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Welcome to the powerhouse Revolution Podcast. I’m Lucy Gernon, ex corporate leader turned CEO of my dream business, helping corporate female leaders just like you to create your dream career and life. At 40, I quit the corporate world as I was tired of doing a job that no longer led me up and wanted to live my life my way. I created the power house Revolution podcast, to give you simple, actionable tips and strategies to help you create the perfect career and lifestyle that you and your family deserve. So if you’re a corporate female leader or manager who is ready to step into her superpowers, and live the life you were born to live, you are definitely in the right place. Because life is way too short to dread Mondays. Okay, let’s jump into today’s episode.
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Hello, there, and welcome back to another episode of the powerhouse Revolution podcast. The sun is shining around today, the sky is blue and isn’t just great to be alive.
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I think it is anyway. And for you, you know, I
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just want you to pause right now. And just have a little check in with yourself. And just ask yourself, How am I feeling today? Has anyone asked you how you are today? Or have you just said the typical? Yeah, I’m fine. What are you really? What’s going on for you right now? Get really curious with yourself. Because if things are not great, you always have a choice to change them. So I was talking to a client of mine there a couple of weeks ago, and something that comes up a lot. Now, I mean, a lot is how to push back and set boundaries and actually keep them. So I don’t know about you. But as an ex people pleaser, I find it very difficult to say no. I found it difficult to say no. And my family life, I found it difficult to say no at work. And as a result, I was often resentful. And, you know, I wasn’t as approachable as maybe I could have been at work as well. Until I learned that there is a way that you can set boundaries. And there is a way that you can do it without being unprofessional. So that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you today. So there’s a method that I teach my clients and they call it the dad method. And I did a full podcast episode. Gosh, I think it was like episode number two, if you go back and look at it, called how to set your boundaries using the DAG method. But I’m just gonna give you a brief kind of synopsis of it here now for you today. So first of all, I want you to know that you have a full right to choose and control where you put your energy and where you put your time. Your boss, your family, your friends, they don’t own you. Okay? Now, if you’re multitasking, come back to me. I want you to empower yourself today to realize that you are in the driver’s seat. And you get to control what you do with your time. You’re not obliged to help anybody or put anyone else first other than yourself. Now, I know that you are a kind, warm hearted woman, and I know that you support other people, and I sell you too. But I also know that you sometimes feel resentful. And you sometimes wonder why people don’t see how overwhelmed you are, or why people keep asking you for support, or why you’re given that extra work. It’s because you don’t stand up for yourself. Now, I’m going to share something that my coach, one of the girls in the mastermind I met with shared Excuse me. Now this is I’m not that I’m prudish, right, I’m just I’m very professional. I don’t like certain words, but I actually just thought this was quite a fun, kind of an acronym that you can use when you think about setting boundaries at work in particular. So one of the girls in the mastermind she was talking about confidence and about, you know, pushing back with a certain family member or something of our friend actually it was, um, one of the other girls in the mastermind. She went yeah, you need to have BDE and I was like, we were like, what’s BDE now I not deal with the cool kids. Okay, I’m in my 40s now, and she was like, I can’t even say the word girls, but I’m just gonna say it please forgive me. I’m like cringing right now. She was like big dick energy. I was like, Oh my God, that’s so vile. That’s disgusting in my head. And then I thought about it. And I was like, Oh, so this is a 10. So if you think about a man, okay, and that Just wait. I’m not saying that word again. But we’ll just use BDE. Okay, you can go back and replay it, if you didn’t catch it the first time. I’m not saying that word again. But we’re just gonna say BD E. And if you were thinking about a man who had it, who had a BD, let’s just say, don’t they walk around, cocky, full of confidence, they channeled this energy that I think we can take from. So the first thing is, is I want you to channel your BDE. Okay, so when it comes to boundaries, you’ve got to put your big girl pants on channeled up BDE energy and set some boundaries. You deserve to control your life. Yeah, if you’re multitasking, come back to me. You deserve to control your time, you deserve to control your life. So what you want I want you to do is to apply my dad method. Now, it can be difficult to do this, because sometimes there’s mindset work that needs to be done in advance in order for you to have the confidence to do this, but I’m going to share this with you anyway. It’s what I tell my clients, and that’s how they get results. So it’s the dad method. So D AD to fine, apply and defend. So the very first thing I want you to do is I want you to get crystal clear on what’s acceptable for you, not what’s acceptable for other people. So again, if you’re multitasking, come back to me. What do you want? Do you want to be on your emails at nighttime?
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Maybe you do, that’s fine. But if you don’t, why are you doing it? Do you want to be replying to WhatsApp apps? I’ll give you an example. Actually, when it comes to boundaries, I’m super clear with my VIP clients, where, where, where how we work together. So work life balance is a core value of my company. And myself, because I have been there, I didn’t have it. And now that I have it, I’m never given it up again. So I’m very clear boundaries that you know, we, we our primary method of contact his email, and then to allow 24 hours for me to respond because I don’t want to be on my phone all of the time. There’s lots of coaches out there, who use different apps, or different apps like Voxer, and telegram where they their clients, you know, convoys not even anytime I don’t operate that way. So if you ever want to work with me, please just know that you will get the results by the way, when you work with me to my system, through my processes with everything I give you when with our one to ones and all that kind of stuff. What you don’t get me 100% of the time. And I’m very, very clear on that for myself, because I value my time and my life far too much. So I want you to know that it’s okay to value your time. And it’s okay. Like my clients don’t think any less of me, the ones who work with me because they respect that. So you and it actually inspires other people then to set boundaries for themselves. So you control your time you get to decide when you work. Within reason, obviously, you’re employed by your employer. But if you don’t want to be working all the hours if you don’t want to be dialed in into calls at two o’clock in the morning, like what are you doing before? You’re telling yourself a story in your mind that you have to do with for your role, but I’m sorry, a meeting doesn’t have to happen. When you’re supposed to be asleep. Yes, you might be in a different timezone. I fully appreciate that. And sometimes the shit hits the fan. But if you weren’t there with the business really fall to pieces, in the majority of cases it wouldn’t. So there’s ways and means if you get clear, especially if you manage timezones on when you’re available, and do it around what works for you, not what works for other people, you’d be surprised how people will accommodate it. But the most important thing is, and if you’re multitasking come back to me is when you set a boundary, you then have to do it with conviction. So that brings me to the next step, which is apply. So when you decide, okay, this is my new boundary when it comes to work, great. I now I’m going to apply it where most people fall down is they look for permission for the boundary to be accepted by others, okay? You’re not going to get permission, you go in look and with with permission, that kind of energy. How do you think the conversation is gonna go. Whereas if you go in with this is how I do it. This is how I operate. This is when I’m available, people go okay. And you come across as confident you come across as a leader, you come across super organized and structured because she knows her time and she knows when and then you have to commit to being available at those times. Right? So I’m just using that as an example. But you’ve got to apply it and you’ve got to do with conviction. And as well as part of the A in the app in the Apply section. It’s really important that you communicate your boundaries in advance of when You know, the thing is happening. So again, to go back to the call thing, you can’t just decide last minute not to go. That’s super unprofessional. But you want to be communicating and sending an email or having discussions with key stakeholders and saying, Look, I’ve been evaluating my time lately, I’m going to try to optimize my time so that I’m, you know, I have more time for strategy. And if you know, I’m more available for you always make it with the other person. And so as a result, these are the hours that I will be available for you to contact me. So again, I shared this in another episode before, again, go back to episode two. And listen, when I worked in the corporate world, I wasn’t available for my team to contact me all the time, I had my instant message turned off a lot of the time, because it’s just too distracting. And I would not get my job done. And people used to ask me all the time, how do I get everything done? How am I so efficient? How do I get people to do things for me, boundaries and communication. So you’d be so surprised when you step into that role and bring that BDE right brained up BDE with you, people will respect you. And then the third thing step in the method. So D for define a for apply. And then D is defend. So when when push comes to shove, and this is one thing I know for sure. So if you’re multitasking, come back to me to manifest anything in your in your life, if you want to manifest a new, a new promotion, if you want to manifest better work life balance, if you want anything in your life, there’s one thing that most people fail on. And it’s this. You don’t overcome the tests, you’re being sent from the universe, or life, or God, whatever you want to call us. In order to have something you will be tested. And I can tell you that with certainty, you’re not just going to set your boundaries and all of a sudden, nobody’s going to ask you your boundaries are going to be tested. So I want you to know that. And then the next time it happens, I want you to go up this, he said this is going to happen. This is a call to grow. This is a call to grow. What does that mean? It’s life telling you testing you? Does she really want this? I’m going to see is she gonna? Is she going to step into the next version of herself? Is she going to control her time is she going to see her worth? And I promise you, when you push back, you will open up a whole new world to yourself, you’ll see people differently, they’ll see you differently. And what actually ends up happening is you look more professional. And I don’t know about you. But if you’re listening to my podcast, you probably are a very professional woman. I value professionalism with everything that I am, as well as authenticity and being myself. But I also value work life balance, I value my time I value experience in nature, looking at the sky, having time to talk to my mother to have time to play Barbies with my kids having time to be present and cook a dinner without looking at what apps are emails coming in. Right? They’re basic, basic things, but I’m a basic bitch, right? God, I’m cursing a lot today, really sorry. But I am right. And I think we all just want the simple things in life. So I really encourage you to think about the fact that you’re learning here for a short time on this earth. And you can live your life on your terms. But it all starts with boundaries. So again, just to summarize, D AD, define, apply, defend, go do it. Your action today from this podcast, within 24 hours, I want you to either whip out the notes on your phone or get a pen and paper and just start small. Start with one boundary that you can set that would make your life better. So it might be telling your boss that actually no, you’re not available for a call at seven o’clock. And the question that actually another little tip I’ll give you is that sometimes I hear all the time I hear actually, it’s hard to say no sometimes to a boss, when there’s a business crisis. Grades is always a business crisis, there’s always an issue, there’s always a reason to go on the phone. But if you were in hospital, you probably wouldn’t go on the phone. So what I used to do was very occasionally now I would never really have been asked to stay that late. And if I was I would have done it because it would have meant that was something really, really bad. And obviously there’s times where you need to do things like that, right? But if it’s a consistent thing and you want to leave work on time, say say you just want to leave a five o’clock, cuz you want to go home and put your washing on, because you want to get in top your laundry. I hear that sometimes you might feel guilty for leaving when you don’t actually have a reason you know, you’re not going somewhere. So I want you to channel the energies if you weren’t going somewhere. So for example, if you had a doctor’s appointment, something important or you’re bringing a family member to the hospital, you’d have no problem to try and up that meeting or setting that boundary. So I want you just to tell yourself in that moment. Okay, well Imagine if I did have a hospital appointment, what would I say? And I wanted to channel that energy when you set your boundary. So try that little tip. And it definitely definitely definitely works for me. And again, I’d love if you would connect with me over on Instagram, I’d love to hear what you think about this episode. I’d love to love to hear what boundaries that you’re planning on setting because I really, really hope that this has inspired you. And I want you to know that you are good enough, you are worthy and you control your destiny and it’s time to start stepping into your superpowers. It’s time to start stepping into the best version of you. There’s no more waiting around you know, it’s time to realize that you only have one life you don’t get a second shot at this. So go and set some boundaries and I look forward to hearing from you in Instagram so you can go connect with me as at Lucy garden on Instagram, you connect with me on LinkedIn, but I hang out a lot on stories and Instagram and I love having the chat at you in DMS. I love sending your voice notes and just touching base and getting to know you. So that’s it from this week’s episode. I really, really hope you found that useful and I look forward to talking to you next time.
