Lessons from Times Square 3: How Successful Women Set Boundaries Without Guilt (NO More People Pleasing)

Executive Coaching for Corporate Leaders: The 5% Club

Shayla King explores the exhausting emotional labor women perform when constantly scanning rooms to manage others' comfort and reactions. Th

Key takeaways

• A boundary is valid even if the other person does not respect or understand it.
• Someone else's disappointment is not evidence that you have made a wrong choice.

Main topics

• Setting boundaries
• Overcoming people-pleasing

Notable quotes

A boundary does not require the other person's agreement to be valid.

Conclusion

The ultimate takeaway is to stop editing yourself to avoid others' rea

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome back to the 5 % Club. I'm Shayla King, the coach for Corporate America, and I help leaders improve their performance and their happiness. Today, we're talking about something women do all day long without even realizing it. Managing everyone else's comfort, reactions, and opinion of us. We're going to talk about why we overthink, why we over-explain, why we scan the room. Why we try so hard not to disappoint anyone. and how much lighter life gets when you stop. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel a little more unbothered. Let's get into it. Speaker 1 (0:50) I was standing in Target the other day in one of those ridiculously long checkout lines. It was back-to-school shopping. And there were moms everywhere with their kids in full carts, groceries, back-to-school supplies. You know the scene. And suddenly, they opened another register. And this guy walks over with one item. Pays, walks out, happy as a clam. And this woman behind me is furious. So I turned to her and I said, wait, what happened? Did I miss something? And she says, that guy, he just went over there. He didn't even look around at all these moms with full cards that have already been waiting in line and ask if any of them should go first. And I remember thinking, I doubt that man ran that calculation. I think he saw an open lane and thought, cool, my lucky day, a lane opened. Purchased it and went home without thinking anything else about it or about the other people around him. Meanwhile, the women in line are running an entire social algorithm. Who got here first? Who has more stuff? Would it be rude? Should I offer it to somebody else? Does somebody else need it more than me? Is everyone else okay? And I thought, my God, this is it. How much lighter would life feel if we stopped scanning every single room for who might need something from us? Sometimes the lane opens. You're allowed to take it. Here's the pattern, and I think a lot of women do this all day long without even realizing it. We monitor, we scan, we manage. And we are constantly checking. Is everyone okay? Did I upset someone? Did that sound rude? Am I being selfish? Do they understand why I made that choice? Does my husband agree? Does my friend think I'm weird? Does the contractor think I'm nice? Does the hairdresser think I don't like her? Did I text formally enough? Or did I forget that, like, checking on them before I just answered the question? Did I disappoint someone? Are they comfortable? Are they okay with me? And I think it's exhausting us. So today's lesson is simple. I got exhausted just reading that list, didn't you? Yeah, it's so much, but we're living it every single day. This is today's lesson, and it's so simple. You are allowed to be a little more unbothered. Not inconsiderate, not selfish, not oblivious, just less responsible for everybody else's emotional experience. All right, let's talk about the world's playbook. There are the obvious rules women are handed. Be nice, be helpful, be agreeable, be a good mom, a good wife, a good friend, a good daughter-in-law, right? But I think the more exhausting rules are the unwritten ones. She said don't bring anything, but should I bring something anyway? She said she's fine, but is she really fine or does she want me to follow up with her? Everyone is sitting together. Would it be rude if I sat somewhere else? He doesn't understand my decision. Should I change it? My mother-in-law is disappointed. Does that mean I should reconsider? I want to leave, but will everybody think I'm antisocial? Speaker 1 (4:22) I'm tired, but I should probably have fun, be fun. I don't feel like talking, but I don't want her to think I'm rude. We are constantly trying to decode what everybody else really wants, and then we're trying to make sure that we deliver it. That is a lot of invisible work. One of my clients had a moment recently that I thought was so powerful. Her mother-in-law got her tickets to the World Cup. Amazing, right? But she had a newborn baby. She had a brand new job. And her life was completely full. And in the past, she for sure would have gone. Would have driven the two hours to LA. Would have gone to the event. Would have got home at 2.30 in the morning and gone back to work the next day exhausted. Because someone had given her tickets. Because it was generous of her mother-in-law. Because saying no might hurt someone's feelings. Because you should be grateful. I mean, it's World Cup tickets. Because you don't want to disappoint your mother-in-law. But this time, she said no. And her husband was struggling because his mother did not understand. My client said, she doesn't have to understand it, honey. She just has to respect it. And he said, well, she doesn't respect it. And that's when she had the realization. She went back through our conversations and what boundaries really look like and how you get to choose yourself. And she said, you know what? She actually doesn't have to respect it either. She can disagree. She can think it's ridiculous. She can be disappointed. She