IDL85 Season 2: Brave Boundaries with Sasha Shillcutt

Why are boundaries vital for success in business as well as in life? Do you have “everyday boundaries?” Are you checking in on your priorities and using boundaries to uphold them?

I’m so excited to introduce you to Dr. Sasha Shillcut. She has a new book, Brave Boundaries and through that book, we reflect on what boundaries mean for not only leaders, but also parents and individuals. We consider how you can develop and manage your boundaries and why they are so imperative.

Meet Dr. Sasha Shillcutt

Dr. Sasha Shillcutt is a renowned cardiac anesthesiologist, gender equity researcher, TedX Speaker, published author, podcast host, and CEO of Brave Enough, where she leads over 20,000 women in living connected and courageous lives.

Sasha’s greatest passion is empowering and encouraging others to achieve well-being in their professional and personal lives. She speaks frequently to executives and leaders on the topics of professional resilience and gender equity, and her TEDx talk titled Resilience: The Art of Failing Forward has been viewed by thousands of people.

Sasha’s writing has been published in both the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. Her first book, Between Grit and Grace: How to be Feminine and Formidable, was released in February 2020.

Visit Brave Enough and connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Learn about boundaries - 07:21

• Readdress any old beliefs - 11:06

• Check your priorities - 17:40

• Dealing with boundary-backlash - 22:49

Learn about boundaries

Boundaries are a foundational aspect of relationships, both between people and between people and the world around them.

They do not divide or separate you from the world. Instead, boundaries help you to help other people because they demarcate what you need for yourself and those around you. 

If you want to do good work, if you want to be successful, if you want to make a true impact, then you must have healthy boundaries with yourself and others.

Readdress any old beliefs

Don’t make a martyr of yourself by using the word “always”. Are you always available for your patients? Are you always available for your spouse? Are you always available for anyone that needs you?

Truthfully, you should answer no, because sometimes you do need some space – and that is completely fine! You do not have to be accessible and available to everyone, all of the time. That is not healthy, sustainable, or genuine.

If you are always available and don’t take into consideration how you feel or what you want, then you need some boundaries because you are running the risk of resentment and burnout.

Check your priorities

Do you want to assess the quality of your boundaries? Evaluate your priorities, and see whether you are making time for them in your schedule.

If you find that your priorities or goals are being constantly pushed from one week to the next, then you may need to strengthen, redefine, or set up some boundaries.

Dealing with boundary-backlash

If someone is shocked, annoyed, or angry at you for setting a boundary with them, it almost always comes from a place of jealousy.

You setting and maintaining your boundary is showing someone that they can do the same with you. If, however, they struggle to do that or feel entitled to have access to you, your boundaries can trigger them.

Remember that they must take responsibility for their actions, not you. If you set a boundary and someone else gets upset, that is their upset to deal with, not yours.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Sasha Shillcutt – Brave Boundaries: Strategies to Say No, Stand Strong, and Take Control of Your Time: The Key to Living Empowered

Visit Brave Enough and connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

Check out the Impact Driven Leader Youtube Channel
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

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I feel like that’s really the crux of this [which] is learning about the idea of boundaries and when it’s okay [use them].

Tyler Dickerhoof

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Hey, welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad you're listening in, tuning in, whether you're a subscriber, someone shared this with you. Glad you're here. If you're watching on YouTube, great to see you. It's still summer. I still have some color still tan. I don't know what I'm going to do come December in Pacific Northwest where I haven't seen some sun. I don't know. Let's just be honest, sun is a good thing. Well, I hope it's sunny wherever you're at today, listening in, and I'm so excited to share to date my good friend's Dr. Sasha Shillcutt. She has a new book called Brave Boundaries. We dig into that book. We talk a lot about boundaries, not only as a leader, but also as a parent, as a person, yourself. How to go through and establish boundaries and why boundaries are so imperative. I truly enjoy every time I get to chat with Sasha. I know she brings such great wisdom from her perspective, serving so many in the medical field, and really giving that perspective of, I'm here doing the work leading. That's what I always get from her. I know you're going to get that today. I'm excited for her to share. We have a great conversation. A little bit of friendly banter. You'll get into that in a couple minutes but again, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. As always, you get value from these episodes. I'd love it if you share me a note. Let me know what value Sasha brings to you today, whether that's through a comment, whether that's through a review, rating, wherever you're listening to it. We'd love to know that, just so I can share that with her, give her feedback too. Again, I'll catch you here at the end. [TYLER] Sasha, good morning. We're recording this nice and early, and it's a little later for you in the Midwest. It's early for me here in the West Coast, but that's okay. I'm excited about it. So good to see you, friend. You're smiling, you look happy. I'm just excited to be here with you. [DR. SASHA SHILLCUTT] I'm excited to be here with you. We always, we just, you're one of those people that we haven't talked in a year or so, and we can just pick it up and we just jump right into the realness of life, which I love and I'm just honored and excited to chat with you. [TYLER] I'm excited to chat. I was a guest on your podcast, Brave Enough. The seventh season is out going all through the Enneagrams and I'm going to launch with that first question. Your new book coming out, Brave Boundaries, comes out at the release of this podcast within a week or so. I want to ask you this question to top off, all right, which Enneagram style do you believe struggles the most with boundaries? Is it too early in the morning to like, to throw that at you? [DR. SASHA] No, I love it. I would love it. I would probably say a two, an Enneagram two, the helper because their core desire in longing in life is to help others. They get energy from helping and being seen as helpful and filling in the gap for other people. So because that is their baseline drive in life, they have a very hard time saying no. They have a hard time putting their own, prioritizing their own health. They can be completely burned out and still get up and at two in the morning and pick somebody from up from the airport. They just, they're such servant-minded people because that's what makes them tick that they have a very difficult time establishing boundaries. It's interesting because I have coached several twos in my classes and when we get to the boundary lecture, I have a 12-week course that I teach all of them, I can see their faces on Zoom and all of them, just like, if the tears start coming and the shame starts coming, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't be ashamed that you don't have boundaries, because it's so overwhelming to them that they realize that they've never even given themselves permission to have boundaries. [TYLER] As I imagine, and we'll get obviously much deeper, we're just a couple minutes into this, it's the given yourself permission to have boundaries that I think is probably so difficult, whether it's in an office space, professional space, whether it's in a home. I feel like that's really the crux of this is learning the idea of boundaries and when it's okay. So I asked you right before the open, I said classic, oh, I wish we were recording this, but where for you, as you're excited about this book, what most excites you about sharing brave boundaries with the world? [DR. SASHA] Well, as you know, or if you don't know, I'm a physician. I have a Master's in Clinical and Translational Research. So I went to school for a long time, few decades of my life I spent in a classroom and despite hundreds of hours of learning and classes from everything from psychiatry to wellness, to leadership, to organic chemistry, I never learned the concept of boundaries. It was like a missing education in my life. Even the leadership classes I have taken, I've taken leadership courses at Harvard, spent thousands and thousands of dollars on all these different things to try to really improve myself because I love self-improvement and growth. I think any of us that are leaders, we're constantly trying to better ourselves so we can lead people well. No one ever taught me about boundaries and it wasn't until I hit rock bottom where I was overstretched, overcommitted and I was having a lot of shame about that because I was actually teaching classes for how to prevent burnout when I myself was burned out. I finally went to talk to a therapist, which I had not done in several years because I was like, I need to fix me. We always think we just need that fix. When I walked in and I told her all the things that were stressing me out and all the things that I was feeling shamed that I was failing to accomplish, she said, "You have no boundaries." I was like, what are boundaries? I thought boundaries were something for people that are in a toxic, maybe marriage or something, or have a toxic family member or have a, which is true, but she's like, "Nope, you need everyday boundaries." I had no idea what that concept was and how important it was for my health and my wellbeing, and actually for how I show up for other people in my life. What I love about this book and why I'm excited to share this book is I think that there's something in the book for every single person to improve their everyday life. They may have a big pain point in their life that they don't recognize, like myself is just missing really nice, clear, safe fences around to keep the good that you do in your life good and not overdo it and have it become something that's bad. [TYLER] Sure. I appreciate how you defined that idea of boundaries. As you mentioned earlier about the Enneagram two, and as I was thinking about that, my brother is an Enneagram two and he is always wanting to help and that's great but as I found, and he found is it became difficult as he got married and had kids to where all of a sudden that extra level went on him and just created a issue. So we had a little pause and recording there, for those of you that have listened to my previous show with Sasha, we had an amazing time building a relationship recording that episode. You know what, I think that's just, it's good because I look at that as, it's working through the quirks of life and it's all good. I was just talking about my brother who's at Enneagram two, and seeing as his life got fuller and fuller, it became difficulty with those boundaries of where to say and just saw himself getting stretched and stretched. I think about myself going through that and I wonder to myself, and I want to share this experience, growing up on a farm, there are no boundaries. It's just, you're always on, you're always working. There's always something there, the next day, you can't, there's very few times where you just put it away and think, oh, we're done. In a career in agriculture, I saw that too. It's like animals are living, breathing, need to be taken care of 24/7. You have to constantly address that. I would guess that especially with patients that are living, are going through the recovery, are going through all those things in the medical field, it can be very difficult to say, I can walk away from work. It's like you're always thinking about that to where it's very difficult to have those boundaries. [DR. SASHA] Yes. I think that's actually part of the process that is the disease that leads us to burnout is that we are actually taught to be a good physician to, or to be a good parent, let's say, is to have no boundaries, is to always, we use words like always I'm always there for you. I'm always there for my patients. I answer my phone 24/7. [TYLER] It's almost like a badge of honor when you do that. [DR. SASHA] Yes, yes. So when we don't do that, when we actually prioritize our own health because we're either tired or sick or need to rest, or we just have some other priority, we feel shame and shame is such a powerful emotion. It's one of the most powerful drivers of people to take poor actions. When we feel shame associated with prioritizing self, it's like an internal conflict. What boundaries allow us to do is to recognize that there's actually no shame in setting and saying no, in saying, this is how much energy I have to give to this today because I have to conserve energy for myself, my wellness, or my family, or whatever's going on. So it's like it gives you permission in a healthy context to recognize that you're not saying no to the person or saying no to a character to part of who you are as a person, as a human, as a helper or as a leader but you're actually saying no to the overwhelm and the over extension of yourself, which will only lead to negative behaviors. [TYLER] I'm thinking back and as you're sharing that in the world that we have today with available media and cellphones and this idea of always being on call. And I think back and as you shared earlier that you were never taught this in all of your education. It's like, why is it some of the most important things that we need to know in profession, in life we're never taught? I'm thinking, how much has it changed in a 10 to 15-to-20-year period to where you're always on compared to think about a physician in the mid-eighties. They maybe had an office phone, didn't have a pager, they had office hours, they would check in maybe, but if they didn't have a cell-phone attached to their hip and in their pocket, you weren't getting in touch with them. If they went to the lake with their family for the weekend, they were there at the lake for the weekend. Unless they called in, unless someone comes running up to say, Dr. Shasha I need help. They're gone and they're off those boundaries, were easier to establish. Does that make sense? [DR. SASHA] Yes, yes it does. I think that it's interesting because if you look back at the advancement of technology and all of the things that we have been able to achieve in medicine from artificial hearts, all of the things that we've been able to extend people's disease, which is good, it's a good thing it has also been in the advent of technology that has allowed us to be more and more accessible to where we have no boundaries and the burnout rate of physicians has quadrupled. And I think it's not just physicians. I think it's like this in almost every career. People can access you wherever you are. You can go on a vacation to the most remotes part of the world and you can check your inbox or someone can ask you a question about work or your family can get ahold of you. The same, the opposite is also true when you're at work trying to focus on something, your kids can call and say, "Hey, can you FaceTime me and show me how to cook an egg?" These are the types of things that we don't recognize have significant challenges for us in our mental health and our ability to feel like we're constantly on and we're never off and being off is somehow letting someone down. [TYLER] It's okay. [DR. SASHA] I'm just laughing because we are so chill. Most people are really freaked out when we have technical issues but I think last time we had technical issues, I said, no one's dying, so it's okay and you were like, this is true, no one's dying. [TYLER] It's alright. That's a perfect lead in to one of the things that I found, and this is where I think there's, it's not gender-specific. I think there are different personalities, whatever. I don't think it is. But I can remember early on in our business, in our network marketing business, and Kelly having a struggle with boundaries. Again, I share where my frame of mind came from working in agriculture where there's never an off switch to coming into a business where you're like, oh, it's not life or death. If cows, if they don't get fed, they die. If people, you don't respond to them within an hour a minute of them sending a direct message or whatever, they're not going to die. It's like, it's not going to happen. For Kelly she did hair and that was her profession. She had her three days a week that she worked, and once she was gone, she was gone. There was never a, do you ever call your hairdresser after you got your hair done and say, "I need help?" Usually, like in emergency light, it doesn't happen. So for her making that transition, and again, I think being a mother and having that mentality of like, oh, if there's something needed, I need to be there, it was a tough transition. I can remember telling her, it's like, "Kelly, it's not life or death. It isn't that big a deal." And yet it's taken a while for it to sink in and now I can see her more at ease but there's times where you put that pressure on yourself to perform and you're like, I have to. I could imagine there's times writing your book where you're like, I have to do this and you're like, I need to get this done. I have a timeline to where maybe your boundaries get really pushed and that just brings stress. [DR. SASHA] Yes. I think what people don't realize is that boundaries are this internal map for you to live your priorities, that's really what they are. So the best way to see how well your boundaries are is to look at your calendar and what you say every January, are you really your priorities? What you say your priorities are in life and really what you're doing, where you're spending your energy. For me, I think I constantly felt for a number of years, which heightened during the pandemic, actually as a physician, that I just needed to be present and always being my best self for every human that I that needed me. That was just being a good human right, helping the masses, helping that person in front of me. I had no idea that that was actually helping people can become really dysfunctional [TYLER] Sure, yes. If you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Even if you're doing it for the right reasons. [DR. SASHA] Yes, yes. I have this boundary for myself every morning where I get up and my brain goes off and it says, you have this, this, this, this, this today. Start getting in, open your inbox. Do all these things. This is how my brain works. My brain never wakes up in the morning and goes, oh, let's have coffee and do some yoga and get some exercise, drink some water. That is not how my brain works. But I know that if I do that day after day, if I just wake up and hit the inbox and start doing the task and start emptying the dishwasher and doing the papers before I'm out the door, my day is not good. My mental health isn't good. My emotional help, I'm projecting my stress on others, so I have this boundary with myself every day that I get up and I go, no, no, no. That is not, do not listen to yourself. There's your tennis shoes, there's your water, there's your Bible. You got to take it, read verse and you're going to meditate it on it while you're going to get outside and walk for 30 minutes even though the, my anxiety is going open the inbox, open the inbox. Nobody knows that I have that boundary, but I know, and I am the better person when I get to the hospital or when I get to my team meeting, when I get to it with my kids, that I've just done that. But that's not where my internal dialogue goes in the morning, Tyler. I go to like, wanting to just slash and just hit the tasks running because I have so many things to do. But I want to live my priorities. I want to live what I really, truly desire, which is to show up for my family, show up for my patients, to not project stress during the day on my coworkers, to be a human that is healthy. I really care about my health, but if I don't start out without boundary every morning, it's not happening. So I think we have to recognize like the pressure that the world puts on us. It puts so much pressure on us. [TYLER] As I'm thinking about this, the extent from a leadership perspective is how much responsibility, not only do we have on ourselves for this boundary development, letting others know about our boundaries, but then as well as a leader recognizing instead of dumping on people and expecting them to establish their own boundaries and tell, hey, I've had enough to look at that and say, oh, okay, I need to be cognizant of your boundaries and really help in that establishment rather than just say, hey, sink or swim. So we are discussing this as a leader, the opportunity to help someone else establish their boundaries. That's a responsibility as much as a, hey, just dump it on them, expect them to figure it out. [DR. SASHA] Yes. So this is a really important lesson that I think we as leaders don't recognize the value of how we demonstrate this for others. I was recently talking to my boss, my leader about this, and he was saying how he was really frustrated that he had a really great vacation plan in Europe and he spent the whole time on the computer and answering emails. I said the best thing you can do for all of us is to not do that because you are then demonstrating that it's okay to have boundaries. That's what's beautiful about having boundaries is we often think we are going to anger other people when we say no, when we set boundaries, whether that's like, I don't attend work dinners or I don't answer email on vacation, or I don't answer my phone at six in the morning or whatever the boundaries are. When we set those boundaries, we often think we're going to be disappointing people and we hate disappointing others, but we're actually giving them permission to set boundaries. We're demonstrating that as leaders for other people and when we experience backlash, something I talk about in the book boundary backlash. When people get angry at us or they get annoyed or they get shocked that we're setting a boundary, it almost always comes out of jealousy. I have experienced this, like someone says, oh, I'm not going to bat, or I don't do that, or I'm not, and I think, well, how come you get to do that? You get to set a boundary and I don't. We're jealous or we're just shocked because we've never actually thought that we could set a boundary. So when you start setting boundaries, Brene Brown says clear is kind and it's so true. I think about that every time I think about setting boundaries, like when you set boundaries, you are not just saying it's okay to have boundaries and work for me or work with me and have your own boundaries. You're telling other people, you're giving them permission to set boundaries and saying, I'm a person who believes in boundaries. I get it. Go ahead and share your boundaries with me. Oftentimes, our boundaries live in our heads and we don't tell them to people. If you don't tell your boundaries to others, you can't really get angry at them or hold them accountable for interrupting you if you haven't actually expressed a boundary. An example I give of this is, let's say it's a Tuesday night, one of your coworkers or team members calls you and you're like watching Netflix, it's eight o'clock and you're just hanging out, you're in your PJs or whatever and you're like, "Oh, I can take this call from Tim because I'm not doing anything." But then fast forward the next Tuesday, you're rushing to get to your kid's soccer championship or you're rushing to get somewhere and you're annoyed all of a sudden that Tim is calling you on a Tuesday at 8:00 PM but you shouldn't be because you answered the phone last week and you told him it was okay to call you then. If you don't have a boundary, why are you angry suddenly at your coworker or your team member or the person that's calling you, where if you had boundaries and you would be like, "Hey, I saw you called. If it's not an emergency, we'll chat tomorrow." That's setting a boundary, whether you're watching Netflix or you're rushing to dance recital that says, I don't do this at night because I want to preserve our professional boundaries and I want to preserve my mental health and your mental health. I'm telling you, I don't, I have a boundary with work call tonight. I'd love to help you tomorrow during the hours of seven to five. So this is how we need to start thinking and holding ourselves accountable and stop getting angry at someone when we've never really expressed that boundary before. [TYLER] How much is the communication of the boundary is important to be the establishment of the boundary, important to be done, you can have your boundary for whatever it may be, all those boundaries. What may be a boundary and an expectation for me may not line for you and frustration that can come if those aren't like almost compromised to answer your call on Tuesday nights. But hey I need you to because you're required of this. [DR. SASHA] I think that's really, really important too, and a good point because there is some work that we do that is human work that has to be some, we have to be accessible. I mean, I am in a field where I am on call at night, obviously I always answer my phone at two or three in the morning or whatever. There are also times where it may be a leadership crisis. Maybe someone has had, there's a death or there's someone's having a mental health crisis or someone's sick or injured or there's personnel issues. I'm always saying that we need to have, we need to be better at triaging our energy. Part of that is recognizing do we actually have conversations with our coworkers and our team like what constitutes an emergency? What constitutes you to call me? Because sometimes obviously if someone is injured or sick on the team, or we're not going to miss a deadline because there's this massive shortage of whatever. I want to know that, I want to know that at eight o'clock at night. How do we teach our team members, how do we teach our family what constitutes okay to interrupt or okay to call outside of a boundary? So I think we need to be better at triaging our energy and just communicating our boundaries. We expect everyone else that lives and walks in our world to know what our energy is that day or what stressors we have or what's going on externally in our family. They don't, people don't. [TYLER] We were talking about this, there's times that our, our boundaries, there's reasons for our boundaries to, I don't want to say be violated, but to step over. But yet without establishing that and discussing it and understanding it leads to this gray area where can be tension but yet to me, when you have that conversation, you're building a deeper relationship and connection to people. This is where I think, and this comes into a piece of leadership that I think is essential, a place of empathy, meaning, hey Sasha, I understand that you want to be able to go watch your son play soccer. That's important to you. That's important to me because it's important to you but I also need to know that sometimes when you're there, I can call you real quick because I need your expertise, I need your help, I need you in this situation and I won't do it and won't violate that unless it's absolutely necessary. But that only comes from a conversation and an understanding. To me that's real empathy. [DR. SASHA] I love that you've phrased it as empathetic because boundaries are empathetic and when you have conversations with people about when it's okay to have to cross that boundary or what constitutes crossing the boundary and what you want, you're basically saying to your team I care about your wellness. I care about your mental health, I care about your family, I care about your work life balance. I want us to be super productive when we're working, but I also want us to make sure that we're not going into anything because I want you to stay on my team. I want you to be here. So when you have those conversations, you are, every single time I've had these conversations with my team, I've gotten feedback. I've been nervous about it and I've always gotten feedback from them that says, we love when you're so clear about things like this. We love that you bring this up because we feel we can ask you. [TYLER] I imagine there's an amount of relief and what's going through my head and thinking about this is people say, oh, I don't want these regulations, the how it has to be. But then yet I think when we have too much like ambiguity, the gray area that we're hesitant and we're always overthinking, whereas if you could say, hey, here's the line. Here's black, white, however you want to say. There may be a spot for gray. It brings relief to both sides. [DR. SASHA] Yes, yes. For example, I work a lot on the weekends with my team because I am busy during the week at the hospital. So for my Brave Enough work, I work essentially weekends and I constantly am telling my team, I will literally put it in the first line in Slack. There's no expectation of you to answer this until Monday. I just put it out there because otherwise I don't, there's a power differential. There's me and there's true people that work for me and I don't want them to ever think, oh my gosh, it's Saturday and I have to answer her because she's asking me this question. So I say, I work in off hours. I do not expect you to work in off hours. If I need something from you, I will text you but otherwise it goes to email or Slack. There's no email emergencies. I mean there's really not, I work in emergencies that are actual real, there's just not email emergencies. If somebody really has to know something, they're going to call or text you. So I think that it's just the more clear and transparent we can be around work life boundaries, the more people want to work for us. They really do because they know like you care about their family life. You care about their mental health. You're a leader that actually has a view of it and you want them to care about yours. So I think this is hard in corporate America. I think it's really hard in medicine as well, but I think it's essential. I used to think that the lack of boundaries really inflated my ego. I would be like, well I'm not on call, but they're calling me because I'm the expert. That's a dangerous place to work and live and I don't think we realize how the lack of boundaries just feeds your ego, which is not healthy. I used to say, oh, I'll take this call even though I'm not on call because I'm the expert. Now I say, actually there's an expert on call. Is that person junior? Yes. Is that person maybe not have the 10-year tenure or whatever? Correct. But they're very capable of answering this question and I'm not going to let that feed into my like, oh, I have all the answers. You can call me anytime. So I think we have to really empower others too, and through our own boundaries. [TYLER] I think that last piece, the empowerment of others with our boundaries is a piece of leadership development and growth that is an attribute that comes with boundaries. Hey, I'm not available. You know what, Mary is what? Mary is very capable and I know she can handle this and you guys can figure it out. I think that that growth and leadership ability is essential to, again, having empathy and having your own boundaries, recognizing boundaries of others, having that boundary discussion of, hey, how do we operate? What are our collective business boundaries? You mentioned with Brave Enough, these are the boundaries that you guys have said, my expectation is you guys are working during the week. Unless I text you, it doesn't matter. I'm just doing this because this is my allotted timeframe for it. Don't feel like there's pressure, pressure otherwise. The piece that I want to tap into real quick though is how much did the last two years of a pandemic absolutely destroy and or blow up the boundaries within the medical field and the effect that that has had in the entire profession? [DR. SASHA] I don't think that we, well we know there's actually been studies coming out right now in medicine that has said that we don't know what this public health crisis has actually done to our overall health, like our overall lifespan, just the stress of the pandemic. The lack of boundaries in the medical field has led to like I think there were something crazy, like, I want to say like 6,000 physicians in the first year left medicine and then last year it like quadrupled. So we have nurses exiting medicine, we have physicians exiting medicine because there were no boundaries. I mean, there were just, and then again, if you had boundaries, there was this feeling of shame. You couldn't show up and be superhuman so I'm just going to quit because I can't be superhuman. It showed how we had literally like zero lines. There were no bright lines. The lines were gone. When you were at home, you were supposed to be available and people were working from home and they were working 16 hours a day. I mean, it was just, and has really, all hands-on deck. I think it showed me that it's not, you can't go on like that. You can do that maybe for a month or two, but you can't do that for a year. You can't do that for two years. I certainly couldn't. That's what led me to write this book. I mean, honestly as it's like I need a reset, I need guides for myself so I want to share this with others because I'm sure other people need a similar guide. [TYLER] I think that is to your point, I believe this, I believe we're seeing it is the virus in of itself that has a cost, a human health cost. But everything underneath the surface, if we think about the iceberg is much bigger. We're just figuring that stuff out. We've seen it over time but now the ramifications, I think that will continue to impact us the next couple years as we see people making decisions financially and lifestyle wise based upon what's happened the previous two years whether it's changing careers or where they choose to spend their money and spend their time. I believe, and I hope it creates a better establishment of boundaries, but I wonder if there's going to be a pendulum effect, meaning and I think that's where that discussion in between the two parties is important because it's like, well, I gave everything for two years and I absolutely just killed myself almost literally to a point now where it's like, I don't even care about you. You are, I don't, unless, it does not matter. That pendulum swing is not healthy for anyone either, [DR. SASHA] Right. Yes. I think one of the things that I've learned and matured as a leader is just setting up expectations from the very beginning with people, whether it's a patient or a friend or a family member or my team. I never regret setting clear expectations and having those conversations. I always regret that I didn't set a boundary. And many times, we don't recognize that it's just a boundary that we need to set with someone. We feel uncomfortable, we feel stress, we feel like, oh, we need to have a conversation, but we're not sure what it is. If you can put it in the context of a boundary, it makes your conversation so much easier, makes the stress, because then it takes it off the human being and just puts it on, this is the expectation, or this is the boundary we need to work on, or this is how this needs, I just want to make sure you understand my boundary here. It becomes less about the person and more about the boundary or the task or the need that needs to happen or that has potentially not happened. It just makes the conversation and the interaction so much less stressful, at least for me and that's what I love about the book is I really take you through like how to take a boundary inventory because most of us have areas of our life that we have really good boundaries and we don't need boundaries. Other areas of our life are hot mess and it's like the animals are roaming with no fences, and we oftentimes don't recognize that it's a boundary issue. [TYLER] There's one part there that I think having grace with boundaries that I think has got to be really important. Meaning if you share, we'll go back to the piece that you said about Tuesday night, getting a call from Tim and you take the call one time and he's going to call you again even though it's like, well, I'm off. But once you see that call, you text him back, say, "Hey Tim, is this emergency," and the opportunity for even if you've done that twice or three times and say, "Hey Tim, remember this is when I'm off," giving grace that people don't intentionally try to violate boundaries. It may not be their boundaries so they don't think about it rather than being offended because oh, they're constantly trying to violate my boundaries and I don't believe that's the case for most people. I think it's, they just don't remember in the moment or think about that. It's our opportunity to continue to reinforce those boundaries. [DR. SASHA] Yes, I love that. It's so important to give grace because like I said, all of us have boundaries are very individual and they're, a boundary for you may not be even a boundary for me or wouldn't bother me, but what we have to do is recognize that we are all humans that are busy doing our best and what someone else, an expectation that they have of their night, for example I have friends that don't have kids. Oftentimes, people think because they don't have kids, they can just do call them anytime, ask them to help anytime. They are always available. Well, they may be doing something that they have planned for like two weeks. That's really important for them. They may be showing up for something and I'm like it doesn't matter that they don't have kids. Respect their boundaries. They have just as important duties and tasks and things they're doing at night and the rest of us, we have to be respectful of that and just give grace to people and explain that over and over. I know I cross boundaries sometimes and people need to tell me like, Sash, is this an emergency because you're coming at me? Because I'm an Enneagram eight, so I come at people strong, like out of the dugout, like whenever. I may just be, yes, I may just have a question, but it may come across like intense. I've had people say to me like, you just came in this room really intense, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm like, oh, thank you. Thank you for correcting me here. It's not an emergency, it's not a big deal, actually. I just have a question and I can wait. It can wait. So we have to give grace to one another for sure. [TYLER] I love that. I love you sharing that and putting a bow in this conversation about boundaries is like, hey, allow that ebb and flow and allow that conversation in it. To me that's only, I think that's going to create a better work environment for everyone, which then creates a better home environment, which is a discussion that I've had a lot lately with different guests, is when we create that psychological safety, everyone's better off. I believe from this conversation that boundaries actually create psychological safety for everyone, every party involved. [DR. SASHA] Yes, yes. It's just, it's a work in progress and I love that, psychological safety because it, what it does is it allows you to show up authentically and that's what we want. We don't want people to have to worry about how they're being perceived or the perception of themselves. We want people just to show up in our life, in our work, in our families as themselves authentically and feel that they can be safe enough to do that. That's like the best thing we can give people. So I agree. It's such an important conversation to have and we just have to be brave. It takes courage. It takes courage to set boundaries. [TYLER] Sasha, thank you so much. I appreciate this conversation getting catch up with you and talk about this because it's one very important, but two, I think from a leadership perspective it can't be abdicated. It has to be involved and everyone has to be a part of it. Again, thank you so much. [DR. SASHA] Thank you. [TYLER] As Sasha went through the four questions, and I'll read them off real quick to you if you didn't have an opportunity to write them down, it's number one, when you're looking at and establishing, going through boundaries is what do I know to be true? We actually talked a little bit about that even more and how essential that is just for your own security in developing your, going through your insecurities. That's a big facet to me in becoming impact driven leader is identifying and owning your insecurities. A big piece of that, as I mentioned there as we're wrapping up, is how boundaries fit into that. It's asking the question, what do I know to be true? Number two, what is the boundary that's needed? Now, quite honestly, you might need help there. Maybe it's someone else offering you discussing, hey, this is what I know to be true. Seek advice, seek counsel in what boundaries could I put in place? What boundaries are available to me? Number three is who needs to hear it? I think that's so important is you can go through what do I know to be true? what boundary can I set in place? But if you never share it's like that never happened. It never exists. Then lastly, setting a time and a date to share the boundaries too. Walk through them. Now, I think that's an ever going one. We discussed that in a little bit is sharing with people your boundaries does more to build a relationship than it does to cut it off. I believe that I've seen that and I know as a leader that's important to help people with. I, again, thank you for being part of the audience, for subscribing to listen and to give people like Sasha a platform to really share what she's worked through in life, what she's taking her professional career. I know this, no matter who you are, where you are, there are facets what she shared today that you can absolutely apply to your life. I know that I have and I am, and I encourage you to do the same. Until next time, have a good one. Appreciate you being here.