5 Steps in Building a Sustainable Structure to Support the Flow of Your Ideal Life
In a world driven by action, productivity, results, and goals, we rarely allow ourselves the space to truly feel and experience life and the world around us. We often find ourselves glued to our desks in back-to-back calls, barely getting a chance to take a bio-break, let alone sit down for a proper lunch. By the end of the day, we find ourselves backlogged on our to-do list, our email jammed with new demands that we haven’t had a chance to address due to endless meetings. The stress and anxiety of getting it all done start to mount, and we find ourselves working longer hours to check more things off the list in the hopes that a crossed-off to-do list will help us sleep at night. But it doesn’t. Instead, we fester over all the things we have yet to get done, the deliverables and presentations that we have yet to complete, and the meetings for the next day/week that we have yet to prepare for. We find ourselves flying by the seat of our pants, barely getting a chance to stop and take a breath. And in the rare moments when we do get a chance to pause, we either go into a numb state from the overdrive of cortisol ripping through our system or get anxious about what to do in that precious time of a pause that so rarely comes around. Do we exercise? Do we read? Do we get chores done? How do we maximize this precious and rare moment of a break?
This was the life I lived and experienced for years before I hit significant burnout, where a picture my 5-year-old son drew pulled me out of the hustle and curled up into a ball on my bedroom floor.
I had lost weekends and precious time with my kids. I had lost connection with my husband and myself. I was advancing my career, but at what price? All that mattered most to me in life? All that I cherished to my core? Strip me of my job, my title, my income—sure, I’ll wobble and get knocked down, but I’ll find a way to get back up and likely come out stronger on the other side. But strip me of my health, my family? That would be a regret I would carry to my grave, that I would never truly recover from. Not because I don’t believe in the power of healing and transformation, but because it would be a reflection of me living my life unaligned to my core values. It meant I was living my life based on fear and ego vs. my heart and what matters most to me in my life.
When I first crawled out of my burnout, literally picking myself up from the ground, I started mapping out a way in which I could establish sustainable boundaries that allowed my work to fit into the lifestyle my soul was yearning for—the human element of me was craving.
Here are the steps I took to take back my life and build sustainable boundaries to support living a life aligned to my values:
Own Your Calendar: For me, this started with sitting down with the EA of our Global Chief Revenue Officer, who walked me through her methodology on managing his calendar and filtering meeting requests—only accepting meetings aligned with his priorities. By putting this in place, I wiped out 20% of the meetings I was attending weekly.
Be Purposeful with Your Time: Identify meetings where you aren’t an active contributor or a key audience. If it’s a meeting you can opt to multi-task in, then it’s not a meeting you need to attend. Instead, catch recap notes or delegate to teammates who can provide you with updates on weekly syncs. This cut my meeting attendance down by an additional 30% each week.
Create Space: As a result, I then had ~50% of my week back to put towards actually doing work vs. sitting on calls. I was able to proactively plan for big meetings, be strategic, and methodical vs. reactive and rushed. I was able to push back on things that came over the fence because I knew my bandwidth and guarded it with my life. This also included putting blocks on my calendar every day for designated “focus time.” Psst…these blocks can also be designated for your wellness (i.e., walk, workout, meditate, draw, etc.)
Establish “No Zones”: I shut off work before 8 am and after 5 pm. If it was an emergency, they’d call…and only 1% of the time did that ever happen in the four years that followed. By building those blocks, I could be in the headspace to connect with family, be present, and experience life. For me, this resulted in better sleep and showing up as a better version of myself to the people that mattered most to me. It also meant improving my physical, mental, and emotional health.
Do the Internal Work: As boundaries and habits are put in place, it’s critical to do the internal work to address the limiting beliefs or outdated thought patterns that kept you in a cycle of overwork. I addressed the need to be a top performer and compete with everyone, including myself—no longer feeding the desire of the ego and instead putting weight behind being the person who had balance, the person people enjoyed working with. I reprogrammed my brain to not value my worth to the company based on the number of hours I put in, but on how effective I was when I showed up and the outputs and results I was able to make for my org and for my clients.
Years later, I’m still peeling off the layers of these habits that became ingrained in my system over the last two decades. But I can see the difference in myself and my life as a whole. Because I’ve been committed to living a life aligned to my values, I no longer feel the fight-or-flight stress each day. I no longer miss out on moments with my kids, nor do my kids feel the angst and reactive energy that would often carry over from the workday. My energy is lighter, I laugh more, I sleep better, I feel the excitement for life each and every day.
This is what taking back my life looked like for me. How can you make shifts in your day to create space for experiencing life, prioritizing your wellness, and living a life unapologetically aligned to your values?