222. How to Stop Saying Yes (Even When You Know You Should Say No) - Part 3

Samantha Hawley (: 00:00

Welcome to our final part of the Beyond Awareness series. Part one was all about the mental load and loosening its grip on the weight of our responsibilities, equaling the price to pay for our happiness and our success. Basically being able to safely turn off and not being afraid that a ball is going to drop while doing so. Part two,

was all about getting comfortable delegating without it creating unsafety in your body. Or maybe I should have said while creating safety in your body and being able to offload tasks and having it elevate you instead of creating more work for you. Today, we are diving into that moment where someone asks you for something and you know that your calendar is full, you're already stretched thin, and you

Know that you should say no, you want to say no, but you hear yourself say, sure, I can do that, before you even say it out loud. And then you do say it out loud. And then you judge yourself for saying yes. You're like, why did I do that? You're kicking yourself. You then might resent them for even asking, like, don't they know that I'm busy? Don't they know that I'm a single mom? Don't they know that I'm a mom? Don't they know that I'm working? Don't they know my role?

And then you feel guilty for feeling resentful and you tell yourself that you'll respond differently next time. Like next time, since this happened, I'll say no. I actually was flying first class about, I think it was a year ago, a little over a year ago. I was flying first class out to California to go visit my sister. I had what I think was a crazy experience where

On the flight out there, someone popped up and asked to change their seat with me, which I don't know. I feel like that's very normal in economy. But in first class, I'm like, get the seat that you signed up It's not like musical chairs in first class. Anyways, it just completely took me by surprise that this girl popped up and said, ⁓ partner is sitting right

next you, can we swap?" was just like, sure. luckily, I stood up our seats were window seats. So at least that worked out. But in my head, I was like, what the never again. I will stay stern in my response. I'm going to claim my seat. And then lo and behold, I had a layover.

And my next flight, I'm sure you're guessing, the same exact thing happened. But this time, it was a woman. I had a window seat so that I could lay my head against the window hopefully fall asleep. But the woman behind me says, excuse me, husband is sitting right next to you. Can we switch? But she had the aisle seat. for some reason, again, felt so unprepared. I was like, what is the chances of this happening back?

to back in first class. And was just like, and I think I did stall trying to give myself some time. But I said yes. And I tried to make it make sense for me because normally I do like the aisle seat because I can get up and go to the bathroom without bothering anybody. People pleasing yet again. told myself like,

This is the script you can say, but I still was taken off guard. Like when the moment came, I said yes anyways. So today we're talking about why we keep doing that, why we keep over committing, why we say yes when we want to say no, why those scripts that we say in our head and better boundaries haven't actually helped us stop saying no or start listening to what we actually want to do. Because we know this pattern.

That's what we're aware of, right? We're also aware of the fact that we should say no or that we want to say no and all of those other things that we should be doing or that we're already trying. A client a couple weeks ago left me a voice message and she said, I'm excited because my day is set up to go so smoothly nobody needs me to approve anything and there are no calls with impromptu questions.

And I giggled because in her brain, if someone asked her a question or needed her approval, that meant that she had to stop everything, that she had to answer, that she had to say yes, that she had to put their work above hers, even though she is the CEO. She's the one running the company. And so in my brain, I realized two things. One, that she could easily say,

I'll get back to you later. Or if that felt too scary for her, she could say like, I'll get back to you in 20 minutes or I'll get back to you by the end of the day. And then the second thing was a belief beneath her default reaction to someone needing her on a day that she was hoping that was going to be a smooth day was something along the lines of ignoring my team means I'm a bad boss.

And I've personally experienced something similar with my son. When he was really little, I used to say yes to him all of the time. I would give him chocolate before bed when he asked, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to say no, but I would say yes. I once bought him a $30 toy. It was like a Bumblebee ride-on toy in Target. When I didn't want

I would also have sitters over to watch him, but I would work from home in my home office when I actually wanted to go to a coffee shop or just literally leave the house. But I stayed because my son wanted me home in my home office. And none of that was because I thought I was a bad mom if I didn't, if I said no to him. It was because I wanted to avoid a meltdown, if I'm being honest.

In these examples, I was people pleasing with my son, with my two-year-old, to avoid my own discomfort. And so in both of these examples, in any example that you can think of, of when you have said yes and you want to say no, when you want to even delegate but you do it yourself, once you can identify that feeling and then the patterns associated with it,

That's when you can get more curious. That's when you can question more. And so with my client, after prompting her, she could easily recognize that she felt like a bad boss for letting her team wait too long for that response. But she didn't yet address even further that saying yes actually makes her feel needed and it makes her feel good.

She likes that feeling. She actually likes when her team comes to her. And it ripples into her family and her friends. So even though she wants her day to go smooth and she wants no interruptions, she feels needed. And I skipped over the truth in my examples that while saying yes to all of my son's requests was annoying and frustrating and exhausting and draining,

I was actually benefiting from it because it allowed me to turn off or at least not be on because I didn't have to deal with that meltdown. And we do these things all the time. We say that we're exhausted, resentful, burnt out, unclear, whatever it is. That's what we're aware of. But there's almost always a part of us that's benefiting us by staying in that realm. And that's the gap.

That's the gap that we close on this podcast. And the next step is to keep questioning to find that deep rooted belief. That deep rooted belief is the gap. So the gap in the examples for today of people pleasing could be that saying no means that you're being selfish and or that you're letting people down. And you don't want that, right? You don't want other people to feel bad.

about themselves or other people to think poorly of you, so you say yes. Or the deep-rooted belief of if I don't say yes, they will stop asking me I'll be irrelevant. So this might come into play where boss, for example, a client is coming to mind where she wanted to say no, she wanted to divert questions that were coming to her throughout the day. But...

If she didn't accept those questions, what if her team stopped coming to her and then it was kind of like her door would be closed. Nobody would come to her and she would be removed from the office environment and she would be irrelevant. That was scary. She did not want that type of atmosphere. So she kept saying yes. Another deep rooted belief is other people's needs matter more than mine. And that's pretty common. But think about how that applies to you.

And you might feel that a little bit more deeply of how true that might be for you. hope that by mentioning those and sharing some of these examples, you're starting to see the connection in your own life. That you might be over-committed, but by staying busy, that makes you feel worthy. So no matter how many boundary scripts you try, you're going to keep saying yes to things.

And there might even be layered safety and fears. Like, you're burnt out, you know this, but answering your team's minor questions means that you're the best boss. And if you don't keep saying yes, and if you don't stay in the trenches with them, they might leave because they'll think you're a bad boss and you don't want to spend more time hiring. So you stay small. So it's almost like once you

highlight one fear, which is attached to one belief, another one might pop up. Like in this example, then my team is going to leave and then it's going to blow up and then I'm going to need to spend all my time hiring and training and I would rather have who I have now, say yes and I would rather feel burnt out have my team.

I would rather accept more on my plate than to put more on my team's plate. So just knowing busyness equals worthiness for you or whatever your gap is, whatever your root belief is, at least one of them is where you can start, that is where you begin to dismantle it. So this is like the next step. I've been getting the question a lot of, okay, well then what? Which I love. feel like I'm...

bringing awareness to these beliefs, so much so that people want to know what's next. And so what's next is beginning to dismantle it and it's not just replacing it with a new belief because the territory of positive affirmations. It's like, if I know that busyness to me means that I'm worthy, let me say the affirmation that I am worthy. That means nothing.

Everyone says I am worthy. So there's so much more to creating a new belief, but it all starts with questioning that root belief that you just named for yourself. Because questioning allows you to release the grip that it has on you, to create wiggle room. Byron Katie talks a lot about this. don't know a ton of her work, but my mom loves her.

And she is told when she talks a lot about this questioning. the importance of this is that we're questioning it and then finding proof that a different belief just could exist. We're not replacing it yet. We're just different belief that maybe, just maybe, we could be worthy or deserving or an amazing boss, an amazing mom. And it's unattached to how productive we are. It's unattached to our income level.

unattached to how often we say yes. People can love us and it's unattached to if we gave them our seat in first class. And I didn't even need them to love me. They were strangers. I can be kind and say no. So finding proof that a different belief could exist and then taking action based on that belief. What can you do

Prove that to be true. And maybe it'll prove to be false. Maybe it'll prove to be scary and you might not take action, just follow through on But take action and see what happens. that ripple effect and track evidence of that new reality that you're craving. This is a This is deep and important work. But some permission slips that could be helpful for you today if you're relating to this.

Trust that your value is not tied to being indispensable. Your role in your business is the visionary, not the executor. Your role in your family is the role model, not doing everything for everyone or everything that everyone asks. And finally, trust that you are loved even when you say no.

I hope that you had so much awareness today and beyond, that you highlighted that gap and that you even started to close that gap to get closer to doing something about it, but mostly that we're closing it. And if you realized through today that you have been saying yes to prove your value instead of because you actually want to help, because that's also valid, you can say yes because you want to help.

If you're doing that and it's leaking into the fact that you actually want more time for yourself, you want more time for your family, you want more time for your business, and it's at the expense of your time, your energy, then that's the shift that you need to make. And boundary scripts and just saying next time will be different, you can't, those won't work. That's not how you're gonna get your way out of it. It's identifying those root beliefs.

Amazing work today if you've been following along and if you want my private one-on-one guidance support, all that, then I do have breakthrough intensives. Those are 90 minutes to dig into your personal belief and help you not only through people pleasing, but the ripple effect that it's been having on your life, in your business, in your family. Any other emotions is coming up for you. So maybe it's the guilt spiral. Maybe it's...

resentment and you'll be able to say no confidently and stop resenting everyone for asking you things and ultimately start trusting yourself and what you want. Self-trust is really what it all comes down to in the end. if you are interested in that, click the link in the show notes and then come back on Thursday for the journaling episode. And then come back on Thursday for the journaling episode to work through this exact

That is it for the Beyond Awareness series. Thank you for showing up for all three parts, and I will see you on Thursday.