In the September Issue:
Creating Boundaries to Benefit You and Your Business
Women entrepreneurs often have difficulty setting boundaries in their business, which leads to burnout, inability to reach their goals, and resentment. There are five essentials to having healthy boundaries in your business.
It all starts with Clarifying Your Values. If you’re not clear what’s important to you, you don’t know where to set boundaries. Next you need to Alter Your Mindset. When it comes to establishing business boundaries, this includes debunking your subconscious scripts, and disrupting your old patterns of thinking.
In doing boundary work, you must learn to Keep the Focus on Yourself. There are four ways in which I encourage my clients to do this, which I’ll expand on below. Developing Empowered Communication is imperative for setting boundaries, especially for those who own their businesses! And lastly, you’ve got to Show Up for Yourself. You learn to do this by living in alignment with your values, leveraging your new mindset, focusing on yourself, and directly communicating with others.
Essential Element Three: Learning to Keep the Focus on Yourself
While all five essentials are important, in this article, I am going to focus on the third essential element of establishing boundaries in your business – keeping the focus on yourself.
There are four parts to this:
1). Looking at what you want or need
2). Minding your own business
3). Understanding your part in things
4). Engaging in consistent self-care
For women, focusing on ourselves is especially hard because we’re socialized to take of care others first. In fact, we’re often told that it’s “selfish” to focus on ourselves. It’s actually selfless. When we fill our cups first, we give to the world from a place of abundance rather than a place of lack.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing to care for others, but it can be taken too far. We’re so used to focusing on others and what they want, we often lose sight of what we want. This is magnified for those of us in service-oriented businesses.
When you’re making decisions about how to spend your time and energy, or which course of action to take, start by asking yourself, “What do *I* really want or need in this situation?” You’re still going to ask what’s best for others, but start with you. So many of us completely neglect our wants and needs, and then we get burnt out, and we’re no good to anyone!
Another thing we often do (especially in service businesses) is that we don’t “mind our own business.” I cannot tell you how many women entrepreneurs I’ve worked with who are overly concerned about their clients’ welfare, to the detriment of their own business!
They’re afraid to charge their clients more when the scope of work expands.
Or they’re afraid to raise their prices when they realize they’re not making enough to support their own business. The focus is on their clients (and sometimes their competitors), rather than on their own business. You’re in charge of your business, not theirs!
If you’re burnt out, or the business is not growing in the way you hoped it would, take a look at yourself. What’s your part in your burnout? What’s your part in the lack of growth in your business? That doesn’t mean you don’t consider external factors, but you must look at the thing you can actually change – you!
Lastly, if you’re in business for the long haul, you have got to learn to take really good care of yourself, consistently. This means engaging in activities that fuel you, and reducing the activities that drain you.
Meet Barb Nangle - Founder and CEO of Higher Power Coaching and Consulting
Barb is a boundaries coach, speaker, writer, and the Founder and CEO of Higher Power Coaching and Consulting, LLC and host of the podcast, "Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery."
In 2015 at the age of 52, after decades of therapy and tons of self-help work in a variety of areas, Barb found herself in 12-step recovery. She’s been in two such fellowships since then, and has changed deeply and profoundly as a result. As a former addict and people-pleasing rescuer, she empowers people to live their lives on purpose, by coaching them to build boundary systems in their personal and professional lives.
Connect with Barb HERE!
