July 17, 2025 • 17 mins
Feeling lost when you're not at work? Wishing you had downtime but then struggling to fill it when you’re lucky enough to have a moment to yourself? You’re not alone.
In this episode of Rock Your Reinvention, we explore what happens when high-achieving women give their all to their corporate jobs—and suddenly face free time they don’t know how to fill.
Inspired by a recent coaching session, I share the surprisingly simple way to build a life outside of work. If you've ever wondered "Will I be bored if I leave my job?"—this episode is your guide to building a meaningful, multi-dimensional life.
Learn how to:
✅ Avoid the trap of a "one-note life"
✅ Use the 9-box exercise to diversify your fulfillment
✅ Build boundaries, be intentional & fully commit to where you spend your time
✅ Turn boredom into creativity, not burnout
Whether you're planning a corporate exit or already on the other side, this episode gives you the tools and structure to build a life you love. ❤️
You are more than your job. Start living like it—one box at a time.
🎧 Tune in now and reclaim your joy beyond the 9-to-5!
If you're looking for additional support through coaching, visit my website to learn more about working together and my signature program EDIT Your Life™: www.karinfreeland.com/life-coaching
Then book a call here!
Not ready for coaching? Get a copy of my self-help book: Grab Life by the Dreams!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karin Freeland (00:00):
Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help
high-achieving career women likeyou get unstuck, make your
corporate exit strategy, andsuccessfully transition to your
next chapter.
Hi, I'm your host, KarinFreeland, a certified life coach
and corporate exit strategist.
Whether you want to start abusiness, become a speaker, or
something else, I'm here to giveyou the tools and strategies to
(00:23):
shift your mindset, build yourconfidence, and take bold
actions so you can rock yourreinvention.
Ready?
Let's go.
Well, hello.
I'm so glad you're here today.
Today's episode was inspired byone of my clients who is
currently working on leaving hersix-figure job to make her side
(00:46):
hustle her main gig.
And in one of our sessions, sheexpressed some concern around
controlling her own schedule.
Not because she was worriedthat she was going to be lazy or
that she wasn't going to followthrough on the work, but
because she actually thoughtshe'd be bored.
(01:07):
Hear me out.
So I was curious where this wascoming from, and I asked her
some questions and discoveredthat she had some downtime
recently one afternoon, and shedidn't know anything.
what to do with herself.
And maybe you've had a similarexperience.
This is actually super commonfor women who are always on the
(01:30):
go, always focused on theircorporate job and don't always
have control over theirschedule.
The feeling of boredom or notknowing what to do with
ourselves is one side effect ofa demanding job because we lose
sight of ourselves and become soingrained with our work that we
don't know where else to findjoy or purpose in our life.
(01:54):
So I thought it would be goodfor me today to address this and
give you some guidance on howyou can create a more fulfilling
life outside of your nine tofive.
And so there is hope, right?
And I know that if one personis struggling with this, others
are going to be struggling withthis as well.
So let's start with theresearch and the facts for why
(02:18):
you may feel this in your life.
There's a great book that Ilove.
It's called Feel the Fear andDo it Anyway.
It's by Dr.
Susan Jeffers.
And she shares a case wheresomeone went through a divorce
and felt like they had losteverything.
And when Dr.
Jeffers looked at that person'slife, she could see why he felt
(02:40):
that way.
He'd made his partner,everything.
In another case, she sharedabout a guy who was laid off
from his public relationsexecutive role, and he
experienced the same devastationand emptiness.
So how is it that someone canhave similar experiences with a
(03:03):
divorce as in a layoff, right?
Because they're really twodifferent areas of your life.
But it's very simple when youboil it down to the underlying
factor, which is they have onenote life.
What does that mean?
It means they put all of theirworth, all of their identity,
and all of their focus on onemain thing in their life, and
(03:29):
that's it.
Right.
So in the case of the divorce,maybe it's the person who also
has the same friends, the samehobbies, the same everything as
their partner.
Right.
And the person at work who theydon't do anything outside of
work.
They don't have friends.
They don't have a spirituallife.
They don't have a goodrelationship because work
becomes number one and not justnumber one, but the only one.
(03:52):
And that's a recipe fordisaster because all of your
happiness and your fulfillmentis now wrapped up into that one
thing.
Now, here's a great analogy.
I hope you enjoy this as muchas I think it relates.
If you know anything aboutinvesting, you know you never
put all your money in one area,right?
(04:14):
Don't put all your eggs in onebasket.
You've heard this phrasebefore.
You diversify your portfolio.
Yet isn't that exactly what wedo with our big six-figure
careers?
We make it our whole life, ourwhole identity.
We're not diversified, andthat's a problem.
That's why so many people dieor fall ill shortly after
(04:39):
retirement, because they feellike their lives are over.
They have nothing else to livefor if they're not working.
How sad is that?
You work your whole life forwhat?
You never even get to enjoy thefruits of your labor.
And I don't want that to beyou.
So if you take one thing awayfrom this episode, I want it to
(05:00):
be this.
Start diversifying your life.
Now, how do we actually dothat?
Well, Dr.
Jeffers suggests that you mapout your full life.
Like what is that vision of awhole complete life for you?
And the way she visuallyrepresents this is a large box
(05:24):
with three rows of three boxes.
So think about it this way.
It might be a little bit hardto imagine.
And if you're somewhere whereyou can draw this out on a piece
of paper, I highly encourageyou to do that.
But basically, it's like atic-tac-toe board.
You've got three rows of boxes.
and three columns, right?
So you should have nine boxestotal.
(05:45):
And then you can draw one bigbox around the outside of it.
And then what you're gonna dois label each square inside the
box with the different elementsand areas of your life.
So for example, the first rowof boxes might have family in
the first one, alone time in themiddle, and personal growth in
(06:08):
the right-hand column.
Then in the next row of boxes,you might have work in one box,
relationship in the next box,and friends in the next box.
And then the third row could behobby in the first box,
leisure, and then contribution.
These are nine categories thatare going to help you lead a
(06:33):
more fulfilling and whole life.
Now, no one box...
is more important than anotherper se, right?
So I want you to cautionyourself from thoughts like, I
don't really need me time.
Or, oh, I don't really havetime for hobbies.
All of these are important ifyou want to have a full,
(06:55):
complete life.
Now, there may be things thatyou want to add or swap out in
your life.
For example, I would have a boxwith spirituality in it, right,
in my faith.
And I might rename leisure tomore fun and recreation because
I want to remind myself thatit's okay to have fun in life.
So it's not so much about whatyou call your boxes.
(07:17):
They don't have to be the labelthe same as mine or another one
of my clients or anotherclient, right?
They can all be slightlydifferent.
But they do all have to be fulland they do have to mean
something to you.
Now, imagine that you...
lost your job, or you decidedto make an empowered exit.
(07:40):
One of those boxes, the workbox may suddenly become empty
for a bit, but you have so muchgoing on in the rest of your
life that you're not reallygoing to miss it all that much,
right?
The sting of losing your job isnot going to be that hard.
We have to remember you aremore than your work.
(08:02):
Okay, let's say you're in abusy season of life and you've
got young kids and you'rebuilding a business, right?
So maybe right now you don'thave a lot of time for friends.
Okay, well, you're not gonnacompletely crumble because you
still have family and spouse andmaybe part of your contribution
box is volunteering so you getsome sense of community and
(08:23):
socialization there.
Now, I know you're alreadythinking, Karin, my job is so
busy.
I don't have time for friendsor hobbies or leisure, et
cetera, et cetera.
And I want to give you a littletough love alert here.
BS.
And I mean that with love.
You know that.
You're just not making time forit.
(08:45):
You have the same 24 hours aseveryone else, okay?
So you can come up with all theexcuses you want about why you
don't have time for this fulllife.
but you do, and I've helpedhundreds of women create full
lives that have all these boxes.
And so what I find is it comesdown to three things,
(09:07):
intentionality, boundaries, andcommitment.
Let me break this down for you.
Intentionality means that youare more intentional about your
time and energy.
You carve out space for each ofthese boxes throughout your
week, even in each individualday perhaps.
(09:30):
You know your priorities andyou do what you need to to
ensure that they are met.
So for me, this means puttingtime blocks on my calendar.
I have a block for working out,for going to mass, for spending
time with my kids, for seeingmy clients, for doing marketing
and working on my business.
All these things have to havetheir own space and I need to be
(09:53):
intentional about that.
Boundaries, you have to be ableto say no to the other boxes
when you're in that current boxand you need to be able to
communicate your boundariesclearly.
You also need to know when aboundary has been crossed so
that you can reinforce it andreestablish that boundary with
(10:16):
whoever has crossed it.
So I'll give you an example,right?
When I'm in my work box, I doneed to say no to my kids and I
need to set some boundaries.
They're teenagers, so they fullwell know, okay, if mom is at
her laptop, mom's told you she'sgoing in to record a podcast,
we're not coming in andbothering mom until she's done
and she opens her office doors.
(10:36):
And if the office doors areopen, they know that they can
approach me.
And so let's imagine that oneof my kids came in during my
work box when I was focused onon doing some work.
And he's one of my oldest rightnow is learning to drive.
So he might say, mom, come on,come on.
I want to go for a drive.
And I say, I know you want momto take you for a drive right
(10:58):
now, but I told you that I havea few things I need to finish
for work first.
As soon as I'm done, I wouldlove to put away my phones and
spend some quality time with youand go for a drive.
And if I know about how longit's going to take me, I'll say,
give me 20 minutes andhopefully I'm done in 15.
Always overestimate.
Always overestimate how longit's going to take me because
(11:19):
he'll be disappointed then.
But when I get done early,he'll be happy versus me saying,
oh, no, I need another fiveminutes.
Oh, no, another 10 minutes.
Right.
And then he gets they getcranky.
So but I'm in that box.
So I'm going to commit to it.
Right.
Fully.
100%.
I'm gonna be intentional aboutthat time and say, okay, these
are the things I'm gonna dowhile I'm in this box to make
the most of it.
(11:39):
And I'm gonna set thoseboundaries.
And then commitment, I like tothink of this kind of as like
playing full out and fullyparticipating and giving 100% to
each box when I'm in that box.
So if you have a girl's nightcoming up, you're gonna put away
the phone.
You're not gonna be looking atwork emails.
You're not gonna be looking attexts from the kids.
(12:00):
You're gonna go all in withyour friends and be 100%
present.
When you're at work, you're100% focused on work without the
guilt.
When you're with your spouse,you're 100% present with your
spouse.
And this kind of commitment iswhat's going to eliminate that
boredom because you're so fullyparticipating in the moment.
(12:21):
Even if you have alone time ordowntime, you can be 100%
committed to that relaxation.
And I want to share just acouple of quick client success
stories to bring this home.
You know, one of my clientsleft her big corporate job and
same thing was like, what am Igoing to do with all this time
(12:42):
on my hand?
And we started reflecting onsome of the hobbies and things
that she missed.
And she decided to pick up atennis racket.
She hadn't played in years, andit was something that she had
always enjoyed.
And now, not only is shegetting more exercise and taking
better care of her body, butshe can play with her spouse,
which has also created more timefor them together.
(13:02):
And you know, after being in abig corporate job, that
sometimes our relationships takea really big hit.
And so there's a lot of healingthat can happen there for her
as well.
Another one of my clientsstarted working out to reclaim
her energy post kids, right?
She knew she was done havingkids and also really felt like,
(13:22):
oh, my body's taken, this istaking a toll on my body.
And I just, I want to feel likeme again.
I want to feel good.
And so this gave her some greatalone time where she could
reflect on her goals and how shewanted to show up as a mom when
she was with her kids.
And I love this becausesometimes we can check off those
multiple boxes at a time,right?
We can get some alone timewhile we're also working on our
(13:46):
health.
And another one of my clientsadded volunteering to her life
and she found so much joyempowering women in her
community.
And it was just another avenuethat brought purpose and meaning
to her life outside of herwork.
Your challenge, should youchoose to accept it now, is to
(14:07):
write out your nine boxes for afull life.
And start being moreintentional about spending time
in each one of them.
You also need to start settingthose boundaries and make sure
that you're 100% present whenyou engage in each one of those
(14:28):
boxes.
And, you know, I talk somewhatabout boundaries.
all of these different piecesof this in my book, grab life by
the dreams, right?
There's a whole chapter onrekindling your hobbies.
There's a whole chapter ongetting spiritual.
There's a whole chapter onowning your power, which
includes this whole idea ofsetting boundaries.
(14:48):
So if you need a little morecontext or you want to DIY this,
I highly recommend picking up acopy of grab life by the
dreams.
Half the time it's on sale onAmazon.
So I bet you can get it forless than 20 bucks and it is
going to be a fantasticinvestment that's really going
to help you take everythingyou're hearing and learning here
and put it into practice andtake it to the next level.
(15:12):
I know if you're intentionalabout your time, you set those
boundaries and you really committo those boxes in your life,
you are going to find yourselfless and less bored in your
downtime.
And you know what?
I will say if all else failsand you do find yourself getting
(15:32):
bored, Good, embrace it becauseboredom can actually lead to
more creativity and productivitybecause your mind is bored
because it's lackingstimulation.
And so if it will find a way tocreate stimulation, if you sit
with that boredom long enough,But you have to do boredom
(15:53):
right.
And if you're sitting there andyou're scrolling away your life
and you're scrolling away yourboredom, that's not going to
help you because it's actuallygoing to make you more addicted
to your phone and more addictedto those dopamine hits.
And it's actually going toreduce your creativity.
So I guess if there was asecond thing you took away from
this episode, it's like put awayyour phone and create That is
(16:14):
killing everyone's life, Iswear.
There's gonna be so many GenXers who wake up one day and go,
oh my gosh, I scrolled away thesecond half of my life.
I don't want that to be youeither, okay?
So sit with your eyes closed,perform a mindless task like
cleaning out a closet or foldinglaundry and just see where your
boredom will take you becauseboredom is not always bad,
(16:36):
especially if you've got yournine boxes built out and you are
living that full, completelife.
And I would love to hear fromyou.
So if you have created a morefulfilling life outside of your
nine to five, email me yourstory.
You can reach me, Karin@karinfreeland.com.
Don't forget that's Karin withan I K A R I N.
(17:00):
I would love to hear yourstory.
Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help
high-achieving career women likeyou get unstuck, make your
corporate exit strategy, andsuccessfully transition to your
next chapter.
Hi, I'm your host, KarinFreeland, a certified life coach
and corporate exit strategist.
Whether you want to start abusiness, become a speaker, or
something else, I'm here to giveyou the tools and strategies to
(00:23):
shift your mindset, build yourconfidence, and take bold
actions so you can rock yourreinvention.
Ready?
Let's go.
Well, hello.
I'm so glad you're here today.
Today's episode was inspired byone of my clients who is
currently working on leaving hersix-figure job to make her side
(00:46):
hustle her main gig.
And in one of our sessions, sheexpressed some concern around
controlling her own schedule.
Not because she was worriedthat she was going to be lazy or
that she wasn't going to followthrough on the work, but
because she actually thoughtshe'd be bored.
(01:07):
Hear me out.
So I was curious where this wascoming from, and I asked her
some questions and discoveredthat she had some downtime
recently one afternoon, and shedidn't know anything.
what to do with herself.
And maybe you've had a similarexperience.
This is actually super commonfor women who are always on the
(01:30):
go, always focused on theircorporate job and don't always
have control over theirschedule.
The feeling of boredom or notknowing what to do with
ourselves is one side effect ofa demanding job because we lose
sight of ourselves and become soingrained with our work that we
don't know where else to findjoy or purpose in our life.
(01:54):
So I thought it would be goodfor me today to address this and
give you some guidance on howyou can create a more fulfilling
life outside of your nine tofive.
And so there is hope, right?
And I know that if one personis struggling with this, others
are going to be struggling withthis as well.
So let's start with theresearch and the facts for why
(02:18):
you may feel this in your life.
There's a great book that Ilove.
It's called Feel the Fear andDo it Anyway.
It's by Dr.
Susan Jeffers.
And she shares a case wheresomeone went through a divorce
and felt like they had losteverything.
And when Dr.
Jeffers looked at that person'slife, she could see why he felt
(02:40):
that way.
He'd made his partner,everything.
In another case, she sharedabout a guy who was laid off
from his public relationsexecutive role, and he
experienced the same devastationand emptiness.
So how is it that someone canhave similar experiences with a
(03:03):
divorce as in a layoff, right?
Because they're really twodifferent areas of your life.
But it's very simple when youboil it down to the underlying
factor, which is they have onenote life.
What does that mean?
It means they put all of theirworth, all of their identity,
and all of their focus on onemain thing in their life, and
(03:29):
that's it.
Right.
So in the case of the divorce,maybe it's the person who also
has the same friends, the samehobbies, the same everything as
their partner.
Right.
And the person at work who theydon't do anything outside of
work.
They don't have friends.
They don't have a spirituallife.
They don't have a goodrelationship because work
becomes number one and not justnumber one, but the only one.
(03:52):
And that's a recipe fordisaster because all of your
happiness and your fulfillmentis now wrapped up into that one
thing.
Now, here's a great analogy.
I hope you enjoy this as muchas I think it relates.
If you know anything aboutinvesting, you know you never
put all your money in one area,right?
(04:14):
Don't put all your eggs in onebasket.
You've heard this phrasebefore.
You diversify your portfolio.
Yet isn't that exactly what wedo with our big six-figure
careers?
We make it our whole life, ourwhole identity.
We're not diversified, andthat's a problem.
That's why so many people dieor fall ill shortly after
(04:39):
retirement, because they feellike their lives are over.
They have nothing else to livefor if they're not working.
How sad is that?
You work your whole life forwhat?
You never even get to enjoy thefruits of your labor.
And I don't want that to beyou.
So if you take one thing awayfrom this episode, I want it to
(05:00):
be this.
Start diversifying your life.
Now, how do we actually dothat?
Well, Dr.
Jeffers suggests that you mapout your full life.
Like what is that vision of awhole complete life for you?
And the way she visuallyrepresents this is a large box
(05:24):
with three rows of three boxes.
So think about it this way.
It might be a little bit hardto imagine.
And if you're somewhere whereyou can draw this out on a piece
of paper, I highly encourageyou to do that.
But basically, it's like atic-tac-toe board.
You've got three rows of boxes.
and three columns, right?
So you should have nine boxestotal.
(05:45):
And then you can draw one bigbox around the outside of it.
And then what you're gonna dois label each square inside the
box with the different elementsand areas of your life.
So for example, the first rowof boxes might have family in
the first one, alone time in themiddle, and personal growth in
(06:08):
the right-hand column.
Then in the next row of boxes,you might have work in one box,
relationship in the next box,and friends in the next box.
And then the third row could behobby in the first box,
leisure, and then contribution.
These are nine categories thatare going to help you lead a
(06:33):
more fulfilling and whole life.
Now, no one box...
is more important than anotherper se, right?
So I want you to cautionyourself from thoughts like, I
don't really need me time.
Or, oh, I don't really havetime for hobbies.
All of these are important ifyou want to have a full,
(06:55):
complete life.
Now, there may be things thatyou want to add or swap out in
your life.
For example, I would have a boxwith spirituality in it, right,
in my faith.
And I might rename leisure tomore fun and recreation because
I want to remind myself thatit's okay to have fun in life.
So it's not so much about whatyou call your boxes.
(07:17):
They don't have to be the labelthe same as mine or another one
of my clients or anotherclient, right?
They can all be slightlydifferent.
But they do all have to be fulland they do have to mean
something to you.
Now, imagine that you...
lost your job, or you decidedto make an empowered exit.
(07:40):
One of those boxes, the workbox may suddenly become empty
for a bit, but you have so muchgoing on in the rest of your
life that you're not reallygoing to miss it all that much,
right?
The sting of losing your job isnot going to be that hard.
We have to remember you aremore than your work.
(08:02):
Okay, let's say you're in abusy season of life and you've
got young kids and you'rebuilding a business, right?
So maybe right now you don'thave a lot of time for friends.
Okay, well, you're not gonnacompletely crumble because you
still have family and spouse andmaybe part of your contribution
box is volunteering so you getsome sense of community and
(08:23):
socialization there.
Now, I know you're alreadythinking, Karin, my job is so
busy.
I don't have time for friendsor hobbies or leisure, et
cetera, et cetera.
And I want to give you a littletough love alert here.
BS.
And I mean that with love.
You know that.
You're just not making time forit.
(08:45):
You have the same 24 hours aseveryone else, okay?
So you can come up with all theexcuses you want about why you
don't have time for this fulllife.
but you do, and I've helpedhundreds of women create full
lives that have all these boxes.
And so what I find is it comesdown to three things,
(09:07):
intentionality, boundaries, andcommitment.
Let me break this down for you.
Intentionality means that youare more intentional about your
time and energy.
You carve out space for each ofthese boxes throughout your
week, even in each individualday perhaps.
(09:30):
You know your priorities andyou do what you need to to
ensure that they are met.
So for me, this means puttingtime blocks on my calendar.
I have a block for working out,for going to mass, for spending
time with my kids, for seeingmy clients, for doing marketing
and working on my business.
All these things have to havetheir own space and I need to be
(09:53):
intentional about that.
Boundaries, you have to be ableto say no to the other boxes
when you're in that current boxand you need to be able to
communicate your boundariesclearly.
You also need to know when aboundary has been crossed so
that you can reinforce it andreestablish that boundary with
(10:16):
whoever has crossed it.
So I'll give you an example,right?
When I'm in my work box, I doneed to say no to my kids and I
need to set some boundaries.
They're teenagers, so they fullwell know, okay, if mom is at
her laptop, mom's told you she'sgoing in to record a podcast,
we're not coming in andbothering mom until she's done
and she opens her office doors.
(10:36):
And if the office doors areopen, they know that they can
approach me.
And so let's imagine that oneof my kids came in during my
work box when I was focused onon doing some work.
And he's one of my oldest rightnow is learning to drive.
So he might say, mom, come on,come on.
I want to go for a drive.
And I say, I know you want momto take you for a drive right
(10:58):
now, but I told you that I havea few things I need to finish
for work first.
As soon as I'm done, I wouldlove to put away my phones and
spend some quality time with youand go for a drive.
And if I know about how longit's going to take me, I'll say,
give me 20 minutes andhopefully I'm done in 15.
Always overestimate.
Always overestimate how longit's going to take me because
(11:19):
he'll be disappointed then.
But when I get done early,he'll be happy versus me saying,
oh, no, I need another fiveminutes.
Oh, no, another 10 minutes.
Right.
And then he gets they getcranky.
So but I'm in that box.
So I'm going to commit to it.
Right.
Fully.
100%.
I'm gonna be intentional aboutthat time and say, okay, these
are the things I'm gonna dowhile I'm in this box to make
the most of it.
(11:39):
And I'm gonna set thoseboundaries.
And then commitment, I like tothink of this kind of as like
playing full out and fullyparticipating and giving 100% to
each box when I'm in that box.
So if you have a girl's nightcoming up, you're gonna put away
the phone.
You're not gonna be looking atwork emails.
You're not gonna be looking attexts from the kids.
(12:00):
You're gonna go all in withyour friends and be 100%
present.
When you're at work, you're100% focused on work without the
guilt.
When you're with your spouse,you're 100% present with your
spouse.
And this kind of commitment iswhat's going to eliminate that
boredom because you're so fullyparticipating in the moment.
(12:21):
Even if you have alone time ordowntime, you can be 100%
committed to that relaxation.
And I want to share just acouple of quick client success
stories to bring this home.
You know, one of my clientsleft her big corporate job and
same thing was like, what am Igoing to do with all this time
(12:42):
on my hand?
And we started reflecting onsome of the hobbies and things
that she missed.
And she decided to pick up atennis racket.
She hadn't played in years, andit was something that she had
always enjoyed.
And now, not only is shegetting more exercise and taking
better care of her body, butshe can play with her spouse,
which has also created more timefor them together.
(13:02):
And you know, after being in abig corporate job, that
sometimes our relationships takea really big hit.
And so there's a lot of healingthat can happen there for her
as well.
Another one of my clientsstarted working out to reclaim
her energy post kids, right?
She knew she was done havingkids and also really felt like,
(13:22):
oh, my body's taken, this istaking a toll on my body.
And I just, I want to feel likeme again.
I want to feel good.
And so this gave her some greatalone time where she could
reflect on her goals and how shewanted to show up as a mom when
she was with her kids.
And I love this becausesometimes we can check off those
multiple boxes at a time,right?
We can get some alone timewhile we're also working on our
(13:46):
health.
And another one of my clientsadded volunteering to her life
and she found so much joyempowering women in her
community.
And it was just another avenuethat brought purpose and meaning
to her life outside of herwork.
Your challenge, should youchoose to accept it now, is to
(14:07):
write out your nine boxes for afull life.
And start being moreintentional about spending time
in each one of them.
You also need to start settingthose boundaries and make sure
that you're 100% present whenyou engage in each one of those
(14:28):
boxes.
And, you know, I talk somewhatabout boundaries.
all of these different piecesof this in my book, grab life by
the dreams, right?
There's a whole chapter onrekindling your hobbies.
There's a whole chapter ongetting spiritual.
There's a whole chapter onowning your power, which
includes this whole idea ofsetting boundaries.
(14:48):
So if you need a little morecontext or you want to DIY this,
I highly recommend picking up acopy of grab life by the
dreams.
Half the time it's on sale onAmazon.
So I bet you can get it forless than 20 bucks and it is
going to be a fantasticinvestment that's really going
to help you take everythingyou're hearing and learning here
and put it into practice andtake it to the next level.
(15:12):
I know if you're intentionalabout your time, you set those
boundaries and you really committo those boxes in your life,
you are going to find yourselfless and less bored in your
downtime.
And you know what?
I will say if all else failsand you do find yourself getting
(15:32):
bored, Good, embrace it becauseboredom can actually lead to
more creativity and productivitybecause your mind is bored
because it's lackingstimulation.
And so if it will find a way tocreate stimulation, if you sit
with that boredom long enough,But you have to do boredom
(15:53):
right.
And if you're sitting there andyou're scrolling away your life
and you're scrolling away yourboredom, that's not going to
help you because it's actuallygoing to make you more addicted
to your phone and more addictedto those dopamine hits.
And it's actually going toreduce your creativity.
So I guess if there was asecond thing you took away from
this episode, it's like put awayyour phone and create That is
(16:14):
killing everyone's life, Iswear.
There's gonna be so many GenXers who wake up one day and go,
oh my gosh, I scrolled away thesecond half of my life.
I don't want that to be youeither, okay?
So sit with your eyes closed,perform a mindless task like
cleaning out a closet or foldinglaundry and just see where your
boredom will take you becauseboredom is not always bad,
(16:36):
especially if you've got yournine boxes built out and you are
living that full, completelife.
And I would love to hear fromyou.
So if you have created a morefulfilling life outside of your
nine to five, email me yourstory.
You can reach me, Karin@karinfreeland.com.
Don't forget that's Karin withan I K A R I N.
(17:00):
I would love to hear yourstory.
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