What's Keeping You On-Call All The Time

There's nothing quite like a sense of urgency that keeps you on high alert to client and customer needs 24/7 is there? What even fuels the ‘need’ to respond immediately? Why do you feel the pull to keep refreshing the inbox and opening up the texts?

Make it stoppppppp. Being on-call all the time leads to burnout. It also can lead towards bitterness and frustration towards your family, friends, clients and network. Nothing like me trying to respond to a client while I cook dinner while my kids need me to help them with something. Someone is getting the raw end of the deal in that situation!

Why is it that we feel the need to respond immediately?

Here's 5 beliefs that may be keeping you from healthy on-call boundaries :

Want to know what drives me to stay on-call? It's the belief that I'm going to get behind and not be able to catch up. And guess what…I DO end up falling behind sometimes, but I AM able to catch back up. Most of the time I “catch back up” by gaining perspective on what really needs to be done. It's a win-win. I hold the boundaries and in return, I end up actually doing only the things that are important.

My coach reminds me that we all do things to either avoid pain or gain pleasure. My desire to remain ‘on-call’ is me trying to avoid pain, but the irony is that I'm actually creating more pain in my life. I end up exhausted and honestly a little frustrated. I can have a bitter attitude towards clients because I feel like they're ‘needy’…when in fact IT'S ME always responding to them that's creating that feeling. It has nothing to do with their requests - I own my behaviors and my response.

So - how are you going to attack the belief that is keeping you on-call all the time? Perhaps, explore what it's costing you mentally by being on-call all the time. Or maybe your best next step is to go down the trail of seeing what would happen if your belief came true. What if you DID get behind? What if your potential client DID go elsewhere? See what comes of this exercise. I promise, doing the hard work will yield results.

Cheering for you & tossing all the confetti,

Alicia