E032: Do you use the little words “Yes” and “No” backwards?

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Welcome back to The don't wait for your wake up call Podcast. I am Melissa deila, your host and continuing on the theme of self care with this episode today. So I'm going to talk to you today about the power of the words yes and no. And how often we misuse them. We get them mixed up. And very often we are saying yes to others and no to ourselves.

What if we flipped that on its head and started saying yes to ourselves and no to others? That is a form of self care. And if you listen to Episode 30, you'll know that this is emotional self care. When we start saying the word no.

So often, though, we want to please others. And we want to help. And that's wonderful, except when we do that at the expense of helping ourselves. And we do live in a busy doo doo doo gogogo world. And when we just take on too much and we get too busy, it really is at the expense of helping ourselves. Sometimes though, it can also be ego driven, even subconsciously.

As a look at me look at how much I'm doing for everyone. But then we can crash and burn. And again, that isn't serving anyone, least of all you

anxiety and depression are at near epidemic levels. But I also see people well on the path to burnout. When I run run lab tests for clients, I can see what their cortisol levels are doing and that they're all over the place. They're stuck in a state of a state of chronic stress because they have taken on too much. Their desire is to help and that's wonderful. But when it all gets to be too much, that is no longer wonderful.

They truly do it with the best of intentions from the bottom of their

Heart. But they've stopped listening to their own body and aren't recognizing the signs of their body asking them to slow down, because they just have to get this done. And they just have to get that done. And it's one more thing and they have this deadline and that deadline, they're struggling with sleep, which can cause digestive issues, hormone imbalances, weight gain, thyroid issues, and more. All because of this desire to help others, while forgetting about our own needs, and the importance of looking after ourselves. All they were trying to do was help. But it's landed them with these health issues that they don't want and didn't ask for. Because they didn't learn how to use the words, yes, and no.

So many of us do want to help others. And I've volunteered, you know, through my kids being in school for years and years and years. And this is truly something that I have also had to learn. And it isn't easy. And it does take practice.

The first time that I actually decided to practice saying no. And again, this isn't something that I grew up learning or knowing about is something that I have learned only since I went back to school and became a health coach and an integrative health practitioner, and started understanding the importance of self care. And these magic words of yes and no. And the first time that I decided to practice it, I had somebody asking me if I could help at a run a high school career day.

And

I wanted to say, yes, there was a piece of me that wanted to say yes, because I could do that quite easily. But I had decided I had to start practicing saying no, I couldn't take on any more. And so I said no. And it felt strange. It felt really weird saying no, because I was so not used to it. And even as I was consciously choosing to say no, my brain was saying, Well, you could do that with both hands tied behind your back, like, what's the big deal here? If you could just say yes, and then that would be easy for her.

But I stuck with a no, because I wasn't responsible for making it easy for her, what I needed to do was I needed to take some things off my plate. And I already knew that. And even if this was easy, it wasn't helping me achieve my goal of taking things off my plate.

So I had to say no, and I had to stick to my guns. And I did it. And even as I walked away from that conversation afterwards, my brain was still chirping at me, like now she has to find someone else. And now she's going to spend more time.

And she volunteered for that. And I have to say no, and not add more things to my plate. And yes, we can all still volunteer, but we just don't need to over volunteer. And sometimes these volunteer roles, I find they all come at once at the same time. And so taking on one of those at a time is better than four, because then you get into this place of overwhelm of having too much all at once, and maybe find other volunteer roles that you can do at another time of year. So it's not everything at once. So maybe that means volunteering at different organizations and not just, you know, doing things for the school, for instance.

So the next time someone asks you to do something, I want you to stop and think about this. And instead of just saying yes, you can actually say, let me check my calendar, and get back to you.

And then go away. And that gives you time to truly check in with yourself and ask yourself some questions. Do I really want to do this? Why do I really want to do this?

If the answer was yes. And then if I don't take this on? What could I do with that time instead?

Because if you don't take it on perhaps that time can be used for your own self care practice.

And perhaps it can be used to get more done in your work day so that you're not bringing your work home in the evening, and you can have more family time. So these words are absolutely critical. And it does take time for us to get into the practice of using them properly. And I absolutely don't mean for you to go out and say no to everything moving forward. It does take volunteers to make the world go round. And there's many valuable organizations out there that are 100% dependent on volunteers. But what I find is we have many people in the world who are pleasers, and they say yes to everything to please others, but at the expense of looking after themselves. So is that you? Are you that people pleaser? And you find it hard to say no, simply because you want to please the other person. And that's where this lesson is so important. And the practice of saying, Let me check my calendar,

is a really great way for you to start creating a new habit around shifting from automatically saying yes, into giving yourself the space to check your calendar, and go away. Ask yourself those questions. And then if you truly want to do it great.

But if it's not something that you should be taking on right now you've got enough on your plate, you want more time with your family, you want more time for self care. Now you've given yourself that space, to be able to say, No, there are many people out there that get coerced into volunteering, because there are, you know, limited resources and guilt trips are put upon us that if we don't do it, nobody's going to do it.

And again,

what is more important to you, your health,

your time with your family,

we're moving this organization forward, we can all only do so much in a given day.

And if the guilt is being put upon you, again, let me check my calendar, that is something that I teach my clients all the time.

Let me check my calendar, it just creates the space. The other thing that going back to the ego piece of it, that

is important to understand. And a perspective that I use again with my clients. And that can be quite drastic is to just stop and think about what would happen if I got hit by a bus?

Could they go on without me guess what they would figure it out. And so that's the ego check in for you is so often we think we're the only ones that can do it. Or we can do it better than anyone else. Or we can do it more easily than anyone else. So we just have to do it. But we don't have to do it. If we always do it, we're actually depriving others from learning those skills. Maybe what it comes down to is that you to train someone else to do it so that you can step away from it moving forward, if it's something that you've volunteered for Don for a number of years. And that's one way to work your way out of some of the responsibility that you might have taken on that is now become too much in your day to day life. And it's one way to you say yes, this year, I'll train someone. And then you can say no, for each year after that. I've done that before. And that's very effective.

And it's interesting, because it's something I've done it a few times, and I've generally done something for many, many years, like eight or nine years, far too long. I train someone else to take over. And then they do it for just two or three years. Well, they were so much smarter than me.

And maybe less egotistical than me maybe I thought I was the only one that could do it. That's why I did it for eight or nine years until it finally I realized this is too much. I can't keep doing this. I have to pass it to someone else. And they only do it for two to three years, but then they can train someone else.

So think about all of the things that you're

involved in in your life. In Episode 30, I talked about the fact that I hear from people so often, I don't have time for self care. I talked about ways to find time for self care. Well, this is one huge way to find time for self care, is to simply start saying no.

And also looking at what are you already involved in?

And what of these projects? Can you let go? What are the end dates of these projects that you might be involved in? Is there an end date? Is it something that happens every year, and that you can work your way out of it by training someone else, as I just said,

and at the same time, knowing that I have this on my plate right now. And this is enough.

And if someone else comes along and asks for your help,

and even puts that guilt trip on you, you already know, in your head, I am already doing this, I'm already helping these organizations helping these people, I already have enough on my plate.

And I'm not taking anything more on. And when you understand what's in your calendar and what you're working on, then you can feel really powerful in your right to say no. Sometimes we don't stop and think about what we're already doing. We forget things we did in the moment. We don't think of everything at once. We don't factor it all in. And we don't we don't think it's Oh, it's too much. We're not thinking that we're just thinking how can I help this person? And so we get coerced into saying yes. But if we have an inventory in our mind of exactly what we're already doing, where we're helping who we're helping, we feel better about saying no, because it's only right that somebody else should step into that and learn how to help. Because we can't do it all.

We can share that opportunity with someone else. Because we've already got our full plate.

And as you look at that, ask yourself as well, what joy do I get from being involved in these projects? Because it can't all just be about you giving, giving giving.

You need to get something out of it. So what joy Do you get out of it? What pleasure is derived from you doing this? And again, as you do an inventory of the different things that you've said yes to

ask that question. Because that will also help you determine

which ones you want to work your way out of, because maybe some bring you more joy than others. So you can release the ones that don't and let somebody else do them that it will bring joy to.

So I know this sounds like a really basic concept

of using the words yes and no.

But so often, we miss use them. And we're saying yes to others, and no to ourselves.

And I really invite you as you move forward to start flipping that around, and start saying yes to yourself, and no to others.

And as I said, it isn't easy. It takes practice, it might feel strange as it did for me. But when you understand where you're at what you're already working on, who you're already volunteering for, and what brings you joy, and what doesn't, you will be in a much better position to use the words correctly, the next time someone comes to you asking for you to do something. And he will be able to confidently say

let me check my calendar

and go away and ask yourself those questions, do a check in and then be able to reply and say, No, I'm sorry, I can't take this on and not feel any guilt around that. Because you've done a quick analysis, you know where you're at, you know what you want. And you know that it's absolutely okay to say no to someone else. And be saying yes to yourself in that same action.

So thank you so, so much for joining me here today. In our next episode, I'm going to be talking with a guest on resilience. And it ties in beautifully because of course self care does foster resilience, as it helps us to cope with and lower our stress levels. And all of that

ties back to our ability to say no when we need to say yes to our

ourselves and promote our own self care first. So thank you for listening. And I look forward to having you join us again next time. Before I let you go today, I just want to let you know about my next health, kickstart and detox program. Starting on Tuesday, October 5, running for the for Tuesday through October at 2pm. Pacific. For 90 minutes, all sessions are recorded. And we're going to dive into doing a functional medicine detox in a guided supported manner as well as learning the right way to eat for your body. It's not about doing the latest crazy diet to lose weight is learning how your body wants to eat. It's also learning about optimizing digestion because it's not just about what we eat. It's about what we absorb. And we're going to dive into sugar because it's an everything where is it sneaking into your diet and causing you problems. So sign up before September 28 get 20% off. This is truly the single best starting point on your healing journey. You might have made new year's resolutions back in January, we're now into the final quarter of the year, it's time to start prioritizing you and your health. And this program will help you do it. When we have toxins bogging down our system, which is very common today with 100,000 manmade chemicals having been introduced into our world since World War Two. It causes inflammation in the body, it causes hormone imbalance, it causes a sluggish digestive system, it causes weight gain, it causes poor sleep, it causes an immune system to not function at its best. So when we get those toxins out, we can undo all of that, you can check out the link in the show notes. And I've also dropped a link to my toxic load quiz. So you can discover your toxic load score today and see that some of the symptoms that you might be writing off as aging, or genetics, or seasonal allergies are not they're actually signs of a toxic load, and your body is asking you to do something about it. And here's your opportunity. So check it out in the show notes. And I look forward to having you join in the program.