A few weeks ago I was hit with a twinge of hustling. I hadn't felt that hustling feeling in a LONG time. I've worked hard, but hustling feels completely different for me.

As a business owner, hustling has an undercurrent of urgency, proving, and even a bit of desperation.

In my corporate career, hustling felt more like being overwhelmed with the number of things I had to do - and feeling like I couldn't let any of it go.

Is it hard to advocate for yourself, just for you? If so, know this - You are allowed to advocate for yourself in the same way you advocate for others.

Let me be clear - advocating for others is good!

But you also get to advocate for yourself, just on behalf of you. For your salary, your time, your energy - anything.

Can you set boundaries and still be seen as a team player and high performer? YES.

In fact, I've seen time and time again that if you set and communicate boundaries clearly, people are most often fine with it.

Even more interesting....I've seen MANY example of people being seen as a HIGHER performer after they set boundaries because they have the time and energy to focus on what's most important - and those are the things that often get recognized and rewarded!

A few weeks ago I was challenged by some successful speakers to look at how I was messaging my business - and I realized I reacted COMPLETELY differently to their feedback than I would have in the past.

When I first started my business (and for most of my corporate career as well), I took every single piece of feedback as verbatim truth, especially when it came from leaders and people I viewed as "experts."

This was the overachiever in me. Be better! Do it all! And do it all NOW!

A LOT happened in my work world this fall. Grounded Wildness launched in October, which was awesome -- and also SO MANY details and to-do's to execute. By the time Thanksgiving came around, I was exhausted.

I vowed to reset my boundaries, lay off checking work email at night and on the weekends, and get back to my normal routine. I also planned to take a full five days off over Thanksgiving.

And then I didn't do any of it.

Well, it happened again. The lesson the universe keeps teaching me over and over and over - SAY. NO. MORE. OFTEN. I know I’m not alone here, which I why I created The Ultimate Guide To Saying No At Work. It will give you actionable steps to set boundaries, renegotiate your workload, and decline meetings so you have greater space in your life.

Just in the last few weeks I've had several conversations with women at different events and books clubs reading my book about setting boundaries and saying no. A lot of the discussions have focused on two big questions: Are you even allowed to say no at work? If so - HOW DO YOU DO IT?!?

I've been hesitant to share this story because it involves losing weight. There's so much pressure on women to lose weight and have the perfect body and it makes me so angry that I don’t want to focus on it. But I'm doing it today for a very specific reason -- losing weight taught me the unbelievable power (and joy!) that comes with saying no.

You're seven months into Covid. A situation you probably never thought much about before it actually happened. And DEFINITELY a situation you never thought would still be going on and affecting your daily life. Now is the time to reassess. To set boundaries between your work and the rest of your life ON PURPOSE.

After getting shingles at age 30, I knew I had to set better boundaries. It's been a learning process and I haven't always been 100% great, but here are the three key steps that have helped me to get WAY better at setting boundaries so that I'm not stressed, overwhelmed, and sick - and have more time for the things in my life that matter.