In the first blog post I wrote on boundaries, I talked about WHY it is so important to have them in these five areas. But what use is a why if you don’t have a HOW? In this follow up blog post, I will talk about how I maintain boundaries in order to stay happy and healthy.
With your TIME
The first thing you need to do when maintaining boundaries is to set them. Time is probably one of the easiest areas to do this in, as it is an objective measurement. For example:
- When will you work?
- When won’t you work?
- When are you available for your customers (how much time)?
- When are you not available?
- How much interaction are you willing to give to potential customers (how much time)?
Once you have decided on these, don’t be shy about it; make it known. You can do this through your 1:1 interactions with people, embed it into your social media postings or posting on your sites. I am not available after 10pm every night or before 8am in the morning my time and I am pretty vocal about this. At this stage, this works for me. If it changes, I will make it known again. Consider it the opening hours of your business. The thing is, if people know when you are open for business and what to expect from you, then there is no pushback. Why? Because your clients/customers then accept that that is how you operate. You don’t have to be snarky about it, just matter of fact “I don’t respond after 10pm, I will get back to this in the morning.” Treat it like any other business would.
With who YOU are
We all have lives that are separate from our content creator personas, and although there may be some crossover, it is important to keep some distance between the two (for the sake of your mental health). This is difficult though, as we develop relationships with our fans, customers and clients, it is normal that we may start to share more about our lives than we may have at the beginning. Also, the way this industry is now, people expect a certain amount of personal sharing and connection with their favourite content creators. I maintain this boundary by treating Rem Sequence as a job, both in practice but also in my headspace. My fans and clients do not know my real name; I ask that my friends and people who know me in real life call me by my real name. I am not a big sharer anyway, so I find it easy not to share personal details in public. I think this is useful to think about in multiple ways; the content of your photos (keeping personal things out of them), when you talk about places you visit, things you enjoy. Although these can build relationships with your fanbase, they can also erode the boundary between YOU and your work. How much are you willing to share? What things are you going to keep just for you? When I am pressed about certain details, I have a few strategies that I use. Sometimes, I will make something up; other times I will just distract the person. Remember, you are in charge of what and how much you share of YOU. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
With your CASH
As with time, how we maintain boundaries when it comes to our money is a bit easier as it is something objective. Your payment methods, your rates and your pricing are all things you can decide upon and rattle off very easily when asked. How to maintain that boundary? My best piece of advice is to stick to your guns, even if someone gets pushy. Lots of content creators get worried about losing business or what others will think about them if they budge around their cash. If someone really wants to have a piece of you, they will work with you and not waste your time by arguing with you over a payment method or a matter of dollars. Let these people walk. Don’t even bother arguing, just politely excuse yourself from the conversation. You are costing yourself MORE money by justifying why you run your business in a certain way to people that are not invested in what you are doing.
With your PERSONA
When it comes to boundaries around my persona, I have found that the number one reason that I may budge on them is because of a lack of confidence in myself. If I feel like maybe I should explore area xyz because someone has asked me repeatedly about it YET it is something I am not comfortable with, then the reason probably is because of a loss of faith in what I am creating. The way I manage this is by surrounding myself with supportive and encouraging people who are knowledgeable in the business and can pull me up by the bootstraps when I need it. Instead of questioning and exploring my boundaries with customers, clients and random peers, I will go back to this group of supporters and check in with them. Nine times out of ten they tell me that my initial reasoning was sound and not to worry about what anybody else says. I think when it comes to our personas, having confidence in ourselves and commitment to the path we are taking is absolutely key. And the way to maintain this is through the people we surround ourselves with.
With your ENERGY
In my first post on boundaries, I talked a bit about how to maintain these around your energy. It is definitely easy to get sucked into working 24/7 as a content creator and it is just not healthy. In my opinion, the best thing you can do in this regard is to treat it as if it were a vanilla job where you are accountable to someone for the level of energy you put in. Develop a work schedule and stick to it. Incorporate break times/days into this schedule and make sure you future proof yourself for if you are in the unfortunate position to have to take time off. The number one thing is to work out how much you can do in the time you have, and know that some other creators may work more than you and some less, but that doesn’t make you any better or worse than anyone else. And if people make you feel bad about that… well, that says a lot more about them than it does you. Working with people can be incredibly draining, and you must develop boundaries around this and maintain them in order to remain consistent and survive in this industry. Once again, having a strong support network who can encourage and support you in your decisions around this is vital.
I hope this piece helped to address questions you may have had about how to maintain boundaries. However, in writing this, I realised one of the key things to success is developing supportive and encouraging relationships with other content creators and people in our industry. In my next piece, I will talk about finding your tribe and some guidelines I have found useful when building and maintaining my support network.
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