The topic of boundaries has come up a few times with my clients recently. But while boundaries, or rather a lack of actually setting or following through on boundaries was what needed to be addressed, it wasn't the actual issue presented. Instead, there were issues of not enough time, working too much, multiple distractions, overdelivering, managing client expectations, are any of those symptoms something that you're also struggling with? Boundaries may be the solution.

Let's look at a typical workday for a business owner struggling with boundaries. Many entrepreneurs wake up and immediately start checking and responding to emails or messages. Maybe that sounds familiar. Maybe you dive into urgent tasks and ignore your top priorities. You hop into a meeting that's scheduled for 1 hour, but it runs over, and there's no end in sight anytime soon, a client sends you a request, and even though it's out of scope, you have a hard time saying no.

You want them to be happy, so maybe you even volunteer to do more, and then immediately regret it. A client asks for an impromptu meeting, and you accept it, even though that means you're going to be skipping lunch. Notifications are distracting you constantly, but you want to be responsive to your team, your clients and your potential clients. But before you know it, it's 5 PM, and you haven't even touched your so-called priorities that were on your list, so you either push them to tomorrow or you sacrifice more family time to get them done. Rinse and repeat.

This is so many of you, and here's the thing, you think it has to be this way, or you think everyone else needs to change. Maybe you even recognize that you need boundaries, but you think the boundaries are for everyone else when they're really for you. You see, boundaries are not about changing someone else's behaviors.

They're about communicating your request and what you will do in response. Let's look at an example. I coached one client recently who attempted to protect her time by limiting client questions to two questions per week during office hours, and she was so upset when the client asked more than two questions or sent questions outside of her office hours. But the thing is, good luck changing your client. Right? Instead, I recommended to her that she remove limits from her client and that she set boundaries for herself that she could follow through on. In other words, she could allow the client to send any questions anytime but communicate ahead of time that she will check and respond to all questions within 24 hours, Monday through Friday, during office hours. Then she can schedule a time on her calendar to check and respond once or twice a day to any new messages. Now, it's up to her to follow through on those boundaries.

If a client messages on a Saturday, she can and should maintain her boundary and wait to respond until office hours on Monday. Adults always get to behave the way they want to behave. You can't expect them to change. And listen, if it were possible, if we could control people, if we could change people, if I knew how, I would tell you, but it's not possible. So, we can't wait for adults to change, we can't expect them to change. We need to look at how we are going to respond instead. Let's look at another example. Let's say that you'd like your family to be quiet or to not interrupt so you can concentrate and finish some deep work.

This is a real example that I faced in my business. As soon as school was canceled, and my husband started working from home during quarantine. It was a really big adjustment for me because all of a sudden, I was interrupted and distracted constantly. I requested that my husband and kids were quiet and did not interrupt, but I can't just make a request, a boundary has another part to it, and that's the consequence. And the consequence is my response to it, what I will do if they don't comply with my request. So for the boundary to be complete, I had to have a response that was within my control. Here's what that looked like for me. I needed to batch record some podcast episodes and needed complete silence for an afternoon.

With two young kids at home and a husband working, that wasn't going to be easy. But I made the request and said, if you all cannot commit being quiet and not interrupting while I record my podcast episodes, I'm going to book a hotel room for one night and record there, they understood. And after attempting to record at home, it was clear that it was not going to be possible to have the amount of uninterrupted quiet time that I needed, so I went ahead and booked the hotel. There were no arguments, and there was no drama.

So, to recap here, there are two things that I want you to keep in mind about boundaries. One, boundaries are for you. It's about what you will do, not trying to change others. Yes, you could make a request, but no, you can't expect that they will comply.

You can hope they will, and they might. But if they don't, then you know that really the boundary was in place because of what you're going to do in response. And two, the second thing that I want you to keep in mind is that then you have to be willing to follow through. Boundaries are only going to be as helpful as you are willing to stick to them. It doesn't help to set a boundary and then not follow through. If you tell your clients that you're not available to respond to messages on the weekend, and then you respond to messages on the weekend, you're the one disregarding those and encouraging them to continue to message you on the weekend. So, you have to hold to your boundaries. I encourage you to take some time to audit your day through the lens of healthy boundaries and look at how you can better communicate and also follow through on the boundaries that you set in both business and life.