologise or give long explanations, use a calm tone of voice, be straight forward in letting the person know the boundary you are creating and the reasons, don’t make it personal so the person will not feel 'attacked', make sure you have support from others who understand and respect your decision in case of manipulation, and start with tighter boundaries, and then loosen up if you need to.
If this still sounds tricky, it helps to remember the reason why you are setting boundaries in the first place.“Often, our appetite for what we want to achieve at work and with life beyond is bigger than the time and energy available,” Katarina continues. “Understanding what the reasons are to why it’s difficult for us to set boundaries, is an important milestone."
Setting boundaries means you have made a huge step into taking control of your life. Life coaches are available for sessions online, ready to guide you through your individual obstacles. Perhaps the next step is learning to say "No", so you can make time for what you want to say "Yes" to.
