Last year I made a promise to myself that I would not show up on social media unless I had something valuable to offer and was willing to give my time to responding and engaging with people about whatever it was I was sharing. (Those that witnessed my incredibly valuable utensil hack from last week on Instagram stories can attest to that. I jest).

Truthfully, I had begun to sense a real urgency cropping up within myself to always be present, to make sure I replied to everyone, to make sure my work, ideas or offers were visible and it was making me weary and resentful. There was an uneasy ‘hustle’ mentality creeping in and slowing contending for my peace.

There are plenty of business gurus out there that will give you information about how to build your audience, grow your business and be seen and heard. The information that is often lacking from these programmes, tips and hacks is how to do that and protect ourselves from burn out or blurry boundaries and it feels a bit irresponsible not to address it.

Boundaries are not sexy business talk. It is not the hot-topic-content that gets all the clicks and shares. Maybe that’s because all around us we are being sold quick fix solutions to what is actually really deep inner work. There is no cheat-sheet-freebie-offer for creating healthy boundaries, yet this is the foundation of a great, fulfilling, sustainable business and life.

When we are hopping around from thing to thing, saying yes to everyone, sharing all the details of our lives and being available for everyone, it is so easy to be distracted, drawn into things that don’t serve us and build a business or life on what we think we should be doing rather than what we know intuitively we really want to create and do.  

Since drawing that line for myself last year, I have noticed some significant changes: my follower count on Instagram is neither growing, nor is it important to me anymore. I am way less distracted by what other people are doing and way more sure of what I really want to say. I am attracting the kind of people to my work that I *really* love to work and collaborate with. I am much more at ease with the ebb and flow of my work. I am fixated on offering value and authenticity rather than what I think will get the most attention. And I know this is because I began to draw a line.

I know this isn’t something that just I struggle with (please know this is not something that is fixed for me; I need to check in with myself all of the time), because I work with women every day and I see and hear that this is common. Our boundaries are down the priority list and it shows in so many ways; in our mental health, in our bodies, in our relationships.

I want to offer three signs that might indicate your boundaries need to be updated to help you feel more at ease in your work and life; not to make you feel guilty or ashamed, but to offer you the opportunity to update these boundaries so that you can operate in a way that actually sustains the things that you really want to do in a way that feels true to you.

SIGN NUMBER 1: OVERSHARING

In this access-all-areas society, where we can glimpse into each others lives and peek behind the scenes at any given time, there is a real temptation to overshare.

What I mean by this is that sometimes our desire for connection can cause us to slip into sharing what is raw, rather than what is real. This culture of baring all because we know it will bring a reaction or a response is often rooted in a dependency of reaction and response from others. This is false intimacy, guised as vulnerability and confuses the importance of boundaries.

Sometimes, sharing what is raw can further compound what is going on for us; loneliness, jealousy, anger, resentment – and there’s never any certainty that we are going to get the response that we desire from what we share. Our rawness with people that don’t know us and the different nuances in our life can further our pain when their response (or lack of) doesn’t live up to our expectations.

Sharing what is real is different; it is sharing from a place of healing or a desire to connect because we know our own truth is likely to be helpful for others. We know we can share what is real when we have come to a place where other peoples responses to what we share aren’t critical to how we feel about it. We don’t owe anyone our vulnerability or an inside scoop. That is an honour that should be earned in relationships.

If we are oversharing or are revealing things about ourselves because of a dependency on praise or to rally the reactions of others, an update to boundaries might be needed.

SIGN NUMBER 2: ALWAYS BEING AVAILABLE

I don’t think there has ever been a point in history where humans have been more accessible to each other. At any given moment, there are no less than 10 ways that people can contact or invite interaction with us (comments, whatsapps, DM’s, email, phone, text, slack etc). Of course, this is an incredible gift! We can Facetime our friends in any country and we can attract and do business with people all over the world.

What is tricky about this is that our ability to be available is overwhelming us - quickly. If people are able to contact you any time of the day or night for your help, advice or service, they will. If we have not set clear parameters for when we are available and when we are not, we cannot expect other people to respect us. If we have not made it clear when we are off-duty or unavailable, this is not on other people to navigate, it’s on us. A sure sign of needing to update our boundaries is being overwhelmed with DM’s, facebook messages, emails, What’sApp groups and voicemails. Nobody can keep up with the speed of the communication train at this rate and it is burning us right out.

Being able to draw lines around when you will and will not be able to connect or engage is something only you can do and doing so is an invitation for respecting and preserving yourself and the attention you want to give to the most important things in your life.

SIGN NUMBER 3: SCARCITY + SAYING YES

I relate to this one really hard. I am a doer. I find it hard to not want to throw myself into all the things that look good, sound good and are shiny and new. I like people to like me and to be involved in #allthethings.  And I know I’m not the only one.

One of the things that has always been a big indicator to me that my boundaries have slipped into people pleasing is when I have said yes to doing something and then that thing comes around and everything within me wants to back out. And then I tell myself that I’m flaky for wanting to back out. Relate?

What’s behind this behaviour pattern is a sense of scarcity; both relational (if I don’t take them up on this, they may see me as cold/unlikeable) and maybe financial or positional scarcity (if I don’t say yes to this, I might miss out on the money, the exposure (!) or the opportunity may not come around again). Scarcity mentality is simply not trusting ourselves.

When we say yes to things that are outside of our lane, our own path and put other peoples’ requests of us ahead of the plans we have made for ourselves, we are saying that these things might be better than our own ideas and plans for ourselves. Saying yes when we mean no indicates that we don’t trust that what we really want to do is best.

We can break this pattern by cultivating more trust in our own ideas, our own plans; believing that they will hold up and bring us to the right things when the time is right.

If you are connecting with any of these signs, you are not defective - you are in good company! I’ve had dozens of conversations recently with brilliant women who know they need to update their boundaries for the sake of their sanity and you can too.