Why Your Yes Is As Valid As Your No

When we were kids, and if we were lucky, our parents read to us. Perhaps it was a bedtime story, an interesting article they had happened upon, or maybe it was only the address of a long-awaited letter that was breathlessly conveyed. But long ago, and for some of us, very long ago, we were read to as a kind of intimate communication, something we don’t get to experience much of anymore.

So today I thought I’d read to you. Perhaps you can use these few minutes to relax, to take some me-time in an otherwise hectic day. Close your eyes, or maybe at least close the door.

I’ll be reading from my book Chasing the Wild Authentic, A Field Guide to the Practices, Boundaries, and North Star of Living Your Truth, and I’m reading from the section where we’ve just taken leave from the concepts and skills to express our authentic self, to now learning to protect our authentic self.

Everyone cozy and ready? Here goes.

Before we leap headlong into our Yes/No work, I want to share a story. It’s a personal one about a revelation I had one day while working with a client. I’m telling it now as it completely changed the way I think about boundaries—in particular, the Yes side of boundary-making, though the insight sparked while working with a client on how to say No.

I must admit, I enjoy coaching clients on how to say No: No to all the unwanted or painful aspects of their lives. And this is exactly what this client and I had been working on, her ability to say No to what did not work so she could more fully access what did.

Because in the end, No is not about the painful things; it’s about the good things the No protects—the safety and wellbeing that lies in wait behind one’s ability to say No.

To really thrive in life, we must master the ability to say No. No is a powerful ally.

Now for a bit of story background. The client I was working with had not been getting her emotional needs met in her intimate partnership. And while there were several things going on in that relationship, of chief concern to me was that my client’s basic functioning was deteriorating in the overall context of not being seen and loved for who she was.

I was holding space for this dilemma during one of our sessions when I had a sudden flashback. Maybe it was triggered because my client was also losing weight in the process. I don’t know.

In that moment I flashed back to a skin-and-bones, failure-to-thrive infant I’d encountered in my previous work as a child protective investigator. Failure to thrive is a term that’s used to describe an infant that’s underweight and not progressing; in some cases, as in this one, it can be life-threatening.

This infant was on the verge of death. And the cause? If we really go to the heart of the matter, the cause in this situation was not being seen and loved, and thus not cared for in a way that accompanies being truly seen and truly loved.

And clarity struck.

Remove what we need to survive, and death is as likely an outcome as if we’re intentionally flooded with toxins.

Death is still death, no matter if it’s caused by getting too much of what would harm us or getting too little of what we truly need.

In that moment, I realized that saying Yes to what’s needed is as vital as saying No to harm. The urgency and legitimacy we’ve come to accept relative to our No applies equally to our Yes!

Saying “Yes!” to ourselves is not only a valid response in general, saying “Yes!” to ourselves can be a matter of survival.

I share this experience at the start of our work building Yes/No boundary competence because I want you to know how seriously I take the matter of your Yes. In our work together, your Yes will always be an equal partner to your No.

Being anchored by your No and your Yes can steady your ability to follow through with better actions, reclaim your power, and express who you are in the world. Yes and No are key reference points for your safety, and together define the passage to your brilliance and joy.

Your ability to say both Yes and No with clarity and conviction can chart a course to a life beyond what you now imagine.

(The “client” in the above segment represents no actual client, but is a composite of many client experiences and made to respect privacy issues.)