Episode 010: Setting Boundaries is Self-Care
January 3, 2022
Do you have boundaries set, either in your personal life or business, that provide you with a level of self-care? Setting boundaries is a form of self-care in that you’re protecting you. In today’s episode, I’m sharing how boundaries are important, three of my personal boundaries, and a challenge to help you start small with setting your own boundaries.
This episode is brought to you by Someplace for Every Body – The Conference, a three-day, three-night event will be filled with diverse speakers, engaging activities, and a multitude of vendors all coming together to empower womxn from around the country. Join us October 6-9, 2022 by grabbing your tickets today!
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/618022038d4f0300195c3ae8/61c101bd45cc690014760b13" frameBorder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>My Own Boundaries (00:35)
- Clients Can Connect with Me Via Email Only (00:59)
- I Ask My Guests that If They’re Coming Over to Ask Prior (4:07)
- I Don’t Make My Nights and Weekends Available to Just Anybody (6:28)
My Challenge to You (12:00)
Let’s Connect:
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies and living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by someplace images, boudoir for everybody, you can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives.
Hey, y’all, I’m Carly someplace. And I want to chat today about something incredibly important. boundary is, oh, what a concept. So I think that boundaries are an incredibly important part of daily life and an incredibly hard part of daily life. And setting boundaries is the type of thing that is individual to every single person. So for example, I’ll start with some boundaries that I’ve set for myself that I think are extremely, extremely useful. I’m obviously a business owner. And one of my first boundaries that I established with clients is that I do not text my clients. And I do not use Facebook Messenger to message with my clients, I prefer to have an inbox for everything, and to have everything go into my email. So by having everything voting in my email, I have record in one single place of where every conversation we’ve had has taken place. Because at the moment, even if I just wrote again, you know, for this to my business, I’m juggling over 100 clients at one time. So when I have friends who book in with me, they automatically text me, Hey, can I get this? Or can we rearrange this? Or can we do this? And my first, first thing that I always say is, hey, can you email this to me, just by setting that single boundary of Can you email this to me and my best communication is through email for business, it sets the boundary that they’re not going to be able to text me and expect me to be able to respond at any time. And every single one of my email signatures I have I respond between nine and six, Monday through Friday, I absolutely will respond outside of some of those hours or when I’m traveling depends on you know, different things like that. But that’s my personal boundary. And I have set the expectation that I’m only going to respond within those hours. And that I’m only going to respond via email. It’s, it was a really, really hard transition for me to be able to do that. But it gave me peace of mind because I had again, friends who would become clients texting me, well, can I change this one thing? Can you edit this photo for me? Can you do this? And the answer is yes. And if you write it down an email, I will get back to you when I’m working on business things. Not when I’m going through my daily life and looking at my cell phone, I definitely reserved my cell phone for a lot more personal things.
And with that, like I said earlier, I also don’t use Facebook Messenger for anything besides personal use, I don’t use it for business, since I run, obviously, the vast majority of my business through a Facebook group, I get a lot of message requests, we’re talking two to five a day, sometimes more, depending on the time of year or what’s going on. Facebook doesn’t always show those to me, which is why it’s not a reliable source of you know, being able to have enquiries, different things like that. And it’s the type of thing that then people think that they have constant access to you. And while I love being able to be around a lot, I still have my personal life that I do have to separate from all of those things. So messenger is purely for a personal standpoint, that’s a huge boundary that I’ve put in place. And it seems so simple just to do something like that. But it’s honestly made my self care a lot easier. If somebody messages me on Messenger, I can mute messenger, I don’t necessarily want to mute my text messages, or mute my phone calls when it comes to that being my own personal phone and the way that I use it for interacting with my friends and my family on a regular basis. So I think that having the boundary in place, but my business is only accessible through email and so that I can have a full, everything just makes it so important and have every bit of information that I need in there. It makes a huge difference. Another very important boundary that I’ve set and this is a lot for my own mental health and my own mental well being is that I asked my family specifically that if they’re going to come over that they ask prior a I’m not home a lot and I say that in the way of like I’m obviously traveling a lot and doing different things when I am home and I have my own home time scheduled. Just because I’m home and maybe not doing a photoshoot doesn’t mean that I have endless hours to give to my friends and family as much as I would love to. And I think it’s really an establishment of like, please ask me for my time versus Oh yes, just come over anytime and it’s no big deal because I will most likely be in the middle of something. So being able to set time boundaries with family and being able to ask them to be respectful of that time that I do have when I’m home, just by asking if they can come over or setting a time up so that they can come over, I obviously want people to feel comfortable to come over at any point. And I am want to be a safe place for people in that capacity. But I think that there’s so much that comes in from just dropping in for a few minutes. If that happens all the time, those few minutes constantly turn into hours that I’m losing out on things that I had scheduled, or alone time or self care, or things that I’m going to cut out from myself, instead of cutting out from my business or anything else. So by establishing that boundary of like, pretty much being like, hey, ask before you come over, it’s a really big thing for me to be able to schedule my life around it as well and be able to schedule my own self care and self, self anything in time when it comes to being able to have that boundary with people.
So you’ve heard me tease you about that big sleepover that we’re planning for the women of the someplace for everybody conference, right? It’s hopping someplace for everybody conferences happening in Miami, Florida, October 6 through ninth in 2020. To grab your ticket today at some place for everybody.com. To connect with a supportive community focused on personal healing and self love, and hear from astonishing lineup of speakers. We can’t wait to see you at this women only conference. So don’t forget to grab your ticket and learn more about the conference at someplace for everybody.com.
Another very important boundary. And I do this, both with business and in some ways personal as well, is that I don’t make my nights and weekends available to just anybody. Those are personal time for me. Specifically, those are time times that I get to spend with my boyfriend. And since we just moved time that we get to spend packing and doing projects for our new home, doing things like that, having access to people’s nights and weekends when I mean if we go in a traditional sense of like, that’s when you’re with your family. And that’s when you are, you know, making dinner or getting ready for bed, being able to do those things. Being able to give yourself that time that is focused and dedicated just to yourself and your family or the people that you live with. Or the people that you know are in that inner circle is really, really important that you let yourself have just that time with those people. And I think it’s really important to kind of I don’t want to say have a routine because since I travel so much, it’s it’s hard for me to keep one. However, on the flip side, I know that Tuesday night is date night, and Wednesday is date day, I take all day Wednesday off in order to spend it with my boyfriend, because that’s the day that he has off. So if we’re going to have time together, that’s what it is. I don’t schedule things. If people ask to schedule things, I say no. And it’s creating that boundary for my own life and my own lifestyle in order to have access to the things that I want more of. And by wanting more of I want more time with my boyfriend, I want more quality time with my boyfriend. And that’s important to me.
So therefore, if somebody says, hey, Carly, would you like to go do this adventure on a Wednesday, I’m gonna say I’m sorry, I can’t, I have these other days open. But Wednesdays are not that day. So a lot of this, like I said, specifically starts with nights and weekends. And I don’t really give people my nights and weekends. Unless it is a, I would like to get together and let’s do something together. Versus if somebody just wants to, again, pop by or do anything like that, or potentially long phone calls, facetimes, etc, those are all very different. Those are things that I like to do during the day. And I would like to have my nights for myself so that we can, you know, unwind together so that we can have space for that. When I’m in a different time zone. It’s a completely different thing when I’m traveling. But again, my nights are then reserved for having time spent on the phone with my boyfriend, or talking to my parents, you know, being able to be with my family in the way that I am when I travel. And being able to reserve that time specifically for them is really good for my mental health and my mental well being. So I don’t necessarily let people in on my nights and my weekends, they are the time that I need for myself and the time that I get to recover from the week just as everybody else does. It is the time when people find themselves less busy, and they want to reach out and they want to be able to do different things like that. But it is a hard boundary that I’ve put in place. That those are very specific to me. And I’ve I’ve been able to keep that even though it’s hard, even though it’s hard. And I think that the whole premise of boundaries is a really big thing because boundaries are hard. I’m not going to say the boundaries are not hard. It’s incredibly hard to stand up for yourself sometimes. And a lot of these small boundaries that I’m talking about are really, really important because they allocate giving yourself time and giving yourself presence and knowing that that time is just for you. And and that’s what those boundaries are creating is giving yourself these times it is a form of self care and self love to put boundaries in place, especially with people that you love to have these boundaries of I need this time for myself or I need, you know, just this one specific amount of time and then having whomever you’re with your partner, whoever respect those boundaries. And that timeframe for you, is a huge, huge aspect of self care. And I won’t lie, sometimes I’m not great at following other’s boundaries. My boyfriend yesterday played video games for four and a half hours, and I love him. And that is his favorite pastime. It was one of our days off together. And I had expected us to be able to spend the morning together, and he got out of bed before I did. And he went and started playing games and got to hang out with his friends. And I had to remind myself, as much as I selfishly wanted to spend that time with him, he has spent again, all of his nights and days off, and every time that we’ve been together with me, and he hasn’t been able to be in that space. That is his personal self care for him playing video games and getting to hang out with his friends virtually in that capacity is a huge form of self care, it looks extremely different from my form of self care, extremely different from my form of self care. And that’s okay.
And I found myself yesterday being frustrated that he wasn’t talking to me or spending time with me. And then I realized that I wasn’t respecting his boundaries of him needing that space for self care as well. And so when he finished and we were, you know, hanging out together, I apologize for being crabby, and for interrupting the time that I knew that he really needed with his friends, because I was feeling needy. And I think a lot of boundaries is also recognizing other people’s boundaries, and what’s healthy for them, and what’s healthy for you and how you’re able to move forward in those different types of situations. So my challenge to you for this week is just to set one small boundary, it’s a new year, there’s a lot of stuff going on one small boundary for yourself that is going to make your life yours specifically, not you and your family, not you and your partner, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your your husband, wife, whomever you specifically, what is one boundary that you can set in place that is going to vastly improve your own self love or self care by giving you more time or peace of mind in a way that is the most beneficial to you. So think it through, set it as one boundary this week, in this new year, one boundary this week. And if that boundary is something that you keep throughout the rest of the year, then you’ve accomplished something huge in setting a single boundary. They are hard, they are hard. And they get harder in bigger situations, which I’m sure I could talk on even more so. But I want to start with these small ones. Because in everything that I’ve learned in everything that I want to teach is that self love and self care and the ways that we move in our own worlds, to appreciate ourselves and love ourselves comes from these small steps. And I can’t give you gigantic leaps and bounds of boundaries if we can’t set small ones and stick with those. So again, my challenge this week is for you to set one small personal boundary and stick with it. I hope you have the best week and happy new year.
Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show. If you’re looking for a community to love on you and support you and your self love Journey, come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at some place for everybody.com Until we meet again, be kind to yourself.
