Boundaries: How to stop saying “yes” to everything

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 If you are an overachiever, a people pleaser, or one of those people who is booked so heavily and keeps taking on more. But also, secretly feeling burnt out and exhausted. This episode is for you. I’m gonna share a little bit about why you might say yes to so many things and how you can break the pattern and start to hold boundaries to give yourself more spaciousness.

 So today we’re gonna talk about how to stop saying “yes” to everything. A lot of business owners I work with and that I’m friends with have a “yes”. Addiction. I have to admit, I’m recovering at one of these. The thing is, with us entrepreneurs, we have a lot more energy and enthusiasm than the average person.

So what we tend to do is take on a lot more than the average person. Let me share an example of this. You know, I run a full-time business. My husband runs a full-time business and I help him out with his business. I’ve got my health and fitness that I’m quite focused on. We’re obviously running a household with little kids.

We’ve got the family finances, managing the house. Kids, the kids’ sport. And about 18 months ago, I was asked if I would be the president of a not-for-profit organization. And I totally thought, “yeah, absolutely I can do that.” I’m also the mom that constantly offers to look after other kids, and I seem to have a revolving door of dogs that we look after.

And the thing is, I have a big heart. Like I do genuinely wanna help other people. I wanna create a positive impact in this world. However, since I’ve been working with my therapist, I’ve been learning how toxic my addiction to adrenaline and to people pleasing is and how much it affects my health. If you can relate to any of this, let’s keep going on this topic.

So let’s today have a chat about why you keep overcommitting, the real cost of saying yes to everything. You’ll learn how to set boundaries without being a jerk, and you’ll learn how saying “no” more often can actually grow your business. And your sanity, it will help you feel healthier. So let’s be real.

When you say “yes” to things, it feels good. At first, you feel helpful, you feel needed, you feel important. But what’s actually going on underneath the chronic esc? The first thing is fomo, which is the fear of missing out. I know this definitely comes up for me. So for example, if you say “no” to something, let’s just say that you’re invited to a social event and you say no, you really get worried.

If I keep saying no, they’re not gonna invite me to things. You may also find the fear of conflict popping up. So, you know, if I say no to this, people are gonna think that I’m rude or ungrateful. Then there’s the fear of not being liked. People aren’t gonna like me if I don’t do all the things all the time.

And when you dive a little bit deeper, you might be able to find where this has actually come from. When I dove into this with my therapist, we realized that I actually had a sense of obligation around this, which we think might have come from my childhood. So I’m the eldest of five children. My mom also ran a family daycare, which is basically like a childcare center, and when I was 15, my mom had my youngest sister.

So I was sort of that, you know, almost like a second mother figure for my younger sister. I was changing her nappies. I was helping out a lot with her. And to get a bit more context around our family dynamic, you know, we did not have, we had no spare money. We had no cleaner, we didn’t have any support, we didn’t have any luxuries.

You know, we were, we were doing it, you know we were doing it pretty tough. So it wasn’t an option for me to say no. We all had to chip in. I remember that particularly when my little sister got older, everyone had a night where they had to cook for the family. We used to have these big piles of washing.

I’ll never forget these big piles of washing. We had this table. It was not just like a normal sized table. It was like a, an enormous table, and it was constantly filled with washing, and we all just had to keep going and keep folding and folding and folding. So it wasn’t an option to say no. Because I had this sense of, I have to, and I know that, I still feel that now.

So you might be able to dive a little bit deeper into where your people pleasing has come from, and then I want you to take a moment to think about your pattern of saying “yes” to everything, how this might show up in your business. Maybe you might find that, you know, a client says to you, Hey, can you just throw in this for free and not charge me?

Maybe your clients constantly contact you outside of business hours, and the mindset stories begin because you start to think, if I say no, I’ll lose the sale or the client or the opportunity. If I’m not continually available and overdelivering, they’ll fire me. So here’s a truth bomb. Every time you say yes to the wrong thing, you are saying no to something that might be the right thing.

Let’s start with talking about setting some boundaries in business. So. Firstly, you are not alone. If you struggle with this, you know, I think that this is something that every business owner struggles with at times, but some examples of how it might show up is when you say, yeah, I can do that for you.

And then it ends up taking hours. I know that I have, you know, offered to help out people. My cousin started a business and I was like, yeah, for sure I’ll help you with it. I totally didn’t mind that, by the way. But there are some examples like that where I felt resentful after. You might find that you are giving discounts.

You might find that you say yes to collaborations, even though it totally drains your time and energy, and you are actually getting zero return on that investment. Or another thing that you might find is that you let clients scope creep because you wanna be nice. So let me give you permission right now.

You are allowed to say no. You’re allowed to say no to unpaid work. You’re allowed to say no to discount requests, and you’re allowed to say no to low vibe opportunities. In fact, protecting your time is a CEO skill. So a quick reframe can be saying no is a redirection back to your priorities. Hmm. Food for thought.

Okay. Let’s bring it closer to, let’s talk about home and personal life. So if you, on top of your business, are juggling a whole bunch of other things, maybe you are a parent, a partner, a friend you know, emotional support, human, I don’t know, you might be saying yes to a lot of things. Some examples might be volunteering when you don’t have the capacity.

And that was me. Hosting events, catch ups with people who drain you, doing everything for your household, doing favors for everyone else without ever getting any in return. So let’s call it what it is. This is basically if you are doing things at your own expense and sitting in resentment after you are basically being a martyr, which doesn’t make you a better human, it just makes you resentful.

So you are allowed to say, “that doesn’t work for me”, or “I’m not available,” or “thanks, but I’ll pass.” So here’s the thing that’s a little bit challenging about this. When you do start to, if you’ve always been a yes person and you stop saying yes to everything, there are gonna be some people in your world who don’t like it, and it’s gonna be a bit uncomfortable both for you and also for them.

But what will happen is that they will learn to respect that. If you are always the person who gets dumped with everything, everyone else will always continue to expect it. So let’s talk about how to start saying no. I think first and foremost, decide in advance your boundaries. Set your non-negotiables.

So some examples of this might be, I never work for less than X dollars an hour. Your boundary might be, I don’t do unpaid collaborations. Your boundary might be, I don’t do unpaid collaborations with anyone who doesn’t have a bigger audience than me. Like there might be some exceptions around this. And again, you can set this in your personal life as well.

I don’t host every single time for the same friendship group. I’ll do it every third or fifth time. I’m not going to look after other people’s children because I don’t enjoy it. Maybe that’s something that resonates for you. So the first thing is actually just get clear, like, what are my boundaries?

What are my boundaries in business? What are my boundaries in my personal life? Like actually articulating and getting clear about it, and also identifying the nuances. Like, I know for me that I honestly, like, I love having play dates. Like when my, my kids have their cousins come and stay or kids from school, it really doesn’t bother me.

It doesn’t bother me at all. One thing though that I have noticed that does yeah, I guess it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s one of those things that’s not a, a clear yes for me is going to other people’s houses to look after their kids. So, for example, if someone says, Hey, can you please come babysit my house?

I’m a bit like, that doesn’t really light me on fire. Whereas if it’s in my house, it’s, it’s easy and I don’t mind it. My kids get to have fun. So think about the nuances around your boundaries as well. Think about the nuances around business. Because you know, I say, you know, I am not available for unpaid collaborations.

But if Amy Porterfield contacted me and said, “Hey Claire, would you be open to doing something?” I’d be like, hell yeah, Amy, at least at this point in my business journey. So think about what those nuances might look like and at different stages they’ll be different too. I mean, I certainly, it’s only been recently that I am a hell no, unless it’s paid speaking.

For ages. I was like, do you know what? I’m happy to get in front of new audiences. So I was really open to that opportunity to speak, even if I wasn’t being paid for it. So it might change at different stages of your journey. Now, this next tool is one of my favorites to stop saying yes to everything it is to pause before replying.

And the second bit of that, that works really well for me, is to bounce it off someone else. And what I mean by bounce it off, someone else is chat to chat to someone independently and hear what their thoughts are on it. Let me give you an example of this. So I’m one of five kids, as I mentioned, and we are all go, we, every second Christmas, we all get together and we’re all going away.

And one of my brothers posts in our sibling chat this week and says, I didn’t book any accommodation. There’s only a two bedroom available now. I booked a three bedroom apartment with a beautiful ocean view and I instantly went to grab my phone and say, Hey, you can have my apartment and I’ll just take the other one.

And then I thought about it. I’m like, well, no, I did. I booked ages in advance and I had really wanted my kids, my kids share in our little beach shack, our kids share bunk beds and they are always in the same room when we go on holidays. And I thought it would be really nice for them to just have a couple of nights where they get their own bedroom for a little while.

And so I, every part of me was like, I wanna jump in and I wanna help. My brother doesn’t have enough space. And I thought, I’m just gonna sit on this for a message and I’m also gonna go and tell my husband and see what his thoughts are. And he was like, no, that’s our room. We’ve got the ocean room. And you know, we had booked it.

So when I bounced it off someone else, I was able to get a bit of perspective and I didn’t jump in and offer straight away. Sometimes I think we forget that everyone else’s stuff isn’t always our problem. Particularly if you’re a people pleaser, an overachiever type. I know you know, for example, a lot of people have, you know, unwell family members and they are the default person who is going to the medical appointment, showing up, doing all of the things, even if there’s other people around and available who just don’t step up and do it. Everything is not always your problem to solve. Okay. The next part of this is having a go-to script. So if you are someone who’s like, yeah, sure, I can do that.

Absolutely. I’ll do that. Yeah, no problems. I’ll bring the food for the barbecue. There’s a couple of phrases that you can pull out that can be your little toolkit. Now, here’s just some examples. I want you to get some that are right for you and that are in your own vocabulary that will feel aligned, but some examples could be, let me think it over and come back to you in a few days.

That’s one that I love to use because it, it just buys me a bit of time instead of just saying, yeah, sure. And then maybe like, why did I offer to do that? Yeah, let me think it over and I’ll come back to you. You can say, I only do whatever. So for me, one of the things that I say is, I only do paid speaking these days, and my rate is X, let me know if you’d like the link to book in or you can just keep it really general. Thanks so much for thinking of me, but unfortunately I’m at capacity right now. Come up with some little go-to scripts. That can be your default thing to go to when you normally say yes, you can have a little, a little phrase, even if it’s just something to buy you a bit of time following on from this.

I think that it’s also a very clever idea to communicate clearly what your boundary is because a lot of people don’t have the courage to have the uncomfortable conversation around it. The other person is left, confused, unsure. So have the clear communication around exactly what the boundary is. So like for example, you could say, “Hey mom, look, I’m more than happy to host at my house.

However, I don’t wanna have to always be paying for the food to feed everyone. So I’m happy to host it at my place so long as everyone chips in and brings some things along.” Or in business it might say, look, I am happy when, you know, we, we’ve designed your brand new launch. I’m happy to respond to emails.

You know, we’re just gonna be jumping in and doing the big campaign, and I’m gonna show up live to the launch event and everything for that week. However, outside of that, I’m only available between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM because when you communicate clearly exactly what that boundary looks like. It just helps set expectations because otherwise the other party is guessing, wondering what’s going on.

I really believe that clarity breeds trust. The next thing to do, if you have an opportunity come up and you’re like, is this a yes? Is it an o? Check it. If it does feel good. Sometimes it does feel good. Like, you know, I said that I do a lot of dog sitting and I, I love dogs and sometimes it feels good and sometimes it doesn’t.

And it’s a learning, like, what does this look like? I know for me with my clients, when I get to the end of the 60 minute call with them, I don’t necessarily go, three minutes to go and cut off the call straight away. Sometimes I, we take it a little bit further and that feels really good to me to make sure that we’ve finished out a conversation if that’s needed for that particular call.

Obviously you don’t wanna be making all of my calls run, but it feels good to me. It doesn’t feel great to be cutting people off halfway through, you know, a conversation because that’s my boundary. The next thing and the final thing actually is to hold your boundaries. If you go through the discomfort of that communication, be it with your mom, the catering, or in your business, you have to hold it because if you continually keep breaching that boundary, you are basically saying it’s okay.

For example, if you’ve had the conversation and you’re like, mom, I’m happy to always host, but everyone needs to bring the food so that I’m not paying for at all. And then she goes, Hey, great, we are all coming on Saturday. What can we bring? And you go, oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve got this one. And that’s the first time.

Then you do it again, then you do it again. No wonder people come to expect it. And if you tell your clients, Hey, I’m not available, you know, on the weekends. And then if they message you, you keep replying to them. It’s not surprising that they, you know, even though your contract or your conversation might have said that, if through your behavior you’re demonstrating something else, you are leaving someone feeling very confused around what this looks like.

And on this note, I do wanna share that. A lawyer friend of mine told me that even if you’ve got a written contract, if your behavior continually is different to what’s in your written contract. It can actually, in terms of the legal agreement, change what your agreement is. So let me share what I mean.

If you are a social media manager and your contract says, I’m going to do three posts a week for you. But every single week you throw in two extra posts and for six months you’ve been doing five posts every week. And then one day you crack the sh*ts and you’re like, I’m only gonna do three posts. The fact that you have continually been doing five for a long period of time actually sets a new precedent of what your agreement is.

Now, I’m not a lawyer. Please go and get your own legal advice. But this can actually happen. And regardless of the legal implications, it also expectation wise modifies what each party is expecting. Look, I wanna wrap up by saying, saying hard is No, I know that I still screw up and say yes to things and then later regret it.

But I have been doing this work and I am learning to be so much better at saying no. And honestly, it feels great, awkward in the moment, but great long term because every yes has a cost. Your time, your energy, your peace, and ultimately your profit. So start saying no more often. Start saying yes to your own priorities, start saying yes to your own next level.

You don’t need to explain your boundaries, although I think that it is helpful, but you do need to keep them. Let me know if this episode resonated with you. Feel free to drop me a DM over on Instagram, I’m the Clare clare_wood_coach. Let me know if you are a recovering people pleaser, and hopefully there’s some tips in here that will help you break out of those patterns.

Have a fabulous week and I’ll chat to you again next week on The Clare Wood Podcast.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio