Owning your yes and your no

I’ve practiced yoga for my entire adult life, and it’s taught me a number of powerful lessons over the years. Recently, several personal and client experiences that have driven home this one: one of the most powerful things you can do in life — especially when things around you are shifting and changing — is to know what your YES is and to fully be with it.

While in coaching we often talk about “being a yes,” it was on my yoga mat that I first heard this phrase. It’s resonated and rooted in me ever since.

YES is a simple and powerful word.

Embodying your yes is much more than saying yes to what’s in front of you. And it doesn’t mean indiscriminately saying yes to every opportunity that presents itself.

This might be a great explorer mission to take on for a short period of time — especially if you may want or need to stretch your comfort zone a bit — but really, it’s more lasting to be discerning and intentional with your yes, to ground those things you commit to in meaning and purpose.

Rather than just talking the yes talk, this is an energetic stance that impacts how you think, feel and show up. It’s about fully leaning in to what matters to you. It’s about commitment and about actively taking a positive, affirmative approach towards who you most want to be and what you most want to create in your life.

This is a great thing to reflect on when we close out one year and start a new one. Or anytime we’re adapting to changes.

In my own times of transition and uncertainty — the ones I excitedly created, the ones I was apprehensive about and the ones I never expected to have to deal with — I’ve continually come back to this idea of being a yes. Or, as yoga teacher Baron Baptiste described in his book Being of Power, being “confident in the ability to turn difficulty into possibility, upsets into positive energy, and breakdowns into breakthroughs.”

We're not just talking about facing the uncomfortable bits and standing up to a challenge, though. Committing to a very personal yes is both a decision point and the foundation of creating what’s next.

Too often, we come at life and work — and especially change and situations of uncertainty — from a place of can’t, won’t or don't know how. Resistance is a natural reaction. It doesn’t ask much of us to stay in that comfort zone. It may feel safe. It also doesn’t always offer us much in return.

Being a yes to possibility, to ourselves and to honoring our clarity creates more of the experiences we want.

This means continually being discerning in what we are saying yes and saying no to, and looking past the moment to understand the consequences of where we are showing up as committed and where we are not.

In fact, the no is a really big part of this equation— and saying no can sometimes also be the more difficult part.

We have to say no a lot more often to get to those fully aligned yes places, and although we intellectually know that to be true, it also takes work to get comfortable with the word, the boundaries it entails and the fallout that can sometimes bring.

The author James Clear puts it this way: “Saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future. No is a form of time credit. You retain the ability to spend your future time however you want. Yes is a form of time debt. You have to pay back your commitment at some point. No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.”

It’s not just time, though. No paves the way for clarity and replenishes our personal energy. Every no makes more space for that yes.

Recently, I watched a client step fully into her yes, with clarity and commitment. It was a moment where everything visibly shifted.

She was able to stand fully in that yes because she had been practicing saying no to a number of things. No to activities that aren’t serving her goals. No to being rushed while seeking out clarity. No to a few tempting but ultimately distracting opportunities.

The room was there.

“Suddenly,” it became easier to feel the knowing around what she wants her work life to grow into during the next year and why that’s important. "Suddenly," she is seeing results that felt so elusive before. Her personal energy is revitalized and her outward results are looking different as a result.

Try it as you reflect on what you’re experiencing now and where you want to go next.

If the first steps to creating a well-balanced, integrated and fulfilling next year — anything you want over the next 12 months, really — include saying no and being a yes, where is that true for you right now?

What you are saying yes to in the next year, and where will a well-placed no or two create more space for that?