ļ»æ00:01 - Angela J. Buckley, PhD (Host)
Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer but you can't seem to get ahead? Do you frequently feel overwhelmed and under-supported? Listen to the Overcome to Become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself. Hi, I'm Dr. Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength in Nature Leadership Series and Likeable Leadership Reflection Journals. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and coach In Overcome to Become. I share with you the science-backed and experienced proven lessons I've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout.
00:38
Hello, and welcome back to Overcome to Become with Angela Buckley, where we discuss strategies to empower ourselves and our organizations. I'm your host, Dr Angela Buckley, where we discuss strategies to empower ourselves and our organizations. I'm your host, d Angela Buckley, and today we're diving into a crucial topic self-fortification. What am I talking about when I say that? I'm talking about protecting yourself as you go through your growth journey. We're going to explore specifically how setting personal boundaries can lead to backlash from the people around you, especially those we care about, and we're going to discuss science back tips to help prepare and insulate ourselves from that resistance. So first let's just start with understanding what backlash is and how we handle that when we establish boundaries. It's not uncommon to encounter this backlash from our friends, our families and our colleagues, and this reaction often stems from their discomfort with our changes or the challenges to their beliefs and behaviors. Changes or the challenges to their beliefs and behaviors. Recognizing that this is a natural part of the process is the first step in fortifying ourselves, and so what we've seen is that as we interact with people, we train them how to interact with us, and if we have always been open and said yes, yes, yes to everything, then they are going to be upset, offended, perhaps even confused when you start saying no and setting limits and setting boundaries. So let's talk about that. We want to define what boundary setting means and how that is important in taking care of yourself. We're also going to discuss the psychological and emotional responses to other people's boundary setting.
02:34
So first, boundary setting. It means that we are understanding what we are capable of, what we are capable of handling, that we are able to understand what is going on and what we can handle and what we cannot handle. It's a clear establishment of our ability and our capacities to be working in the world that's around us and that gives us the opportunity to communicate that with the people around us. One of the biggest challenges we have when setting boundaries is when we're trying to adjust boundaries within our personal relationships, because so many of our personal relationships are established on our past behavior. When you're going through a transformational change for yourself, you are changing yourself, but that will impact the people around you and they may not like it.
03:39
Probably the biggest thing that we see, if you you're a parent, is that the boundaries are constantly changing with your child. Why is that? That's because, as a parent, we expect the child to change, to grow, to take on more responsibilities, which in turn gives us the opportunity to say no in a healthy manner. Opportunity to say no in a healthy manner. For example, I have a teenager and I am not willing to do his laundry. When he has time, when he has ability, when he has that within his capacity to do that. It's his job to take care of some of his basic healthy needs so that I have a little more time to sleep and, frankly, exercise.
04:28
So setting that boundary was not the same when he was eight years old versus now when he is a teenager. When he was eight years old, I was only asking things like please give me all of your wipes and we will work and we will learn how to do this together, right? But I didn't expect him to be able to do a task that was self-initiated, self-completed frankly, a little bit too big for him, right? So as he grew, he expected me to do more of the load, and as he grew, I expected him to do more of his load and give me a little more of my freedom. Back, right, and so, understanding how that is, there's a little push and pull because they're hoping that you will continue the habits of doing for them and, as you're setting boundaries, you're establishing that they have the skill set and the capacity to take care of their own things and you are able to focus on the capacity and the skill set that you need to take care of yourself.
05:40
It's very important, when you're setting boundaries, that you help set some clarity around, that I will help you during this transition. This is what my final expectation is. This is the amount of time that I need for myself. So, setting boundaries it's critical for yourself, but it's critical to truly communicate that up front as you go through these changes with the people around you, because, in fact, some of those changes may not be things that they are expecting. So there will be people in your life who will absolutely support this change, and there may be a few people in your life who do not, and so one of the reasons that we talk about fortification, we're talking about finding friends and that support network of those people who are going to help you navigate the people who are not happy with the changes, and that's really the focus that we're talking about. We do have to be prepared that in our season of change, some things fall away. Just when we look in the garden, we see that some plants stick with us year after year and other plants are only there for a season. Choose who your friends are going to be that are going to be with you through this season of change. So let's take another look at this.
07:09
We actually have some opportunities to apply some very practical strategies in supporting this transformation for yourself, okay, and they're supported by psychology and organizational development work, and they can help you build the resilience that's necessary when you can expect backlash Right. So, first of all, you really want to establish a strong sense of self for yourself, and the way you can do that is by focusing on your values and really talking about your priorities to yourself. You can't set boundaries or communicate values or priorities to the people around you if you're not clear in yourself what those are. So we do offer a course specifically on helping you identify your personal values and priorities, and I want to encourage you to go through those exercises maybe one time a year. Popular time of year is always January, but it doesn't have to be. Frankly, I prefer to do it in the spring. I think it's a more natural time for us to think about those kind of growth strategies. But there's a course out there for you. It's cheap, it's very accessible. You can get it done in just a couple hours of work and reflection. And so go on out to the Strength in Nature website and take a look at the value mapping course, but spend a little bit of time asking yourself what are my values and what are my priorities, and am I aligning my actions and my activities with my values and my priorities? So research shows that the strong identity is really linked to a greater resilience when we have social pressures. So when we are able to articulate what our values are, we're able to say no to the things that do not align to those values.
09:21
The next thing that we really want to talk about is communicating clearly and confidently. This may be a challenge if you have always been a people pleaser, but when you set a boundary, you need to be direct and assertive. Communication theory emphasizes the importance of clear messaging, and this really lessens the misunderstandings between two people. I also like to include the why, so we talk about the what, the how and the why. So, for example again, as I have a teenager who wants to stay up later in the evening, I need my sleep. I get up early, my job requires that I am up very early, and so we have talked very clearly about what boundaries look like as far as bedtime, and I need to be in my room at minimum, relaxing, and I expect that if he leaves his room for the evening for something he's allowed to, but turn off all the lights, right Like, my expectation is that I am able to go to sleep and I can take care of myself, and he can take care of himself at this point in his life. So explaining to him why sleep is so important to me, why I need to have the bedtime that I have, is part of the learning journey for him and for our relationship as well. Right, so being clear about that helps significantly.
10:55
So I like to talk about these parenting things like sleeping and bedtime and interactions, because these are safe places to practice your no's, because it gets harder when you have to tell your boss I must leave at 545. I was always very lucky that I had a boss who understood, but I also had an absolute hard deadline because if I did not get to the daycare by 6 pm I would get fined. And after that happened once or twice because my boss was late for the meeting. I shared with him that the next time I get a fine he would be paying it. Right, like he did not know that there were such things, that child care has deadlines and that if you get too late frequently that you can be kicked out.
11:43
But I needed to be assertive in what my needs were. I get to work very early in the morning so that my day can end on time, so that I can move on to the next part of my life and the requirements of my life. I needed to be clear and I needed to be confident in the need to be where I needed to be and so practicing first at home, low stakes, moving on to these higher stakes, where it might be a little bit scary, frankly right. So there's these opportunities for growth in these situations, and the third thing we want to talk about is really creating that support structure. Again, we're practicing our communications in a low stakes area and now we're going to create a system of friends. Your vibe attracts your tribe, the people that are going to support you through this transition, the people that can help you role play, even some of the boundary setting conversations that are going to be coming your way. We have seen that social support has been shown to buffer against stress and it provides encouragement. You can grow through these processes. So identify and connect with a few key people who are going to be in your corner as you go through this boundary setting exercises with the people around you.
13:15
I talked about clarity and communicating and messaging, and I want to move on to preemptively addressing concerns. Again, I'll go back to a teenager. I need to go to sleep at 10 o'clock, but, mom, what if I need you later? Of course I'm here. He can reach out at any moment. What I'm saying is that, on a regular basis, the goal is that I'm in bed winding down by 10 PM. So we're anticipating the questions that are going to be coming my way and how can we handle them With my CEO and this 5:45 drop dead time for me to leave? We had the same conversation.
13:57
There are times when things blow up. Yes, I have neighbors and I have friends and I have siblings that can help, but that shouldn't be an absolute day-to-day habit. That is for when business has blown up. There was a safety incident that I need to respond to on the shop floor. Things do happen and I can make plans, but they should not be the daily. Do not allow your exceptions to become your norms. So that is one of the things that you really need to talk about and talk through, because as you set boundaries, people will look for the exceptions and they will try to push you in order to break your boundaries. Except that some exceptions do occur and plan for them and anticipate them so that you're prepared and you're not feeling like somebody is trying to overwhelm you. So we understand that behavioral strategies suggest that accepting that the pushback is coming and being prepared for that pushback will help reduce some of your anxiety associated with setting those boundaries. If you need to role play that with that group of friends that you've been developing, or get yourself a coach and a mentor who is willing to walk through all of these challenges with you before you go out into your real world scenario.
15:25
And lastly, number five here, practice some self-compassion. Acknowledge that facing backlash is challenging, it's scary. Your relationships will change. Some will stay and get stronger, some will become neutral and, in fact, a few may break away. Be prepared for this and the way we be prepared is by practicing that emotional resilience of making sure that we have our friends, that we really know our values and that we are sticking strongly to our values. And that will help you, help support your overall mental health. Try some mindfulness, try some meditation, practice positive affirmations to really reinforce your self-worth and the work that you are putting into setting those boundaries and diminish that negative self-talk. Remember self-fortification. Resilience building is a journey and as you navigate these boundary settings and understanding these potential backlashes, you are going to become stronger and more resilient. It's important to honor your needs without any guilt. When you apply these strategies, you will be better equipped to withstand the challenges that arise.
16:51
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Overcome to Become. If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, sharing it, drop a like and until next time, keep fortifying. You've just listened to another episode of Overcome to Become. Thank you for joining me. Angela Buckley, your host, keep fortifying. You can apply these skills in your home, at work and in the community. If you'd like to learn more, join us in the Strength in Nature Learning Academy. We are currently featuring the Overcome the Overwhelm course with a 20% off coupon code OTB2024. That's valid until the end of 2024. You can join me and my community at wwwstrengthinnaturecom and on Instagram at creatively efficient. Thanks for listening. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
