What Katniss Everdeen, Boundaries, and You May Share in Common

Have you ever thought about what qualities most impress you in a business owner?

I find that they are often the qualities we desire most for ourselves yet don’t readily possess or find ourselves jealous of or triggered by others who do.

As we enter the fourth quarter of 2020, I want to leave you with some qualities and values that will be game changers in helping your business grow and scale as we approach the new year.

In my mind, there is no sexier quality in an evolved business owner than boundaries.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so let me take you back to 2014…

I had started my business and was juggling to manage my time with a full-time career in the Federal government while striving towards self-employment, in addition to a budding new relationship that was capturing all of my attention, and I felt like I didn’t have enough time for any of my commitments. I had reached some levels of success as a new business owner…. full-pay clients (overcoming that first mindset hurdle of – am I really worth being paid for this), covering most of my business expenses with my business earnings, starting to get more clarity on my ideal client…

However, I kept hitting the same roadblocks. I often felt like:

“It’s hard to care so much about other people! I just want to help them but I feel like I care more about them than they care about themselves or me.”

“How will I ever scale to full-time, there is simply not enough time in the day.”

“Gosh, should I give them a discount because they said they can’t afford this and I know this would completely change their life.”

“My schedule is so stressful, these clients keep rescheduling on me and I’m not getting any time for myself to relax.”

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

I imagine they do.

One concern I hear from clients over and over again is how to successfully grow and scale as a business owner while being a helping professional.

Yes, I’m looking at you coaches, therapists, consultants, nurses, doctors, marketers, designers, and so many more!

Have you ever considered that there’s a reason you got in this industry in the first place? Yup, me too.

We LOVE helping people. Many of us are naturally empathetic, often highly sensitive, and gifted in the emotional intelligence arena.

But I would assert that one of the emotional intelligence areas that many of us heart-centered and service-based professionals naturally struggle is in the realm of boundaries.

Boundaries around managing our time, honoring our self-worth and pricing structures, respecting our schedules, and practically speaking, even sticking to our own office management policies and client service agreements.

I really want to normalize this because I literally see it all the time.

When did we make it mean that we didn’t care about others if we assert our own boundaries?

Why did we make it mean that we don’t care if we still end our appointments on time if and when clients show up late? When we charge clients for missed sessions? When we honor our schedule over someone else’s?

Consider that it’s when you learned to caretake, to prioritize others over prioritizing yourself, and when you equated care and compassion with self-sacrifice and volunteering yourself for tribute.

And YES, Katniss Everdeen was the epitome of a martyr too.

I assure you that people will not only like you when you begin to honor your own boundaries, but they will respect you for honoring them. And, they will start to see for themselves a new way of relating to themselves and their own self-worth. One that comes through honoring themselves first and then receiving that same respect in return.

The more you honor (and love) yourself, the more space you create for others to treat (and love) you the same.

A foundational place to practice this is in the area of boundaries.

I  have been using the context of business for this post, but please know that the same holds true in every other area of your life, ranging from romantic relationships and friendships to family dynamics and volunteering commitments.

Setting and honoring boundaries is a practice over a perfect.

Many of us heart-centered and service-based business owners have struggled with boundaries for most of our lives, so please have oodles of self-compassion and grace with yourself as you begin to integrate boundaries into how you run your business and live your life.

You likely will feel like you’re being harsh as you begin to say “no” more or simply not cave to other people’s desires. That’s normal, it gets easier.

I believe that honoring your boundaries as a business owner with grace and self-respect is one of the single most transformative breakthroughs you can generate as a business owner.

The magic of creating boundaries is that it’s also NOT a once and done type of breakthrough. Like all transformations, it’s one that continues to evolve as you do, and as does your pricing, your availability, your scheduling, your love life, your everything…

For heart-centered, empathetic, and helping professionals, honoring your boundaries is an absolute game changer.

Boundaries are one of the core areas of mindset work and business transformation that we focus on in my UNBOUNDED Mastermind and Group Coaching program. If this post resonates deeply with you, you’d likely be a great fit for my signature program. You can find all the details here and I would be honored to speak with you

With love,

Catherine

P.S.  Check out this testimonial video of Jackie Kindall, one of this year’s UNBOUNDED masterminders and what the program helped her unlock in her business, Kindall Evolve.