You over shared at work.
You didn't mean to, but your coworker was
pushing for answers about your personal life, or
you've just learned the hard way that
coworkers are not your friends.
And now you're ready to reset your work life boundaries.
This has been coming up a lot on my videos here and
in my AMA that I have every Wednesday on Instagram.
So I wanted to make this video to deep dive into
your work life boundaries so that you know exactly
how to keep your life life separate from your work life.
If you're here for the boundaries and the vibe,
give this video a thumbs up and let's jump straight into it.
First, you need to get clear on what your boundaries actually are.
What is oversharing to you?
There are no right and wrong answers to this question.
There's just individual lines.
And let's face it, the answer may actually change depending on
where and who you're working with. Some people are
totally cool with being an open book and
everyone knowing everything but other people... not so much.
For example, from speaking to many of you career besties.
In the comments, if a coworker asked you what
you did last weekend, I know that some of you are cool
with giving kind of a safe work appropriate level answer,
while others of you don't want to answer that question at all.
And if you're really not sure to figure out where your
own individual lines are with these work life boundaries,
ask yourself this question:
What do you want the Patty's of the world to know about you?
If you haven't seen my workplace villains, in this video,
I'm talking about the office gossip.
If you don't want anyone at work to know that
you're having relationship problems,
trying to lose 10 pounds,
or getting over a toxic workplace,
these would be topics to refrain from talking about at work.
Now it's one thing to know that you have the boundary.
But something happens when we start to get really
clear on our own work life boundaries. And honestly,
I haven't really seen this be discussed,
the next step is to get clear on why that boundary is valid.
Undoubtedly, a situation is going to come up when
you need to enforce that boundary.
It's why you're thinking about it in the first place.
I'm the person who needs that boundary,
because let's face it, the people that the boundaries are for
really unhealthy people who aren't just
going to accept that you have this boundary.
No, no, they're going to try to shame and bullying you into breaking it.
Following our example of asking about what you did last weekend.
If you don't want to answer in detail.
Maybe you have a coworker who tries to make you feel bad about it.
"I don't know what the big deal is."
Your belief in this boundary is what's going to make you
hold the line and it might even stop them from pushing
in the first place. In this phase answering these questions
is really going to help you out:
Why am I worthy of boundaries?
Why is this boundary important to me?
And why is it absurd that anyone wouldn't respect this boundary,
write your answers down and quite a few things
might come up for each of these prompts like you're
entitled to privacy and your privacy is important and
the information isn't relevant to your work or your
professional relationships. Answering these problems
is going to help you bring awareness to how valid these boundaries
are for you, and will help deepen your belief in
how you deserve to have these boundaries respected at work
plus energetically, it's going to keep you aligned with your boundaries.
And now this brings us to our next step,
which is a tactical Step. Be ready to not overshare obviously
at the most basic level, you're not going to walk into
the office and willingly volunteer the information
like how much your boyfriend annoyed you,
but that's probably not the problem you're having.
The problem really arises when someone asks a question
that you're not comfortable with answering or prods
for more information that you're not comfortable disclosing.
There are a few tactics here that can really help you out.
First, I'm a huge fan of deflection.
Dodge the question and by changing the topic,
ssk a redirecting question about a project at work.
Oh, I forgot to ask you about this thing on Project X.
Another tactic is to give a non answer
and then directed back towards them.
"It was good did you end up going
to that show you were talking about?"
Or you can simply make yourself unavailable,
"I'd love to catch up. But I really need to get to this email.."
Having these ready to go, and yes, scripting and practicing
can be immensely helpful. Of course,
when you're dealing with a Patty at work,
they're probably not going to give up so easily though.
And in those situations where they're really not picking
up what you're putting down humor can come in really handy
humor makes imposing that boundary a little bit less intense
and kind of removes some of the shame and embarrassment
that they may have experienced if you call them out.
For example, a couple of weeks ago,
I was chatting with someone in the comments
on one of my videos about how her boss was demanding to see
a picture of her boyfriend -
super awkward right?
Aaying something like
"Whoa, that's TMI..."
isn't it paired with your energetic alignment about
how important and audacious it would be for them to
not respect that work like boundary they're gonna be
more likely to drop it and not continue pushing because
they don't want to get called out for real you know,
we want to help them save face whenever possible.
But sometimes you do need to call it out.
If you've been subtle and respectful and energetically
aligned and your coworker just is not getting your work life boundaries.
Be ready to be clear and direct saying something like
"I'm not comfortable discussing this at work"
is totally fair and totally valid.
Something that really helps especially when you get kind
of into those awkward phases with enforcing work life boundaries
is developing uneffablewith energy.
I've been talking about that quite a bit lately.
And I'm actually going to do a deep dive in my next video.
So if you want that to help you prepare,
make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it.
And let's face it isn't five we all aspire to right.
And actually, this brings me to something that we need to
talk about when it comes to work life boundaries,
especially in regards to oversharing,
be ready for the pushback from the toxic coworkers,
especially if you're working with a narcissist like
they don't really understand boundaries. T
o be clear, getting pushed back, when you have clearly
communicated a work life boundary is going to be rare,
but typically where they're going to push is actually because
they're trying to save face,
they feel embarrassed for crossing the line,
they feel embarrassed for being called out,
especially if it's in front of other people,
which is why we want to give them the opportunity to
save face as much as possible. This is one of the reasons
why I encourage you to start with kind of humor and
making it light to begin with so that they're not feeling shame
and embarrassment. But another thing that could also
be very helpful here and I've discussed this in other videos
before is to give them a positive identity to live up to
when you're enforcing your work life boundary.
Now knowing how to deal with difficult coworkers when
you're getting pushed back is of course going to be really
crucial in those extreme circumstances. To help you prepare,
I want you to go and watch this video right now to help
you get ready to deal with that difficult coworker but
before you go if this video helps you get ready to stop oversharing
and enforce some work life boundaries.
Give it a thumbs up really helps my channel
makes you my favorite career bestie
It's a win win situation.
As always my friend thank you so much for watching.
I will see you in the next video. Bye for now!