Beyond the 9-to-5: How to Create a Fulfilling Life (#92)

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!

Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:00

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. Well, hello. I'm so glad you're here today. Today's episode was inspired by one of my clients who is currently working on leaving her six-figure job to make her side hustle her main gig. And in one of our sessions, she expressed some concern around controlling her own schedule. Not because she was worried that she was going to be lazy or that she wasn't going to follow through on the work, but because she actually thought she'd be bored. Hear me out. So I was curious where this was coming from, and I asked her some questions and discovered that she had some downtime recently one afternoon, and she didn't know anything. what to do with herself. And maybe you've had a similar experience. This is actually super common for women who are always on the go, always focused on their corporate job and don't always have control over their schedule. The feeling of boredom or not knowing what to do with ourselves is one side effect of a demanding job because we lose sight of ourselves and become so ingrained with our work that we don't know where else to find joy or purpose in our life. So I thought it would be good for me today to address this and give you some guidance on how you can create a more fulfilling life outside of your nine to five. And so there is hope, right? And I know that if one person is struggling with this, others are going to be struggling with this as well. So let's start with the research and the facts for why you may feel this in your life. There's a great book that I love. It's called Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. It's by Dr. Susan Jeffers. And she shares a case where someone went through a divorce and felt like they had lost everything. And when Dr. Jeffers looked at that person's life, she could see why he felt that way. He'd made his partner, everything. In another case, she shared about a guy who was laid off from his public relations executive role, and he experienced the same devastation and emptiness. So how is it that someone can have similar experiences with a divorce as in a layoff, right? Because they're really two different areas of your life. But it's very simple when you boil it down to the underlying factor, which is they have one note life. What does that mean? It means they put all of their worth, all of their identity, and all of their focus on one main thing in their life, and that's it. Right. So in the case of the divorce, maybe it's the person who also has the same friends, the same hobbies, the same everything as their partner. Right. And the person at work who they don't do anything outside of work. They don't have friends. They don't have a spiritual life. They don't have a good relationship because work becomes number one and not just number one, but the only one. And that's a recipe for disaster because all of your happiness and your fulfillment is now wrapped up into that one thing. Now, here's a great analogy. I hope you enjoy this as much as I think it relates. If you know anything about investing, you know you never put all your money in one area, right? Don't put all your eggs in one basket. You've heard this phrase before. You diversify your portfolio. Yet isn't that exactly what we do with our big six-figure careers? We make it our whole life, our whole identity. We're not diversified, and that's a problem. That's why so many people die or fall ill shortly after retirement, because they feel like their lives are over. They have nothing else to live for if they're not working. How sad is that? You work your whole life for what? You never even get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. And I don't want that to be you. So if you take one thing away from this episode, I want it to be this. Start diversifying your life. Now, how do we actually do that? Well, Dr. Jeffers suggests that you map out your full life. Like what is that vision of a whole complete life for you? And the way she visually represents this is a large box with three rows of three boxes. So think about it this way. It might be a little bit hard to imagine. And if you're somewhere where you can draw this out on a piece of paper, I highly encourage you to do that. But basically, it's like a tic-tac-toe board. You've got three rows of boxes. and three columns, right? So you should have nine boxes total. And then you can draw one big box around the outside of it. And then what you're gonna do is label each square inside the box with the different elements and areas of your life. So for example, the first row of boxes might have family in the first one, alone time in the middle, and personal growth in 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 be hobby in the first box, leisure, and then contribution. These are nine categories that are going to help you lead a more fulfilling and whole life. Now, no one box... is more important than another per se, right? So I want you to caution yourself from thoughts like, I don't really need me time. Or, oh, I don't really have time for hobbies. All of these are important if you want to have a full, complete life. Now, there may be things that you want to add or swap out in your life. For example, I would have a box with spirituality in it, right, in my faith. And I might rename leisure to more fun and recreation because I want to remind myself that it's okay to have fun in life. So it's not so much about what you call your boxes. They don't have to be the label the same as mine or another one of my clients or another client, right? They can all be slightly different. But they do all have to be full and they do have to mean something to you. Now, imagine that you... lost your job, or you decided to make an empowered exit. One of those boxes, the work box may suddenly become empty for a bit, but you have so much going on in the rest of your life that you're not really going to miss it all that much, right? The sting of losing your job is not going to be that hard. We have to remember you are more than your work. Okay, let's say you're in a busy season of life and you've got young kids and you're building a business, right? So maybe right now you don't have a lot of time for friends. Okay, well, you're not gonna completely crumble because you still have family and spouse and maybe part of your contribution box is volunteering so you get some sense of community and socialization there. Now, I know you're already thinking, Karin, my job is so busy. I don't have time for friends or hobbies or leisure, et cetera, et cetera. And I want to give you a little tough love alert here. BS. And I mean that with love. You know that. You're just not making time for it. You have the same 24 hours as everyone else, okay? So you can come up with all the excuses you want about why you don't have time for this full life. but you do, and I've helped hundreds of women create full lives that have all these boxes. And so what I find is it comes down to three things, intentionality, boundaries, and commitment. Let me break this down for you. Intentionality means that you are more intentional about your time and energy. You carve out space for each of these boxes throughout your week, even in each individual day perhaps. You know your priorities and you do what you need to to ensure that they are met. So for me, this means putting time blocks on my calendar. I have a block for working out, for going to mass, for spending time with my kids, for seeing my clients, for doing marketing and working on my business. All these things have to have their own space and I need to be intentional about that. Boundaries, you have to be able to say no to the other boxes when you're in that current box and you need to be able to communicate your boundaries clearly. You also need to know when a boundary has been crossed so that you can reinforce it and reestablish that boundary with whoever has crossed it. So I'll give you an example, right? When I'm in my work box, I do need to say no to my kids and I need to set some boundaries. They're teenagers, so they full well know, okay, if mom is at her laptop, mom's told you she's going in to record a podcast, we're not coming in and bothering mom until she's done and she opens her office doors. And if the office doors are open, they know that they can approach me. And so let's imagine that one of my kids came in during my work box when I was focused on on doing some work. And he's one of my oldest right now 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 mom to take you for a drive right now, but I told you that I have a few things I need to finish for work first. As soon as I'm done, I would love to put away my phones and spend some quality time with you and go for a drive. And if I know about how long it's going to take me, I'll say, give me 20 minutes and hopefully I'm done in 15. Always overestimate. Always overestimate how long it's going to take me because he'll be disappointed then. But when I get done early, he'll be happy versus me saying, oh, no, I need another five minutes. Oh, no, another 10 minutes. Right. And then he gets they get cranky. So but I'm in that box. So I'm going to commit to it. Right. Fully. 100%. I'm gonna be intentional about that time and say, okay, these are the things I'm gonna do while I'm in this box to make the most of it. And I'm gonna set those boundaries. And then commitment, I like to think of this kind of as like playing full out and fully participating and giving 100% to each box when I'm in that box. So if you have a girl's night coming up, you're gonna put away the phone. You're not gonna be looking at work emails. You're not gonna be looking at texts from the kids. You're gonna go all in with your friends and be 100% present. When you're at work, you're 100% focused on work without the guilt. When you're with your spouse, you're 100% present with your spouse. And this kind of commitment is what's going to eliminate that boredom because you're so fully participating in the moment. Even if you have alone time or downtime, you can be 100% committed to that relaxation. And I want to share just a couple of quick client success stories to bring this home. You know, one of my clients left her big corporate job and same thing was like, what am I going to do with all this time on my hand? And we started reflecting on some of the hobbies and things that she missed. And she decided to pick up a tennis racket. She hadn't played in years, and it was something that she had always enjoyed. And now, not only is she getting more exercise and taking better care of her body, but she can play with her spouse, which has also created more time for them together. And you know, after being in a big corporate job, that sometimes our relationships take a really big hit. And so there's a lot of healing that can happen there for her as well. Another one of my clients started working out to reclaim her energy post kids, right? She knew she was done having kids and also really felt like, oh, my body's taken, this is taking a toll on my body. And I just, I want to feel like me again. I want to feel good. And so this gave her some great alone time where she could reflect on her goals and how she wanted to show up as a mom when she was with her kids. And I love this because sometimes we can check off those multiple boxes at a time, right? We can get some alone time while we're also working on our health. And another one of my clients added volunteering to her life and she found so much joy empowering women in her community. And it was just another avenue that brought purpose and meaning to her life outside of her work. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it now, is to write out your nine boxes for a full life. And start being more intentional about spending time in each one of them. You also need to start setting those boundaries and make sure that you're 100% present when you engage in each one of those boxes. And, you know, I talk somewhat about boundaries. all of these different pieces of this in my book, grab life by the dreams, right? There's a whole chapter on rekindling your hobbies. There's a whole chapter on getting spiritual. There's a whole chapter on owning your power, which includes this whole idea of setting boundaries. So if you need a little more context or you want to DIY this, I highly recommend picking up a copy of grab life by the dreams. Half the time it's on sale on Amazon. So I bet you can get it for less than 20 bucks and it is going to be a fantastic investment that's really going to help you take everything you're hearing and learning here and put it into practice and take it to the next level. I know if you're intentional about your time, you set those boundaries and you really commit to those boxes in your life, you are going to find yourself less and less bored in your downtime. And you know what? I will say if all else fails and you do find yourself getting bored, Good, embrace it because boredom can actually lead to more creativity and productivity because your mind is bored because it's lacking stimulation. And so if it will find a way to create stimulation, if you sit with that boredom long enough, But you have to do boredom right. And if you're sitting there and you're scrolling away your life and you're scrolling away your boredom, that's not going to help you because it's actually going to make you more addicted to your phone and more addicted to those dopamine hits. And it's actually going to reduce your creativity. So I guess if there was a second thing you took away from this episode, it's like put away your phone and create That is killing everyone's life, I swear. There's gonna be so many Gen Xers who wake up one day and go, oh my gosh, I scrolled away the second half of my life. I don't want that to be you either, okay? So sit with your eyes closed, perform a mindless task like cleaning out a closet or folding laundry and just see where your boredom will take you because boredom is not always bad, especially if you've got your nine boxes built out and you are living that full, complete life. And I would love to hear from you. So if you have created a more fulfilling life outside of your nine to five, email me your story. You can reach me, Karin@karin freeland.com. Don't forget that's Karin with an I K A R I N. I would love to hear your story.