Leaders Need Boundaries- What Five Days of Quiet Did for Me- Part One

**This is not a picture of me, yet is how I started each day, during my 5 days of solitude.

I recently came from an event where many of the leaders in our town gathered. It was good to see familiar faces, catch up after the holidays, and feel that collective exhale—most people looked rested.

What struck me most, though, was a common thread running through nearly every conversation I found myself in.

Boundaries.

Not because we were explicitly talking about them, but because each executive shared, in their own way, how they were being more intentional with their time and attention. One spoke about limiting when he turns his phone on. Another shared how he now accesses email on his own terms. One leader told us the best vacation of his life was the week he didn’t bring his work phone at all. He told his team he’d be gone, that any emails sent during that week would be deleted, and if something mattered, they could resend it when he returned.

As he talked, I watched his face soften. You could see the remembering. The relief. The intention to keep those boundaries intact.

When I shared, I mentioned that I had just spent five days completely on my own.

And I laughed as I said it, because I felt like a teenager. Sleeping in. Watching my favorite thriller shows. Working out when I wanted. Doing exactly what I wanted to do… which, surprisingly, was working on my second book proposal. Maybe not very teenage of me, but the feeling was real.

Those conversations stayed with me. Because what I realized is this: people are hungry for undistracted time to themselves, either by themselves or with those they care about. Deeply hungry for it. And yet, few of us ever truly permit ourselves to take it.

Kids or no kids, tech and work creep in fast. With access to email, social media, and everyone else’s needs 24/7…

… boundaries don’t just happen; we have to create them.

Those five days to myself reminded me how essential boundaries are. They gave me the vitamin I needed most: quiet. Quiet to do what I wanted to do, and what I had been wanting to do for a long time but didn’t have the mental bandwidth to finish- my 2nd book proposal.

Here’s what those five days revealed—and the hard I chose each day.

**A photo of our family together before they my husband and boys left.

Day One: My Choice of Being Alone

Day One started early. I helped the boys get ready, made breakfast, and watched them pull out of the driveway just after 7 a.m.

When the house went quiet, I sat there and thought, What have I done? I should just go with them.

This was the first ‘choose your hard’ moment.

I could distract myself, fill the silence, stay busy, and avoid the discomfort.
Or I could sit in it.

So I moved my body.

I journaled. I worked out. I listened to an audiobook and watched a sappy British Christmas movie.

I missed my family. I didn’t numb it. I didn’t rush past it. And I reminded myself (again) that this time is good for me. I need it.

That was the hard I chose: feeling all the feels instead of fleeing.

The rest of the day was slow and simple. Writing didn’t happen today, yet the planning for it did.

And just because I didn’t have anyone to cook for, I had two chomps for dinner and almost a whole bottle of wine. Not the dinner of champions, yet the dinner I chose that night. I knew the wine would mess with my sleep, yet because I didn’t have kids to wake me up before 6 am I was ok with that.

This choice of being alone was exactly what I wanted and needed.

**A photo of my gym. What you don’t see is that is it very cold.

Day Two: Owning My Time

I woke up at 8 a.m. not to an alarm or kids, just because my body was ready.

I journaled and laughed at my goals for the day:

Write.
Work out.

Eat great.

No times.
No urgency.
Just mine.

The hard today wasn’t discipline.
It was a restraint.

I didn’t jump straight into productivity to prove my worth. Instead, I thought about how I actually want my work weeks to function. I realized I don’t need more discipline, I need more space. With uninterrupted focus, I can finish my proposal in days that usually take weeks.

After movement and a shower, I set up my first real writing block to work on my book proposal. Clean desk. Phone off. Ninety minutes.

The familiar voice showed up:
Who’s going to read this?
You’re wasting your time.

The easy path would’ve been to stop.
The harder path was to keep going anyway.

Action, for me, is an act of not believing every thought that shows up.

That night, I went to a holiday party for 1 hour to congratulate our realtor’s son- who recently graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (woot woot). I grocery shopped at 8:30 p.m., wrote more, watched shows, read, and went to bed around 2 a.m.—no alcohol, no guilt. Just being on my own time.

I ended the day deeply grateful for quiet—and proud that I hadn’t given my time away.

I was hitting my stride.

**This picture is from the book, The Quiet Mind, Sayings of White Eagle.

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