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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. And I'm excited to jump into this topic because I know it's something that so many of us struggle with and that is dealing with other people. It would just be so easy if we didn't have to deal with anyone else. And if everybody just did what we wanted them to do, it seems so reasonable, right? Like why can't they just do what I asked them? Why can't they know how to be a normal person? This comes up obviously with respect to everything from your boss and your coworkers to your mother and your children and your spouse and friends and everything in between. And so it's a really important topic. So let's dive in. Okay. Here's the thing, obviously like if you've been here for a while, you know that I typically work on your own thoughts, your own mindset, how you show up, the things you control, cuz that's all you control. And I always in- inevitably get questions on my free monthly coaching calls or in my group about well, am I just supposed to accept everyone's bad behavior and just manage my mind? What am I supposed to do when, you know, I've asked my husband to do this and he doesn't listen? What am I supposed to do when my boss keeps emailing me at eight o'clock at night? And no, you don't have to just accept bad behavior if you don't want to, you get to choose. But I want you to know what you're doing, what you control, what the outcomes are gonna be, what the consequences are, so you can make a more informed decision. Alright? So let's jump in. I want you to think about your interactions with people in two different ways. There are the want to’s, the wishlist, the things that I really wish other people would do, the requests that it would just be so perfect if they would listen to what I'm saying or if they just knew, even better, I don't even tell them most of the time. It's just in my head. And somehow I just think everyone should know what my needs and wants are. And if they knew it, it would be so fantastic. There's that list of things. And then there are boundaries. There are things where it's like okay, this is a line for me and I will not allow somebody to cross it. Now, as we'll talk about and what you'll see is when you can learn to manage your mind, most things are in the want to list. It doesn't really get to the point where I need to set up an actual boundary. It's just something that I really wish other people could do. And with that list of things, I'm gonna teach you how to manage your own mind around it. And then there are inevitably things where it's like no, I do want to set boundaries. I have certain standards that I will not allow people to cross. And that's totally fine too. And we need to know the difference because I think oftentimes people think they're setting boundaries or they want to set boundaries and they don't know how and it causes a whole mess. So I'm gonna break it down into do those two topics. Let's start with the wish list, the want to’s. I just wish, right. If everybody could just do this and I just wanna pause because isn't it funny that we know the best way to act for everybody in everything. Have you ever thought of that? And trust me, I am culprit number A in this, like I truly believe that I know the best way for every one of my friends to live. I know the speed at which everyone should drive. I know how fast it should take somebody to order their drink at a Starbucks. I know the right amount of religion that people should engage in and anything too much is crazy and anything less than that is also crazy for other reasons, right? It's like it's amazing that we have our own backgrounds, traumas, histories, beliefs, upbringings and we just assume that everybody else should view the world exactly as I view it. So I know how much my husband should text me if he actually loved me. I know how much my friends should invite me out. I know how much a boss should check in with their employees and how much responsibility to give and how to not become, I don't know, toxic or whatever. Like you it's so ludicrous when you think about it. And it requires a little bit of reckoning to realize maybe I don't know, right? Maybe what I think is the right thing to do somebody else does not think is the right thing. Does that make them wrong or is it just that we've had different experiences and we view this in a different way? And when you can start making that distinction, it becomes a lot easier to not take offense when someone doesn't do the thing that you want them to do. So when we start thinking like, you know, my friends should call me more often, they should listen to me for as long as I listen to them. My boyfriend should text me as much as I want. He should initiate all the dates. My kids should stop arguing so much. They should just be more grateful. My mom should stop asking me to come over for dinner so many times. It's annoying. My boss should stop sending me emails after five. My boss should be nice like talk to me in a nicer way, whatever. This becomes such a huge source of our own suffering because our thoughts about it, this should quote unquote like when you hear that word, should, it's gonna tip you off that you're creating some kind of rule for people. They should just do this. They shouldn't do that. And because we will never, ever, ever, listen to me, my friends, we will never control other people. No matter how many requests, pleads, you know, like whatever we do, they are gonna do it their own way. And if we stick to our guns about like it should be this way or that way, we create a lot of frustration for ourselves. We create a lot of angst and sadness and disappointment and all these other emotions because of the thoughts we have about how they're doing it and the meaning we attach to what they do. Right? So it's not just the thought, it's if my boyfriend initiated dates, then I could believe that he's invested in this relationship and that he loves me. Right. I could feel secure. If my kids stopped arguing so much, then I could believe that I'm a good mom and that I'm teaching them properly and I could feel proud. If my boss stopped sending me emails after 5:00 PM, then I could enjoy my evenings and not be so anxious. Do you see what we're doing here? The only reason we want someone to act a certain way is because if they do, then I get to think certain thoughts that will make me feel better. Ahhh, super tricky, right? You do what I want and then I get to believe whatever it is, the story that I wanna believe. What I wanna attach to the story is, you know, that my boyfriend is invested in this relationship, that I'm a good mom, that I don't need to respond to emails at night. Like that's what I wanna believe. And I can't believe that unless you do exactly what I need you to do but what if you could? What if you just got to think whatever you wanted as if there was no thought police and they don't have to act any differently. Like imagine how different your life could be if you didn't need anybody else to act in different ways for you to think, whatever it is you wanted to think, okay? How much easier would your relationships be if they got to be exactly the person they are, they got to act exactly as they want to act and you get to love them anyway. Like what if the people in your life were just there for you to love them and you didn't need them to do anything else? And then when I say this, I inevitably get like well, I don't wanna be delusional. And you know my answer to that if you've listened to this, I've done a podcast where I'm telling you to be delusional. But the thing is we're already being delusional all the time. You are walking around being delusional every single day I promise you. I want you to think about it like in the scenario when I just said like my boyfriend, you know, if he initiated dates, then I would think that he loves me. Think about how many times like we've walked around thinking of my spouse or my boyfriend or my girlfriend or whatever or my friends don't love me because X, Y, and they didn't do X, Y, and Z. And how wrong you've been. Right? Like maybe your spouse isn't a great communicator but that doesn't mean that he doesn't love you. And we like to think these things, right? Think about how many times like you you thought you were gonna get fired or your boss hates you and then you realize it was something completely different. Like we're already being delusional all the time. Think about how delusional it is to think the thought oh, my husband didn't take out the trash when I asked him so he must not respect me or my friends didn't text me today so they must not want me around. My mom keeps comparing me to my cousin so she must hate me. Right? Like we have these thoughts. We don't realize we do. Like we don't kind of equate it in that sentence but that's what we're equating in our head. Like if they do this act, if they act in this way, then it must mean the way I interpret it is just the gospel. It's just the truth. And I've said this before, like we have no problem being delusional as long as it's like these doomsday theories or negative thinking. You know, it's worth considering like what if you just got to choose the best thoughts you had about the people in your life until they proved you wrong. Right. And I know that this brings up a lot of fear in people in being blindsided and like you're trying to prepare yourself. And I want you to know that that besides a faulty thinking like there's no preparing for that stuff. Okay. I want you to think about what that means. What you're saying to yourself is I don't wanna feel positive emotions right now in the off chance that I might feel negative emotions in the future. Like if I find out that my boyfriend doesn't actually like me or wants to break up with me or my friends, whatever, and I'm gonna feel terrible when I have to go through that sadness or, you know, grief or rejection or whatever I have to feel. That's gonna feel so terrible in the future so I'm just gonna make myself feel terrible the whole time. I can't feel good now cuz then I'll get there and it'll feel really worse. And I just want you to know it's gonna feel bad when you get there. It's not as though if you like pre-party in your emotions, you make yourself feel terrible, when said boyfriend breaks up with you or when you have a falling out with your friends or when, whatever, you get fired, you're not gonna be like oh my God, I totally prepared for this. I feel totally fine. I've already used up all my emotion. No worries. Now I'm totally cool. No, you're gonna feel like crap. And it's part of that 50/50. So like what if you knew you could feel that like yeah, if something goes south, if I get evidence that like this isn't the relationship for me or my friends actually are crossing boundaries or whatnot. Okay, I will deal and process that emotion when I get there but I don't have to constantly try to brace myself for the worst-case scenario. I don't have to constantly think the worst things about the people in my lives. I don't have to protect myself quote unquote by always keeping myself in a heightened state of negative emotion and panic as like a a tactic to prepare. And so I just want you consider this for a second: what if people got to act the way they're going to act, right? Your boss got to talk the way he talks. Your mother gets to make the requests she wants to make. Your friends get to behave the way they want to behave. And you get to decide what you're gonna think and feel about it. You get to decide not to attach a story to it. You get to not make it mean that there's something wrong with you and that everybody hates you or whatever the stories are that we like to tell about ourselves. And then the next question I typically get is so I can't make requests of people in my life, I just have to like accept exactly what they're gonna do? And that's not what I'm saying at all. You absolutely can make requests. I just wouldn't hang my happiness on it whether or not they comply. So as an example, like if I ask my husband to take the trash out and he doesn't, I get to make that mean that he doesn't care about my needs or respect me or I can understand like oh, he likely thinks about taking out the trash in a different way than me. Maybe he forgot. Maybe it wasn't important to him. Maybe he got tied up in something else. A million different things. Right. And I can still choose to believe that he loves me. I can still ask him again without getting upset because my thought isn't ugh, what's wrong with you? How dare you. I already asked you to do this twice. Why don't you ever listen to me? Like the that's what's causing all of my negative emotion, not the fact that he didn't do this, how I'm thinking about it, what I'm making it mean. I'll give you another example with my children. I've done a lot of this work because I used to always have these, you know, should thoughts. They shouldn't be doing this. Like my daughter might throw a toy or something and I've told her numerous times not to do that. And I've tried to teach her and I've you go through it over and over again. And instantly when that happens, my thought is like oh, she shouldn't be doing this. I've already taught her. Right? Why can't she just learn this? She's getting she's old enough now to understand that we don't throw toys and I can get frustrated and I can lash out at her. I can overreact. I can shut down any conversation. I can try not to understand where she's coming from. I can do all of these things and perpetuate this cycle that I don't want to have or I can still keep making the request. And when she doesn't do it, instead of me thinking she shouldn't do that ,when I start thinking of course she should because that's what she's doing. She's a four-year-old and four-year-olds throw toys. And then I get to like decide how I want to act in that situation. Right. I don't make it mean that I'm a bad mom that she's throwing toys, that I didn't train her properly or whatever. I get to reframe it. Like my daughter should be throwing a toy because that's what she does. Okay. This is where I get to show up as a parent. What do I wanna do here?
Is there gonna be a consequence? Like is there a boundary that I have around this? Am I gonna sit and talk to her? What am I gonna do here? But when I've taken off the idea that she should somehow be different, it takes off so much of the pain for myself. When I stop making it mean something about me, when I stop hinging what I get to believe about myself based on how everybody else acts, then I don't have a desperate need to control them because like my ego and my self-esteem and my self-confidence isn't based on what everybody around me is doing. It's based on me, right? Byron Katie has a quote, she says when you argue with reality, you lose but only a hundred percent of the time. And I find that quote and like runs through my head a lot when I'm constantly thinking he shouldn't be doing this. He should have done that. She shouldn't be doing this. My boss shouldn't be doing this. Because every time I'm doing that, I'm arguing with reality because that's what they are doing. What I think they should and shouldn't do is irrelevant to what they are actually doing. So if I stop arguing with reality and I think like okay, this is what husband's doing. This is what boss is doing. This is what my mom is doing. How do I wanna think about it? Then I can reframe. Then I can figure out how I wanna show up in this situation. Then I can decide what I'm gonna make it mean and what I'm not going to instead of sitting in frustration because like he just shouldn't be this. Like I'm just gonna be that he's not a different way. And part of what I want you all to learn and this is the work that I do with my clients on a really deep level is like how do we start dropping the should for everyone? Even for ourselves. Trust me, if you have a lot of shoulds for other people, you have a laundry list more for yourself. I should be getting up earlier. I should work out three days a week. I should be eating cleaner. I should make it to work on time. I should get through my to-do list every single day. I should focus more. I should have more energy. I should be less stressed. I should be more present. I should be off my phone. Right? Like how many of those sound like the like soundtrack that we have in our brain every single day. And then we wonder why we're so exhausted at the end of the day. And even with ourselves, it's like can I start accepting? I should do anything that I'm not doing. And if I am doing something, maybe it's time for me to explore why am I doing it? Instead of constantly telling myself I shouldn't, maybe I should be doing it right. Maybe I should be distracted. Maybe I should take a nap. Maybe I should drop some balls. Maybe I should not clean the house. Why do I have all of these rules for myself that I'm constantly not living up to because those are not things I'm doing? At what point do I just accept the way that I am and the way my brain works and start thinking about how do I wanna think about this differently? How do I wanna set a different standard? I was actually on, we were just on a coaching call yesterday and we were talking about like the standards that we set for ourselves. And one of my clients said well like well, I don't know how to do that cause my identity is that I have to always be perfect. Like my best isn't good enough unless it's perfect. And I was like okay, how's that working out for you? Does that work? Of course not cuz it's impossible. You can't be perfect. None of us are. That's the beauty of life. And so either you get to keep failing at the standard that you're setting for yourself and everybody else or you get to start reevaluating that standard. Like is this serving me? Why do I have this standard? What am I trying to protect myself from? What do I think I will get to think and feel about myself or everybody else if this standard is met? That's what I'm after. I wanna meet the standard of perfection so I get to think that I'm a good employee, that I'm a good mother, son, father, wife, whatever the role is, whatever the identity is. I want these external check boxes so then oh, I get to believe I am good. I am hitting the mark. But the sad thing is that we have such impossible standards that we never hit that mark so we always feel terrible based off of a made up standard. It's time to change that standard. Right? And so how you do one thing is how you do everything and how you start treating other people in your life, how you start kind of dropping this agenda that you have for them, that they have to meet for you also helps you stop with yourself. When you stop needing other people to be perfect, you stop needing yourself to be perfect as well. When you give other people more grace and compassion, you give yourself more grace and compassion and you just feel better. It's like life can just become so much easier if we don't need everybody else, even ourselves, to live up to these impossible standards that we have for them or to jump through all these invisible hoops that they don't even know are there. Now, I do wanna make a difference between this and the next group of things and that's setting boundaries. So I am not saying, you get to make as many requests as you want of the people in your life. That is your absolute right and it's their right to decide whether they're gonna stick to it and do it or not. Right. And that's gonna determine the quality of your relationships. Now, there are absolutely things that you wanna set a boundary for. I just want us to be very clear on what we wanna set a boundary for. Right? I want us to be clear like where is that line for me? And before that line, what are the things that I just wanna drop? Like it's not actually a boundary, it's not something that I think is a make or break. I can manage my own mind around this person not doing that. And what are the things that's like no, that's a deal breaker for me? And so before we jump into boundaries, I want everyone to get clear on what a boundary is and what it isn't. Okay. So a boundary is a request that you make from someone else. It doesn't have to be explicit. You don't have to say it out loud. You can. It depends on the situation for certain behavior. And it's the consequences that will follow if they don't change that behavior. But it's always your actions. I want you to hear me on this. A boundary is not like people think they're setting a boundary when they say I want you to call me less let's say. Let's say you tell your mom I want you to call me less. I don't I can't talk on the phone that much. Right? You are not gonna change mom's behavior. Mom may still call you 10 times a day. Right? Typically, if we haven't set a boundary and now we are, people are not going to respect that boundary. We should not be surprised when that happens. I love that people are like I told them and they're still doing it. It's like yeah, of course they are cuz they don't want that boundary. They were used to not having that boundary. That's not the boundary. The boundary is for you always your own action. The boundary is if you do X, I will do Y. Okay. And it never has to come from anger. It shouldn't, it never should come from a lot of like very heated emotion. You should clean up your thoughts around it. But it should be like if you call me more than twice a day, I will not pick up. I will pick up only two calls a day let's say. That's gonna be her boundary. So mom can keep calling 10 times but I have already expressed it. She can get upset. We're gonna talk about that in a second. I will still only pick up the phone two two times. That's my boundary. That's what I've decided I can handle. That's what my mental health needs. That's the time I have it in my schedule. That's it. That's all she gets. Then we don't need mom to do anything differently. Mom can keep calling. She can keep leaving messages. Cause I always hear people say like well I told them and then I can't keep the boundary because they won't listen. And I'm like that's not a boundary. They don't have to listen. It never has to be contingent on anyone else's behavior. It's a directive to yourself about what you're going to do and not do. Okay. Now again, like I said when you realize that you can manage your mind around like your wishlist for people and still be happy, then there are very few things that you actually have to set boundaries for, right? Like you don't even really have to have that boundary with mom. You can just kind of decide I'm not gonna pick up because she can call me as much as she wants. That's totally fine. I don't need to have this conversation. I'll just pick up when I want to. And I'll still think I'm a good daughter and I'll manage my thoughts around it. And I won't get all upset when the phone rings 10 times, I'll just see the 10 missed calls and I can feel neutral about that. And I can pick up when I want and I don't have to have some set rule. That's totally fine too. But when we do decide like no, this is crossing kind of a line and I wanna set a boundary, then you have to make sure it is something you're going to follow through with every single time. So I want you to really hear me when I say boundaries are not a way to manipulate or control other people. It's not a threat to get other people to do what you want them to do. Okay. A lot of times this is how people use boundaries. I'm gonna give you an example. I want you to understand that a healthy boundary is something for you. It is not against anybody else. So what I mean by that is let's say I have a boundary that I don't want to be around somebody that smokes. I don't like the smell of smoke. I don't wanna get secondhand smoke. I have just decided that smoking is gonna be my line in the sand. Let's just say, okay. And let's say I have a friend who smokes. I don't set a boundary to try to manipulate that person to stop smoking. Okay. My boundary isn't like oh, well you better stop cause if you don't stop, I'm gonna leave. And I want them to feel panicked in some way or upset that I'm gonna leave and I'm using this as like a control mechanism to get them to do what I want. That's not how boundaries should work. That's not how any adult like a healthy relationship should work. You don't need to control other people. My boundary though can be that if you smoke, I'm gonna walk away. I'm gonna go somewhere else. I'm not angry about it. I don't need you to stop smoking. I'm not trying to change your behavior or your views in any way, I just get to decide that I don't want to be around smoke. Right? So it can feel like a very loving thing. Like I love you so much. I totally get that you wanna smoke, have fun, but I just don't wanna be around it. So I'm gonna go inside while you smoke and then when you're done, come inside and hang out or call me back out and I'll come back out or whatever the boundary would be. Okay. Now, the other person gets to react however they want. And one of the things you have to understand with boundaries is that you are not responsible for the emotions that other people experience. Okay? So somebody in that scenario might be like cool, I'll come in in a minute. I'm gonna finish smoking and I'll come in. And I think that's what most of us wish happens but that might not be the situation all the time. Right? You might have a friend that is like oh, stop being such a child. Smoking is not that big of a deal. It's not gonna get to you. Like you can stand far away from me. I don't wanna stand out here alone. I look stupid. Just stand here like be a good friend or whatever. You don't have to get upset about them being upset. You don't have to give in and let go of your boundary. You get to stand firm in what you want and you also get to let them have whatever human emotions they want to have. Nothing has gone wrong. Typically, when we start setting boundaries, people are going to get upset. People that benefitted from never having boundaries before with us often want that unfettered access. Right? If mom has gotten to call you 10 times a day and you pick up every time, she's gonna feel a little hurt that you're not picking up. That's okay. We can try and explain it,but it's also just okay that like mom's gonna have some sadness. That's alright. Mom's gonna be alright. She's an adult. She can have a human experience and move on. And this is where for my people-pleasers, it's the hardest, right? It's like we have tried our whole life to regulate everybody else's emotions and we have tried to make sure that nobody ever, God forbid, has a negative emotion which is impossible. And that's the why we fail at it. And so it can feel very uncomfortable to pick a boundary knowing that somebody else is gonna get upset. And that's the inner work that you have to do. Right? I think oftentimes when we go back to this wishlist, it's like I wish they would just act like this cuz then it would be so much easier, cuz then I wouldn't have to put a boundary up, cuz then I wouldn't have to get upset, cuz everything could just be great. But guess what? It's not gonna be like that. They're not gonna stop the behavior. So you get to decide either you b*tch and complain all the time and feel a lot of frustration and nothing changes or you manage your mind around it and you allow them to do whatever they're gonna do and you just deal with it or you put up a boundary and you allow them to have their negative emotions. Like those are your options. And unfortunately, for most of us, we camp out in option one. We just complain and talk bad about them and talk behind their back and tell everybody else and get frustrated and constantly go through the same cycle instead of deciding like what do I need? What do I control? What do I want in my life? And can I let other people just have the emotions they're gonna have? Since this is a podcast about work and career, let's talk about boundaries at work because I get a lot of people that tell me like oh I can never set boundaries at work. And I want you to know that's not true. First, you already set boundaries. Everyone does. We all have unspoken boundaries, right? For instance, most of us most likely hopefully hopefully would not tolerate physical or sexual assault at work. Right. Abuse. Meaning that if your boss slapped you or made, you know, a sexual advance let's say, you would quit. You would leave. You would go to HR. You would do something. There would be a line that would be crossed. And most of us would be like this is not what I'm gonna put up with. That is a boundary, right? Like it doesn't have to be explicit. You don't have to tell your boss like by the way, if you slap me, I'm gonna quit. Known, right? That's a very extreme example but it's just important to see when people tell me like I can't set boundaries. It's like of course you can, you already do. And the problem has happened is that like there are certain boundaries that we just allow to be trampled on or kind of go into the gray area and this is where we run into problems. Like for a lot of us, our job may be a nine to five but meaning that really what is given is that we get to leave at five and then slowly that time becomes 5:30 and it becomes 6 and it becomes 6:30, you know? And on and on because people start seeing that like oh, I'll work a little bit later. Oh, I can rely on this person. If I give them some more work, they're just gonna stay and do it. And for most of us who are people-pleasers, we do that because we want to be a team player. We have all of these notions about what we're supposed to do at work. And all that really is is like we start allowing our boundaries to become flexible, to be walked on. They're not actual set boundaries. They sort of become like suggestions. And you have to understand where that is. Like where is it that I'm what I'm actually being paid for? Like I have clear roles and responsibilities. Obviously, they're paying me a salary. I need to do certain tasks but absolutely there are boundaries around what I am required to do and what I am not and the question becomes like what am I gonna enforce? What actions am I gonna take if boundaries are crossed? And what consequences am I willing to accept? Now, this is a really important part cause I think a lot of times we catastrophize what's gonna happen. So it's like if I ever say no, I'm gonna get fired. And I just want you to get really honest about what is actually gonna happen. I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, that you get fired for certain things. It very well could. And that might just be a sign that you're not working in the right place. Maybe you wanna be somewhere that respects the boundaries that you're properly allowed to have or it might just mean that like we love to go to this worst case scenario that I'm gonna get fired. And really the only boundary or consequence to that boundary is that maybe you won't be teachers pet like maybe your boss won't love you as much as you want him to or maybe you're not gonna be seen as a team player or somebody's gonna have a negative emotion and be upset that you can't stay late. But if your boundary becomes like you only pay me to work until five o'clock so at five o'clock I am leaving and you can feel whatever you want about that and we can talk about it. If you wanna pay me more, then I'll stay. But that's the only way, right? We start creating like these are my boundaries with work and maybe it's just a mental boundary. Maybe it's just I won't answer emails after six. My boss can email as much as he wants. Maybe that's the only time he gets on email, maybe he has no intention for me to respond. And I used to just be a people-pleaser and so I would jump at the opportunity and I'm no longer doing that. So my boundary is if you send an email after six, I will not respond to it until the next day. I don't have to explicitly say it. I mean, I could. I don't have to tell anybody but this is what I'm gonna train people to understand about me is this is when I respond. What I want you all to start thinking about when you are thinking about how you wanna show up at work, right? What are certain things, and, you know, not just at work, I think that in any part of your life, what are things on my wish list that I can let go, right? Maybe I'm not gonna get my boss to be the chipper, positive human being that I wish he was. This is the way he's gonna be. Can I learn to manage my mind around that? And then what are things that I'm gonna actually set boundaries on? I'm gonna decide like if I'm given more tasks then I can finish in my 40-hour work week, which is what I'm paid to do, what's my boundary? I will then speak up to my supervisor and then his supervisor. If I am emailed after six, I won't respond. If uh I'm asked to take on another project in my free time like to volunteer something, I will decline. Those are my boundaries at work. Can I manage my own mind when other people get upset about that? Can I manage my mind around being a people-pleaser? Can I manage my mind around the consequences? Even if there are consequences, that's okay. I would rather figure out and navigate those. Then give up all of my nights and weekends to make sure that people love me at this place. I mean, those are the decisions you're gonna have to make. Maybe that's not a decision you're willing to make. That's fine. Just know that you're choosing that. Like if I'm making the decision that I wanna go above and beyond because I wanna climb this corporate ladder, okay, then I can manage my mind around that. Then I don't wanna sit in resentment and frustration for the rest of my life cuz this is what I'm choosing. Maybe I do this for the short term so that I can make it to a position in this field. Okay, like that's my decision and that's my short-term goal. Right? And then what are the things that are mental boundaries which is typically what most of us need to work on which is the most consuming. It's all the worry and the stress and the fear and all the overthinking, all the guilt, everything that you're dealing with when you come home and you're not actually even working. This is why so many of us are not only exhausted but we're not present in our lives like we come home and we just numb out or we're on our phone or we're doing all these other things instead of actually enjoying our free time. So part of that is that like you create, again, task boundaries and you create boundaries around your own thought work. Like if I hear my inner critic getting loud, I will sit for 10 minutes and journal and work on the thoughts that I wanna practice. Or if I start worrying about my tasks for tomorrow for more than 30 minutes, I will take a break and write all of my unintentional thoughts or whatever. I will learn, look, if you know how to do thought work, you could do some thought work. You could do meditation. You could go for a walk. We have to start creating these things so we change the neural pathways that we have. We have allowed our brain to kind of run wild and we don't put kind of these checks and balances so then we just spend our whole night ruminating instead of catching ourselves and being like oh, I'm doing this again. What was the boundary I had with myself? What is the consequence that happens when I do this so that I can stop this habit so I can create other habits, right? Boundaries aren't just for other people, they're with ourselves. Then when we start realizing that we're not living the way that we want, we don't live in alignment with our own ideals. When we're living out of habits that are no longer serving us, when we don't wanna people-please like we start figuring out when I engage in that activity, I'm not gonna beat myself up and I'm not gonna think that I'm all of a sudden gonna change. I start like implementing, okay, what's gonna be the boundary that I set up? What's gonna be the thing that I do to try to get out of this? And so I want you to spend some time thinking about what are things that are just wishlist things that I can start changing my own thoughts around and what are things that I really do wanna set up a boundary around? What's one small boundary I can set up this week at work or at home that's gonna help me gain some control over what I am and am not willing to accept anymore in my life? This is the work that we do in Pave Your Path together for six months. If you want help figuring out how to set boundaries, if you want help with the type of boundaries you wanna set up at your work or with yourself, if you want the support to figure out how to manage your mind because listen, when you first set up a boundary, your mind is gonna lose it because it's not used to it. It's not used to other people being upset. It's not used to the quote unquote consequences or ramifications it thinks it's gonna come. And so part of this is yes, you have to set the boundary but you also have to be able to kind of calm yourself down from the disaster that your brain thinks is is gonna happen if you start saying no to people. So if you want help with this stuff, if you wanna start taking more control of your life and actually setting boundaries so you have time to do other things so you have time at night to work on that dream career or a side hustle or whatever it is you wanna do so that you can start showing up at work in a place that kind of takes back your authority and allows you to become in control of what you will and will not do and how you will advocate for yourself, then I encourage you to join next class. Stop putting this stuff off. Like this is the work that you need to do to be able to like where you're at right now and to be able to know anywhere else I go, any other job I take, I know I can manage my relationship with other people. I know that the way to have the best experience is not me always saying yes all the time and bending over backwards for everybody. I know how to take care of myself. And that level of confidence and empowerment is what allows us to go after bigger opportunities, bigger dreams, more powerful positions because we don't have to be afraid that we're gonna get walked all over. It's one of the most crucial skills you can learn. It changes every relationship you have. Like when I tell people that the power of thought work has been amazing for my business and my career but the the power of thought work has been amazing for my career and business but the most amazing part of all of it is the way that it has changed how I show up as a mother, how I show up as a wife, as I how I show up as a friend, how I show up as a daughter, how I show up as a coach. All of those things, all of the relationships I have with other people have been transformed because I don't now need everybody else to act a certain way for me to feel better. I know how to take care of myself. I know when I wanna set a boundary and when I wanna just manage my mind. I can let people be exactly who they're going to be and I can feel and think what I want to feel and think. And it's the most powerful gift that I've ever been given. And I would love to help you learn how to implement that so that we don't always feel so out of control with everyone around us. So if you're interested in doing this work deeper, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath and join me in June. And if not, then go out and practice letting people be whoever they're gonna be and managing your own mind and deciding when and where you will set boundaries. Alright, my friends, I hope this was helpful and I will see you next week for another episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with someone else. I promise you know somebody who also hates their job and wants to quit, so why not share the love? And if you want to come follow along for more, come join me on Instagram at LessonsFromAQuitter and make sure you say hi. I'll see you next week for another episode.