 Hey there, it's David. I'm a psychotherapist and one of the main areas I look at with the clients is self-confidence, procrastination, motivation, goal achievement. I take a little bit of a different approach to the typical advice you might hear. But let me show you something today. I'm going to talk about the importance of boundaries with any goal that you might have. Now, let's take someone who has procrastination. This is the way I draw the procrastinator. Someone typically, you know, they're struggling with self-confidence. I'm not feeling particularly good about their goals. And this is the procrastinator. This is the person who is struggling to usually begin work. They would often say they've got problems with motivation. Now down here what I'm going to draw is a person on the opposite end of the spectrum. This person is a little bit different in that they their issue is more to do with workaholism. This guy can't start. This guy can't stop. Now what I mean with boundaries are both of these people here, the procrastinator and the workaholic, will have boundary issues with work. There is no such thing really as boundaries. These boundaries are made up, but we all actually have these boundaries in relation to our work. And how the procrastinator and the workaholic perceives these boundaries and what they do with these boundaries determines what their outcomes would be and also the degree to which they struggle emotionally. Let's look first at the procrastinator. So the procrastinator, like anyone else, they have goals and they're going to take steps towards their goal. And here is their goal and we're going to draw the boundary in here like this. Okay. In order to be successful with this goal, what they need to do is move towards the goal and they need to cross the boundary into work, the work towards this goal here. Now with the procrastinator, what's going to happen is every time they move towards the goal, they think about going in here in order to do some work around this goal, they've got poor boundaries with this. They can't seem to break through this boundary to get in to making progress towards their goals. Now, because of for the procrastinator, a lot of anxiety, there'll be lots of feelings I'm going to describe now in a moment, what they will do is they will push the goal forward. So the goal, first thing we'll notice is this goal keeps shifting. In other words, every time they try to move towards it here, the boundary of the work keeps shifting. Okay, and they'll take, they'll try again to come towards it, but the goal keeps on moving away from them. They cannot seem to cross the boundary to get in, cannot break into the boundary to take steps towards their goal. Now on the other extreme, we have our workaholic down here and the workaholic, their problem is the opposite. They have entered quite firmly, most definitely, across the boundary, are now deeply involved and immersed in their work. And one of the things many clients I have, mostly people come to me and they have problems as a procrastinator and believe it or not, I'll show them how to get in here, okay, across the boundary where they're taking consistent daily action towards their goals, how to stop self-sabotaging and how to stop the mechanism of procrastination from ruining things for them. Once they figure it out, they often go, they shift into this other extreme of workaholism, which is not great either. Many people think it's a better problem to have. It's like a higher order problem. But believe me, it's not good either. Okay, we don't want this and for reasons I'll explain as we go along. But let's just look. They've crossed into the boundary and now they're in their goal, okay? The goal is in here with them, they're with their goal. For them, they will attain the goal because they're deeply immersed in it, but the boundary for the workaholic keeps spreading out. It shifts, okay? And as soon as the goal again is accomplished in here, what happens is the goal, the boundary for the workaholic shifts once again and it keeps shifting on and on and on like this. Okay, so it's never, the phenomenon we see for this person is that they're always busy. They're always stressed. This person here feels terrible because they can't make any progress at all. Now, what's really going on here? Well, what will this lead to? Typically for the procrastinator, what we'll see is, well, the first of all, we have depression. Okay, that's a main one for the procrastinator. Down here, the typical one we will find is something called burnout, B-U-R-N-O-U-T. So very different extremes, so very, very common nowadays. This is, as I talked to in other videos, self-esteem is super important in procrastination. It's always important, really. But we see with burnout, there's a real problem with these boundaries of actually escaping once you're engaged with it. But I'll write it down here as well, low self-esteem, which is why it's very important with procrastination to work on building that self-esteem and also not to reinforce those self-esteem through this kind of self-sabotage process we see. Obviously, this is very frustrating. So a lot of frustration for this person. Down here, it's more like stress is what we'll see. Another one we'll see here is a lot of anxiety. In terms of what I kind of focus on as a therapist, I see this as more in terms of Jungian psychotherapy. This is the shadow part of the psyche, which has become very, very prominent. This is the really dark part of the shadow, the worthlessness, what I sometimes call the defective story that we have about ourselves. And for the other person here, we're trapped in the persona. This is more about improving yourself all the time. Huge expectations, often externally from others and trying to live up to those standards from other people. Now, we might think of these two people as completely different, okay? Nothing in common with each other whatsoever. Completely opposite, right? They have the exact same problem, right? And I'm going to outline it here. What I mean by that is you could conceptualize, if you want to solve either of these problems, if you fall into the procrastination camp or the person who's going through burnout with poor boundaries with their work while they're engaging with it, we could say it like this, and I'm going to write it down. It is a lack of respect for boundaries. Okay, a lack of respect for boundaries with their work. And what we need to do is start to put in very, very clear boundaries with this. For the procrastinator, their problem of boundaries are obviously crossing the threshold and usually for them, they have a lot of problems with feeling overwhelmed, etc. What I emphasize for this person is that they need to start setting minimums. In other words, a baseline amount that they're going to commit to on a daily basis, okay? And it's usually way lower than the procrastinator thinks it is, thinks it should be. Procrastinator usually has an awful lot of work in mind for what they should do, but doesn't engage with it. So our threshold for action, our baseline for action, needs to exist, okay? And so it could be a very, very low amount to start engaging with. Now this problem here for the workaholic is that they have no maximum, maximum. Now, in other words, they have to have very clear boundaries with work is now finished and I'm stepping away from it, right? When does it become difficult for these people for the two different extremes that we have? Well, if we look at the real solution for this, I'm going to give you some real takeaway advice from this. If you're struggling with eateries, it's an issue with boundaries primarily, right? So the solution is going to be something like, let's write it down, solution. I'm going to give you four little things. The first one is set a minimum, set a minimum, okay? So in other words, for the procrastinator, it's set a minimum for work, okay? If I do that, I'll have made some progress. Be very clear setting a maximum, okay? After which, under no circumstances, should you allow yourself to engage with work, okay? So Now, what I mean by a boundary is very strictly to respect the boundary, strict adherence to a boundary. Something else we can talk about. If the work is not started, so if it's not started, that means don't move the boundary, okay? Don't move the boundary. Do not keep shifting this, pushing it forward, okay? Like the procrastinator. Set a time for it, it either gets done or it doesn't, but do not shift the boundary. Likewise, if it's not finished, okay? If the work is not finished, again, same thing applies. Do not move the boundary. So for the workaholic, it's that thing of coming up to the end of their work day, work isn't finished, and they're actually probably making some really good progress, but they're not quite finished, they're not quite finished, so they keep shifting the boundary. Why is this such a huge problem? And I'm going to draw it up here at the top. This is really the ultimate takeaway. This is why self-esteem is so important with goals and motivation and procrastination. The problem we usually have if we're not respecting boundaries with work is because of a misperception we have, and it's a very dangerous one, and this is what the misperception looks like. We see ourselves like this, and we see this huge thing in our life, and it is called a goal. In other words, both of these issues are caused by seeing a goal you have in your life as bigger than you, okay? Something that you have to move around rather than it being just a part of your life, okay? It becomes bigger than you, and it starts to control your decision-making. We want to reverse this entirely. We want it so that we are the thing in life that's important, and we're looking down on this thing called a much smaller thing, much less important goal. Now, the goal is still important, but we're looking down on it rather than looking up at it, and it's looking down at us, maybe it would seem like it. So, boundaries. Consider how strict you are with boundaries, and that will have a huge, huge impact on your motivation, your self-care, how excited you feel, how optimistic you feel, how in control you feel. Oftentimes, the procrastinator feels completely out of control. Oftentimes, the workaholic feels completely like they're being controlled, externally sometimes by their schedule and all the expectations and everything else. So really, when you're scheduling in your work for the week, be very clear about when you're going to begin, and do that mindfully. Spend some time thinking about that, because once you set that in your calendar, do not allow yourself to move it, okay? That's basically you now thinking that this goal is more important than you. Set the goal there, it either gets done or it doesn't, okay? And over time, that might be a little bit difficult for you to do at the beginning, okay? But once you get to hanging that, you find that you're way more consistently engaging with the work, and you're also, I have to remind you, it's as difficult for some people to switch off from the goal as it is for some people to get into a goal, okay? So I'm talking about both of these things here. Once the goal is finished, once that window of opportunity I sometimes call it, closes for your boundary work, step out of it, okay? Don't let it become bigger than you are. So I hope that was helpful. Something to maybe help you this week while you're working towards your goal. And take care. See you again soon.