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episode 159
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Transcript:
You’re listening to Episode 159 of The Art of Living big. Can you believe we’re already on episode 159 Time Is Flying these past couple years have flown by you guys, I just want to let you know before we start that tomorrow, I’ll be leaving to go to the beach. So if you want to follow along on that very happy journey, you can go to my Instagram at Betsy Pake and my stories, I’m sure it will be full with lots of gratitude and appreciation and high vibe living by the ocean, right sea salt and all the things so I’m pumped about that.
I want you to know that my training is available on the website, if you want to know how to master your subconscious and really turn any kind of crisis that you’re in right now into one of your biggest transformations, you can just go to my website, Betsy Pake calm, and that will get you right to the training, you’ll see it right there on the Big Yellow Button.
So I am more and more convinced that as we can start to see our lives in terms of opportunity and gifts, and all of the things that come at us as actual lessons to learn on the path to getting the great thing that we’re here to manifest. So I’m going to talk a little bit about that today and share a couple stories of very vulnerable one, as I tend to do.
Sometimes I record this podcast, and then I pause it and I cry. And I’m like, I can’t believe I did that. Well today is one of those things. So it is awesome, because it’s given me an opportunity and chance to heal. And I hope that when you hear it, you can see yourself in that and places where you have done that same thing, right of what I’m about to tell you, or something similar, right? Where you’ve put the things that you love the most to the side in order to people please or not saying no or to do what you think you should be doing to keep everybody happy. And what happens is it ends up crushing you.
And so I want to talk about that today. And specifically how do we say no? What’s a good way to say no? And are we allowed to say no to certain places and people in situations in our life, even if we love them, even if they’re our boss, even if we report to them, like whatever that is how we can actually expand and how we can use saying no and putting limits on our expansion. So I’m excited to share this episode with you today. If you liked it, don’t forget you can share it.
If you if you share it with your friends. That’s awesome. If you leave a review, you can screenshot the review. And then on any iTunes or any way that you listen to it, and then just send the review to support at Betsy Pake calm and we will send you a self hypnosis audio to download on beliefs so that you can start shifting those beliefs and step into what you have called into your life. So if you want to talk about this episode, join me inside the Facebook group at the Art of Living big.com. That’ll forward you right into the Facebook group. And now here’s the show. Welcome to the art of living big. I’m your host, Betsy Pake. I’m an international expert in manifesting from your subconscious. And this podcast is designed to help you
think differently
about what could be possible for your life. Now, let’s go live big. Hey, everyone, welcome to today’s show. So today I want to talk to you about saying no. Now, this can be an obvious thing to some of you where you’re like, I don’t have any trouble saying no, I say no. And I need to say no. But I will tell you that it’s something that I have struggled with. And I believe it comes from being a people pleaser, right where we want people to be happy. And we want people to feel heard. And we want to be able to provide support to people. And I think a lot of us do this, especially as moms, right.
So we have this other layer of wanting to help and wanting to nurture and wanting to put other people first. But what ends up happening when we do this, is we end up putting ourselves farther and farther down the list. And you know, sometimes this shows up in little ways. sometime this could be like,
you know, like your kid asks you to
I remember my kid used to ask me to go to
to go grab like a coffee at Starbucks right? Or go grab like ice cream in the summer and I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want an ice cream and I didn’t really want her to have an ice cream. But then I would do this thing in my head when I would say well, it’s not really a good reason not to write. So do you ever do this where you’re like, I don’t really want to do that. But there’s not a good reason not to so I’ll just do what they want.
And it almost creates less resistance because you are helping someone else and they’re they stop asking you but what happens over time. Time is that it starts to wear you down. And it actually creates a lot of resistance for yourself, and a lot of self doubt, and a lot of self trouble and issues in your self worth, right.
Because if you’re constantly putting somebody else in front of you over and over and over again, it tends to wear you out. And then you begin this pattern of, well, I’m always second or third or fourth, or fifth. And that’s just the way it is. And then when new choices come, you automatically default to being fourth or fifth on the list, and you put everything else first. And you know, in Episode 155, I talked about my lessons from the beach.
And one of those lessons that I heard was to fill up your vessel first. And when it overflows, give the overflow to everyone you meet. But the part of that that we go, Oh yes, give the overflow to everyone we meet, the part of that that I was really focused on is fill your vessel, first make sure that you’re full, and not just full that you’re overflowing, that you are so full with what it is that you need, that you give the overflow to everyone else, which means you remain full.
And I have found in my life, that saying now has been a difficult thing for me. And so I want to share a couple stories. Because I think, you know, stories, I think, bind us together. And I think that you’ll see yourself in some of these. And I have a couple stories of not saying no that are pretty extreme, I think you’ll agree they’re extreme when you hear them. But the reason I want to tell you about this is because I believe that when we don’t heal something and we don’t fully close the loop, it pops back up for us, and gives us a new opportunity to be able to heal. Okay, so I’m going to explain to you what I mean.
So
I have a dream. And
you have dreams too. So I just want you to think about yourself. So I have this dream about my business and what my business can be. And I am really aligned with my business and with abundance and flow in my business. And I have this dream. So if I go like way far, not far out, but like vision out wide, a wide, wide vision of what I want to
get to that point.
I know there will be things for me to overcome. And there will be lessons for me to learn.
Because I am not the person that has that business yet. Because if I was I would have that business. Okay, so I believe that the universe shows us
trouble. I’m trouble in like
my air quotes write trouble or hardship or like lessons so that we clear the things that we would need to clear in order to have that dream and be that person in that bigger vision. Right? So I have this dream of having this company and really impacting thousands of women write thousands of women every day. And what does that mean? That probably means, like, I’m going to get a lot of emails, I’m going to get a lot of messages and a lot of requests from people. And if I am the kind of person who can’t say no, those messages and requests would become very overwhelming. Am I right?
And I would need to deal with that in a certain way, I would either need to hire somebody to deal with all of that. But I would still need to tell them and give them direction on what to do and what to say. And if I’m saying yes to everything, then I really couldn’t ever build a business that impacts millions because I would be so busy dealing with like, little requests, right one off requests over and over again. And so I want to talk about this about learning to say no, and some of the things that I have found.
So I’m going to bring it back as I and I’m still learning this lesson, I’m realized it over the past like three weeks that I am still learning this lesson. But I’m gonna get in the Wayback Machine. And we’re gonna go back a couple years. And there was a day this is the very This is a very intense example. But I want to just make the point of how much I needed to learn this lesson. Okay, so you’ve heard me on the show, talk about how my daughter had been sick.
And about two years ago, I got an email from somebody. I think it was about two years ago, that year and a half timeframe doesn’t matter. I got an email from someone on Facebook. And they had it’s somebody that I have not seen in probably Well, probably 17 years because they helped me buy a house when my daughter was a baby. So I moved and bought a new house and they helped me. And they asked me a question about something I had posted that was business related. And I replied to them and said, Oh, I’d be happy to talk to you and I was happy to talk to her, but I it’s gonna have to be in a couple weeks.
And the reason was because my daughter was standing in front of me in my office. And I needed to bring her to the hospital. So she was standing waiting for me. And I said, I do it’s gonna have to be in a couple weeks. And right off, she replied and said, I just need a minute of your time. We just jumped on the phone with me really fast. And I said, I can’t right now. And she said, I swear, I’ll be so fast. But I need to figure this out right now.
Now, keep in mind, this isn’t, isn’t a relative, it’s not somebody that was paying me this is somebody I haven’t seen. And I remember looking at my kid, and saying, like, hold my hand for a second, I’m going to just call me to make this quick call. And I call that person
I keep I kick myself.
And the phone call didn’t take but two or three minutes, it wasn’t long. But I kicked myself because I went against what my inner Knower knew to do, right. My inner said, No, focus on your kid and do this thing. And I was trying to do everything. I wasn’t trying to not take care of my kid I, I was, I was trying to do everything. And I have suffered so much from that moment, because I replayed it in my head and beat myself up and was like, Who? Why did you do that? But I didn’t do it. I did it out of like, I can’t say no, I don’t know how to say no. And it was the universe finally saying to me, like, Oh, my God, Betsy, like, we’re going to make something so extreme that it causes an emotional reaction in you. So that
years from now, you will still remember this moment and go like, I’ve got to learn how to say, say no, and that’s okay. It’s okay to say I can’t right now. And so at the time, I did learn to say no, but how I did it was I retreated. So I really retreated in a lot of different ways, from friends and family and all of those things so that nobody would ask anything of me or less of me. I mean, I think I even got off Facebook for several months, like I just, I needed to not have anybody even ask.
So now because the universe likes you to actually bring things to a conclusion, it started to bring it to me again, but in a softer way. And so I started noticing I was getting a lot of messages from people about, hey, like, I know, you probably have a podcast about this. But this is my question, can you just give me an answer real quick, or sending me really long messages, which I’m, first of all, I’m so grateful, because I want to know what people think.
But then there was a request at the end. And so I realized, I mean, there was one particular day that I heard from people that I have known in my life, so not like not strangers, but people I have known where I was getting messages and voicemail messages. And then also messages in my inbox, like through my website of people reaching out. And so you know that one day where I got all those messages, I realized, Oh, this is that lesson.
So it’s coming to me in a much softer way. But there’s still something that I need to learn about saying no. And it’s not that I don’t want to help people, I desperately want to help people. But I also know that if my vessel is not full, I can’t do the work I’m here to do. And I know that I own only one person.
And if I’m getting like six messages, so imagine six messages, and each message takes like 15 minutes, right to, to create a response to like, that’s an hour and a half of time that I don’t really have. And so protecting my energy. So in all of this, I’ve realized that I really need to come up with some ways, better ways to say no. And so I wanted to share with you some of the things that I thought of and some of the things that really worked for me.
And now when people reach out because they want help, like, that’s what I’m, I want people to want me my help, right? So there is a contradiction there in my brain where I’m like, I’m getting what I want. But I also want people to I want there to be an equal energy exchange, right? So if somebody messages me, and they are one of my clients, they will get all of my time and energy on that day with whatever they need until they are that is complete, because there is an energy exchange there for everybody else, unless, you know, unless you’re a client of mine, or unless, like you’re my family, I needed to create some different boundaries.
And so one of the things is that it’s okay to say no. So what I want to say to you today is that it’s okay to say no, and we don’t always have to give the reason. I don’t have to explain because that whole thing that I just told you is really hard to explain and some people may feel restriction around that well, aren’t I important enough? You know, why aren’t I this will just take a minute, right? Just like that message that I got, she was not doing that to overstep any boundaries, she didn’t know that I was standing there holding my daughter’s hand was waiting to walk out the room to go to the hospital. And so I fully know that nobody is coming at me to like, bring me down or take stuff from me. But I also am the only one that’s in charge of protecting my energy and my time.
So it’s okay to say no, and you don’t always have to give a reason. And so one of the things that I really like is to just say, I am so grateful that you’re coming to me that for that. But right now, I don’t have the time to respond in the way that I would want to. Right. So that’s simple. I appreciate because that is all true. I appreciate that. You’re coming to me for that. And I have a certain way that I would want to respond to that. And I can’t because I don’t have the time, I don’t have the capacity. There’s just one of me. And so I respond in that way. It is total truth. And then if they come back again, I don’t feel the need to respond again.
Because I have given my answer I have given enough. And then I can just move on. So for me, it’s really difficult to hit delete, I need to respond, because I feel like if people took the time to reach out to me, I can’t just go, Oh, I don’t have time for that and delete. And so that’s just years ago, when I was on match.com. And I would I went on match.com for like, I don’t know, six weeks or something. My husband was on there, but we didn’t match, oddly enough.
And so I would get I got like a like when you first go on, I guess who knows, I guess there weren’t a lot of people in there. I got like a ton of Matt like hundreds and hundreds of messages in the first couple days. And but I felt like I had to respond to everybody, because I felt like they took a minute to respond to me. So I actually got friends to help me like everybody, let’s just respond and just say thank you so much. But I don’t think we’re a good match. Like I had this thing I would say so stupid. So I’ve always had this thing where I feel like if you’ve reached out to me, I need to respond
in some way. So
also another response another way, if somebody reaches out and says something to me and asks me a question, or gives me their opinion or whatever, I appreciate you reaching out, thank you so much. Like, I don’t need to do anything else. And so I want you to think about your life, and where people are coming at you for stuff. When I was growing up, my mother used to say when I would say Can I have this Mom, can I have that? Can we do that? She’d say thank you for asking, but I’m going to say no right now. Well, thank you for asking made me open to be able to continue to ask which is really important in a parent relationship, right? So with our kids, we might want to respond differently.
But we can still say no, and we can still feel secure in that. So with work relationships, maybe it’s I appreciate you asking, I don’t have the time to take on that project. With a boss that gives you too much to do. Maybe it’s I really appreciate that you think that that’s a good project for me. I also have these other five projects, which one would you want me to set aside to focus on this? Do you see how you’re like setting a boundary for your time.
So being firm, but being really polite, right? So even if you’re at work, and your boss is asking something of you doesn’t mean that you give every like bit of your soul? It doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to protect your energy or your time or that you’re supposed to work 12 hour days just because they ask it. Right.
So also, the next little nugget that I have for you is to Don’t be afraid to say it twice. You know, when that woman came back to me and said, when she emailed and said, Could you just help me with just a second I said, I’ll help you next week. And she said, we’ll just take a second. Like instead I went okay, because so just because someone’s persistent doesn’t mean you have to give
in.
Smile, politely say thank you so much for asking. But I, this is a firm No. And I found saying that this is a firm No, then sends the message that there isn’t a negotiation that’s going to take place. That that’s how it is and we’ll have to circle back another time and figure out how this could work in a different way. Everything that you do is an energy exchange with people, everything if you have a friend, right and there’s an energy exchange there and if you’re not getting energy back, then it feels one sided and it no longer feels good. So it is in that person’s best interest to be able to have a negotiation and an energy exchange and a back and forth so that you can maintain
your relationship in a really Great way,
I think that it’s okay to say no to things that you really don’t want to be a part of. And that can be a hard No. And sometimes that can be really hard. So one of the things that I have found for me is that it’s really hard for me to hear my intuition, or to meditate and get into a deep meditation, if I have had alcohol. So like, if we were up yesterday, or Saturday, we went to the pool, and I’m at the pool, I’m having a couple drinks, right? I’m not getting drunk, but I’m having alcohol.
Even the next day, I’m shot, I cannot connect. I can’t hear my intuition. If I drank on a Sunday, and then Monday, I had to go to work. And I’m with clients, which I rely a lot on being able to connect, and to hear messages and to be able to relay those in a way. But if I feel blocked, so I joke with my husband, we call it the devil’s juice, because I’m like, I can’t have the devil’s juice. So my thing is, I’ll have a drink when I’m on vacation if I want to. But this weekend, we were going to the pool and the pool is open. It was the first time of the season. And he said like, and he do we I mean we joke, right?
But he’s like, do you want some Devil’s juice? I’m going to get some and I’m gonna bring a cooler? And I said, No, I don’t want any. And he asked again. Now remember, he’s not asking to pressure me. He’s asking me because he knew that sounded fun. And he wanted me to have fun, right? So I knew the cause of it. He wants me to have fun.
And so he said again, are you sure? Are you sure I can pick you up some of those, whatever it was fruity flavored cans of drink thing Margarita mix the things if that’s what you want? And I said, No, but I’ll take like a fancy water or something. So he got me like a bunch of sparkling water and diet cokes. And like other drinks that I could have. But he asked twice. And I had to say no twice, but I knew the intent. Right? So I didn’t get mad. I knew the intent.
Do you want some devils juice? No, I don’t. Are you sure you don’t? Yep, I’m totally sure I’ll feel better. I’ll have more fun without it. Because that’s really what he wanted was me to have fun. I reassured I would have more fun without it. He was like, cool. He got me a bunch of fancy cold drinks. Do you see how sometimes we say yes. Because we think that’s what people want from us. But really what they want is something underlying, right. He didn’t want me to be drinking, he wanted me to have fun.
And when I assured him that that could happen. It wasn’t an issue at all. Right? So I want you to just look at the points in your life where you need to shift things where you need to be able to say no, and I’ll tell you the very, very, very, very first step in that is knowing what your boundaries are, and what is really okay with you. So here’s what I would, I would want you to do this week is to just notice the times where something happens and you feel restriction. So you’ll feel it in your body, right? You might feel a tenseness in your, in your chest or in your shoulders, and you’re like, No, I don’t want to do that. Right? How do I say no to that?
If you feel that, then I want you
to just notice what your response is. Are you trying to negotiate with yourself to make it a yes to keep somebody else happy? Or are you trying to understand what their reasoning was and what they wanted, so that you can still stay true to what it is that you want and they can still be happy? Just like the devil juice situation, right?
A couple weeks ago, my husband got me he got me concert tickets to see Bryan Adams not Ryan Adams. I just want to make it clear it’s Bryan Adams which you know, was popular like in the 80s it was like brings me back to my church. It’s like the greatest time of the year when we can go see Bryan Adams and I love him.
He has a song out right now side note called shine a light. And it is like my theme song. I love it. So listen to that if you want to understand me more. So we went had tickets to go see Bryan Adams, which is like my very favorite thing, my favorite thing of the whole year and then he bought some tickets for us to see a concert that he loves on Friday night. So Saturday night was Bryan Adams. His concert was on Friday night and he said I got tickets to see the cult on Friday night if you want to go now. As soon as he said it, my body seized up. I don’t want to go I don’t like the call. I don’t like the location where it’s in. It was being held at. It’s at this like old like tabernacle in Atlanta and I’m
sure it’s gonna be like on 2021 day for
blowing up or falling down or something. I just I don’t I and I knew I’m not going to have as good a time on Saturday because I have to get up early for some stuff on Saturday morning. I won’t have enough time as good as ever time at Bryan Adams. And I felt that restriction and I also felt like he’s asking me to go to do something he really loves and he asked he got me something Do what I really love. So you’re gonna run into this, where you’re gonna have that thing where you’re like, I feel restriction.
But it’s somebody that I love asking me to do it, right. So I want to tell you how I handle this. But I want to also explain something. I believe that if I said, If I say yes to something, then I want to do it joyfully, even if I don’t want to go, even if my body is going No, no, I don’t feel like doing that thing. If I said yes, then I’m going to do it joyfully, because I made a commitment. So when he said that to me, I was like, I can’t say yes, because then I’d have to do it joyfully, and keep my word. But also, I really don’t want to go.
So I said, Look,
I’m going to be exhausted. And I won’t experience Bryan Adams in the same way. I know you really want to go and you want me to go with you. But if you’re open to going with somebody else, and I named a couple friends, he could ask, I said, see if they want to go. If they can’t go, then let’s talk. And we’ll figure out what works for both of us. And I know he was a little disappointed, but he totally understood. And he understood that I was making a decision from like my inner No, or from what really felt
like the right thing for me.
Now, I don’t know, maybe I would have gotten really worn out and gotten sick, like, I don’t know, maybe I just wouldn’t have liked it. Like, I don’t know, the reason I just know that I felt the restriction. Now, I’ve been married to Craig, for six years, we’ve owned this house for seven years. So we’ve been together nine years.
So he kind of gets me
nine years ago, he may not have had that reaction. So I will say that. But being able to pose it in that way, look, everything about me, it’s just saying I don’t want to go. If you can’t find, can you ask so and so and so and so. And if they can’t go, let’s regroup and talk about it
totally open, he got somebody to go
off they went, and we ended up having been having a great day at the concert the next day. So saying no, can actually bring you closer to the person that’s asking, you actually can get a better understanding of each other, and what your boundaries are and boundaries, as we all know, from Bernie brown boundaries, create better relationships. So saying no, isn’t saying isn’t rejecting the person, saying no is simply setting up a boundary for yourself.
So I have found that if I want to grow into this larger version of what I want for my life, and my business, I have, this is one of the things that I have to grow into in order to become that person. So if you’re having trouble saying, No, I’m gonna bet that it’s something that you have to grow into to in order to get to your dream and your goal and your big manifestation that you have in mind. So take a minute slow down, recognize what the resistance is, when you’re feeling like you need to just do whatever it is that they want. And if there’s an equal energy exchange, and how can you make it so
and I think when you can do that,
that is when you can start to live a big life. All right, you guys have an awesome week and I will see you thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you found it a value please share it with your friends, tag me on Instagram or leave a review on iTunes or any of your listening apps. If you leave a review and you take a screenshot please email it to us at support at Betsy Pake calm and we will send you a self hypnosis audio that will help you break down any limiting beliefs that you have. So thanks so much for sharing. Thanks so much for leaving your review. And don’t forget to join us inside our Facebook group by going to the art of living big.com. And I’ll see you there
