61: {Pep Talk} The Journey of Establishing Boundaries

Do you have boundaries in your life? Boundaries must exist in both our personal and professional lives. In today's episode, I unpack the importance of setting boundaries in all sections of your life. I share my own journey of learning to establish boundaries and provide tips on how to create and maintain them. I also touch on  the concept of human design and the Enneagram as tools for understanding yourself and how you are making decisions. Highlights Include: 

• Setting boundaries is crucial for personal and professional growth.
• Understanding one's human design and Enneagram type can help in establishing boundaries.
• It is important to limit time and exposure to toxic or draining people.
• Setting boundaries with work, such as not answering emails or calls after a certain time, can lead to increased happiness and productivity.
• Time blocking is an effective strategy for managing tasks and improving focus.

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Transcript

Caroline Pennington (00:01.23)
Hey girl, I hope that you are having a great week. I just wanted to jump on here today and talk about something that I have been learning more about and that's been important to me and that's boundaries. So in my 20s, I had no boundaries whatsoever. I said yes to almost everything, yes to almost everyone that was part of my life. And then I woke up in my late 20s and decided that I couldn't continue this on. I went in a different life.

So now that I'm in my 30s now, boundaries has been a huge thing that I've worked on both personally and professionally. And I wanna talk through these of kind of how it's worked for me and hopes that it helps you as well. So one thing that we learned in our podcast Mastermind in Denver, Colorado this past week was our mentor, Ksha Getmary. She brought in a human design expert. So her name was Lauren Armstrong. She lives in California.

and she is amazing. I am literally obsessed with the work that she is doing. So she is a human design expert, so a lot of that goes back to exactly how we are wired. For the exercise, we had to submit the exact date of birth, so day, month, year, and then the exact time that we were born. And I learned during that process, I'm a sacral generator. Sacral meaning I make decisions with my gut.

and generator, meaning I wake up every day full of energy, I need to pour it into my purpose, and then at night I'm depleted, ready to go to sleep and get up and do it all again right over the next day. So, and a lot of this work has to do with the Enneagram concepts as well, and so if you're listening to this now and wondering what this is, you can log online and take a free Enneagram test and figure out which Enneagram that you are.

The scores on the Enneagrams go through one through nine. I am an Enneagram eight, which if you look that up and you know me, that is literally the exact way that I am wired and how I do everything. So it's really fascinating to look at. But back to creating boundaries, a lot of times boundaries can come into play whether it has to do with family, friends, or work. And family is typically harder to create boundaries with, but it still can be done.

Caroline Pennington (02:28.363)
And what that might mean is if you have a family member who is poisonous or toxic, it means limiting your time or exposure to them. The same thing goes for friends. If you are around a group of people, maybe in a social setting, maybe even a one -on -one setting, and you can tell that this person is depleting you of energy, it might be time to reevaluate your friendship with that person.

And a lot of times that's hard because maybe you think, oh, I've been friends with this person for a long time or since college or since childhood or whatever. But if you are continuing to grow and learn and improving yourself and working on yourself from a personal or professional development standpoint and that person is not, you might not have alignment anymore. And that's okay. It doesn't mean what you're doing is better or whatever, fill in the blank than they are. You just may be in different places than each other.

And the same thing goes for having boundaries in work. A lot of times I dealt with this, especially in my earlier stages of my life and my career, I had no boundaries. I answered emails all the time, calls, text messages, whatever, you name it. If it came in from my boss, I had the mindset that I had to answer immediately. And again, as I've gotten older and hopefully wiser, I have instilled these boundaries and it's...

served me a lot better professionally. It's made me happier as a professional. So for example, I do not answer emails, calls or texts after 7 p .m. if it has to do with work. It doesn't matter if this person is in a time zone or whatnot. That's a hard boundary for me. One thing that's worked really well for me too with boundaries and what I do in my work and in my businesses is I time block. So a lot of times that means,

I can get overwhelmed with email. We get a lot of emails, right? And no one likes checking emails and going through emails. But I'll set aside time in the day, one hour in the morning, one hour towards the end of the afternoon, where I'll just go through all my emails. Same things with time blocking with, let's say for example, podcasting. I'll set aside only time blocks in my week that is dedicated to that exact activity. And so when I dedicate time to doing that,

Caroline Pennington (04:47.144)
Maybe it's content creation, maybe it's broadcasting, maybe it is checking my DMs on my LinkedIn. Whatever it looks like, I'll shut down my email, I'll turn my phone on silent and make sure that I'm really concentrated during that time lock and doing that one activity. So it's been a huge boundary and productivity hack that's worked a lot for me and when it comes to my business. So I hope this has been helpful. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time.