Setting Limits in Your Life | Day 7/500

Your heart is racing, your chest is tight, and you can't ever seem to catch a full breath. You tell yourself if you could only get to the office earlier, before everyone else, you would get caught up. If you could just skip lunch and stay an extra hour, you'd be able to sleep better. Your issues are just as deep as they are wide—your business' problems are all over the place, much like your hair, your sanity, and quite frankly, your life. 

You have no idea how you're going to do everything, but you tell yourself you don't have an option—you must. You ignore the fact that your health is declining, and you have more gray hairs than you used to. You refuse to believe that your business problems impact your ability to be a good friend, son, daughter, mother, brother, or sister. You know you can do better, but you don't know how. 

I'll be honest with you. I haven't mastered everything in that second paragraph either, and I suspect I never will.

But what I have done that has changed my life is place boundaries within my business and my time. This has allowed me to know that I'm doing the best I can in each area. It's given me "rules" to follow with my time, and I don't feel so guilty about going home for dinner when I haven't yet finished a project that my business needs to be done. 

I want you to think about it like this. If you were to write down everything you needed to do in your life, how many things would be on that list? Hundreds, maybe even thousands? Okay, so what if I asked you to do the same thing tomorrow. Would you add more to the list? Of course, you would because that's how life works. Every day brings a new something. So, if we live and work according to our to-do list, we're asking for it. 

Here are three simple interventions you can put into place that will help you make the most of the time you have, knock the most impactful things off your list, and achieve a more balanced life. 

1. Set limits with your time. For example, I write at the same time every day, from 10-11am. I don't have to think about it because it's on my calendar, and I treat it like any other appointment I have. Knowing it's there, and I do it every day, allows me to let go of any guilt should something "more urgent" come up in its place. Unless my house is burning down, or there's a life-or-death emergency, I don't sacrifice that time because it's limited. I use this same strategy with just about everything. I respond to emails at designated times, leave at a specified time, and meet with my leaders on designated days. This allows me to focus my attention on each block of time without exhausting important mental energy moving mentally between tasks all day. 
2. Create a filter. In my business, I use the Healthcare Hierarchy of Needs to determine which tasks are of the highest priority, keeping in mind it has little to do with the urgency of the task and more about its impact. When I am trying to decide what to work on in the time limits that I have, I run the levels of SALES, PROFIT, and ORDER through my head and look for unmet needs. For example, if any of the things on my list include bringing in new leads, which my company needs, that's where I start. The reason is that the SALES level of a business is the lowest level of the hierarchy, therefore more foundational than the others. I shouldn't spend time on a higher level if the base is not strong. 
3. Consider ORDER. When planning my days, weeks, and months, I consider what makes the most sense to do when. In other words, how can I schedule out my tasks, events, and appointments in the most efficient way? For me, that done by designated certain days to certain things. For example, any 1:1 work I do with clients happens on Mondays and Tuesdays. I use Wednesdays and Thursdays for podcast interviews, webinars, speaking engagements, etc. And finally, Fridays. I keep those reserved for anything that comes up, which brings me energy and joy. Some Fridays, like today, I'll write for the first half of the day and take my husband out for a birthday dinner the second half. For me, Fridays have no rules other than doing nothing that is considered "work."

All too often, people live their lives and run their businesses doing everything that comes to them or crosses their desk with the same level of intensity and priority. In most cases, that negatively impacts the work you need to get done to move your business along in the direction you want it to go. It also affects your outlook on life, which is too precious to jeopardize. It's easy to fall into a cynical, pessimistic, overworked outlook on life, and we must all protect that with all of our beings. We need our positive and hopeful outlook to continue to go on to make the most impact. 

Reflect on the three interventions I've given you and ask yourself if there's anything within them you can do to help yourself achieve a healthier, more balanced life because you deserve it. 

Reader, I'd love to hear your feedback on these blogs. Please feel free to post in the comments or back on the social media link where you found me!

Coming up: 

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