Archive

Give & Take from GYSTTALIVETV on Vimeo.

Melissa: All right, says it’s preparing. So we are live. Hello and welcome, just a live family, to giving you something to talk about live TV. I am your host, Melissa Kretchler. I’m an identity coach and spiritual teacher, and I created this show to bring you something to talk about, to give you stuff to talk about every day, Monday to Friday. And today, if you haven’t noticed, we are starting at 09:00 p.m., Central Standard Time. Now, for any of you in a different country, that is totally fine, which is why we’re doing it at 09:00 p.m.. Because my lovely guest co-host is in Sydney, Australia. So if we did it at 02:00 p.m., it would be middle of the night, not a good thing.

Today we’re going to be talking about healthy give and take and how we can create healthier, happier relationships that are more balanced and equal. So I’m going to hand it over to you, Karen, to introduce yourself, and I’m going to share this to my social media.

Karen: Fabulous. Thank you so much for the privilege to be here and having something to talk about. My name is Karen Austen, and I am currently in Sydney, Australia, which is a beautiful part of the world. And I have a background in recovering my vitality and vibrancy from complex PTSD. PTSD and pretty much absolute burnout, rock bottom, losing everything, money, health, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, financial, I lost it all. So it’s wonderful to be here, Melissa, as an identity coach, because I know that you know what happens when you lose everything and we have our identities attached inside of who we are in the world as a partner, work colleague, our job, whatever it is.

So, yes, building myself back, well, actually uncovering who I really am and then having my identity completely connected to myself as a creative principle, and then interacting in the world from that perspective.

Melissa: Absolutely. And I know we don’t promote on the show, so please don’t take this as a promotion. Anybody who is watching my catchphrase, so if anybody is a coach or anybody is steam coaches, we all have these elevator pitch or catchphrases that we vocalize to explain what we do. Mine is actually I empower my clients to take out their trash, reclaim their identity and take charge of their life so that they can start living it their way for themselves.

Right. So when you said reconnect to your identity, it’s so true. We get so lost and so what’s the word I’m looking for? So disconnected to who we are. When we have the roles and the titles. When you become a partner, you become that person’s partner. When you become a parent, you become that person’s parent. When you start a career or become an entrepreneur, you’re that role on top of everything. And it’s crazy how much we have to go through or how much we do go through on a daily. So this episode is definitely one I’m passionate about and I know you’re passionate about it because we wouldn’t be doing it if we weren’t.

So what do you think the first thing that people need to understand about the give and take and what this episode itself is going to be about?

Karen: So if we looked from a global perspective and then down into our individual perspective, we can see that there are overgivers in the world and overtakers and then when we look at oh, yeah, that shows up there and there, and then we come back to ourselves and we just really get honest with ourself and say, where do we overgive? And where do we overtake? And it can be confronting because those behaviors were created from a very early age.

It’s that first moment like we’re going along in our life, we’re a little baby and there’s that first moment that we realize that we can do things to stop getting love and we can change the dynamic and it’s confronting. And even though we may not have language, we do still communicate energetically and we realize, oh my God, I have to do certain things or not do certain things inside of this family environment. And our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system, it knows on some level that we have to behave a certain way because if we get rejected, we’ll be kicked out of the tribe and that’ll mean certain death. And so in that moment of that split, we take on this different way of being and different way of doing and we do disconnect from who we really are.

Melissa: Well, it’s like people pleasing, right? I know a lot of men and women that I’ve come into contact with who their entire lives and their entire identity in that moment is based on what everybody else wants and what everybody else needs. And their life is so overwhelmed by people pleasing that they don’t know who they are outside of having to do or wanting to do.

And that’s the thing with people pleasing and the give and take is you want to do it. Because for somebody like my husband so my husband downstairs, he’s probably going to laugh that I’m talking about him. Yet again, my husband likes we’ve talked about the five love languages in another episode and my husband is gifts of service, right? So he likes doing things for people. It makes him feel good doing things for people. Mine is touch, right? I’m a touch. I like to touch and hugs and kisses and snuggling and all that.

But you get to a point where even your love language is pushing you to do what that love language is just so you feel good about yourself. I find that one of the things to note is there are so many people who are not happy with who they are or don’t know who they are. Maybe they’re not happy with their life. And again, that’s not knowing who you are. But if you’re unhappy and you turn around, you’re going to project and try to do whatever it is that’s going to make you happy, whether that’s people pleasing, whether that’s give until you have nothing left to give because you’re not taking anything.

Karen: And that’s it. Exactly, Melissa we all have certain ways of being, which is great. And if we take apart giving and receiving, we can inside of agreement, we can give with integrity and we can receive with integrity.

And then if we’re outside of agreement, there’s the muddy waters and then there’s the extreme of war and rape and groping or entitlement or slavery outside of that giving and receiving. And most of us sit inside either of agreement or in the muddy waters. And because we have different patterns of behavior, we know we’ve stepped into our shadow around it. If there’s boredom, resentment or frustration, like, our emotions are so powerful in letting us know if we are in alignment with who and what we really are or if we’re out of alignment with our desires.

And it’s like I am so much in service like your husband and miracles happen. Like miracles happen when you come completely empty to be of service. It’s like the universe sort of wraps in and around and itself and these miracles happen.

If I turn up in service and I’m already a little burnt out or a little bit if I’m turning up in service in order to I want to get something, well, then I’m just going to get hammered. I’m going to get burnt out, I’m going to be annoyed because they didn’t want my service. Why didn’t they feel grateful that I came and did this?

And I think this is where we get caught up sometimes is when we’re doing what feels natural. However, on one level, it’s to get something. And it comes down to our capacity to be connected to our direct root of pleasure, which means pleasure on all the senses. I know it’s been co-opted a little bit by sex and intimacy, but if we look at pleasure from the realm of wonder and awe and joy and happiness like pleasure that feeds all.

Melissa: Of the senses looking, walking around in nature. Right, exactly. The calming, the wonder of being out in that space. Absolutely. I wanted to touch on something you had said and I can’t remember what it is now, of course. See, this is 09:00, my time. Right. It’s evening time.

Karen: Alignment with our emotions or giving to get yeah.

Melissa: Intention. That’s what it is. Yeah. When you were talking about the integrity behind it and when you’re not happy with yourself and you’re giving to get that intention is out of line. That intention will make sure that whoever you’re doing something for or whatever you’re doing something for, you’re going to get that same intention back. You’re not going to get what you want out of it. You’re not going to get what you need out of it, you’re going to get what you’re actually putting into it.

Karen: And it’s like, say I wanted to make someone a cup of tea and when we look at our giving, we have to look at who it’s for, because then we actually access our direct route of pleasure or our indirect route of pleasure.

And it can be as simple as making a cup of tea. So if I see my partner and he’s a bit stressed and I go and make him a cup of tea because he’s got a long night ahead of him, I’m making him a cup of tea. If I’m only connected to my indirect route of pleasure, his response, whether he likes it or not, will determine how I feel. But if I’m completely connected to my direct route of pleasure, his response to the cup of tea makes no difference at all.

And it’s like in the realm of over giving, where we go to burnout or people pleasing or martyrdom, it’s where we go overboard on these things, where we have only the indirect route of pleasure available to us.

So we’ll give and give and give and give and give for the response from the other person. And yet if I can just give completely, because I know that that’s so integrity of where I am and what I have to offer and whether or not and it’s like, it’s just there, it’s this natural impulse, this natural following through of the feeling and alignment in my body and that’s how I ended up burnt out. And like at rock bottom is I thought my worth, because we can interchange pleasure from esteem, worth, value, appreciation, anything, my worth came out of what I could do for another. And so I was so disconnected from my own being that it was always taking care of another, taking care of another, taking care of another, and there was nothing left. Literally nothing.

Melissa: Sure. And for anybody watching, this isn’t just for women, this is for men as well, right?

Melissa: You’ve got women who are wife, mother, caregiver, teacher. We have so many roles wrapped up into one that it does get overwhelming and it is a lot of burnout because kids aren’t always going to show their appreciation, right? So like you said, if you’re in it for the response, their response to you helping them isn’t going to give you what you’re looking for, right? If your partner’s had a bad day and you just want to make them feel better and you know what? I like doing something nice. You’re not having a great day here’s a cup of tea, whatever, right? And even if it doesn’t change their mood, even if you don’t get that response, you still know that you’ve done something that you want to do. Now, a caveat to all of this is when you are doing something for somebody else and doing that gift of service and giving with the intention of just giving. I just totally lost where I was going with that.

Karen: Well, then everyone’s energized like you’re energized if you give just from the intention of giving and knowing that the other person’s response has no impact on you.

Karen: It’s like you are whole and complete in and of yourself, which we all are. And we have forgotten. And part of the reason that we play with this indirect root of pleasure is because we’ve forgotten that we are whole, complete and perfect and we’ve forgotten that love is this inside generated, omnipresent feeling like if we’re doing it to get love, we have forgotten that we already are it.

Karen: And so of course, we’re going to be disappointed completely inside of a relationship in the give and take of a relationship, when we come down to it, the communication is so important and so powerful and it really comes down to three things. It comes down to making requests, making offers and making invitations. And when we can master those three things, everything both with the relationship we have with ourself and others in our immediate circle family and then friends, and then community, and then country, and then globally. If we come down to those integrous things of requests, invitations and offers, it’s a completely different life we have and what we can then generate.

Melissa: Can you elaborate a little bit more on those three?

Karen: So making requests, offers and invitations means that we have a foundation of knowing what’s inside of our domain. And people may use the word boundary in relation to this. However, I’m going to use the word domain because a boundary can change. What’s inside of our domain never changes. We always have a right to it and we always have a responsibility for it.

Karen: So it’s like this organism that lives and breathes based on what’s happening in the natural environment in the moment.

Melissa: Yeah, I love that idea, and I love that concept. I find that society, not as a whole, but in a majority, not a lot of families or family components will have every member being on that ebb and flow.

Karen: Yeah. Yes. And for me to say an absolute yes to something where my yes could be trusted is I had to learn how to say no. So fundamentally, the people that are over giving have to learn how to say no because they’re yeses that can’t be trusted, and it’s not that they can’t be trusted externally, we lose trust with ourself. So if I say yes when I mean no, I am moving further and further away from myself. And so for the people who overgive learn how to say no and learn how to say no, it’s like no and learn the colors and shades of no, learn which no’s work for you and bring lightness to no, knowing that it has nothing to do with you and that you’re building trust with yourself.

And then inside of the people that are overtaking, it’s like practicing saying no to them so that they get used to hearing a no. They’re probably very used to saying no, and they’re not often used to hearing a no. And so people want to proclaim the benefits of yes. Yes. Until we can say no and mean it and build that trust muscle with ourself, knowing I can back myself in any moment by saying, and even in those moments where I’ve said yes, I can ring up and say, I know I said yes, and I regret I am now no longer able to do that. And having no as a complete sentence, I don’t have to explain or justify or give reasons at this moment, it’s a no. I regret it’s no right now, thank you and no. And just explore all of these wonderful ways to say no and then because when we say no to something external, we are saying yes to ourself.

And the more we say yes to ourself, the more we’re getting in contact with our own domain, the more we’re building our own trust muscle with ourself, the more we’re connecting to our own wants. And here’s the thing. People who have been overgivers feel selfish when they say no. They’ve just been trained that what is selfish is just a little bit out of whack. Yeah, it’s just a little bit out of whack. And the more we can come back to an authentic no, we do have to move through a bit of a feeling of guilt and shame, knowing that that’s just the nervous system recalibrating. We’re just recalibrating back to our own authentic way of being, which gives so much more to everyone around us anyway.

Melissa: I agree and disagree, and I love episodes where I’ve got a little bit of disagree. I agree and disagree. I love what you’re talking about. I absolutely do, and it’s completely valid, but it’s very in depth. And for me, even right for me to listen to you speak about the giving and the receiving and feeling it in your body, it’s so deep but so true that it’s almost overwhelm in itself, right? Because my mind is going, Could I do that? Could I not do that? And anybody watching or anybody catching the replay, let me know if you’re thinking the same, is if you start saying no, right? And authentically saying no. And like you’ve said, you don’t need to give a reason, you don’t need to give an excuse. For me, I’m like, but I would fight that. My psyche is fighting that right now by going, if you agree to something and then say no, for me, I would feel like there needs to be some sort of explanation. Right? And don’t get me wrong, there are yeses. If I say yes, I’m going to go somewhere. I’m a hermit. I don’t like leaving my house very often, and I do feel pressured into saying yes at times, but at the same time, I start to not have anxiety. But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to do that, and I don’t want to be that. But then again, I feel bad because I hermit in my house majority of the time and probably only go out once a week. It is a struggle at first, I will admit it’s worth it to get to that point where you are able to say no and you are able to fulfill your own needs. Say no when you need to, say yes when you truly want to, without feeling that pressure. It’s wonderful. It is a wonderful feeling. It’s not going to be easy getting there, but that’s a process, right?

Karen: It is a process and you touched on I mean, we could have another whole hour on even just what you just said then, Melissa, because it really is, and I’m just going to speak to two things. One is yes. Our word, the yes or no that we make is like magic in the universe. And if we’ve said yes to something and then we call up and say, I regret I’m no longer able to come, there’s an impact. There’s absolutely an impact. There’s an impact over there with that person and we have to clean that up. So we would say, but it’s not about giving a reason, it’s about Melissa. I know I said yes to being on the television show on the 5 March and I regret I have to say no. And the impact is over there. You begin to lose trust in me, you begin to lose trust and faith in our relationship. And the impact here is I lose power. My word now loses power in the universe, it really does. And I’m not willing, I’m not committed to have you mistrust me and I’m not committed to my word losing power. And next time we come to an agreement, I’m really going to look at my schedule and really see whether I’m going to take the time and say, thank you for your request, can I get back to you? I need to look at my diary to make sure that if I do say yes, I have the capacity.

So yes, there is an impact if you change your mind, there definitely is. And there’s always going to be an impact out there with the person I’ve made the agreement with. The bigger impact is going to be with me. I lose mistrust. I begin to doubt myself, I doubt all my decisions. Anxiety, depression, all of this stuff comes. And yes, the simple act of saying no is enormously confronting to the body and the mind. And because we’ve been trained, it’s in our DNA that the action coming towards us is more important than our voice. And that’s why when everyone go, it says it’s all about mindset. It’s not mindset is everything. Like the personal development world says, it’s all about mindset. No, mindset is great, but if it hasn’t come through the body first, if it has not come through the body first, the mind lies. Bless its little heart. The mind lies, the body doesn’t. The body will give you real time info and inside of that anxiety that arises, we look at that fear and we look at faith. They’re both invisible things. Fear and faith is invisible. And we feel both of them in the body.

Melissa: Yeah, I like that. I’m all about mindset. If you ever hear me talk, it’s 99.9% mindset. Well, okay, 99.8% mindset. And the reason is I’ve got a majority of it is but there is that percentage. That is your energy, right? And that’s your soul, whatever you want to call it. I call it energy because it’s easier, because I believe our bodies are fueled by energy. But the other percentage of that is the physical. And you are absolutely right. The physical, the physical, the energetic, the mental, they all work hand in hand, but they don’t understand it. Your emotions are controlled by your mind. Your feelings are not right. If you emotionally react to something or emotionally respond to something, that’s a mental reaction, right? But if you are feeling something, feeling pain, it can be mental. But that’s only if you train yourself not to feel pain at all. Excuse me, but yeah, that’s, again, another topic that could be like another hour. But saying no doesn’t have to make you feel like an a-hole for anybody watching.

You don’t have to feel bad for saying no. Have that conversation right before you say yes to anything. There was a teacher that I had, and she said, before I do anything, I give myself 24 hours. And in that 24 hours, I can check in with myself. I can check in with what I need to check into, I can do my research, whatever it may be. I give myself 24 hours before I don’t because I’m impulsive. But that’s what she told me. And it’s so true for a lot of people having that check in time with yourself. If you’re spiritual have check in time with your guides, have check in time with your energy or your soul, there are so many levels to you checking in with yourself. So number one, check in with yourself. Make sure that saying yes or no is aligned to you. Number two, communication. The way you say things, your words have power, and the way that you request or the way that you ask, the way that you give, the way that you take, that means something.

So again, with one person’s giving more than the other, sometimes that’s needed. If you need that to change, say you’ve been giving, giving for six months and you’re overwhelmed and you’re burnt out. You sit that person down calmly and non emotionally. I can’t stress this enough do not have conversations that are based on emotions. They will flatline. Okay? Have a conversation logically and don’t put your expectations, your beliefs, your emotions or your feelings onto that other person. You take that upon yourself. I’m feeling as though I’m burning out. I have been giving giving, and I need or I want some help. So would you take on this responsibility or would you take on this chore or would you take on taking the kids to their lessons? Whatever it may be that you’re asking for, just know that you’re doing it for you regardless of the outcome, right? And if your partner says no or your friend says no, then again, like you said, sit back and say, okay, what can I do to make myself feel better? What can I do? Can I schedule out half an hour of my day for me, time for self love, self care, for me to recharge my energy and my batteries and fill my own cup? And do for yourself what you’re expecting other people to do.

Karen: Brilliant. Brilliant. And everything is energy. Everything is energy. And we can’t think any greater than we can feel. We can’t think any greater than we can feel. So if we can reach for the feeling, place first and then reach for the thoughts that go with that feeling place. So reach for the feeling and then reach for the thoughts. And our behaviors come out of our body. They don’t come out of our mind. And so when we can get the mind and the body working as one, it’s like we have the self conscious part of us, the unconscious self conscious is mind. The unconscious part of us, which is the body and then the superconscious or the soul, whatever you wish to call it. When they’re all aligned, that’s when flow happens. That’s when life does become this expansion and contraction. So absolutely and really checking in with yourself, your whole being, not just the mind, but the body as well, because the body, that brain and the heart, they have powerful pieces of wisdom.

Melissa: So on that note, I wanted to mention no promotion because I’m not running it right now, but I did a program at the end of the year last year or mid year last year, and I called it Chakra Power because I’m a spiritual teacher, as we both have the spirituality aspect to it. But I realized that, and this is why I did that program, is that we have the seven chakras. We have multiple chakras, but we have the seven main. Right in our chakras is an epicenter of power. And depending on who we are. And it’s different for everybody. But one of our chakras, if not multiple, but usually one main chakra will have an epicenter of power. That if we know where it is, if we know how to locate it, we can actually call on that power. To give us the confidence, to give us the courage to give us the love, the understanding, the power to do what we need to do and make the decisions that we need to make and be self sufficient in our needs. So I was teaching people how to do that and it was one of my favorite programs to do because who doesn’t want to be able to tap into that power that you uniquely hold. Right. It was quite nice. I absolutely loved it. And I wanted to mention it because it was one of my trends. I created that program. Like it wasn’t something I learned from a different spiritual teacher. It wasn’t something that is regularly taught. I created that concept and that was powerful for me to know that that’s something that I did because it’s something I use.

Karen: Exactly. I mean, we all generate and synthesize the gift of what we offer based on our own experiences. And it’s like for me, it’s reclaiming the power that is intrinsically ours. And you mentioned before the emotional response to the trigger, to the thought. It’s like the power in that is in the moment. It’s like the only real power actually is neutral and it’s that power to choose. Can I choose a different response rather than the patterns that are the reaction in the mind and the body? Yeah, exactly. The power to choose. And it’s like the choosing over the doing. Yeah, I’ve got this. And everyone does have that capacity to choose.

Melissa: Yeah, I’m going to save this on here. I’ll probably record it later for TikTok. And I mentioned this yesterday in the video I did yesterday and I’ll mention it repeatedly because it’s one of my favorite things to mention. There is a huge difference between a reaction and a response. A reaction is a quick fire emotional response. There is no logic behind it. There is no truth. It is literally just oh, my mind says that. That pisses me off. I’m going to react. That is a reaction. A response is when you remove that emotional reaction or you step back and say, okay, I’m feeling pissed off. I’m going to give myself a minute. Do the 15 2nd breathing technique or whatever it is. You need to clear that emotion and then say logically, am I mad because of a perceived thought or am I truly mad because energetically in my body I feel that that was intentional. Right. And then you respond and there’s a huge difference between them.

Karen: Yeah. Because the body drives the behavior. The nervous system, the fight, flight, freeze part of the autonomic nervous system is the thing that drives the reaction or the response. And when we’re born, we know how to mobilize it. We know how to cry, we know how to ask for our need through distress. But we’re never taught how to calm ourselves down. We have to learn that through another a carer, a parent, if the carer or the parent can’t help us calm that down. The neural networks in the baby’s brain are pruned and rewired based on the environment. And so it happens in the body. It just happens in the body.

And so if we look at I lived, I had the police station attached to the house and the prison cell in the backyard. So there was always a level of vicarious trauma in my environment. So my nervous system inside of my body sort of changed the barometric pressure, it increased to a new normal. And so then what was normal for my whole system was to go into an environment that felt the same. And so I went into the criminal justice system and my nervous system then kept expanding what was normal because the body just wants this homeostasis and yet it wasn’t until like I did an enormous amount of mindset work. However, the level of autonomic dysregulation in the body, the level of the nervous system that was dysregulated, and you can see it in any family that has a lot of fighting or if there’s a lot of anxiety or if there’s a lot of depression. It’s a nervous system in the person. Their nervous system is a little out of whack, and it’s like being able to calm that down. And once there is a nervous system that can flow the other nervous systems in the family, it just changes the whole dynamic in the family. And so it’s like it is the nervous system that moves us into fighting mode or connection mode or running mode or depression mode. It’s the nervous system. And so it’s like how to bring it back to its natural rhythm and then automatically the behaviors and the thoughts change with it.

Melissa: For anybody catching this, try the 15 2nd breathing technique. It is absolutely transformational. Just how quickly it relaxes your body, it relaxes your emotions, it relaxes. So it is literally inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds. And you can repeat this multiple times, but even from the first try, you will notice a difference in the way your body feels. 15 seconds. Like 15 seconds all it takes.

Karen: Absolutely. That is the perfect nervous system hack. It really is, because it’s the nervous system that controls the breath. So when you come in and bring it to a different pace, you are hacking your nervous system. Absolutely. It changes your heart rate, all of these things. So powerful.

Melissa: Yeah. All right. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we end? We’re over the hour mark, so I think we might as well shut it down. Anything else you’d like to add?

Karen: It’s just been a pleasure to be on here and I know we’ve given people something to talk about, which is the point of this conversation. And I love how the flow, the flow of who we are together in communication. You can build it in the breath, you can build it in the body, you can build it anywhere you like. So. Thank you, Melissa.

Melissa: You’re absolutely welcome. Thank you. I love it when people see the value of what I’m trying to do with the show and what I’m trying to give to the viewers and the people watching is just the ability to create conversations or even witness conversations that are going to change. Not change, but are going to help them create a happier, healthier life for themselves, for their loved ones, for anybody they come into contact with. Right? Starting a conversation about even if this entire video, somebody only takes away that 15 2nd breathing technique, that’s transformational. Not that I don’t want you to take away the rest of it, but if that’s the only thing you take away from this video, your life can change just by calming your body and knowing your limits.

Karen: Like knowing your limits. It’s okay to have limits and it’s.

Melissa: Okay to ask for help.

Karen: Absolutely.

Melissa: As long as you know asking for help is coming from you. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, thank you so much, Karen, for joining me. I really enjoyed this episode and I think that we did give people something to talk about as I’m like splashing my bra all over the place that they can take and start having happier, healthier lives through conversation. Whole point of the show. So thank you for everybody for catching this episode, catching the replay, listening to it on the podcast. I am Melissa, of course, your host of the show. My guest today was Karen Austen. You can connect with both of us through the description in this episode on the website at WW justalivetv.com and we can connect. Join the Facebook group. Let’s connect. If you have more questions, type them in the comments, send us a message. Let’s connect now. My inbox is always open. I am always on the hunt for mower co hosts who want to talk about their passion topics. If you have a passion topic that you want to see featured but you don’t want to talk about it yourself, send me a message. I will do my research to find somebody who can come on and talk about your topic. And thirdly, we are always open to sponsors. If you’d like to sponsor an episode, sponsor a platform or sponsor the website. I have packages available for all three to make the show bigger, better and much broader audience. So lots of love to select family. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Reach out because, again, inbox is always open. Thank you so much, Karen, for joining me.

Karen: Thank you, Melissa. Thank you.

Melissa: Have a wonderful day.

Karen: You too. Enjoy your evening. Bye.

Melissa: Thank you. Bye.

In this discussion, I emphasized the profound importance of saying “no” in our lives. Learning to say “no” is not just about setting boundaries with others but also about building trust with ourselves. I highlighted that for people who tend to overgive, mastering the art of saying “no” is a fundamental step because it ensures the authenticity of our “yes.”

It’s vital become comfortable with saying “no” and understanding its various shades and nuances. It’s not just a binary choice; it’s about finding the right “no” that works for us. I also talked about the value of practicing saying “no,” especially for those who are accustomed to hearing “yes” all the time. It’s crucial for them to become more receptive to receiving a “no” from others.

Saying “no” to external commitments is, in reality, saying “yes” to ourselves. This process helps us build trust within ourselves, connect with our true desires, and overcome the feeling of selfishness often associated with setting boundaries. I acknowledged that initially, embracing an authentic “no” might trigger feelings of guilt and shame, but these are natural reactions as our nervous system recalibrates.

I also delved into the concept of aligning the mind and body, emphasizing that our actions are driven by our body’s nervous system, which provides real-time information about how we feel. It’s crucial to reach for the feeling place first, letting our emotions guide our thoughts and behaviors.

Lastly, I discussed the impact of changing one’s mind after saying “yes.” While changing our commitments is sometimes necessary, it’s essential to maintain our integrity. I highlighted the significance of keeping our word and not causing mistrust with others or diminishing the power of our word in the universe. Open and honest communication about any changes is key.

Connect with Melissa