It’s how we talk about our values that makes the difference.
Cameron and Jesse work down the hall from each other. Back from the long weekend, they cross paths near the coffee machine. Cameron reaches for a mug while Jesse stirs cream into theirs.
“How was the long weekend?”
“Good. Easy.” Jesse’s already smiling at the memory. “We did the whole thing on the deck this year with the neighbors. Burgers, cornhole, the kids running around with sparklers until it got dark, one minor sparkler incident successfully contained. Watched fireworks from the backyard. The best part though, it was the first Fourth in a while where I didn’t check my phone once.”
“That’s nice.” Cameron says it and means it, but there’s a half-beat delay before it registers. “We were at the lake. It was good too.”
“Yeah? What’d you guys do?”
“Swam. Grilled.” A pause. “The fireworks I mostly missed. Honestly, I was on my phone drafting a chunk of the AI Adoption Readiness report while everyone else watched them. My family said they were something else.”
Jesse doesn’t say anything for a second. Just nods. “I used to do that. For years.”
Jesse tops off their coffee and heads back toward their desk, the conversation already moving on to whatever the day has waiting. Cameron stays by the coffee machine a beat longer than it takes to notice why.
Where Did You Recognize Yourself
Did you recognize yourself in Cameron, reaching for the phone in the one moment nobody was reaching for them? Or in Jesse, present enough to remember the fireworks instead of the report?
A Glassdoor Community poll found that only 44% of workers consider themselves good at staying offline during time off. Which leaves more than half who don’t. The gap isn’t discipline. It’s values.
The line matters less than noticing when one crosses into the other, work showing up in family time, or family pulling at your attention during work, and the friction that comes with it.
Here’s the part that’s easy to miss. On that lake, nobody texted Cameron asking for the report. No boss called. The boundary that mattered that day wasn’t with anyone else. It was the one Cameron needed to set with themself and didn’t. When your values are clear, the boundary is clearer too. When they aren’t, the smallest work thought feels urgent when nothing is due. Boundaries with ourselves run on values, and which ones get to lead when nothing outside us is asking for anything at all.
The ones we skip with ourselves protect something else: whether the values we hold, about family and about being present, shape how we spend a day when it’s entirely our call.
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” – John Lubbock
What Makes This One Hard
There’s no built-in signal for a boundary with yourself. Nobody asks, so there’s nothing to push back on. Just a thought, reasonable enough on its own, that it won’t take long, and nothing in the moment tells you otherwise.
It rarely does. And the cost isn’t really about the time it takes. It’s about which value lost that round, without you ever noticing there was a vote.
This isn’t a Fourth of July problem. It happens at the birthday dinner where you’re mentally drafting tomorrow’s agenda. The Sunday that was supposed to be nothing in particular, except you checked your inbox once and now you’re three replies deep.
What’s Really Going On
Not which do I prioritize, career or family, but what’s the right emphasis on each that honors and benefits your whole life. In my practice, I see a version of what psychologist Chester Sunde described in Psychology Today (November 2025): excessive career focus leads to burnout and disconnection, while excessive family focus leads to loss of identity and growing frustration. When those two are aligned, a moment like Cameron’s mostly resolves itself. On a holiday, family and rest simply outweigh the report, without much of a fight, because in that moment, nothing about the report is due. It’s when they’re out of alignment that something this ordinary turns into a real pull. The phone never asks if it’s a good time. It just assumes it always is.
Most people never define that measure, so attention drifts to whatever’s most familiar, wherever they’re already most connected to their values. For Cameron, that was work. It could just as easily run the other way. The belief underneath might sound like this: my values only count once everything else is handled. Left unexamined, that belief operates without you noticing, and a thought about work crosses your mind at the worst possible moment, and reaching for the phone feels less like a choice and more like a reflex you never agreed to.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
What stuck with Cameron wasn’t the report. It was one line from Jesse, tossed off without any real weight behind it. “It was the first Fourth in a while where I didn’t check my phone once.” Cameron thought about that on the drive home, then again a few days later, unprompted, the way a thing does when it finally sticks. Jesse hadn’t solved anything for Cameron. The line just pointed to a difference Cameron hadn’t let themself notice yet. Of the two of them, only one had a memory of the fireworks that didn’t involve a phone screen.
Jesse isn’t the hero of this story. Just someone a step further along, proof it’s possible to get there without compromising on values. No cape required.
Cameron didn’t have an answer yet. A question that wasn’t there before the holiday: which value gets to lead, when nothing outside is making that choice for me?
One thing worth trying, and you don’t have to wait for a long weekend to try it: before your next day off, even a regular weekend, write down or tell someone the one value that gets to lead that day, before anything else gets the chance to. And one question worth returning to beyond that: when did you last check in with the values that honor every part of your life?
If it’s been a while since you’ve checked in with your values, or you’re not sure how to align your boundaries with them, you’re welcome to book a free, no-obligation discovery call.
Wishing you a July that gives you more room than you think you’re allowed to take.
~ With room enough for both, Holly
Holly Steinhoff, CPC, ELI‑MP, CICP
Founder & CEO
