When Saying No Feels Impossible

 

Today's episode is called When saying No Feels Impossible.

It is our fourth in the series on how to set Christ like boundaries without feeling guilty.

 

Years ago I had a client who was a grandma and she was the grandma to a sweet little nine month old baby girl and the mother was her stepdaughter.

The mother of this child struggled.

She struggled with following through on responsibility.

She struggled with holding a job.

She liked partying on the weekends and grandma really enjoyed taking care of the baby.

However, she found herself all of the time taking care of this baby randomly.

Sometimes the mom would leave the baby overnight without really expressing when she was coming to pick it up.

So she had no idea how long she's going to have the baby, if it's going to be overnight, if it was going to be the whole weekend and she was just babysitting this baby all the time.

Sometimes she would have her own plans and her own things that she was working on.

And the mom would say, help, help.

I need you to babysit the baby.

The Grandma would drop everything and take care of the baby.

Well, there was a couple of problems with this.

First of all, she wasn't allowing this sweet daughter to take responsibility for her own actions and what was happening.

But more than that, she was unable to get her own things done because she was always watching the baby.

So as we discussed it, talked about what she wanted, and what she was able to do, she realized that she was able to take care of this baby one day a week, every week.

She was going to take this baby on Wednesdays.

And sometimes she could take the baby on the weekend if she had 24 hour notice and if the baby got picked up the next morning fairly early and wasn't just left there randomly forever.

She had a conversation with the girl and she said look, I want you to make all of your doctor's appointments.

You can run all of your errands, anything that you need to do that's important, you can do on Wednesdays.

I will babysit for you.

And the daughter was excited about this.

The stepdaughter was really excited.

There was a couple of times where she would call on a Tuesday or she would call on a Thursday and say, I need you to babysit.

And grandma would say, no, remember, Wednesdays are my day.

Soon they were able to fall into a rhythm where she was still getting lots of opportunity to take care of the baby and the mom was getting lots of opportunity to be a little bit more organized with her time.

And everybody was happier.

This is a perfect example of why we set boundaries.

It saves relationships and how it can also protect our time.

So that's what we're going to dive in today.

The law we're going to be talking about is the law of inspired action.

We can learn about, study, and scroll through social media forever and learn about how to set boundaries.

But until we actually take action and we start saying no 

Then we're not making any progress.

There's a lot of reasons why we don't say no.

Here's just a few of them.

We have this deep fear of disappointing somebody else, of making them upset or making them angry.

We're afraid that if we don't do it, no one else is going to do it.

We believe that our job is to fix, make better, to change, or to save.

Any of those can keep us from  saying no.

And there's a lot of deeper issues, especially if you have trauma where you're afraid of getting in trouble or you're afraid of being abandoned.

All of those things can be a part and a piece of this.

But before we dive in and I start pushing all of your buttons and you come up with all the reasons why your story is different and why you can't set a boundary, let's talk about four reasons why we should or why boundaries are good.

The first one I already mentioned, which is boundaries save relationships when we give more than we have, when we act out of fog, fear, obligation, or guilt.

We had an episode about this.

The resentment builds, we feel taken advantage of, we're exhausted all of the time, and eventually that resentment and that emotional separation builds so much that the relationship dies.

Second, boundaries provide the other person an opportunity to take responsibility and make changes.

The truth is that if you're going to take responsibility and you're going to do the hard and you're going to fix and change the consequences of someone else's bad behavior, of course they're not going to change.

Why would they?

There's no reason for them to.

And so not setting boundaries enables bad behavior and it stunts growth.

If you want somebody else to grow and change and do better and feel better and be happier, then we're going to allow them the consequences of their choices and we're going to stop enabling that behavior.

That means that we need to say no because boundaries preserve our energy and our purpose.

We were all given a purpose and a mission in life.

And when we're so busy putting out somebody else's fires or living by somebody else's agenda or somebody else's priorities, not only do we lose the capacity and the energy to take care of our own things, but we're also so busy that we don't have time to do the things that are most important.

That's a big deal.

Then lastly, when we take action based on our core values, we also had an episode about this, that  we allow people consequences of their choices, that we allow people responsibility for their own emotions, that we act from a place of honor.

When we start acting from those core values and we've living our life by then instead of acting on fair obligation or guilt, then we start to see ourselves differently and our actions start to match who we are.

And that is powerful because we start to shift and see that, oh, my needs and wants actually do matter.

Oh, I can speak up and I can still have a good relationship.

I can communicate in a kind and respectful way.

We learn  how to be different and we want that for ourselves.

We want that for our relationships and we want to exemplify that for our kids.

The last thing you want is for your children to be walked on, for your children to be taken advantage of, for your children to be relation, to be resentful in their relationships because they're just following what you did.

So let's dive in.

There's two parts to taking inspired action.

The 1st is we want to speak the truth with love.

And the second is we want to just flat say no.

So we're going to start with the story in John chapter 2, verses 14 through 16 of Jesus tipping the tables.

You all know the story.

Jesus went into the temple, people were selling things, they had animals in there.

He made a whip and he  knocked all their tables down and he said, no, this will not be a den of thieves.

He kicked them all out because what they were doing wasn't right.

And he spoke up about it.

He wasn't about keeping the peace or being nice all the time.

If there was something that wasn't right, he said something about it.

Good relationships are based on an ability to have difficult conversations and to do it in a kind and respectful way.

Keeping your mouth shut doesn't always benefit you or the relationships, and that's not how Jesus rolled in Luke 7.

Jesus called out the Pharisees for their criticism and judgement of the woman who anointed him with oil.

There's so many times when Jesus said no, or when Jesus called people out and he wasn't afraid to have the hard conversations or say the hard things.

Setting boundaries like Jesus includes having hard conversations about what our limits are, what we need, and what we will no longer tolerate.

These conversations are invitations to speak our feelings without criticizing or trying to change someone else.

A boundary is what you will or will not do.

It's not what someone else has to do differently.

Difficult conversations are most successful when they are had with kindness, respect, and a gentle, matter of fact tone.

It is not necessary to convince, defend, persuade or over explain.

So the question I have for you is what difficult conversations are you currently avoiding?

How can you speak up without criticizing or putting somebody else down?

Second story, this is the story of Jesus, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

Now remember, these guys are really, really good friends.

Jesus goes over to their house, He has dinner with them.

And you know how when you have really, really good friends, you kind of go above and beyond for them or you, move faster for them.

You would pretty much do anything for the people that you love most.

Well, this is them.

And Mary and Martha come to Jesus and they say our brother is really, really sick and you need to come now.

He said  there's purpose in this.

But my answer is no.

And he waited two more days to come before he came.

By the time he got there, Lazarus was dead.

And Mary and Martha went up to him and they said, if you would have been here, our brother wouldn't have died.

Now I want to stop the story right there and point out something really important because so many times we think we can't say no because we're going to disappoint somebody, because they're going to be upset, because they're going to be angry, because they're going to be let down.

Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen when you say no.

And if we're going to be like Jesus, we get to be OK with that.

We get to sit with the uncomfortableness of that.

And Jesus did.

And he recognized how sad they were, how upset they were, he sat with them and then of course, the miracle was performed.

But if we're always afraid of upsetting somebody else, we're always afraid of disappointing somebody else.

We're always afraid of what their response is going to be.

Again, it's going to wreck the relationship.

The resentment is going to build.

The exhaustion is going to build.

We can't be in a relationship where we are, where we're constantly living in that resentful space.

So that means that.

And like we talked about, we don't want to enable somebody else behavior.

We want them to have the opportunity to grow.

There's so many reasons why it's OK for someone else to be disappointed, why it's OK for somebody else to be upset and,  recognizing, like we talked about in one of our other episodes, that I'm responsible for my emotions and you're responsible for yours.

We want to step into that.

In Matthew chapter 5, verse 37, it says let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Once you say something, stick to it.

And again, the Savior said no on the regular.

When the Pharisees asked for a sign in Matthew 16, He said no.

In Luke 23, Jesus refused to answer Herod.

There's so many times where the Savior set limits, where He said no, and we need to do the same.

Years and years ago, my daughter Natalie was about 8 and we traveled to Utah to visit my sister.

When we arrived, she had laid out on her counter fresh, warm, home baked cookies.

We were so excited to eat them, especially Natalie.

And I was so busy visiting with my sister that every few minutes, Natalie would come to me and she would say, mom, can I have another cookie?

And I'm like, yeah,  go have another cookie.

Like, I wasn't really interested in how many cookies she had or what she was doing.

Well, what I didn't know was she ate about a dozen cookies and in the middle of the night she woke up and started throwing up and she was so distressed and so miserable and I felt so bad.

Had I paid attention and set boundaries with her and set a limit with her, then she wouldn't have eaten so many cookies and she wouldn't have been so sick.

 I think that's such a, good lesson for all of us that when we set limits that we are protecting, that we're taking care of, that we're honoring our stewardship, especially with our children, especially with our spouses.

Recognizing that this is what I can do and this is what I can't do.

This is what's best in this experience and in this circumstance and doing at all from a place of love and not fair, which we also talked about in one of the other episodes.

Also coming from a place of  what is aligned with God's will.

So many times I think that because of our fears that we take action and we're acting out of alignment with what God's will is for the situation in the circumstance

And because we're afraid of letting somebody down.

So we get the opportunity to get our answers and to receive revelation from the Lord about how to handle a situation, how to communicate a boundary, how to move forward, because sometimes we need to step in and sometimes we really need to step back.

Always there needs to be structure, routine, and limits to our not only with ourselves and what we can and can't do, but also with,  our children.

And as we set those limits with our children, then we are creating safety for them.

That structure eliminates anxiety in so many ways for them because they know what to expect and because they feel the safety in the know.

It goes so much against our culture, gentle parenting and all of these other things.

But the reality is, that we want to be like Jesus.

We want to have time to serve and the energy to do it.

And we want to come from a place of love and charity.

To do that, it requires an ability to say no, itrequires an ability to sit with someone else being disappointed and it, and it's a practice and it's a skill.

In fact, I have something called the three minute boundary fix.

It talks a lot about the skills around boundaries.

And all I need is your e-mail address for it.

So you can see that in the show notes or at my website, juliehawks.com and grab that.

It will help you to know how to say that doesn't work for me.

Really consider where in your relationships you're saying yes when you need to be saying no.

In fact, I have three questions I want you to consider as you are listening to this.

What difficult conversations am I currently avoiding?

How can I share my feelings without criticizing or putting someone else down?

And where do I need to say no?

But I keep saying yes.

So think about those, journal about those, pray about those.

And then if you have loved this podcast, will you share it with somebody else?

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have an absolutely wonderful day.