5 Ways to Create Healthy Business Boundaries When the Kids are Home for the Summer (Read Time: 3 min.)

Have kids who need your attention?

Have a business that requires your time?

When the kids are home for the summer, it's a balancing act meeting the needs of both but here's where healthy business boundaries come in: you create your schedule and with that ability comes the power to make a living AND a life.

Here are 5 ways to adapt your small business productivity to a kids summer off schedule:

1. Create time chunks for business productivity and devote them to different categories of work.  For example, you might allocate 20 minutes in the morning (before the kids get up) to social media, 30 minutes after the kids have lunch to email check-in and phone calls, and 2 hours at night (after the kids go to bed) to product development.  Time chunking gives you the luxury of focused time AND time spent enjoying your children for the summer.
2. Change your business goal expectations for the summer.  So many entrepreneurs forget this one simple truth: You're the boss applesauce!  You get to call the shots.  Don't be a slave driver to yourself.  Your children only have 6-8 weeks of summer freedom, enjoyment and family time.  Stop living as if every second missed in your business is a million dollars lost.  Here's the truth: it's not.  Your clients today will still be your clients on August 25th.  Create summer goals and work hours that reflect your need to enjoy your children and then ramp up after Labor Day.  You'll feel better about it and your kids will love the fact that mom or dad isn't stressed about "working" when they're "off." 
3. Create three non-negotiable business tasks that can be performed three times a week and devote the necessary time to getting them done.  What are the 3 major tasks of your business that NEED to be done in order for your business to continue to thrive?  We all have To-Do lists a million miles long but when you're short on time, now's not the moment to create productivity schedules your time simply won't allow for.  Whether it's blogging, writing, producing, filming, or networking with clients, decide what your top 3 are and commit to doing them 3 TIMES PER WEEK.  You do not have to work on the business EVERY single day.  Work smarter, not harder.  
4. Involve your children in the JOY of your business.  The other day, I hired my 15 year old as my social media assistant and since then, he's been logging in hours looking for articles on the web about creating healthy boundaries.  In this way, he earns money (which he desperately wants so he can buy himself a car when he turns 16), gets to see what his mom does, and learns the value of a solid work ethic.  It's a win-win.  If you have younger kids, do a little presentation for them and answer the question that you're going to get asked A LOT at networking events, "What do you do?"  Practice on the kids and if you get a 7 and 5 year old who clap and who "get" it, you'll certainly do well in a networking room full of hotshots.  
5. Be okay with operating in slow motion.  Here's the thing: hyper-drive is not a constant, 24/7 state.  No one has a life who works their business 24/7.  Talk to anyone who spends more time at work than they do at home (I'm talking 80/20) and you'll find a person who doesn't have much of a home life and who's relationships are on the brink of disaster.  That, my friends, is a costly mistake lots of entrepreneurs make.  There will never be a more solid investment of your time than in your family.  Take your business slow and take your family time seriously.  Nothing has to be decided today and whatever is for you will be for you after your kids' summer break ends. 

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The 3 Hidden Dangers of Having Secret Boundaries (Read Time: 4 min.)

Everybody has boundaries... but not everyone communicates those boundaries.  In a book called "Boundaries", Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend indicate the following:  

"An important thing to remember about boundaries is that they exist and they will affect us, whether or not we communicate them... If our boundaries are not communicated and exposed directly, they will be communicated indirectly or through manipulation."

So... when you cover up your boundaries or pretend like someone bending your boundaries is okay, what are you really doing?  

What are the hidden dangers of pretending 

to not have the boundaries you really do have?  

The reality is this: whenever you say "Yes" to something that you secretly want to say "No" to, you are delivering a fake yes with a strong negative undercurrent of a resentful "No."  You may never say "No" directly and you may comply with the other person's needs but your obedience will be filled with resentment, anger, and frustration.  You may not take any of that anger out on the person bending your boundary but you will find someone or something to project those feelings onto.  At the end of the day, complying with a request that violates your boundaries costs you more than you realize and here are 3 hidden dangers of having secret boundaries (i.e. boundaries that you don't communicate but that get violated with your compliance to another person's request):

Hidden Danger #1: You lose respect for yourself.  Any time you say "Yes" because you don't have the guts to say no, a piece of your self esteem and self respect get taken away.  You criticize yourself more, judge yourself more and, before long, lose the ability to trust your inner knowing to guide future decisions.

Hidden Danger #2: You harbor a resentment that festers inside of you but never gets communicated to the person who needs to hear the truth.  This resentment then lives inside of your body until it one day erupts in some form or another (forms that it can take include disease, stress, anxiety, rage, depression, etc.).

Hidden Danger #3: You use manipulation rather than boundary communication to adjust the boundary line.  This tactic leaves you feeling like a coward.  It becomes a way of life where you feel that in order to get your needs met, you have to trick people into meeting those needs.  You begin to feel like a fraud and that leads you to feel unworthy of having any of your needs met.  This is a slippery slope where you lose both your sense of integrity and your ability to ask for what you want.

At the end of the day, the cost of not openly communicating your boundaries is way higher than the temporary discomfort of having the truthful boundary conversation that needs to be had.  No matter what your fears about expressing your needs, at some point, you have to decide whether you'll tell the truth or live a lie... and then you'll have to live with the consequences of that choice.  Choose wisely...

What's the Price Tag on Your Self Respect? (Read Time: 3 min.)

How much are you willing to bend your boundaries to avoid conflict?

How often do you speak "Yes" only to swallow down regret, resentment, and anger?

What's the price tag on your self respect?

That's the issue of today's post: 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T... namely, your own.

In life, no one's respect is more critical to your self esteem than yours is.  Far too often, our choices rise and fall on the approval of other people.  We think that love requires sacrifice and, yet, we act as if self-sacrifice is the condition upon which another person's love is based.  If love comes at the high cost of your self-respect, then there are three things you need to be clear about when it comes to that love:


1) Any love you sacrifice self-respect for is CONDITIONAL.  When the price of your self-respect is no longer adequate, that person will find something else in your soul to ransom.

2) Any person who cares more for their personal needs than your self-respect is a giver and not a taker.  You are not in relationship with them.  You are in servitude to them.

3) The kind of love you are bartering your self-respect for is a selfish kind of love and since love is not selfish, what you're sacrificing your self-respect for is not the love that you want or need.  It's the love you're willing to settle for. 


FINAL POINT: People who cut your self-respect by violating your boundaries will continue to do so until you teach them how to treat you in a healthy way.  Words will not be enough.  Consequences must follow a violation of your self-respect boundary. In life, you do not simply tell people your boundaries; you SHOW them...

How to Politely Say 'Back the Hell Off' with Boundaries (Read Time: 3 min.)

Some people like to pick fights...

Others like to ALWAYS be right...

And some people (and, yes, I'm guilty of this) like to have the LAST word...

Whatever a person's boundary bending behavior, it's important to know that you can, in any conversation, at any point, call a time-out on communication that is no longer serving a purpose.

Here are a few signs that the conversation you're having with someone is probably wasting your time:

1. The conversation is moving away from open and leaning more towards defensive
2. The talk is one-sided with one person making all the demands and the other person fighting to get a word in
3. There's no reflective listening going on; no one's reflecting back what the other person is saying (i.e. trying to make sure that before he/she jumps to conclusions, he/she really understands what the other person is trying to say)
4. A patronizing or condescending tone of voice is being used (Look: we've all done this but the moment you start to hear "Yeah, right" or "Sure... uh huh..." or "Whatever", the conversation is going to hell in a hand basket)
5. The other person had a thesis or main point at the start of the conversation and, twenty minutes later, this person is still holding tightly to the "point", regardless of your input 

When any of the above signs are in play in a communication, understand that your boundaries are on the way to (or are currently being) violated and you need to politely, clearly and completely communicate (through your boundaries): BACK THE HELL OFF...

Here's how you do that:

1. Call a literal time out: "We're going around in circles here.  Why don't we take a 5 minute pause, get something to drink and then come back and try this again?"
2. If that doesn't work, call a physical time out: "What we're doing here is draining my energy.  I really want to work through this with you and get to a place where I understand you more.  In order to do that, I need to clear my head.  I'm going to take a walk and I'll be back in twenty minutes.  If you're ready to talk more then, let's go for it."
3. Call it what it is and stop the non-sense: "It seems as if all you care about is being right.  Is that the point of this conversation?"  Now, of course, the person will say "No, I don't always have to be right."  Then you say: "Well what does a win look like for you in this conversation?  What would you like to see happen here?"  If the person is really about being "right", they won't have an answer for you.  You'll see the 'deer in headlights' look and then they'll go right back into being right and you being wrong.  At that point, you say, "Okay, so here's what we can do since we've talked about this issue over and over and nothing's changed.  You can be right because you think you are and I'll be right because I think I am and we'll end this conversation and enjoy the rest of the day.  How'd you like that?"  Is that a sarcastic statement?  Yes.  But it's designed to get the person to see that 1) You are not backing down from your stance, 2) You could care less who's right and 3) If all they care about is being right, they can be right... ALONE. 
4. Speak to the boundary violation and not the person.  In other words, say to the person, "I'm feeling really uncomfortable right now.  I feel like you're verbally attacking me and I know that's not what you want to do.  But, for right now, I need this conversation to end until we both can come back to the table and feel safe and respected.  When would you like to try this again?" 
5. If all else fails, if the person insists on hammering out this conversation, get up, grab your stuff, look that person in the eye and say two things: "I've told you why this conversation is making me uncomfortable and you still aren't hearing it.  Now I'm showing you.  This conversation is over."  And walk out... Done!  It's called a boundary of distance.  When boundary communication doesn't work, your last resort is always to use the boundary of distance.  Notice that you don't run away.  You don't escape away.  You tell the person (in their face, eye-to-eye) what you are showing them and you then follow through with the consequence you said you would.  This is the clearest way to teach someone else how to treat you.  It's not enough to say what you will do; you actually have to do it.   

4 Ways to Re-Establish Healthy Boundaries When You've Been Through Childhood Trauma (Read Time: 4 min.)

Boundary development begins in infancy. Through attachment to parents, babies learn when and how to feel safe. They experience love, acceptance, and unconditional positive regard and this level of intimacy encourages them to develop healthy boundaries as adults.

But what happens when early childhood attachment isn't secure, when a child grows up with the uncertainty of divorce or the sudden grief that comes as a result of death of one or both parents or the constant danger of an abusive or drug addicted parent?

What happens to the child who was born feeling safe only to discover that the most intimate of spaces (i.e. mom and dad) is really the most dangerous of territories?

Earlyhood childhood trauma (loss, grief, abuse, neglect, or abandonment) all have serious repercussions on boundary development. Children go from needing love to needing acceptance so quickly that when parents are either not present (physically, emotionally or mentally) or are present but overbearing and/or abusive, children quickly replace boundaries with emotional walls.  The innate sense of safety, in these situations, comes from the child doing whatever he or she has to do to protect him/herself.

Fast forward twenty years and you have an adult who doesn't trust his/her boundaries, doesn't trust the people he/she is supposed to trust most, and looks at the world through lonely eyes. Human begins need connection, relationship and a sense that they have someone to count on when the going gets tough. If your early years are spent protecting yourself from the people who are supposed to love you, your adult years are wasted pretending that you don't need the level of connection and attachment you failed to receive.

Here's the issue: early childhood trauma impairs boundary development but it doesn't have to end it. We continue to develop and refine our boundaries throughout our entire lives. Knowing where we are with our boundaries and how they got that way is a great place from which to redefine and recreate healthy boundaries.

If you've experienced boundary injuries early in childhood, here are 4 things you can do to re-establish healthy boundaries in any area of your life:

1) Pinpoint where in early childhood your boundary development was impaired. There is no better way to do this than to get the support and guidance of a licensed, mental health practitioner. A great therapist can go a long way in helping you uncover the key milestones in your childhood where you lost a sense of safety, felt an impaired sense of attachment and started putting up emotional walls. Can this be done on your own? Yes but it's better if you have the support and guidance of a therapist.

2) Give yourself permission to ask and answer. In order to create healthy boundaries, you have to be able to ask for what you want. More than that, you have to have the courage and the strength necessary to say 'No' to the things you don't want and 'Yes' to the things you do. You have to be able to ask for help and receive it, to speak your truth, regardless of who ends up feeling let down, set up, or disregarded. Remember: Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but you don't have to make anyone else's opinion your fact.   In The Healthy Boundaries Master Class, there are a series of audio lessons that teach you how to set limits with key people in your life. 

3) Own the fact that you are now the adult who doesn't have to settle for the boundary injuries you took as a child. You are no longer at the mercy of a bigger, stronger adult. You are an adult. Even when dealing with parents, there's no amount of mistreatment that you have to accept. You are in a new realm and, in this realm, you get to call the shots. Own that.

4) Notice when you start to put up emotional walls and consciously and constructively bring then down by reminding yourself that all is well, you are safe, and you have the right to say yes or no as you please. Emotional walls are not boundaries. Boundaries breathe; they allow good things in and keep bad things out. Emotional walls block all things, keeping the bad out but also keeping the good from coming in. Emotional walls will never bring you love, connection or intimacy because they are erected on the understanding that to feel any of that would mean you would no longer be safe.  A breach in your security is not a risk an emotional wall is willing to take. You don't want emotional walls to keep you from attaching to the people you really care for. When you know the difference between emotional walls and boundaries, you learn how to set your healthy boundaries firm without compromising the flexibility that comes in experiencing intimacy in relationship.

At the end of the day, childhood trauma has a major impact on boundary development but the impact doesn't have to permanent or lasting.  You have the power to redefine and recreate healthy boundaries.  It can occur if you take things step by step, recreating boundaries one day at a time, one step a a time, one relationship at a time.  It can be done...