You know that feeling you get when someone asks you to do something—or give something—that you really don’t want to…and out of your mouth comes the warmest sound of “Sure.”??

 

OMG. Your WHOLE BODY IS SCREAMING NOOOOOOOO—and yet out of your mouth comes the most gracious “Sure” or “Yeah” or “OK”!!

 

 

And here’s the scary part: Saying “yes” when you clearly want to say “NO” is so normal, so common, so HUMAN, that you’re in truly great company—and lots of it.

 

At the same time this practice is simply so, well—soul-crushing—that I have to risk calling it out right now, no matter what the cost.

 

 

(And big propers to you if you decided to say “yes” to this week’s Playbook…)

 

For those of us who have been socialized to be agreeable, to be team players and to be ready to accommodate the needs of others, saying “yes” to others in the face of your body’s screaming “NO” can feel like a SuperPower.

 

We can make things easier for people.

 

We can be the one who comes through in the pinch.

 

We can even be that one who saves the day. (This can be even more fun if you get thanks—or hey, awards!)

 

 

 

Let me ask you though, how long can you sustain the practice of giving all your yeses away—while saving only “NO” for yourself? How long can you keep all those yeses coming before they run out—because you do?

 

This is the question that my recent medical experience has me asking myself every day—and although I appreciate it, I’m not necessarily enjoying the answer—because it means that I am NOT a Special Case.

 

It means that I am every bit as human and vulnerable and expendable as everyone else on the planet. Meanwhile, my body is making sure that I am really paying attention to how many yeses I give out and how many I keep for myself.

 

It continues to astound me just how many yeses I require lately on the rebound from my Radical Wake-up Call from the Universe, delivered in the ER. When faced with a one-way ticket OFF of Planet Earth, things get really clear, really quickly.

 

For years I have taught thousands of people around the world that we really only have “10 Yeses a Day” to spend—and at this moment I have never been more convinced of the usefulness of this made-up construct that I learned over 40 years ago as an addictions counselor. When I forget it, I am always reminded by my circumstances, because they clearly demonstrate that all the yeses I have been using on everything that (and everyone who) matters to me in the world can leave me with only NO for myself.

 

(Don’t you just hate when that happens? UGH. Me, too. Yet it still does.)

 

And it happens SO quietly and so EASILY! So many of us have commitments and connections that require more than half of our 10 yeses. Here’s some low hanging fruit on that tree: relationship(s), kid(s), job(s), side hustle(s), church, school, social life, sick or elderly parents. That’s before you even wake up every morning—all those “already yeses” await you the moment you open your eyes.

 

So let’s just say we might have 3 to 4 available/discretionary Yeses to spend each day. A full three of them are required just to be sure that we sleep, eat and exercise. (Frankly, I often use my extra “yes” on Netflix more regularly than I would admit to anyone outside of this Community—and we all have our comfort thing, right?)

 

 

The number of yeses that you have to spend each day is finite—exactly like the amount of physical and mental energy that you have available before you have to sleep again to recharge yourself.

 

The good news is that there is a way out of chronic overload and exhaustion that’s very simple—albeit not socially celebrated.

 

 

So I’m here to cheer you on to see how many things you can say NO to this week—and I promise you that I am going first.

 

For two weeks I had to say NO to pushing myself to get this Playbook out—because it was “due.” Here’s what I realized: telling myself “it’s due” is merely my guideline to keep myself on track for the joy of sharing this Playbook with you. If I break myself by pushing when I would be better served by resting, we all lose, so I simply had to let it go. (And everyone survived.)

 

Over the past month or so, I’ve said NO to social invitations from folks I really want to see, because it would require a BIG FAT NO to myself that I can’t afford right now. 

And I say NO every single day to the onslaught of negativity that pours in from the media, about people I cannot help and situations I cannot affect, so I can say YES to small acts of kindness and care that are daily within my reach.

 

So I hope you will join me in taking back the Yeses for yourself by saying NO to as much as you can every day.

 

If you want to get a truly invigorating charge out of each one of them, I invite you to say it with the same delight that a 2-year-old does. (I’m not kidding!)

 

Before humans get socialized into saying “Yes” when we can’t back it up, we’re all completely clear about what we want and don’t want. There’s not a 2-year-old on the planet who has any shame about looking you in your face and screaming “NO” because it’s their developmental job to claim their space as an individual.