Off the Rails: Why We Disrespect Our Own Boundaries & How to Stop
A few years ago, my husband and I were staying in a small mountain village in Mallorca when we decided to drive over to the neighboring town one evening for dinner. We had no idea what we were in for: the fifteen, white-knuckle minutes we spent driving from our hotel to the restaurant felt like an eternity as we rounded blind corner after blind corner, up the side of the mountain. By the time we finally got to dinner, I had never been so grateful for guardrails… or a glass of wine.
Our boundaries are the guardrails to our life.
When we consider them intellectually, most of us feel really clear about our boundaries: what we absolutely will and won’t accept. Yet, when we go to work, sometimes we’re really quick to disregard them. Especially when it comes to the boundaries that protect our time and our bandwidth.
Here’s the problem with that: when we ignore our boundaries, we eventually go off the rails.
If you know this is something you struggle with, I’m right there with you. By the time I finally decided to take Something Major full-time in late 2019 the business had enough “proof of concept.” More urgently, however, I was totally off the rails in my life. I was working during the day as the Director of Enterprise Sales at DC’s largest homegrown tech startup, coaching clients before and after work with 7:30AM and 8:00PM appointment slots, and parenting two kids under three in the hours in between. I really loved my team at work, I really loved my coaching work, and of course I loved my kids—but I was losing weight, losing sleep, and my hair was literally falling out of my head.
So why did I keep going for as long as I did?
Too often we say yes to things that violate our boundaries, when every warning sign inside of us is signaling: “Yoohoo! You’re getting pretty close to that guardrail, don’t crash.” Sometimes those signs are physical: a tightness in our chest, a pit in our stomach, holding our breath, or feeling our heart pound. Worse, when violating those boundaries is habitual, you get yourself into the weight loss, hair loss, sleep loss zone like I had. I was also stressed out all the time. As much as these signals can be physical, they can also be emotional: tears, anxiety, resentment, or racing thoughts that just won’t stop.
As one of my teachers, Jamie Lugo, points out we can cross our boundaries both when saying yes and saying no. If you’ve ever said “yes” to something and found yourself immediately engulfed by a tidal wave of dread, you’ve gone off the rails. If you’ve ever done the verbal gymnastics of completely over-explaining or justifying a “no” to a client, colleague, or boss you’ve gone off the rails.
So, if our boundaries are so important to us, why do we allow ourselves to go off the rails? Well, it’s complicated. Here are the top three bad habits I see in high-performing women who don’t respect their own boundaries at work (all of which I’ve been personally guilty of myself). Plus, five tips for rebuilding your guardrails.
Off the Rails Bad Habit #1: We let insecurity masquerade as “rational thought.”
Sometimes we say yes to something even when we feel maxed out because it’s the “right thing to do.” We feel like we’re at capacity and we’re getting really close to that guardrail, but something truly urgent arises and we need to deal with it. Or, perhaps, we decide this is the opportunity we have been waiting for to get in front of the right people. Being able to make those judgement calls is absolutely critical to our success, but it’s also where we have the potential for major trouble: and that happens when we let our insecurity masquerade as reason.
We talk ourselves into saying yes, rationalizing every reason why this is just the “right call.” When really, we’re saying yes because we’re insecure that by saying no we’ll be rejected, judged, or left out of the next opportunity. This insecurity can feel particularly acute if we work for somebody who doesn’t seem to respect their own boundaries or, worse, doesn’t respect ours when we set them.
Adding insult to injury, we often feel insecure about being insecure itself, which makes it even more tempting for us to rationalize those feelings away. In fact, according to Dr. Ashley Whillans at Harvard Business School, one of the top reasons high-performing women are loath to say no, clarify expectations, or ask for help is because they fear being perceived as “lazy” by their colleagues.
Off the Rails Bad Habit #2: We fear disappointing others more than we fear disappointing ourselves.
We tell ourselves a toxic story that disappointing others has a higher cost than disappointing ourselves. That’s because it’s a lot easier to disappoint ourselves than it is to disappoint others: we fear that the boss will remember this during performance review or bonus season, or that they won’t ask us to take on that next leadership opportunity or client matter. We might also get nervous that the disappointed client will move in a different direction. The risk of disappointing ourselves seems to have lower consequences, when actually those consequences are often higher—even if they’re just more private.
When we disrespect our boundaries, the consequences are usually ones that only we can see or feel: it can start with dread, sadness, frustration, exhaustion, or resentment. As those build they can escalate to impaired judgement, anxiety, depression, and burnout. You don’t need me to tell you that those are bad things. Still, for many it’s a lot easier to just shove those feelings down. Worse, sometimes we actually have the audacity to beat ourselves up for feeling that way in the first place; “gaslighting” ourselves on why we’re making this “more than it needs to be.” It's a vicious cycle we need to end. We can start by recognizing that we’re most tempted to disrespect our own boundaries and go off the rails when we don’t properly account for the cost of disappointing ourselves.
Off the Rails Bad Habit #3: We are rewarded for disrespecting our boundaries.
In my 20s I worked for a company with a pervasive culture of overwork. I loved so many things about the people and the experience, but it’s the single worst habit I ever learned; I wanted to say no to taking on one more client, no to one more trip, no to one squeezing in one more phone call (often from airport lounges between connecting flights), so why did I say yes? And then continue to say yes for years after I left? I was rewarded again, and again, and again for ignoring my boundaries. Everything felt wrong working at this pace and volume, and yet I was getting the promotions, I was maxing out my bonuses, and I was lavished with attention from influential executives as a “superstar.” I was stressed out all the time but totally addicted to the praise and rewards.
Going off the rails didn’t feel like I was plummeting in some dangerous free fall, it felt like it was my ticket to success—or least a version of success defined by external validation from others around me.
As I learned, however, you can only sustain that for so long. Success starts to feel hollow when you’re so exhausted you can’t even enjoy it. Even worse, one bad week, month, or quarter can suddenly feel like an existential personal failure when you’ve pinned everything you care about on how others perceive you. As Aimee Bateman says, “When you live by other people’s compliments, you’ll die by their criticism.” Eventually the rewards run out or they just don’t feel as good as they once did. You’ve gone off the rails and all you’re left with is your totaled car on the side of the road.
Nobody wants a totaled car: Here are five ways we reinforce and rebuild our guardrails.
Be aware that when you go off the rails you might actually crash. If you keep saying yes to things that violate your boundaries, are you going to climb to the top or burnout? Are you actually going to execute with excellence or will your work suffer? According to Harvard Medical School, just one sleepless night can impair our performance as much as having a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent. That’s beyond the legal limit to drive. Guardrails keep us from crashing our cars and they can keep us from crashing our careers too.
Evaluate the cost of saying yes and the benefit of saying no. We are often quick to evaluate the cost of saying no (fear of rejection, disappointment) and the benefit of saying yes (approval, rewards). Take time to evaluate the opposite sides of those coins: what is the cost of saying yes? Perhaps it’s exhaustion, sub-optimal performance, or resentment. Likewise, what’s the potential benefit of saying no. Maybe you’ll learn this wasn’t as urgent as you imagined. Maybe you’ll actually be of better service to yourself or your stakeholders by having more time dedicated to more important priorities. Or, maybe simply reinforcing your boundary will stop somebody from dumping needless work on your plate again next week.
Start checking yourself on whether rational thought or insecurity is at the wheel. When you’re tempted to violate your boundary in the name of “reason,” ask yourself: Who is going to see this? How will they respond? Sometimes just explicitly naming that part of decision-making calculus—instead of letting it swirl around in the back of your mind—can be enough to confront our fear (or perception) of disappointing others. Taking a beat to name and evaluate that can help you play out the scenarios, evaluate the cost to yourself and to others, and help you recognize all the potential options.
Ask yourself: how much will this matter in six weeks, six months, and six years? I remember a role where I overworked myself, and told myself that everything was urgent and important. Years later I can hardly remember anything specific I did, but I remember how worn out I was all the time.
When truly needed, redesign and reinforce your guardrails instead of crashing through them. In a former role, I had to travel frequently and unpredictably. At first, the calendar whiplash made me feel like I had gone completely over the rails, until I decided to travel on my own terms by redesigning the guardrails. Often I still had to say yes to a random Tuesday meeting somewhere like Cleveland, but I created new rules for myself: I always flew into a city the night before to get a good night of sleep and hit the gym in the morning, instead of waking up for the 5AM or 6AM flight the day of a meeting. I stopped flying on Sundays to be on-site Monday mornings and tried to align my overnights to the evenings my husband was out late at his part-time MBA program so we could maximize nights home together. I was able to stay agile with the travel demands by creating new structures that made me feel supported—and less burned out.
Maintaining the strength and integrity of our guardrails is a daily practice.
I’ve gotten much better about boundaries in my work life over the years but—as they say—old habits die hard. Just this summer, I kept telling my husband my knee “kind of hurt.” Still, I continued to workout daily and haul a double stroller up the stairs of my DC row house… until I woke up one morning in July and literally could not move my leg with what would be diagnosed as a sprained ACL… so yes, old habits die really, really hard. That’s why protecting my own guardrails and rebuilding them when I crash through them is a daily practice I’m working on: how about you? Get in touch with me to share what you’re working or what’s working well.
Randi Braun is a coach, consultant, speaker, and the Founder of Something Major. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.