How To Set Strong Boundaries to Have A Balanced Solopreneur Life
Stress triggers the release of hormones for fight-or-flight situations. The problem is that when these hormones are released regularly, your body experiences a lot of negative effects. A few examples would be unnecessary weight gain, high blood pressure, anxiety attacks, and mood swings.
It is in your best interest to avoid these troublesome effects from happening to live a joyful solopreneur’s life. One way to do so is to set boundaries on your work and personal time. Let’s discuss further ways to do so.
1. Communicate your ground rules
Clients and employees often think that business owners are available 24/7. This is because they assume that they have the right to bother you whenever they please for the sake of business. Employees, on the other hand, rely on you to make major decisions.
However, you must not let them intrude on your personal time. Make them understand that weekends are weekends. Or if you have planned to go to your son’s game every Wednesday afternoon, tell them that you’re totally off-contact during these hours.
2. Stick to your genuine persona
We all show different identities when we’re in different settings. You could be a strict person at home but a lax solopreneur in the office. Oftentimes, this habit can lead to stress because you feel your decisions and actions are restricted in different environments.
The solution is to merge your personalities to create a more genuine you. As a result, you can be strict or lenient whenever you want to.
3. Be easy on yourself
As a solopreneur, hard work is essential to achieve business success. Because of this, most business owners spend more time working rather than relaxing, being with their loved ones, or doing hobbies. The bottom line is, you deserve to have a break or a vacation from time to time. Even an hour to take a walk outside the office is well-deserved.
4. Share your action plan with your loved ones
Your loved ones only want what’s best for you. At times they will worry if they don’t see you often because you’re engrossed with business-related stuff. If you still plan to keep your focus on your business, you should let them understand your situation by explaining your “whys and hows”. Better, yet, ask for support.
5. Reflect on the boundaries you want to set
Setting your boundaries is tricky because you’ll need to make a lot of compromises. A common example would be sacrificing your time at home for more time at the office. In this dilemma, standing by your principles, ideals, and priorities is highly essential.
You cannot make compromises if you’re sure to regret them because that invites stress. Before you set your boundaries, have a moment of silence and contemplate on which aspects of your life you’re comfortable of sacrificing.
6. Set your goals
Now that you’ve set your boundaries, the next step is setting the goals you expect to achieve based on these boundaries. For example, if you’ve chosen to spend less time on work and more on your family, make a goal of gaining at least 20 new customers per week.
Your goals must be achievable depending on your compromises. Don’t make unrealistic goals that will only make you even more disappointed with your decisions. Living a balanced solopreneur life isn’t just about dividing your time properly, it’s also about being happy overall.
7. Plan your action
On setting your goals, you must devise a plan on how to achieve those goals. Back to the example goal of gaining 20 new customers per week, you should plan to delegate most of your work at the office to your secretary and commit a lot of your time to marketing.
8. Practice consistency
Once everything is set, be consistent. Strictly follow your plans and schedule. Stick to your newfound persona, focus on achieving your goals, and enforce your ground rules. Then, do your best to not add or change your compromises.
Being under stress is not only devastating to your mental health. It can also affect your relationship with other people and can cause a variety of medical problems. One cause of stress is not having enough time for everything. To address this problem, you need to practice better time management, set your priorities straight, and allocate time for personal relaxation.
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