Your inability to set limits on their control

How many people are able to successfully divert your time?

The answer to this question is quite indicative of the strength of your boundaries.

Because although everyone has people they answer to, whether it’s family, bosses, coworkers, or even the occasional loan shark, ultimately, your time is your own. You are the only person who truly values it. And depending on your discretionary use of that time, it’s either valuable or wasted.

Sadly, if allowing other people to successful divert and ultimately waste your time becomes a habit, resentment will build up like a fungus on your heart.

But that’s the beauty of setting boundaries, they allow us to know precisely where other people’s control begins and ends.

That’s why my number one question in all job interviews is about reasonable response time for communications:

Do executives send out emails at midnight and get upset when nobody responds? Are teams expected to be chatting over the weekend? How often do employees get early morning phone calls and text messages?

These questions are asked not only to suss out the company culture, but also to communicate my culture.

My employer is going to know from day one that my boundaries are no joke. Send late night emails to your heart’s desire, but don’t hold your breath for a response outside of normal business hours.

My first career enabled my workaholism and codependency enough, and it’s not going to happen again.

Are you putting very firm boundaries around the power that you have handed over to others to have that kind of control over you?

If not, that’s okay. But the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to break loose the calcified layer of the controlling instinct.

Personally, I learned that if someone else was controlling my time and the emotions attached to it, they were not the problem, my inability to set limits on their control was.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Which people in your life don’t respect your time?

P.S. Prolific, my new software for Personal Creativity Management, has an entire category of tools for setting healthy boundaries. These tools were learned the hard way, battled test through my experience.