Setting Personal Boundaries and Recharging Our Batteries

With the weekend approaching, we typically look to find way's to recharge our batteries, but how often do you ACTUALLY succeed at fulfilling this outcome?  Many times we mix so called 'recharging' our batteries, with surfing on our phones for a few hours, watching hours of TV or playing a few hours of video games.  This is what we call recharging, by way of numbing ourselves for a temporary so called 'feel good' or 'escape' from reality, then to wake up the next day still tired?

Maybe you live in a busy household, have a few kids, a few dogs or live in a small confined space that does't give you much space, so your constantly feeling trapped, not having enough personal space or time to feel like you are recharging.   First step is 'accept ownership and responsibility' of your current situation, many times we look to point blame to others, the house, our kids, our work schedule, its all areas YOU have the control in, but to take control, first comes accepting responsibility and wanting to create boundaries and a recharging processes.  Sit down, take a breath for a minute and stop bouncing around like a hamster in a revolving wheel, because that is EXACTLY what is happening, whether you agree or not.

Don't forget you have the CONTROL over your life, its your darn life, you can be, do or have whatever you want? Do you believe that? If not, then your not accepting full control over your life.  There is ALWAYS a way in any circumstance, its the willingness to open up and accept proactive solutions, create a proactive process and take proactive steps to keep this process in check on a routine basis.  

So what is it!  First are personal boundaries!!! 

Far to often we let others control our life, our actions, our decisions in EVERYTHING we do, then we lose all our personal power to proactively act on what we want in our life.  First step is to TAKE BACK CONTROL of YOUR LIFE.  Start saying no more and yes less and stop living in fear of someone saying no to you or trying to please that other person.  Start today, just for fun, say no 5 times today, you will notice that its really no big deal when you do, but inside you'll feel more confident.

A mistake I've made in my early part of my business life and career, was letting my colleague's and others walk all over me, I was the nice 'farm guy' from small town Alberta, so of course Mathew will say yes and through some tough experiences over the years, it causes much more hurt that benefit, which has made me into a much more conscious human with the decisions I make and where I spend my time on with projects.  LIFE IS PRECIOUS, its a gift, don't waste it away trying to please everyone, of course there are boundaries of not being dis-respectful, that's something I don't believe in, its all done with complete respect and love.  

So how do you set personal boundaries?  First is with your personal time, a little hack I highly suggest is pick a time at night and the morning where your phone is on airplane mode, this is your personal time.  Maybe its 10 pm to 7 am, where your phone is always on airplane mode, this gives you your personal space, mentally and emotionally to not react to phone texts, social media or messages.  Your morning is sacred, set yourself up for success in the day and DON'T react to messages first part of your day, this is why airplane mode is important.  Spend the time in the morning doing your meditation, nature walk, exercise or journaling to have that personal time with you.  Here's where we fall off, we think calls, emails or messages from others are more important, that if we don't respond within 30 minutes we are going to lose the business.......if you don't get your morning personal time you simply react, react, react, all day long and then feel tired and sluggish by days end.  There is nothing wrong with responding to messages in razor sharp response time, lets say from 9am till 6 pm if that's your boundary you set, but stick to it!  So when your ON, your ON and when your OFF, your OFF, there is no half on and half off.  

Next is to set boundaries for yourself between work time and personal time, try not to mix these as much as possible.  This may seem easy to do, but trust me its not!  Its discipline to stick to these business and personal boundaries.  For those entrepreneurs, maybe its from 5 to 7 pm, phone is on airplane, so you can focus on family or relationship time and then after its go time for 2 hours after, its all up to you, to set these personal boundaries, but write them out and work hard to stick to them.  

Now we move into recharging our batteries, this by far is one of the key tools to do for maximizing productivity and performance.  If your always working, every day and don't take time to breathe, just slow down for a moment and reflect, you could be either living a robotic, reactive lifestyle or going in a direction in your life that you don't want to be going in.  Recharging enhances creativity, promotes happiness, healing, spiritual, emotional and physical nourishment, there are a whole slew of benefits.  Just changing environments, your working space, going away for a weekend, brings in those 'magic' ideas!  

I'd suggest recharging in small chunks in day, morning recharge with your morning routine, an evening power walk, mid day workout or 20 min power nap gets you recharging, then take a full day on a weekend to completely unplug, get into nature, go on a road trip, go see friends, go do an activity somewhere, try to avoid TV or video games as these don't fully recharge the batteries, we want to unplug from electronics for as long as we can.   I will give you an example, this coming weekend, Gen, I and our little power beast Lily are going to a beautiful cabin for a day and a half, the cabin has no wifi, so it gives us a chance to get away, unplug and connect.  When coming home, I'm on fire! 

So your action step from this message today is 'TWO' things.  First, journal on what your personal boundaries MUST be and HOW can you RECHARGE weekly?  

Alright, lets rock!

I believe in you, 

Mathew