“Saying no does not always show a lack of generosity and that saying yes is not always virtue.”
It’s not possible to do everything, but boy we sure try hard to squeeze it all in. If you are like me, then you say yes for all sorts of reasons that continue to add obligations to your already full plate. And if you’re a big ideas person who thinks differently, then you probably have plenty of initiatives you’d like to see come to culmination. Ideas give us energy. They give us possibility-gasms™. They tickle our hope. How can you say no to that? As a compulsive yes-ophile, I get it. Saying no is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, but it can be one of the most powerful ways we can be at our best and do more good in the world.
Having control over anything other than ourselves is an illusion and it comes at a cost. It decreases creativity, lowers our ability to think outside of the box and has us behaving in a way that doesn’t serve our highest good. There is this illusion that we can do everything, and it’s sold to us by advertisers, employers and timeshare salesmen. The reality is that there is only one of us. The reality is that we cannot multitask. The reality is that there are only 24 hours in a day. Yes, you can do a lot. Sure, you can say yes most of the time. But think what your life might be like if you only focused on one or two projects that truly feed your soul. You are likely to experience more success, more progress, and more momentum.
There are some great case studies in MBA programs showcasing how the illusion of control can ruin a business. Just look at Uber and how it seems to sabotage its own successes with rampant lawsuits and bad behavior. The CEO seems to lack any moral compass and is caught time and time trying to shortcut major issues. He fought going public, listening to his lawyers and following the law in certain circumstances, which all seemed like ways to resist giving up control. He even referred to Uber as his wife. In the end, the CEO was forced to leave, which is the ultimate slap in the face for someone who prided himself on the being a lone wolf leader.
I don’t mean to insinuate that you resist relinquishing control because you are an ego maniac or an immoral executive. Instead, we can all reflect on how we can learn to let go of the illusion of control. We can examine ways of handing over the baton. We can be intentional and strategic in the people to whom we give authority. If you have big, bold ideas and want to launch them, then create a team that empowers you. Just like a professional athlete, your team can include teammates, mentors, and coaches who challenge you, support you and make you better.
I have a friend who lost her husband suddenly. Many of her friends and acquaintances rallied around her, supporting her through the long and painful process of grieving for all the lost dreams and hopes that were buried with him. I marveled at her ability to accept the help and allow others to love and care for her. Almost a year after his death, she had surgery on her shoulder and she resurrected her support team to set up all the help she’d need. Instead of saying no, I can manage everything myself, I don’t want to put you out or you’ll probably resent having to bring me a meal or drive me somewhere, she went the opposite direction and put her needs out into the world. When she did, she found a small army of people only too happy to give her hand. She’s a beautiful example of saying no to saying no.
I say yes really quickly for lots of the wrong reasons. I want people to like me. I want to feel needed. I want to be involved in something that I think is good and noble. I have to restrain my codependency and people pleasing tendencies when people make requests of me. Why? I will fill my days with yeses only to find that I didn’t take care of the things that are most important to me, like my family, my friends and myself. God forbid I should allow someone to do something without my help. I mean, how would they manage? Sometimes I feel like if a God complex and people pleaser syndrome got together and had a baby that it’d be me.
Fact: We cannot do everything. Fact: There are only 24 hours in a day. Fact: If you can’t take care of your own basic needs, like sleeping and eating, then you are no good to anyone else. When I am faced with a request, I try to weigh it against the things that might not happen if I say yes. Think sustainable.
We may say yes for honorable reasons, but it can lead to distracting us from our important work. One way of insulating ourselves from things that pull us away from our meaningful work is to decline anything that doesn’t bring you closer to that work. If you are a big thinker with a big heart, then you probably already have plenty of visions for better ways of doing things. Anything that delays you from realizing your big, bold dreams is to be avoided at all costs. Our world needs you to stay focused.
I can get myself all worked up over a great idea that I’ll be saying yes before anyone even asks me for something. You had me at, “I got an idea.” Recently, I had been asked to gather a team of up to 4 people and bring them to Liberia for a Leadership program. The possibilities of what this trip represented in my mind were endless and wonderful and transformational. How could I not go? When I floated the idea to my family, my husband and two children suddenly found themselves very interested in pushing the food around on their plates. “Well, what do you think?” My daughter bravely asked how I would have time to squeeze in this trip with everything else I had going on, like building a coaching practice, writing a book, being the President of the school board and starting up a leadership program for middle school kids. My son agreed and added that Liberia had an Ebola outbreak not too long ago. My husband seemed almost sad that I would even consider leaving the family for two weeks for yet another idea that had me moving farther from our family rather than closer to it. What’s worse than saying no? Having to go back and say no after already saying yes, which is what I had to do. It was a good reminder to stay focused on the important work I’m already doing.
One way that I have discovered I can still say yes to wonderful ideas is to recruit teammates. Because I can see the value in most ideas, it’s a lot more fun to find a way to say yes, like finding other likeminded people who can be involved and provide value. Instead of having to say no, I can say I know someone who might be able to say yes.
Our local university has a continuing education department. They are always looking for new ideas, which is like an intellectual playground for someone who never runs out of ideas. Every time I meet with the continuing education team, I talk like a 6-year-old girl being asked what she wants for Christmas. How about a class on coaching? What about teaching people about overcoming people problems? I know, what do you think about bringing coaching cultures into local organizations? And don’t even get me started on the leadership series we could create together. Alas, I agreed to create a curriculum and teach a 6-week course on coaching to business folks. I love the idea. I do not, however, love to write curriculum nor teach the content. But I said yes, so I can either back out, do it anyways or recruit some help. Thankfully, I met another life coach who was really interested in the course we are creating. After a few coffees, she wholeheartedly agreed to work on this course with me and is entertaining the idea of taking over for me after our pilot run. It’s the best of both worlds.
If we can be creative, then we can find different ways to say yes to ideas that excite us. The beauty of creating a team is that they can commit to things whilst you move on to the next big idea. In fact, big idea people seem to be most effective when they partner with detail lovers. Big idea people can dream big, and detail people can get it done. Building a team is helpful, and creating a complimentary group of people is even better.
Along the same lines of recruiting teammates is matching “idea people” with those who can help. There is no shortage of great ideas in the world. If you are an outside of the box thinker, then you have an innate ability to find value in ideas that others miss. Because of this, you can catch an idea with merit and help elevate it. Then you may be able to rally the right people to carry the idea forward. Please note that you may not be the right people.
Just like a traditional matchmaker can see the values in two people and bring them together for the purposes of creating a lasting relationship, the community of out-of-the-box thinkers can see the values in big ideas and pair them with the folks that can assist in shouldering the load. The first step in my client enrollment process begins with a conversation, typically over a cup of coffee. I have met with hundreds of people, most of whom don’t become my client. But I can serve them by putting them in touch with people who would be a good match for their needs. I’ve helped the university find a keynote speaker for the college of education. I’ve connected a local non-profit with a colleague in a different state so they can expand their programming across the country. I’ve asked professional chefs to work with a small organic baby food startup to scale the one person operation. If you get excited by new ideas and can see the value in them, then you can be a great idea people connector.
Matchmaking has allowed me to say no to being involved myself but saying yes to serving people in other ways. Like I said, I hate to say no. I can always find a way to help because I suffer from being a codependent, people pleaser who wants others to like me. It’s been a relief for me to say no while simultaneously supporting others with names of people and organizations that may be right for them. So many people are looking for resources, so you can become a resource center.
Someone proposes an amazing idea. You are hooked. You see the potential, the value, the possibility. Your energy goes up. You start talking faster. You throw out ways to make the dream a reality. You think through all the people you know who can be involved. You are in! Then you wake up the next day and realize you already have too much going on and feel guilty for saying yes to something that you cannot commit to 100%. Maybe you stay the course and give less than 100%. Perhaps you back out and apologize. Either way, you are out of integrity. The moral of the story: be impeccable in your commitments
Because people who think differently are big idea types, there isn’t an issue that they can’t bat around like a cat with a toy to find multiple solutions and approaches. Our tendency is to say yes instead of no. This can result in being overwhelmed, not taking care of ourselves and residual feelings of guilt and resentment. When weighing our commitment to the next amazing idea, we can consider this single question. Can I commit 100%? If the answer is no, then we can take some time to decide what we can commit 100% to. For instance, I may not be able to commit to my friend’s charity for human trafficking, but I can connect her with likeminded people who may want to get involved, or I can make a donation to her program, or I can ask some teachers if they’d consider having her come and educate our kids on the subject. There are lots of issues that resonate with me, but I cannot commit to all of them. If I can’t give 100%, then I can prevent that yes from escaping my mouth and go to plan B.
I had a client, Bill, who ran a small accounting business. He was a big thinker and loved to talk about big ideas. He had difficulty staying on task and his team frequently commented on his tangential nature during weekly meetings. He had a tendency to say yes to most things, and his team became increasingly frustrated. He began the year by charging his team with significant growth targets. They agreed, but Bill was constantly distracted by other ideas. He said yes to ideas which took up more of his time and energy. He became a less effective leader and he was losing the confidence of his team. He was not being impeccable in his commitments, and it had a net negative effect.
During a weekly meeting with the team, he threw yet another big idea at the team and shared why he felt so energized by it. When he was finished, he was met with silence. So he asked his team what they thought. They responded that they didn’t feel they could keep chasing the aggressive growth goals and take on new initiatives that seemed like distractions from those goals. Bill could see how the new initiatives would promote the goals, but his team could not. Bill was overcommitting, which resulted in him under-delivering to his team’s needs. Thankfully, Bill was the type of guy who valued feedback and he was able to scale back and commit himself to focusing on his team. Of course, when we talk, he still has those big ideas ruminating in his mind, but now he weighs them against his own capacity to commit fully.
We say yes to things for lots of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with being excited about the thing we are saying yes to. I might say yes to driving my mom to her doctor appointment because I don’t want to feel guilty. I might say yes to taking my kids shopping because I want them to love me and think I’m cool. I might say yes to being on a committee because I think it will raise my social status in the community. Notice how my yeses have nothing to do with the thing I’m agreeing to do. When my yeses are accompanied with an ulterior motive, then I probably need to dig deeper into my intentions.
In my experience, people who have the highest level of peace and joy are the ones who know who they are. They have done the deep work of figuring out why they are on this earth. How do they know? The answer I get is self-awareness. I think this means that they have spent time and energy discovering who they are in this world. They realize that it’s the only way to find a path forward without internal conflicts and feelings of guilt and resentment. They have high integrity because they know who they are. They say no to things because they know who they are. They don’t let their egos and critical voices run their lives because, you guessed it, they know who they are. The deep inner work of self-awareness is hugely beneficial.
In my coaching mastermind group, I find myself feeling small and insignificant. Of course, this is all me and my not good enough fears. During one of our sessions, one of the coaches said something really confrontational to another coach. I was so uncomfortable with the tension that I wanted to hide under a table. But I stayed and watched the reactions of both coaches, like studying primates in a zoo. After the ordeal, I asked the coach how she finds the courage to say things that are edgy, uncomfortable and provocative. She looked at me and replied she spends a lot of time and energy on deep inner work to know herself.
How does one go about knowing themselves better? I think I may have discovered one path that is working for me and my clients. Anytime I have a struggle, I look for the fear. Then I figure out how to face the fear as my tendency is to distract myself from it with being busy, eating crap and binge-watching Netflix. When I focus on the fear, there is a place I have to go that is incredibly uncomfortable. It’s the dirty diaper analogy where I figuratively force myself to sit in a dirty diaper and not change it. By sitting in it, I can notice the thoughts and feelings that arise. I don’t judge them, just notice them. When I’m doing this, my brain gets wonky and keeps offering me ways to escape, but I choose to sit in it anyway. Here’s something really helpful that I’ve learned. The discomfort will end. It doesn’t last forever. This single fact has been very helpful as I head into a dirty diaper sitting. When I know that the discomfort will end, I can allow it to be.
When we decided to pull our daughter out of traditional school and enroll her in an online program, I went to a deep, dark place. I was filled with worry and dread. My critical voice was so loud, and it was most intense when I went to sleep at night and when I awoke in the morning. My fear was on high alert, and I was on the carousel in crazy town cycling through all the catastrophes that would occur. I worried that she would never learn to make friends, become isolated and depressed, and live in our basement as an adult. I wondered if I was a bad mother, if we were running from our problems, and if we were enabling her. Each night before bed, I would get this discomfort in the pit of my stomach and my mind would race. Instead of judging it, I decided to notice it. I would always fall asleep but I would awaken in the middle of the night and early in the morning with the same discomfort and racing thoughts. I was really uncomfortable.
The good news is that the discomfort slowly dissolved like an Alka-Seltzer tab. At first, when the tablet is dropped into the glass, the water begins to bubble. Then the fizzing starts and the water becomes chaotic and opaque. After a while, the water is clear, the tab has dissolved and the glass is calm. There wasn’t a moment of clarity when my discomfort cleared. Instead, each day the discomfort was less than the day before. Weeks later, there are still twinges and pops of discomfort but nothing like the intensity of what I went through those first few days.
To what end you ask. Well, I am delighted to tell you that I am now resolute in my parenting skills. I learned that all my fears about my daughter were mostly false. I’m more confident in my mothering than ever before because I know who I am as a mother. I don’t parent like anyone else because I’m me. I know that I can listen to my daughter and find a way to get her needs met. I can let go of the need to have her be like other kids, or more importantly what I perceive to be like other kids. I am no longer embarrassed about my daughter being home-schooled because I am sure that it’s what is right for her right now. On the other side of fear is relief, peace, and confidence.
Here’s how I envision the fear process, which I have titled the Alka-Seltzer Model of Self-Awareness.
In the beginning, denying the fear has our stress sitting at a tolerable level. When we choose to face the fear, our stress goes up and stays up for a period of time. At some point, the stress begins to dissipate and decrease, eventually landing at a level much lower than where it began. This is the payoff.
In order to say no to things, it sure helps to know who you are which can involve facing your fears. I’ve witnessed my family members, clients, and even myself face our fears, sit in the discomfort and come out the other side knowing who we are and what we need to do. It’s hard to convince ourselves to go to that place of discomfort. After all, who would willingly accept pain when there are some many delicious distractions out there? The answer is that the heavy weight of fear and worry can be lifted. It comes at a cost, but one that is worth paying in my opinion.
