Filling the bottomless hole: when to say yes, when to say no
Integrity is: when your words and actions match, and they are in alignment with your values, beliefs, commitments and life vision. –Matthew Marzel
It happens quickly, like this–one moment, you’re on top of things and the workflow systems that you’ve designed meet the needs of what is being asked. Life moves along relatively smoothly.
You’re good with batching tasks;
you know where you can cut corners and where impeccability cannot be negotiated;
you know the importance of setting deadlines and padding time;
you are able and willing to burn the midnight oil if it means getting something important done;
you know that you’re here to live this life with passion, so you enthusiastically say “yes!” to that which calls to you.
Parents, entrepreneurs, and people who have a tendency to take on fifteen different creative projects at once understand how to do all of this.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the willingness to say “yes” becomes something else entirely.
We cross a threshold, and suddenly we have said “yes” and padded time and re-worked the schedule and added more in too many times. The thing that we have been saying “yes” to suddenly becomes too much. These are confusing times, where we struggle with when to say yes, when to say no.
When to Say Yes, When to Say NO
When we take on too much, always saying “yes”, we lose touch with our true “no.” This is when Ego really starts running the show, having us take on ever-more and fit more in because of external approval, because we think we ‘have to’ in order to be a good person, and on and on.
In those moments when Ego is running the show, when the work is not about a sense of internal pride but about a nose to the grindstone and white-knuckling to get things done, what happens is this:
We are saying “yes” so much because we are filling a hole within ourselves. It’s the hungry ghost (that will never be satisfied).
For workaholics (like me)? We take on more, and more, and more, to fill and fill and fill.
It all starts from a good place–you genuinely want to do a good job, or you’re excited about a project. But then there’s a tipping point where it’s more and more and more and it’s all too much.
Creative people know this space when their craft bins overflow.
Parents know this place when the family is so over-scheduled no one sits down to dinner together, anymore (the hungry ghost here can often be a parental fear that if their kids aren’t in a bunch of activities, they’ll be left out and have no friends; if the kids aren’t doing more academic enrichment, they’ll be less successful long-term).
How Does One Course-Correct?
So how do we course-correct, and reconnect ourselves with when to say yes and when to say no? I think we take a Marie Kondo style approach. First, you pull everything out of the closet when you declutter the closet—so first, you STOP EVERYTHING when you are pulling back from being over-worked, burned out, and over-functioning.
Everything, Kate?
Yes. Everything. If only for 24 hours, fine, but no work, no phones, no social media, no computers. Nothing but you and blank open space and no appointments.
And then what happens?
Generally, people feel like this would be heaven, but in actual practice when you DO it, there’s an initial silence that feels uncomfortable.
“Well, I can’t do that.”
Hmmm. I bet you can. I don’t know how, I only know that somehow, some way, there’s probably a way.
Once you’ve had some time for silence, you can assess what’s working and what isn’t. You get clearer on when to say yes, when to say no. You see what you need to keep, and what needs to go.
Silence is Golden
When you temporarily stop EVERYTHING, you learn something more about what was pushing you to get so busy in the first place. You learn more about the addiction of over-work, and about the wounded places in you that say if you just take on one more project, they’ll be okay. You see where you’re saying yes when you don’t really want to, and where you yearn to say—need to say—no.
In the silence of a break, suddenly we can hear our own voice within, and hear it clearly. That voice has so much wisdom. We don’t even really need anything else to happen, but to listen to what’s happening within.
There will always be a hundred reasons not to take a break, and none of them will ever add up to more than the one very important reason why you need to do it: because we reconnect with ourselves in stillness.