Saying 'Yes' Means Being Able to Say 'No'

A big theme and growth edge for me in the last 18 months has been relationships and boundaries and more times than not, the meeting point of the two.

Much of my value and self worth in the past was rooted in a deep need for likability and I often molded not only my behavior but also my choices and the vision for my life around this. It was an all encompassing identity rooted in both generational trauma as well as trauma from this lifetime.

It’s really important for us to acknowledge that the root of people pleasing (along with being a Gemini Sun and Pisces Rising 🙂) for many of us can be rooted in trauma; the fawn response of disconnecting from our own wants, needs and desires. At some point in our life or our Ancestors’ life, particularly if you are a marginalized body, we did not feel safe to express ourselves or it actually may not have been physically safe to do so.

This is why boundary work can feel both challenging and triggering: the stress response in our bodies are telling us that we are being chased by a lion when in reality we are trying to express what feels true to us.

But the quality of our boundaries directly reflects the quality of our physical wellBEING, self-love, our relationships with others and the authenticity of the vision for our life. If we can’t give a no, can we really give the right yes? If we cannot be honest with ourselves about what we want or need, how can we do so with others?

Saying no to people, activities, jobs, habits, etc. that are out of alignment with the truth of who we are and what we value in the here and now gives us space to say yes to the things that actually are soul aligned. If we are not used to saying “no” - in whatever that looks like for us - It can be hard and painful AF (I know from experience) but I promise it’s a muscle worth building.

Without that muscle is when we burnout, we have entangled and toxic relationship patterns - not knowing what is ours and what is others’ -, we have resentment, we are living out dreams that are likely not even ours and we have a life that we are surviving vs. thriving.

When we feel like we can’t say No, what does that say about our own self worth? Do we believe that we have the right to speak up for what we need and for what does and does not work for us?

When I came to the very challenging realization that it was time to dissolve my previous business, Say Space, I had to really look at how I had gotten to this place. There were many things I was proud of around that journey and there were things that were difficult to look at, some of them being my tendency to not be direct about my feelings and my difficulty in expressing my needs. We can add in there conflating other people’s needs, visions and desires as my own as well. I got very clear from that experience that much of that was the result of boundary trauma and the fear of saying No.

I will speak more about that experience in another post but for now I will say that it took saying some very painful No’s along with some trauma work (thank you Tapping) to liberate myself from a dream that no longer fit and a person I no longer was.

Boundary work is courageous and sacred work. Giving powerful “No”s is actually what it looks like, tangibly to Re-Write Your Reality”. As my friend Christine Wang brilliantly said, “we can’t create something new if our energy is going towards things that are old and no longer a part of who we are.”

We must say No if we are to give ourselves the space to evolve and for our visions to do the same. Without this space, we resist our greatness and the fullness of who we are to become; without this space we will continue to fulfill on versions of ourselves and our dreams that are outdated; without this space we are destined to continue creating a world rooted in trauma where all beings are happy and free is not the reality.

But with the space that (the right) No creates, we send messages to not only ourselves but to Spirit that we value ourselves and our needs and while we may not always be totally clear on what or who we are becoming, we are at least clear on who and what we are not.