Cloning: are you starting to think it might be something worth looking into?

After all, even on a good day, you’ve often thought it would be handy to have an extra ‘you’ or two. You know, one to do the shopping, while the other goes to that meeting at your kid’s school, letting you get on with your work.

And that was pre-pandemic!

These days, you’d need an actual clone army just to cope with everything you have to take care of.

Because even if you’re usually an absolute BOSS at setting healthy boundaries, you may be starting to struggle under the weight of current expectations.

You’re still the heart of the home. Only now that home is filled with partners working from home, kids studying at the kitchen table while they self-isolate after catching a cold, and your boss breathing down your neck via Zoom. So that’s extra noise, extra pressure, and oh yes, a tonne of extra snacks to prepare.

But that’s just one layer of responsibility.

On top of that you have all of the stuff taking up emotional space. Like making sure your kids feel secure when their world has never felt so scary. And making decisions you just don’t feel qualified to make, like should you let your teen go to school when the head teacher has confirmed there are COVID cases in their year group? You can’t even figure out if it’s safe for them to go to football practice or their best friend’s birthday party…

It’s no wonder that your usual self-care boundaries have slipped a little. In fact, for most of you, they just plain won’t work with what your life looks like now.

But does that mean you should abandon all hope of healthy boundaries?

Not a chance!

It just means that you need to approach your boundaries with more flexibility, tweaking them, changing them, or creating new ones depending on the current situation and your current ability to cope with life during a pandemic.

So how do you go about creating new, flexible boundaries that’ll help you regain your pre-pandemic equilibrium?

1. Listen to your gut.

If I told you that creating healthy boundaries right now was simply a matter of ‘tuning into your gut’, you’d roll your eyes at me, right?

After all, your gut has never experienced a global pandemic — it probably feels as confused as your head right now, yes?

I’m with you there. Enter:

The ‘should, could, want practice’.

Whenever you’re asked to do something, whether it’s taking on extra responsibility at work or an invitation to a physically-distanced birthday party, you have two automatic reactions: your instinctive gut reaction and your rational head reaction, led by logic and reason.

And the two of them often start a fight, leading to a whole bunch of noise in your body and your head.

The ‘should, could, want’ practice is the BEST way to cut through that noise.

Here’s how it works;

You have to pose three questions, moving through each of them in turn.

1. ‘Should I do this?’

This is often a heavy question; it might be founded in guilt or because you feel beholden to someone. By exploring it, you may realise that you’re in danger of falling back into a trap of ‘people pleasing’. You may rationalise that you don’t actually owe this person anything or, indeed, the exact opposite.

2. ‘Could I do this?’

This question is less heavy, less rooted in guilt and obligation. This is your chance to explore the opportunity, perhaps weighing up the possible outcomes — positives and negatives — and considering the logistics.

3. ‘Do I want to do this?’

Because you’ve worked through the first two questions, the final question is much lighter; it’s energetic and rooted in fun. You’ve listened to your head, you’ve explored logic and reason, now you can properly tune into what your gut is telling you and find clarity.

2. Make your rules (but know when to break them).

Conventional boundary-setting wisdom goes something like this:

‘Set clear rules and stick to them no matter what.’

Well, I’m not on board with that, even when we don’t have a pandemic to contend with.

Because your life, your health, and your emotional wellbeing are always in flux. What works for you right now, boundary-wise might not work in a month, three months, a year.

So yes, set clear rules. But be flexible with them.

For example, imagine you’re a business owner and you’re at capacity. You said you’d stop taking on new clients when you signed your 10^th regular project.

Only, your dream client has just contacted you. Are you going to turn them down just because taking their gig would push you past your pre-decided boundary?

You wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t!

But you should be vigilant — whenever you break one of your own boundaries, it’s important to regularly assess how it’s affecting your energy and your overall well-being.

That way, you allow yourself the flexibility to explore new opportunities without letting your schedule or your emotional reserves become a complete free-for-all.

3. Don’t be afraid to say the magic word.

Nope, the magic word isn’t ‘no’; it’s ‘maybe’.

You see, when you have no boundaries, ‘yes’ is both your best friend and your nemesis. Hello burnout!

When your boundaries are too rigid, you throw ‘no’ around with happy abandon. Goodbye potential opportunities.

But with ‘maybe’ in your arsenal, you get the best of all worlds.

So when someone requests something of you, don’t be afraid to say something like, ‘This is so interesting, I’m flattered you’ve asked me. Let me think about it.’

By giving yourself a bit of breathing space you can assess whether you have the capacity to take anything else on. This is always a great strategy but particularly useful if the current situation has you feeling fine one week and emotionally drained the next.

The world is asking an awful lot of you right now — and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon. But you CAN take care of your physical and emotional wellbeing, even now, by revisiting some of your existing boundaries. With a few tweaks and a little flexibility, you’ll find your balance again, I promise!

If you feel like you’ve hit a wall, whether, with your boundaries or any other aspect of your self-care practice, you don’t have to go it alone. Check out my 1-2-1 coaching programme for a personalised approach to your wellbeing that’ll help you take control of your stresses and reignite your lost spark.