I love getting questions from you all, it enables me to interact with you on a personal level and yet address the broader audience. Most questions tend to have enough commonality that at one point or another each of you may have had an experience to which you can
relate. So please please keep ‘em coming!!
The question this week pertains to boundaries, and this is such an important topic – for women, and for spiritual entrepreneurs. We tend to have a hard time saying no. (Really! I know this is shocking.) As a woman, you just want to take care of people, and we’re so used to putting others first it seems natural to do it with our business relationships too. As a spirit-rich entrepreneur, we might be afraid that if we say no we’ve stunted someone’s spiritual growth, or that they might even judge us for not being spiritual enough (whatever that means…)
This particular question involves an experienced teacher who has been asked to make a commitment to teach at her recent teaching-training grad’s new studio. She accepted, wanting to help the fledging studio get off the ground. But after she made the commitment, she was told that the teachers were all expected to do workshops at the studio as well. This teacher has her own studio she needs to focus on, and the extra time to put together workshops may intrude upon her own goals. In fact, she’d be happy to share her knowledge and ideas, but time is her precious commodity at this point in her career.
Boundaries are tricky here. In providing herself to the other studio she also is spreading the word about the success of her teacher-training program (the owner is a recent grad) and getting her teachings out into the world. But as she has to put more and more energy to the other studio (which is 35 minutes from her own) her own studio’s energy “account” is drained.
What to do? Well, the way I see it there are two options. First, is it possible that hosting workshops at this studio will let you develop material and use this as a “testing ground” for your own studio? Can you reuse the material, tweaking it as you need to once you’ve figured out what works, and use these workshops with your own students? If so, then the time expenditure may we worth it. Feed two rabbits with one carrot, so to speak. (Side note: I read this line in one of my vegan books, and it is so much less gruesome than saying kill two birds with one stone. Love it!)
If that is not an option, or you feel as if this may still be too large of a commitment, then the second option is setting up the firm boundary. Ooooooo, scary, I know. But keep reading, and hopefully you will start to embrace boundaries. Once you learn how to do this in your business (and personal life too) you will be amazed at how good it feels, how well people respond to it, and how much more you get done towards your own goals.
Some interesting facts about boundaries:
- Honesty is the best possible road when establishing your boundaries. But the trick is that you don’t have to go all out on a tangent with your apologies and explanations and you know I would if I could, I feel really, totally bad about this and if you really need me then maybe I can squeeze it in somewhere and…..by the time you’re done you’ve actually committed yourself to every weekend until 2020. Or, the even worse scenario…the white lie. ’I have a wedding each of those weekends you want to do the workshop! I know, crazy! So many people in looove!’ as you sneak out the side door. We know how this ends. Someone sees you digging through the ridiculously priced but adorably bohemian doorknobs at Anthropologie one Saturday instead of the ‘wedding’ and you’re stuck in a very awkward situation. Just be a straight shooter.
- People truly respect when someone has firm boundaries. Not only does it let them know exactly where you stand – which provides security – you are being a leader in reminding them that they too should be firmer in their own boundaries.
- When you have boundaries, you push people to find answers on their own. Maybe this new studio owner was scared to ask outside teachers to host workshops, and now she will need to grow within herself to face this fear. You never know what’s going on behind the scenes, so don’t assume that you do.
