010: How To Set Boundaries To Ensure You Achieve Your Goals

In this episode, you'll want a copy of your Best Life Master Plan and a way to take notes because we're going through some exercises to help you write out all the boundaries you need to live your best life!

We're going to cover boundaries with yourself, with family & friends, and boundaries at work.

By the end of this episode, you'll be ready to fill in the boundaries page of your Best Life Master Plan, which is perfect because the first step in the next module is to start your morning routine where you'll read these boundaries to have them fresh on your mind as you start the day.

You can request your free Best Life Master Plan template by providing your email address on my website here:

Follow Katy on Instagram!

Learn more about The Working Mom Happiness Method course here!

To join The Working Mom Happiness Method Facebook group click here.

• Access the episode transcript here

  Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

  Hi, and welcome to episode 10 of the working mom happiness method. This is where we're gonna get really tactical about some exercises to help you create your boundaries. So before we dive in, I want to just preface this with that, you're going to want to have your best life master plan document handy because you're going to use it in this episode. So this is going to be one of those episodes where you're going to want to be in a scenario where you can write some things down and look at that best life master plan document. Now, if you're new, and you're just joining us here, and this is the first time listening, you don't know what a best life master plan document is. So welcome. I'm glad you're here. We're doing the working mom happiness method, which is my signature program. And we started it back in episode one. And as part of the program we're going through it has four modules. We're currently in module three, you create a document that's called your best life master plan document and you can download that for free on my website, go to women's best life university.com, find the podcast tab and then go to episode three, you can pop your email in there, and I will send you the free template for you to create your own best life master plan. But if you go back and listen to the episodes before this, it'll explain how to fill that in. And then when we start in module four, we're going to create a morning routine where you're reading every morning, your document, it takes about 10 minutes, so don't get scared, don't get too nervous, but it will change your life. And I don't I'm not going to get into the details of that right now because I've covered it in those previous episodes. But go ahead and go back to Episode One and listen through in order to go get your document and create it. So the outcome of this episode so after this episode, your assignment is going to go to is going to be to go to your best life master plan document and fill in that next page, which is your boundaries. Okay, so what you're going to work through here and think through here and take notes on is going to prepare you to be able to to write down those boundaries and fill in that page. And as always, you can use mine I when I send you the template, I have my boundaries in there for a guide. If they resonate with you please use them because a lot of us as busy women have similar boundary needs. But obviously if they don't delete them out and write your own, we're going to set you up for success right now in this episode. Okay, so in this episode, we're going to cover boundaries for yourself. So boundaries that you want to that are basically a gift to you non negotiable items that will help you boundaries with yourself, Where are you going to get in your own way of achieving your goals, boundaries with family and friends and boundaries at work. So there are three types of critical boundaries, boundaries with yourself with your family and friends and boundaries at work. And there are probably other, you know, things that maybe don't fit in exactly those categories, but that should cover the majority of them. Okay, so let's just go ahead and dive right in. So the first boundary area we're going to cover is boundaries for yourself, meaning non negotiables I want you to be setting up for yourself that will lead you toward living your best and happiest and healthiest life. And we have talked about these, some of them are probably I hope, I hope they are already on your best life master plan document under your values and goals. But I want to cover them again. They're the non negotiables that we covered. I covered right from episode one because I didn't want to, you know make you wait weeks to hear the most important things for healthy happy best life. And so I want everybody to include five main non negotiables and those are sleep Drinking enough water, body movement, eating nutritious foods that make you feel good. And stress management now all these things, all those four things I just listed, they count as stress management. And actually, I'm going to start again, because I wasn't looking at the camera. Sorry, Eric.

  Okay, so let me just let me just get get together. Okay, so 349 is when I stopped, I'm going to start again at about 520 ish, starting again in 54321, drinking enough water, getting in some body movement, eating nutritious foods that make you feel good, and stress management. Now those first four things all are amazing for stress management, but I always recommend we do something in addition to those for stress management, like meditation is fabulous meditation or yoga or something like that. So So those are the five non negotiables, for feeling your best and living your best life. So I would hope that you would have those worked into your goals into your values. But in the first exercise, what I want you to do, and in a minute, I'm going to have you pause, the podcast or if you're watching this on YouTube, the video, I'm going to have you pause. And I'm going to have you write down what else what else is critical for you to be happy in your life? What are the most important things for you, in addition to those five non negotiable items? Is it quality time with your spouse? Is it quality time with your kids? Is it getting a massage once a week that by the way, that's a great stress management tool as well. And, you know, there are lots of different things. It could be, of course, but I want you to really sit down and think that in order to live my best life and feel my best and take care of myself, What things do I need to go back in and make sure are in that best life master plan, and it whether it's in goals, or values, put in goals for the next quarter, because remember, you're gonna eventually start reading this every morning and seeing those things every morning, which will make you more likely to do them, okay, and to stick to them consistently. So I want you to just think through what are the other non negotiables in my life that I absolutely need to be happy. And just take a few minutes and think through them and write them down. And then you're, eventually what you're gonna do is go back and make sure you include them in that best life master plan. So they don't necessarily need to be on specifically your boundaries page. Because these are things we just want to add and make sure we're doing. Okay, so one, add them back in. Alright, so go ahead and pause it now and take a couple minutes to write down what are your non negotiables for living your best life. Go ahead and pause now. Okay, you're back, hopefully you pause and had a really good thoughtful list of items that you need in your life to be at your best, essentially. Okay, and hopefully went back and check to make sure that you had the sleep water body movement, eating the foods that make you feel good, and stress management already worked in somewhere to your best life master plan. Alright, let's move on to exercise two, this is boundaries with yourself. So what I want you to do is I want you to start by taking out that best life master plan and rereading your values and your goals for the next quarter. Okay, so I want to get really tactical here on boundaries for the goals that you have coming up the soonest in your life. Okay, so skip over the goals for the next quarter. And I want you to read through them. And as you go through your goals, I want you to think about for each of your goals, just kind of read through them and think, how am I going to get in my own way? Okay, what boundaries do I need to set with myself to ensure that I can meet these goals. So let's talk about a couple of examples to get the juices flowing before you go into the exercise. So if your goal is to wake up earlier, so you can get in some body movement before you start your day, and before you start dealing with work and kids and you know, whatever obligations that you have come up.

  One of the ways that you might get in your own way is staying up too late. Right not going to bed on time. So that's a perfect thing to write down. So if you have morning workout as one of your goals, and you may not that's fine, I'm just making this up. If you have a morning workout is one of your goals, then a boundary you need to set for yourself is that you go to bed on time, okay? Or maybe a boundary you need to set for yourself is you set your alarm across the room so you have to stand up and get out of bed and walk over to shut it off because that'll make you more likely to get out of your bed and do your morning routine and get that body movement in Okay, so So I want you to think about that. Put that lens on every single goal that you have. So this is going to take a few minutes right I want you to be really thoughtful about it. Because creating good boundaries is a game changer. It's going to change your life. And it's going to be what finally leads you to achieving these goals. It's going to be what takes us away from those, that new year's resolution mindset where we just sort of, say our goal, and then we maybe do it for a couple of weeks, because we're excited about it. And then it just fizzles out, you know, time and time again, Year and Year. Again, being this deliberate and writing down these boundaries and reading them every day is what is going to change your life. And I promise you achieving goals, whether they're small or large, is life changing. It's so invigorating, it gives us purpose in life. And it ensures we live our life, we are living our life in ways that are aligned with our values. And that is, as we talked about, in episode one, one of the major keys to happiness and feeling good and living our best life. So I want you to really take the time and go through each one of those goals and say, How am I going to get in my own way? How am I going to get in my way, and jot down some ideas for some boundaries that will not let you get in your own way? What do you need to write down so you don't get in your own way? Okay. Perfect. So go ahead. And we're going to pause and then obviously, come back when you're done. But be very thoughtful about this. Okay, so go ahead and pause now. Okay, great. Welcome back, hopefully, you've got a great list of boundaries with yourself. Now we're going to go into the next section, which is boundaries with family and friends. Okay. And we're going to do two different exercises here. So for the first one, I want you to do exactly what you just did regarding boundaries with yourself, I want you to go through your goals, goals for the next quarter, in your best life masterplan document, and I want you to think about which family and friends or what types of family and friends, items, events, activities, and which people could get in the way of these goals. Okay, and how might they get in the way of those goals? So who, who, who and want who's going to get in the way in your goals, or what types of activities are gonna get away in a way of your goals? And then how might they get in the way of your goals, okay? And I want you to just think through each goal, and then think about, you can jot down some ideas for boundaries, this doesn't have to be, you don't have to be formally filling out your boundaries page yet, you can if you want. But these are kind of notes and ideas to get you thinking and get you ready to fill out that actual boundaries page in the best life master plan. So just go through and look at each of those goals and say how my friends and family get in the way and start thinking about ideas for boundaries you can put in place for yourself, so that won't happen. So you can make sure to achieve those goals. Okay. So go ahead and pause the video now and come back when you're done. Okay, great. And I realized I said, pause the video, you could be watching video or podcast both ways. So I think you knew what I meant. Okay, good. So hopefully you have a list. And that gave you some good ideas and got the juices flowing for really important and critical boundaries for you. All right. Now, the next activity we're going to do is also related to boundaries with family and friends. And this is going to help you to set boundaries, but it's also going to help you when we get into module four, we're going to cover how to protect your energy. Also life changing learning, this concept of just tracking and protecting your energy is amazing. And so I want you to keep these notes that you're about to do in this exercise for when we get to Module Four as well, because you're going to refer back to these but it's also going to help you with boundaries, because what we're going to be looking at, in this exercise is what people in your life and what activities in your life, drain your energy. Okay, so who drains your energy, who of your family and friends are the people in your life drains your energy, who is a hard person for you to be around, you don't feel good, when you're around them, you're stressed out, get anxiety about it, it drains your energy come away, feeling tired, less tired than when you start are more tired than when you went in, right? And what types of activities now?

  This can be so tricky, right? Because it's possible to really really love someone and love having them in your life and they drain your energy that's possible because our kids, right that absolutely happens with our kids we love and we want and you know we want in our lives, but a lot of times they can drain our energy. So I don't want you to have any guilt or judgment here. It doesn't mean you have to cut these people out of your life. Some of them you might need to. And I've had a lot of ladies as they take this program realize they need to create some distance and detach from some of the relationships in their lives. But it really just means you're going to be more deliberate about how you spend your time with whoever you write down. So if that includes your kids or your spouse, there's nothing wrong with you. That's really normal. So please write that down and no judgment. Don't judge yourself. Don't feel guilty. Just be really honest with who drains your energy. And then what types of activities drain your energy. So let's give an exam sample there. So maybe you have a friend who you really love and they don't drain your energy, you love spending time with them, but they're throwing a big party that they've invited you to. And maybe you're more introverted, and a party just sounds life sucking. Okay? And so that's a great thing to know about yourself. And to say no to, you should say, No, you should say no to the party of the friend you love if the party is going to drain your energy, especially if you have a busy week or a lot going on, you should definitely say no. And we talked in the last episode about all the strategies and why it's important to do that, right. So you can go back and listen, if you haven't heard that. But for all the reasons we talked about in the last episode about boundaries, you should say no to that party. And that's a hard thing, because you really love that friend, and you really like spending time with them. But let's be honest, they're throwing a big party, it's not going to be one on one time with that friend, it's going to be the small talk, that is exhausting that you can't stand, okay. Plus, if you're me, you're going to stay up past your bedtime. And I also can't stand that. So we've got to learn how to figure these things out and protect ourselves and protect our energy in these scenarios. And this is a great example. Okay, so really get deep here on who drains your energy and what types of activities in your life drain your energy. And again, it doesn't mean you have to stop doing these activities. So for example, it could be like, you have to give a big presentation at work, and that sucks the life out of you. You probably can't say no to the presentation, maybe you can, I would love you to explore that idea. Maybe you can but but a lot of times we can't. So then how do you plan your week accordingly? How do you plan a rest that evening? Right? How do you get help that evening. So you can just come home and chill. And you don't have to do things when you're exhausted after that presentation, we're going to get way more into those strategies in the protecting your energy section of module four. So that's, that's really, really great. But this is going to help you as you write down these ideas, okay. And also, you can start by putting boundaries around these types of things in for this assignment on boundaries when you fill out that boundary space on your page in your best life master plan. Because if you write down that party's drain you you can write a boundary for yourself right now in that best life master plan that says, I say no to parties that will drain me, right. And reading that every morning makes you so much more likely to actually notice when they when you get invited and say no, it's amazing. When you put it in your mind every morning, how much easier it is to catch these things and say no, when they start to come up in your life. Okay. All right. So let's go ahead and get ready to pause. Just a quick reminder because I talked a lot you in, in this exercise, you're writing down people who drain you and activities who drain you. Okay, so go ahead and pause and do that now.

  Okay, welcome back. Hopefully, that gave you a great list and some great ideas to get some boundaries written. Okay, now let's go into boundaries at work. All right. So you're going to go ahead and do the same thing, you're going to go back and look at your best life master plan and look at your goals for the next quarter. And you might be thinking, Okay, well, I'm just going to look at my goals for for career, my career goals. But no, I want you to look at all your goals, because work can get in the way of our health goals. That's a perfect example, right? For working around the clock, it's really hard to find time to do our healthy habits. And the reality is we have to create time, there's no such thing as finding time. Time is finite 24 hours in a day for everyone, right? We talked about this in the last episode 24 hours for everyone, it is up to you to create the time and to be brave and to value yourself enough to put yourself in your health first, you and your health are more important than anything else in your life. Say that, again, you and your health are more important than anything else in your life. Those are the most important things. And so it's up to you to create the time to spend on yourself and take care of yourself and avoid burnout and be the best person you can be and be the healthiest person you can be. So you can live your happiest life. It's up to you not easy, it's not easy. It's not easy. That's what the whole programs for is to help us figure out how to do this because it's hard because of how society has raised us right. So when we think about boundaries at work, it becomes really, really important because if you are too scared to set boundaries at work, work is going to be encroaching on all of these other goals you've set in all aspects of your life. So you have your values. So you want to go back and look where does my career fall in my values right now and remember, it's okay to put your career higher than your family and priority at some times in your life. Sometimes it'll be higher sometimes it'll be lower. That's okay. We talked about that back in the values module. So I want you to take a look at that so you understand where your priorities are and you're gonna go through all your goals and you're going to say where is work and and get in the way, and you're going to start to brainstorm on some ideas. I set have been on quite a journey personally with boundaries at work. As I've mentioned before in the podcast, I left my corporate job in Early 2020, you know, crazily could the timing was just crazy right before the pandemic right before we knew that I knew the world was going to shut down because of full on burnout. And I had been on this journey learning about boundaries before that, actually a couple years leading up to that. And it took me a while to get good at boundaries and have confidence in myself to be brave enough to leave the job, I had tried to set boundaries in the role, but the role was just one of which I really just felt like the way that it was structured, I wasn't able to do it and stick to my boundaries. So I actually had to walk away, like talk about making a hardcore boundaries choice to protect myself and take care of my health, and live my values, I had to walk away. And that was terrifying, the most terrifying decision of my life, hands down, it was the most terrifying thing I've ever done. But it was so rooted in self care and taking care of me that the confidence boost I got four it was from from it was incredible. And so and I've now gone back, I've now gone back to American Express, which, by the way, is a fabulous company, I went from complete burnout into now this new situation that I absolutely love, and it meets all my needs. And it's not a burnout situation. And the only thing that changed was my mindset. The only thing nothing in the company really changed. It was me and my mindset. So I could have done this without leaving, right. But I just I had to step away, I just I couldn't get there without stepping away. And that that is one of the sort of cures for burnout, right is taking a break and stepping away. Because we say yes to so many things. We don't have that creative space that I talked about in the last episode, to really even understand what's going on or what we need to do about it. Okay, and I know I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but it's so related to boundaries, that it actually is not a tangent. And so I came back with hard core boundaries that work scary boundaries at work. For example, one of the boundaries I created at work in order to protect my non negotiable healthy routine items. And the time I want with my family is I don't take meetings before 10am. And in the job I have as a vice president in a large corporation, that's crazy. I mean, it literally is crazy. Now I do have occasional, I have exceptions in my boundary, because I work with people all over the world. And I don't expect someone else to sacrifice their own personal boundaries because of mine when they're on a different time zone. So I do make some exceptions for people in different time zones. But that's pretty rare that that happens. So the majority of the days, I'm not starting meetings until 10am. And that allows me to wake up and do my morning routine and spend the morning with my kids and make their lunches and talk to them and get them off to school and get some body movement in before I even go in and start my workday. And then once I start my workday, I have a period of time now where I can plan my day. Think about what's coming up how to be strategic, how to have the best workday possible before my meetings start. Okay. And this is a game changer. And it's already making me more thoughtful, more strategic and better at my job. Okay, so think of how many goals that one boundary at work starting meetings, no meetings before 10am created. Now that may be out of the question for you based on the job you do. I understand that. But there's got to be something and it's scary. It is it's still scary to me when I refuse meetings. And I started deliberately telling people I literally have started saying, Hey, I've put in some boundaries in my life to protect my health, my health and avoid burnout. And I actually don't take meetings before 10am anymore, right. And that's scary. Every time I send it my heart races a little bit. But the reaction I have gotten from people at work is incredible. They're literally like cheering me on. They're like, that's amazing. I need to do that. So it's so funny, the things we're scared of aren't as scary as we think when we actually implement them, right? So I want you in you know, the spirit of all that. Hopefully that was motivational to go back through your goals and say where is work going to get in my way? And how is work going to get in my way and each of these goals and start brainstorming some boundaries that you could set at work in order to make sure you can achieve those goals for the next quarter. All right. So go ahead and pause now and do that.

  Alright, you're back. Great. So really, you should have some really deep and thoughtful notes coming out of what you just did, and the exercises in this episode that are going to prepare you to go in and fill in that boundaries page. So that is your assignment. Official assignment for this episode is before the next episode comes out next week on Wednesday. Go ahead and get that boundaries page filled in because in a couple more episodes, we're going to be starting module four, which starts with a morning routine and you're going to want to have everything filled out on that best life master plan through boundaries. There are some pages that come after boundaries, and those are more for scheduling that we get in way later in module four. So you can ignore those for now. But in order to start them off and routine, you want to have it filled out all the way through the boundaries page, okay, and use my boundaries as a guide. Like I mentioned in the beginning, if that's helpful, you can see how I've written them in there and maybe some of them will resonate with you. But, you know, at minimum, I hope they can give you some ideas. All right. Okay, so a quick recap of some of the most important things here for setting your boundaries. Know what your non negotiables are, and be brave enough to stand up for yourself and say no, so you can ensure that you get those non negotiables. And we want to set boundaries to set yourself up for success here. We can be our own worst enemy when it comes to living our best life. So setting and keeping boundaries with ourselves is so important. Setting and holding boundaries with your family and friends will make your relationships more connected and meaningful, and will lead you to living your best life. And we talk a lot more in the last episode about how it deepens those relationships. Setting and sticking to boundaries at work will lead to better balance in life and more confidence at work. I promise you will get better at your job if you create hardcore boundaries at work. Okay, so your homework is to go ahead and fill in that document that page on boundaries. I'm so excited you can always message me follow me on Instagram. I'm just at Katy Blommer. So at Kty BL O M M er and message me there if you have questions about this stuff. You know, if you want to talk further about it, I'm always so happy to talk about it. So definitely message me if you have any questions that come up, but All right, thank you so much for listening as always. And just a reminder that if this is adding value, please share it with somebody who you think it might help. My goal is to just share this with as many people as possible so please share it. Please leave positive comments that helps more people see it but thanks for listening and I will talk to you in the next episode.

  Thanks so much for listening to the working mom happiness method. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from listening for show notes or to enroll in the working mom happiness method coaching courses, visit www dot women's best life university.com

Looking for more resources?