I just love self aware people. On a coaching call recently, worried about burnout, a client of mine said this: “I’m good at setting boundaries but not good at keeping them.” I immediately circled that sentence in my notes.

Now, this is a woman who absolutely does not lack discipline or priorities. She works a super intense job, easily 60-hours a week. She has a baby and pumps breastmilk three times a day when she’s away from home. She is, all around, such a pro in all of the ways. So, why is it so hard for her to keep the boundaries she’s set, I wondered, as she talked and gave me examples that I cannot share here (because one of my boundaries is confidentiality). Three minutes later, also circled in my notes, she told me the answer: “I am such a people pleaser.”

Insert hands-exploding-gesture over my head – POW – because I knew immediately that this was a column I had to share with you.

My goal in that call was not to change my coachee’s personality or to add one more self-help task to her list of to-dos. Instead, I took a different approach – one of grace, permission, and self preservation. Here’s what I told her (and, okay, also told myself), and I hope it can help you, too.

First, no shame, it’s okay that you’re like this. Intellectually, of course, we all know that we need boundaries. But, as women, as moms, we also need to project more ambition than ever to succeed. (Pay gap! Implicit bias! Motherhood penalty! Underrepresentation!) It’s no wonder we are all conditioned to over-deliver and to under-boundary ourselves.

And in theory, of course, we also know that we cannot please all people all the time. But man if we weren’t taught to try! And feeling liked feels good, especially when your work/life balance sucks. At least I work with great people who really appreciate me, we tell ourselves in a fit of confirmation bias. You are not broken for being like this. It’s human.

It may be helpful to hear that, at baseline, you are already more liked than you think. Have you heard of the “Liking Gap?” It’s a psychological phenomenon that shows that most people underestimate how much other people like them. Put another way: You’ve got more likeability leeway than you realize. Set boundaries accordingly! And, I challenge you to ask yourself: Is there something about me that’s even better than just being likable? Certainly yes.

Next, one helpful reframe for eldest-daughter-overachiever types (hi, friends! hugs!) is to think of boundaries as being in service of your work, not just of yourself or your family. You’ll do better work – higher quality now and more sustainable long term – if you invest in boundaries.

Let’s say you planned in advance to take Friday off from work for your 10th anniversary, but Thursday night your Slack explodes and you have to remind everyone that, actually, you will not be online the next day. Choose your own adventure here. You could either:

• Be off-and-on available on Slack and email throughout your anniversary plans, doing passable but B-minus-level work, misreading something, replying to something else out of order, all the while feeling guilty, replaying your wedding vows in your head, and watching your husband do Wordle, Connections, and the Spelling Bee. For the next year, every time you two fight about priorities, income, who’s doing bedtime, and the cost of child care, you both think back to this day, and it becomes such a recurring sticking point that now whenever you have to lean into work, you question whether this job is sustainable at all.

Or, alternatively:

• Remind everyone that you’re off, and then trust the people you prepped to cover for you. The biggest fight you have with your husband on your anniversary is about whether bloody Mary’s or mimosas are better for day drinking. And you show up for work on Monday feeling like a person who has a life that works.

(The correct answer – because I know you like having the correct answer – is B.)

In last month’s column, I shared the deceptively simple and effective communication strategy of, “just say that,” where you preface a hard ask with your vulnerable feelings about asking. When you use this strategy in a conversation about setting a boundary, it immediately diffuses the power dynamic to let the other person feel helpful instead of burdened. Do not be afraid to say, “I care a lot about this work and have a hard time sticking to boundaries. I’d love your help working on that and your feedback. Here’s what I’m proposing…”

Remember, also, these three things:

1. Setting a boundary doesn’t make you undependable. Just the opposite! A visible, predictable boundary communicates responsibility and reliability. And confidence. All extremely likable qualities, by the way.
2. Boundaries aren’t brick walls. They’re painted lines. Of course, there will be times when you’ll have to break your own rules, and cross that line, and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed yourself. Having a boundary lets you have a set-point to return to when things calm down. It keeps today’s crazy from becoming tomorrow’s new normal.
3. Some of the best boundaries are systems. I have another client who often has to work at home on nights and weekends in order to hit her required hours. No amount of boundary setting is going to change that reality in her industry. But rather than making a daily agonizing decision of am-I-or-aren’t-I working tonight, I suggested that she set specific evenings (Tuesdays and Thursdays) when she and her family know she’ll work a couple of hours after dinner. It’s a predictable, plan-aroundable system, and on any Tues./Thurs. nights when she doesn’t have to use it, it’s a gift.

And if all else fails, lean on Mother Nature for help. Your body has biological needs: food, sleep, sunshine, movement, love. Try pairing some of your harder-to-keep boundaries with those needs for extra motivation. No phone at dinner. No red eye flights on work trips. An actual bedtime. If you tend to answer emails on the Peloton (guilty – sorry, Ally, Cody, and Emma), maybe swimming at the local Y for exercise would serve you better. The key is to make your body unavailable to your work so your brain can’t insist.

I learned that trick by doing baby and toddler bathtime, which I loved in spite of the mess and the slippery little bodies, and the mildew in the squeezy duck, and even the phase where my kid was terrified of going down the drain. I realized recently that’s because bathtime took all of me, with no distractions. It physically required a boundary from anything else in that moment. Just me, my kids, and a millionty billionty bubbles. And that made me likable to the most important person of all, myself.