The How Behind Healthy Boundaries at Work

Mindset Shifts and Practical Ideas for Finding More Balance

For many of us, work takes up more of our time than anything else in our lives. Rarely does our work stay put in the forty hours designated to it by many jobs, and even if it does, our thinking selves continue to focus or ruminate on our work projects, culture, relationships, far beyond the end of our “clocked” days. This feels particularly true for those of us who pursue work that gives us a sense of meaning and purpose, which is ideal when it comes to satisfaction and overall well-being.

In my work as a therapist, I often have the privilege of holding space for others to figure out how to practice releasing and moving through stress to find a more spacious, balanced life characterized by well-being. Often, this means examining work boundaries in a deeper way, integrating mindfulness to find greater wisdom and balance. So here are some mantras for those of us who want to get more clarity around our boundaries:

1. Someone else’s crisis is not necessarily my crisis. How often does work seem to spill beyond the confines of sanity because someone else — a colleague, a boss, a client, is feeling stress and demanding that you fix it? This principle served me so well as a hospice social worker. When someone called me to say that their very sick loved one was going to be left alone over the weekend without a caregiver and demanding that I figure out the solution, I naturally felt concerned. But when I could see through the crisis thinking and identify that it was not my crisis, I was able to deescalate my body’s natural response to stress and crisis (fight, flight, or freeze), which floods our bodies with hormones that make it nearly impossible to think clearly or rationally. Once I shifted out of owning the crisis to feeling and offering sympathy and support, I had access to the many internal and external resources that allowed me to problem solve. When someone else comes to us with a problem and communicates that they are in a crisis, we can best serve ourselves and them by taking a breath, feeling our own body and feet on the ground, and getting clear about whether this is actually our crisis or not. Do I need to be stressed about this issue? Will it affect my well-being in a deep way? Does it actually have the urgency that my colleague is clearly feeling? And if the answer is no, using the mantra “not my crisis” can help us set a boundary, communicate an appropriate and realistic timeline for engaging in problem-solving, and even to offer support to another who is feeling stress.
2. Give myself permission to be finite and human. Yes, there is always going to feel like there is a lot of need, possibly more need than we have resources to meet it. And yet, when we try to stretch ourselves beyond the very real limits of our humanity, we, our work, our organizations, and our ideals and values themselves can suffer. When faced with a need, we can find the most compassion and efficiency by responding, “What’s possible?” By this I mean: will I still be able to eat? Will this take away from my sleep? My time with family? My time to decompress? Of course, there will likely be moments in most job where one or all of these areas are sacrificed for the work. But hear me out: these should be moments, not the norm. Too many of us are far too quick to sacrifice these things, to sacrifice our own health and well-being, in the name of our work. None of us can survive neglecting our own care, even for the most important and valuable work in the world. For me, that has meant turning off my work email — actually going into my phone’s settings and disabling the mail on my work account — after hours and on the weekends. I know not everyone can do this, but for me, that has been essential to showing up with presence to my life outside of work and not feeling tempted by the constant bombardment of emails. The ceaseless and infinite nature of those emails is too much for our finite beings to handle all the time. Or having a small meditation practice before bed, or using a worry box to release our ruminating thoughts about work. Sometimes, it can help to get some clarity around why we are so willing to allow work to infringe on our personal lives. What is the driving force behind my need to work at this pace? Is it driven by my ideals and values? Is it driven by real financial need or a desire for promotion? Is it driven by my need for success, my self-worth, my sense of value? For most of us, it is some combination of all of the above. Giving ourselves a moment to reflect on the driving forces behind our work can help us evaluate whether or not those driving forces really serve us. Or hold up to the truth.
3. My value is not defined by the content of my work. Without waxing philosophic or spiritual, I want to be clear about this point. Despite the great injustices that have, throughout centuries and still today, abused and diminished the well-being and very humanity of the “other,” I truly believe that most of us believe in the inherent dignity and worth of each human being. Most of us believe that every new baby who is born, not yet having attained any achievements or contributed in any way to society, has innate and great value just because they exist. This tiny baby has value because of her life force, his presence in the world. She didn’t have to earn it. He is deserving of it just because he is alive. I wonder where it is on the journey between being born and entering the work force that we start to forget that. Of course, our feedback at work will naturally affect our sense of self and well-being, but we are going to get trapped in sacrificing more of ourselves than is healthy if we believe our whole values comes from the content of our work. Part of acknowledging that we are finite and human is giving ourselves permission to be imperfect. We will make mistakes. We will not meet every deadline, make every client happy. But if we remember that we are valuable because we are human, not based on our annual review, we can take criticism or feedback in stride, rather than allow it to make us question our innate worth. One of my practices is to use my body to help release and remember what is part of me and what is not — when I have a particularly hard moment or receive criticism, after dealing with the moment, I put my arms on my shoulders and brush them down my arm, physically brushing it off. This can be a supportive reminder and way to let go of that which yes, matters, but is not a part of who we are. Remember. You are valuable just because you are a human being. Imperfections and all. Whatever it takes for you to remember this, find a way. Write a mantra. Wear a piece of jewelry or a tattoo that can remind you. Develop a self-compassion practice. When we believe this and live it, boundaries at work feel far more possible.
4. I am not irreplaceable to my work, but I am to my life. Whew. That’s a big one. Many of us feel we do important work, sometimes work that only we could do in the particular way in which we do it. That may be true. But when we get stuck thinking that the work, and perhaps consequently the world, will fall apart without us in it, we find ourselves trapped in a bit of an unhealthy savior complex. It’s healthy, not morbid, to remember that without us, the work would find a way to go on. We are not essential. We are just a part of our work, just as work is just a part of our own lives and identities. This can become cliche in caregiving professions, where the adage of “if you don’t care for yourself, you won’t be around to take care of anyone else” gets tossed around in a way that usually feels more guilt-inducing than supportive. Yet, the heart of that statement remains true. We are healthiest when work is just a part of our lives. Our health, our relationships, our communities, these other aspects of our lives must be nurtured in order for us to keep showing up to our work. Sometimes, it can be helpful in this regard to have another person at our organization or in our field who we trust; by holding an image of that person in our minds, trusting them and their work as a symbol that we don’t have to hold the burden of our work by ourselves, even imagining handing off “the torch” to them in some way, we can remember we are just part of the human community, working towards innovation and justice and growth and well-being in the world. When we can really do this, then we have the space to land with our feet firmly planted in the beauty that is our lives outside of work. We can take in the details of the trees, the smells of dinner cooking, the sound of our child or partner laughing. We can breathe. We can be restored and filled up by our lives. And when we remember that work should serve us, and not the other way around, we can get deeper clarity around what it is that we need.

Because so few of us know how to answer when asked “what do you need?” I encourage each of us to ask ourselves that question. What do I need more or less of to be healthier at work? What gets in the way of me asking for it? What do I want more of outside of my work that would support my well-being? How might setting more boundaries, saying “no” rather than cramming my schedule and life full, serve me? And what rituals, practices, people can help me make these things happen?

May each of us find ways to honor our finite, sacred selves in ways that allow us to show up more fully to our work and then to release that work to show up more fully to our lives.