The Shifting Nature of Boundaries.

At the moment I don’t have other words to describe what we are all creating right now, so even if you have had enough of hearing about ‘the new normal’, it’s what I am going to use for today’s writing.

I am someone who has healthy boundaries. If you have read my books, heard me speak or worked with me as a one to one client, there is a chance that boundaries would have come up at some stage.

Although there are different ways to describe what a boundary is and how they work, I prefer to explain them like this: boundaries are intentionally crafted limits and guidelines that we put in place to respect ourselves and other people.

Over the last week, I have had the pleasure of presenting and facilitating for four organisations with participants all over the world.

Pre-covid my boundary was to do no more than one speaking engagement a week at the most.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. I customise all of my speaking content and facilitation processes for the organisations I work for, which means I need a good amount of prep and practice time.

2. Usually, I would be travelling to the event so travel time played a factor in how many speaking engagements I wanted to do because, as much as I love to travel, I also like to be at home.

3. Two of my presentations this week were pre-covid in-person events that had to go online, and the other two had short lead times of two weeks. In the past, an organisation would book me months, or a year or more in advance.

I am fully aware that I am lucky to be working during this time, and I do not take it for granted in any way, but doing four presentations in a week is a lot.

I have had to manage my time and wellbeing on a whole other level so that I could bring value to my coaching clients, speaking clients and meet my writing deadlines.

Every single one of these engagements I said yes to with my eyes wide open because I love my work, and it has alerted me to the fact that I need to create new boundaries to suit the new normal.

Yes, I can do more presentations because I am doing them from home, but that doesn’t mean that I ‘should’ do them.

I have always believed that our boundaries need to shift and change as our environments and circumstances shift and change.

If we want to give our best in our work and at home, we need to manage our energy and our time so that we can deliver sustainably.

People are doing more online meetings, more childcare (while working) more, more, more.

Creating and resetting boundaries is worth focusing on.

I would love to know how your boundaries at work and home are shifting during this time.

Kemi xxx