ISSUE #011
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For years, I hosted a monthly brunch with about ten women I genuinely loved being around. These were my people. I wanted to see them. And somehow, even figuring out where we were meeting started to feel like another project.
Who can make it? Where should we go? Should we reschedule? Do I actually have enough energy to talk to humans on Saturday (even when this is the group who would not judge me)?
That was the part that finally got my attention.
The problem wasn’t brunch.
I had said yes to so much everywhere else that I barely had anything left for something I actually wanted.
Somewhere along the way, I became the go-to person.
I could give you an embarrassingly long list of examples from my career. Volunteering to fix the presentation because I knew I could make it better. Jumping into the “quick” call because I could probably solve the problem faster. Taking on one more thing because watching it fall apart felt worse than just doing it myself.
And for a long time, that worked.
Being dependable felt good. People trusted me. I got a reputation for being someone who could figure things out.
The problem was that I also taught people something:
Kris will probably say yes.
And eventually, I taught myself the same thing.
Sometimes yes happens before the decision does.
That’s the weird part. Someone asks for something and the answer is already coming out of your mouth before you have checked your calendar, your workload, or whether you even want to do it.
Sure.
Yep.
I can help.
Then ten minutes later: Why did I agree to that?
That is the yes reflex.
And when you’ve spent years being rewarded for being helpful, capable, responsive, or “the one who gets things done,” saying no can feel like you are suddenly failing at being the person everyone expects you to be.
Which makes the obvious solution, just say no more, wildly unhelpful.
You need a pause before you need a no.
This was the shift for me. I didn’t need to become someone who rejected everything. I needed to stop answering before I had actually made a decision. That meant getting comfortable with responses like:
Let me look at what I already have going on and get back to you.
Or:
I want to think about that before I commit.
Nothing dramatic happened. Nobody burst into flames because I didn’t immediately volunteer.
I just gave myself enough space to decide instead of reacting.
The pause changes the question.
Without a pause, the question usually becomes: Can I do this?
And if you’re capable, the answer is annoyingly often yes. Of course you can.
You could squeeze it in after dinner. You could move something else. You could figure it out.
That is not the same as deciding it deserves your capacity. A better question is: Do I want to spend my capacity here?
That answer is different. Sometimes it is absolutely yes. Sometimes it is I care about this, but not right now. And sometimes it is a very clear Nope.
Saying no can feel uncomfortable without being wrong.
This is probably the part I resisted longest. I wanted the right decision to also feel good. Sometimes it doesn’t.
You can disappoint someone and still make the right call. You can turn down something worthwhile because something else matters more. You can stop being the automatic person for something without becoming unreliable.
The discomfort is not proof that you made the wrong decision.
Sometimes it is just proof that you did something differently.
Leave some room for the things you actually care about.
That brunch taught me something I wish I had noticed sooner. Capacity tells us whether there is anything left of you when the things you care about finally show up. I had filled so much of my life with things I could handle that even something joyful started to feel heavy. That wasn’t how I wanted to live or work.
So now, when I feel the automatic yes coming, I try not to immediately replace it with a no.
I replace it with a pause. Because sometimes the most useful boundary is simply giving yourself enough time to make the decision on purpose.
You do not have to answer every ask the moment it arrives.
Cheers to getting unscattered,
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