157. No Makes Space for Yes
Is your life full of too many yeses?
Yeses to extra work responsibilities.
Yeses to loads of childcare you’d rather be splitting with your spouse.
Yeses to everything your parents ask for when you have siblings who could help out more.
Yeses to extra episodes of All Rise when what you really need is more sleep.
Yeses to making cupcakes from scratch when it’s not the best use of your time.
Whatever your life particulars are, chances are you’re saying yes to at least a few things you’d rather be saying no to.
Maybe you’re saying yes without evening thinking about it, then stressing later.
Maybe you know you want to say no but you can’t quite bring yourself to do it.
But what are you saying NO to when you say YES to these things you’d rather not do?
Maybe you’re saying no to starting your business when you take on those extra work responsibilities because they leave you drained and ready for wine and Netflix by 5pm.
Maybe you’re saying no to sexy time with your significant other when you say yes to every single request from your parents even though you have siblings who could also help out.
Maybe you’re saying no to a little bit of well-earned alone time when you say yes to making the cupcakes from scratch.
You have a limited amount of time and energy. When you say yes to something, you say no to something else, because there’s only so much room in your calendar.
Right now, are you saying those yeses and nos on purpose? Or are you saying yes to everything anyone asks you to do and then winding up with a lot of nos for the things you really care about?
In order to create deep, lasting satisfaction, you need to get clear on your yeses and nos, and get them in the right places.
Which means you need to be able to say no in order to be able to say YES to the things that really matter to you.
In this week’s episode, I’m sharing a simple concept that has the capacity to be life-changing and show you how to decide on purpose where you want your yeses to go, what you want to make space for, and how to create a yummy layout for your life and career.
Learn how to say no to things that aren’t your top priorities so you can get your time back to use as a YES instead!
My small group coaching program, Satisfied AF, is officially open for enrollment! Click here to schedule a consult call for Satisfied AF and we can figure out what’s not working in your life and career as well as how to transform it into something that delights you.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How to create more intentionality in your life and career.
Why a lot of things in life don’t need to be done fabulously well.
One thing to help you when you’re starting out saying “no.”
The importance of being able to delay gratification.
What a soft no is and how to do one.
Why your calendar may not necessarily reflect your priorities.
How to start making decisions for yourself based on your priorities.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how the word no makes space for the word yes.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. This week we’re talking about a very throwback concept. I remember way back before I was even a coach kind of coming to this conclusion, or maybe I read about this idea in a book. I don’t actually even really remember where the idea came from, I just remember kind of having this idea, no makes space for yes. If you can’t have a no, you can’t actually have a true yes.
I think this is really interesting from a lot of different points of view. I mean, a very obvious one is the idea of consent. If it’s not safe or okay for you to say no, you can’t actually give a true yes, you can’t actually give true consent. But the way I want to talk about it in this week’s podcast, it’s more about just kind of casual yeses and nos in your life, and maybe some not so casual ones, too.
So I think the easiest example for this is scheduling. We all have a limited amount of time in our day to day lives and it gets filled up with stuff. And if we want that time to do something, we usually need to get rid of something else, or we have to combine things, right?
Like when I worked at Expedia and I took my car to a neighborhood and parked in a neighborhood. And then walked through a park and then walked from the bottom of an underpass to the overpass and then caught a bus. And then took the bus to a different city and then also had to walk into the building. I had a lot of time every day that was taken up with that commute.
So one of the ways that I dealt with that is I collapsed and I did other stuff on top of the commute so that that time was doing more than one thing at once. It was commute time, but it was also time I was answering emails, reading social media, stuff like that. So that’s not what we’re talking about, but it’s just kind of an example.
What we are talking about is like if I wanted that time back to do something else that I couldn’t overlap with riding the bus, then I needed to say no to the bus so I could say yes to something else. And so a way that I did do that in my life was negotiating first one and then eventually to work from home days.
On my work from home days I wasn’t commuting. I didn’t directly say, no, I won’t commute. But I had made life choices and negotiations with my workplace such that I could decline and say no to the bus ride on those days. And then that meant I got that time back so I could use that time as a yes for something else.
Other ways that this could be conceptualized in your schedule is if you’re spending a lot of time doing household chores and you want that time back, you could say no to the household chores and then get the time back for like a hobby, for reading a book, for going on a date night.
And there’s various ways we can say no. Some of the ways we say no are by hiring other people. Some of the ways we say no, are a little bit like saying less of that, right? Like if there’s something in your life that you’ve been doing a really, really good job on, but it doesn’t actually need for you to do a really good job on it, then a way that you can say no more softly is just by doing a less good job on it.
A way I kind of conceptualize this is pass/fail. Like if you are someone who is kind of a type A or kind of a perfectionist, you might feel called to do everything to the nth degree, like fabulously well. But a lot of things in life, they just don’t need to be done fabulously well, it’s more like pass/fail. It’s like if it’s done, that’s good enough.
And so that’s a way that’s a little bit of a, it’s not a yes or no, it’s kind of like in the continuum between yes and no we’re like ratcheting down how much time we’re willing to invest in something, how much of our energy. And when we ratchet that down and carve it back, then we get some of that yes back that we can spend on something else.
And speaking of spending, that’s another way you can conceptualize this. It’s like if you have a bucket of time, a bucket of energy, a bucket of attention, if you’re spending it on one thing, you’re not going to be able to spend it on something else. So when you say no to spending it in one way or in one place, then you get more yes that you can use later.
And this literally does happen with budgets, right? Like if I have a budget of $100 to buy new clothes, then if there’s a $100 pair of jeans, that’s my whole budget. Saying yes to that means I’m saying no to the other things. And if there’s something less expensive, like maybe I can find a $50 pair of jeans, then I can say yes to those jeans and still have more yes to use later.
So in a way I kind of conceptualize this as no makes space for yes. But yes, also will involve saying some nos later, right? The yeses and nos go together, and we have sort of a limited amount of things generally we can say yes to and then we’re going to need to say no to other things. And you either can say no first or you can say no later.
Now, I think this leads to another interesting idea. This is where it kind of overlaps with prioritization. If you’re prioritizing things on purpose, whether what you’re prioritizing is your morning routine, or your work deliverables, or prioritizing spending time with certain people like loved ones, friends, et cetera, you can either prioritize on purpose, or just however you live your life will become your default priorities.
And I think the same is true with the yeses and nos. If you are used to just saying yes to everything until your schedule fills up, then you’re going to be filled up with the default of whoever asked you first and got on your calendar first, which is not necessarily going to reflect what you would like your priorities to be.
So this is a pretty simple concept, but I really think it has the capacity to be life changing for you. And I can already imagine that one of the questions I’m going to get about this is like, okay, I need to say no, but saying no is hard and uncomfortable. How do I do that? And I think that’s a great question.
I’ve coached so many people and so many of them struggle with no. And if you’re just starting out using no, one of the things that can be really helpful is kind of doing a soft no. And a soft no could look like let me get back to you about that. A soft no could look like maybe. A soft no could look like I can’t commit. A soft no could look like can I have a few minutes to think about it? Can I have a few weeks to think about it?
So a soft no isn’t a full no, but it’s going to buy you some time to kind of think it through, to look at your priorities and to decide if whatever is being asked or invited of you actually lines up to your priorities and how you intentionally want to spend your time, energy, money, affection, et cetera.
You can also do a no sandwich where you’re like, hey, thank you so much for thinking of me, that’s not a good fit for me right now but I would love to be considered in the future. That’s just something that came up off the cuff. I’m actually really good at random scripts like that. It’s actually one of my secret superpowers, kind of just coming up with scripts off the cuff like that.
And when I’m working with my one on one, and group clients on calls, I’ll do that all the time when they’re kind of trying to think through, how do I say no? How do I make a request? How do I make this pitch? I will kind of help them come up with a little script, and that’s what I’m doing here for you. And that can be super useful. And you can also write it down and save it like in the Notes app on your phone so that when you need to have a no, it’s available for you there.
I kind of sandwiched it with gratitude and please consider me for the future, but there’s all kinds of things you could sandwich around it. Like when we sandwich things, like if it’s a compliment sandwich, if it’s a no sandwich, the sandwiching is usually about framing the no or framing the request or framing the difficult feedback.
Now, there are different schools of thought on whether people think this is effective or not, but you get to decide for yourself. I also think sometimes when we do things, even if they are less effective but they’re more available to us, it can still be a really good stepping stone.
For a lot of us, if we’re going from not saying no ever, then going to saying a direct no might feel really massively uncomfortable, it might be too big of a step. So if a sandwich feels good to you, you can start there. And then if eventually you want to develop the capacity to be able to be more blunt, you can always build up to that later.
As ever on the podcast, I think taking things in really, really small steps and then praising yourself is the key to making behavioral change. Because small steps are easier to do and we want to do more of what we’re celebrating and what we’re celebrated for.
I’ve talked before on the podcast about delaying gratification being a skill that can be useful. But if all we ever do is delay gratification, then sometimes what we also need to do is learn to experience gratification and pleasure in the moment. And I think that this is a good topic to sort of overlap and revisit that concept with.
So there is this kind of frame of being able to delay gratification is super useful to achieve goals and stuff. But also, like I just said, if all you ever do is delay gratification, then even when you achieve your goals you might have a low capacity for being able to enjoy them.
And I think it might really be helpful if we switch the frame from can you delay gratification versus experiencing gratification to like are you able to choose on purpose which gratification you want and set your life and career up to reflect that, right? Because then it’s less about are you delaying it or experiencing it, and it’s more about like, which gratification do you want in your life and how are we going to set you up to get that?
So, in life when we’re spending anything, whether it’s money, time, energy, effort, we have limited capacity generally, right? And so sometimes what people will do is they’ll spend it on whatever it is that they want and then they’re going to run out, and then they have to figure that out.
Other times people won’t spend it on anything and then they’ll at the end have a bunch of surplus but they won’t have had the experiences they want. I think that one’s more rare, but I do think it happens. Versus thinking through, in what ways do I want my life to be gratifying? And to take this back to the yes and no, where do I want my yeses to be? What do I want my yeses to be for?
I think so many of us want to believe that we can say yes to everything that seems like a good fit for us. But it doesn’t always literally fit into our lives or onto our schedules. I think also, a lot of us feel pressure to say yes to things we think we should do, or should be available for. And again, it doesn’t always fit onto our calendar or into our lives. Or if it does fit, it’s sort of all crammed in there and then we don’t have things like white space leftover and we feel very overwhelmed and crammed.
And I think it’s a really beautiful, and actually pretty rare skill to be able to decide on purpose, where do I want my yeses to go? Where do I want my nos to go? What do I want to make space for? Where do I want my gratification to come from? What is a yummy for me layout for my life, for my career, for my time, for my energy?
So we’ve talked on the podcast before about doing a satisfaction audit, this week I want you to do a yeses and nos audit. What are you saying yes to without even thinking about it? What are you saying yes to that actually doesn’t feel yummy for you? What are you saying yes to that does feel yummy for you?
And what about the nos? Where are you saying no to things you actually want but you haven’t been able to figure out how to fit them in? And where are you not saying no to things that you really want to say no to, right? And in the beginning, let’s not even try to figure out the plan for how to say the new yeses and nos. Let’s just, again, do the audit and look at where you’re at.
And I think from there it’s like, look at where you’re at, see the things that are yummy and delicious that you can appreciate yourself for. And then what’s a one degree shift you can make? What’s a 1% adjustment you can do to bring yourself more into alignment with how you’d intentionally like to be living, how you’d intentionally like to be going about your career? Can you use some of those soft nodes to begin to move yourself in a direction?
Sometimes life being what it is, we aren’t able to shift things as fast as we want or there would be consequences that we don’t prefer if we were to shift things. Like maybe you really want to say no to something at work, but you don’t feel like you’re in a senior enough position to do that. If that’s the case, if you’re not able to employ the no yet, you can still think about like, okay, in 12 months, I’d like to be able to do a no there in. 18 months I’d like to be able to renegotiate this.
So you can plan for what you want the yeses and nos to be. You can be honest with yourself about where you are and what can be changed now. And you can lay the foundation and groundwork for what you would like to change later.
And for things that you’re not able to change now you can still kind of think through like, okay, later when I have more seniority, how could I have that conversation? How can I set myself up well, so that when I go into that conversation I have good evidence that they should do the thing that I’m proposing, because I can show XYZ about my job performance over the last 12 months.
Or even looking for examples of other people having done something similar and it working, because that’s more evidence towards your pitch. So again, there may be places where you can adjust your yeses and nos immediately. And there may be other places where you either can’t or you’re not willing to have consequences you would get from doing that. But you can begin to plan for the future and for what you would like those yeses and nos to be able to do for you and what you would like them to enable you to have and how your life could be if you develop these skills.
Just remember, it might seem like it would be really nice to say yes to everything, but without a no, there is no yes. And for better or worse, our time, energy, effort, et cetera here are limited. So there might be a million things you would like to do. But if you want to do any of them thoroughly or well, you’re probably going to have to make some decisions and prioritize some things above others.
And if you don’t prioritize, then whatever gets on your calendar is going to be the default priority. So you may as well make the decisions yourself.
All right, that’s what I have for you this week. If you would like support in finding your nos and changing your life and making the big and little transitions that you need to make to bring your life more into alignment with how you want it to be, I can help you with that. I currently have space for a few new one on one clients and I would love to have a conversation with you about you becoming one of them.
You can slide on over to my website and sign up for a consult call and we can talk all about what your life would look like with some new and improved yeses and nos and how coaching can help you get there.
All right, talk to you later. Bye.
One more quick announcement, as I’ve been hinting at, the podcast name is going to be changing. It’s been a pleasure and a delight to host the Love Your Job Before You Leave It podcast and as you’ve probably noticed over the years, I’ve shifted from just talking about career stuff to talking about all kinds of life stuff.
And in line with that, I am changing the name of the podcast to Satisfied AF, and mostly it’s just going to be the name that’s changing, but also there are some topics I’ve wanted to talk about that were so far away from career that I just didn’t bring them up, even though I have a pretty broad take already.
So there are new and exciting things we’re going to cover, and when you see the name change from Love Your Job Before You Leave It to Satisfied AF, just make sure to stay following the podcast, don’t unsubscribe, it’s still me, it’s still going to be all the same great stuff and even more exciting things, and also there is going to be a campaign to share about the podcast as it makes the transition, and I’m going to have some really juicy prizes.
So be sure to listen to the next episode on the day it comes out, so that you can hear about the campaign, share about the podcast, and be in the running for those really wonderful prizes.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. This week we’re talking about a very throwback concept. I remember way back before I was even a coach kind of coming to this conclusion, or maybe I read about this idea in a book. I don’t actually even really remember where the idea came from, I just remember kind of having this idea, no makes space for yes. If you can’t have a no, you can’t actually have a true yes.
I think this is really interesting from a lot of different points of view. I mean, a very obvious one is the idea of consent. If it’s not safe or okay for you to say no, you can’t actually give a true yes, you can’t actually give true consent. But the way I want to talk about it in this week’s podcast, it’s more about just kind of casual yeses and nos in your life, and maybe some not so casual ones, too.
So I think the easiest example for this is scheduling. We all have a limited amount of time in our day to day lives and it gets filled up with stuff. And if we want that time to do something, we usually need to get rid of something else, or we have to combine things, right?
Like when I worked at Expedia and I took my car to a neighborhood and parked in a neighborhood. And then walked through a park and then walked from the bottom of an underpass to the overpass and then caught a bus. And then took the bus to a different city and then also had to walk into the building. I had a lot of time every day that was taken up with that commute.
So one of the ways that I dealt with that is I collapsed and I did other stuff on top of the commute so that that time was doing more than one thing at once. It was commute time, but it was also time I was answering emails, reading social media, stuff like that. So that’s not what we’re talking about, but it’s just kind of an example.
What we are talking about is like if I wanted that time back to do something else that I couldn’t overlap with riding the bus, then I needed to say no to the bus so I could say yes to something else. And so a way that I did do that in my life was negotiating first one and then eventually to work from home days.
On my work from home days I wasn’t commuting. I didn’t directly say, no, I won’t commute. But I had made life choices and negotiations with my workplace such that I could decline and say no to the bus ride on those days. And then that meant I got that time back so I could use that time as a yes for something else.
Other ways that this could be conceptualized in your schedule is if you’re spending a lot of time doing household chores and you want that time back, you could say no to the household chores and then get the time back for like a hobby, for reading a book, for going on a date night.
And there’s various ways we can say no. Some of the ways we say no are by hiring other people. Some of the ways we say no, are a little bit like saying less of that, right? Like if there’s something in your life that you’ve been doing a really, really good job on, but it doesn’t actually need for you to do a really good job on it, then a way that you can say no more softly is just by doing a less good job on it.
A way I kind of conceptualize this is pass/fail. Like if you are someone who is kind of a type A or kind of a perfectionist, you might feel called to do everything to the nth degree, like fabulously well. But a lot of things in life, they just don’t need to be done fabulously well, it’s more like pass/fail. It’s like if it’s done, that’s good enough.
And so that’s a way that’s a little bit of a, it’s not a yes or no, it’s kind of like in the continuum between yes and no we’re like ratcheting down how much time we’re willing to invest in something, how much of our energy. And when we ratchet that down and carve it back, then we get some of that yes back that we can spend on something else.
And speaking of spending, that’s another way you can conceptualize this. It’s like if you have a bucket of time, a bucket of energy, a bucket of attention, if you’re spending it on one thing, you’re not going to be able to spend it on something else. So when you say no to spending it in one way or in one place, then you get more yes that you can use later.
And this literally does happen with budgets, right? Like if I have a budget of $100 to buy new clothes, then if there’s a $100 pair of jeans, that’s my whole budget. Saying yes to that means I’m saying no to the other things. And if there’s something less expensive, like maybe I can find a $50 pair of jeans, then I can say yes to those jeans and still have more yes to use later.
So in a way I kind of conceptualize this as no makes space for yes. But yes, also will involve saying some nos later, right? The yeses and nos go together, and we have sort of a limited amount of things generally we can say yes to and then we’re going to need to say no to other things. And you either can say no first or you can say no later.
Now, I think this leads to another interesting idea. This is where it kind of overlaps with prioritization. If you’re prioritizing things on purpose, whether what you’re prioritizing is your morning routine, or your work deliverables, or prioritizing spending time with certain people like loved ones, friends, et cetera, you can either prioritize on purpose, or just however you live your life will become your default priorities.
And I think the same is true with the yeses and nos. If you are used to just saying yes to everything until your schedule fills up, then you’re going to be filled up with the default of whoever asked you first and got on your calendar first, which is not necessarily going to reflect what you would like your priorities to be.
So this is a pretty simple concept, but I really think it has the capacity to be life changing for you. And I can already imagine that one of the questions I’m going to get about this is like, okay, I need to say no, but saying no is hard and uncomfortable. How do I do that? And I think that’s a great question.
I’ve coached so many people and so many of them struggle with no. And if you’re just starting out using no, one of the things that can be really helpful is kind of doing a soft no. And a soft no could look like let me get back to you about that. A soft no could look like maybe. A soft no could look like I can’t commit. A soft no could look like can I have a few minutes to think about it? Can I have a few weeks to think about it?
So a soft no isn’t a full no, but it’s going to buy you some time to kind of think it through, to look at your priorities and to decide if whatever is being asked or invited of you actually lines up to your priorities and how you intentionally want to spend your time, energy, money, affection, et cetera.
You can also do a no sandwich where you’re like, hey, thank you so much for thinking of me, that’s not a good fit for me right now but I would love to be considered in the future. That’s just something that came up off the cuff. I’m actually really good at random scripts like that. It’s actually one of my secret superpowers, kind of just coming up with scripts off the cuff like that.
And when I’m working with my one on one, and group clients on calls, I’ll do that all the time when they’re kind of trying to think through, how do I say no? How do I make a request? How do I make this pitch? I will kind of help them come up with a little script, and that’s what I’m doing here for you. And that can be super useful. And you can also write it down and save it like in the Notes app on your phone so that when you need to have a no, it’s available for you there.
I kind of sandwiched it with gratitude and please consider me for the future, but there’s all kinds of things you could sandwich around it. Like when we sandwich things, like if it’s a compliment sandwich, if it’s a no sandwich, the sandwiching is usually about framing the no or framing the request or framing the difficult feedback.
Now, there are different schools of thought on whether people think this is effective or not, but you get to decide for yourself. I also think sometimes when we do things, even if they are less effective but they’re more available to us, it can still be a really good stepping stone.
For a lot of us, if we’re going from not saying no ever, then going to saying a direct no might feel really massively uncomfortable, it might be too big of a step. So if a sandwich feels good to you, you can start there. And then if eventually you want to develop the capacity to be able to be more blunt, you can always build up to that later.
As ever on the podcast, I think taking things in really, really small steps and then praising yourself is the key to making behavioral change. Because small steps are easier to do and we want to do more of what we’re celebrating and what we’re celebrated for.
I’ve talked before on the podcast about delaying gratification being a skill that can be useful. But if all we ever do is delay gratification, then sometimes what we also need to do is learn to experience gratification and pleasure in the moment. And I think that this is a good topic to sort of overlap and revisit that concept with.
So there is this kind of frame of being able to delay gratification is super useful to achieve goals and stuff. But also, like I just said, if all you ever do is delay gratification, then even when you achieve your goals you might have a low capacity for being able to enjoy them.
And I think it might really be helpful if we switch the frame from can you delay gratification versus experiencing gratification to like are you able to choose on purpose which gratification you want and set your life and career up to reflect that, right? Because then it’s less about are you delaying it or experiencing it, and it’s more about like, which gratification do you want in your life and how are we going to set you up to get that?
So, in life when we’re spending anything, whether it’s money, time, energy, effort, we have limited capacity generally, right? And so sometimes what people will do is they’ll spend it on whatever it is that they want and then they’re going to run out, and then they have to figure that out.
Other times people won’t spend it on anything and then they’ll at the end have a bunch of surplus but they won’t have had the experiences they want. I think that one’s more rare, but I do think it happens. Versus thinking through, in what ways do I want my life to be gratifying? And to take this back to the yes and no, where do I want my yeses to be? What do I want my yeses to be for?
I think so many of us want to believe that we can say yes to everything that seems like a good fit for us. But it doesn’t always literally fit into our lives or onto our schedules. I think also, a lot of us feel pressure to say yes to things we think we should do, or should be available for. And again, it doesn’t always fit onto our calendar or into our lives. Or if it does fit, it’s sort of all crammed in there and then we don’t have things like white space leftover and we feel very overwhelmed and crammed.
And I think it’s a really beautiful, and actually pretty rare skill to be able to decide on purpose, where do I want my yeses to go? Where do I want my nos to go? What do I want to make space for? Where do I want my gratification to come from? What is a yummy for me layout for my life, for my career, for my time, for my energy?
So we’ve talked on the podcast before about doing a satisfaction audit, this week I want you to do a yeses and nos audit. What are you saying yes to without even thinking about it? What are you saying yes to that actually doesn’t feel yummy for you? What are you saying yes to that does feel yummy for you?
And what about the nos? Where are you saying no to things you actually want but you haven’t been able to figure out how to fit them in? And where are you not saying no to things that you really want to say no to, right? And in the beginning, let’s not even try to figure out the plan for how to say the new yeses and nos. Let’s just, again, do the audit and look at where you’re at.
And I think from there it’s like, look at where you’re at, see the things that are yummy and delicious that you can appreciate yourself for. And then what’s a one degree shift you can make? What’s a 1% adjustment you can do to bring yourself more into alignment with how you’d intentionally like to be living, how you’d intentionally like to be going about your career? Can you use some of those soft nodes to begin to move yourself in a direction?
Sometimes life being what it is, we aren’t able to shift things as fast as we want or there would be consequences that we don’t prefer if we were to shift things. Like maybe you really want to say no to something at work, but you don’t feel like you’re in a senior enough position to do that. If that’s the case, if you’re not able to employ the no yet, you can still think about like, okay, in 12 months, I’d like to be able to do a no there in. 18 months I’d like to be able to renegotiate this.
So you can plan for what you want the yeses and nos to be. You can be honest with yourself about where you are and what can be changed now. And you can lay the foundation and groundwork for what you would like to change later.
And for things that you’re not able to change now you can still kind of think through like, okay, later when I have more seniority, how could I have that conversation? How can I set myself up well, so that when I go into that conversation I have good evidence that they should do the thing that I’m proposing, because I can show XYZ about my job performance over the last 12 months.
Or even looking for examples of other people having done something similar and it working, because that’s more evidence towards your pitch. So again, there may be places where you can adjust your yeses and nos immediately. And there may be other places where you either can’t or you’re not willing to have consequences you would get from doing that. But you can begin to plan for the future and for what you would like those yeses and nos to be able to do for you and what you would like them to enable you to have and how your life could be if you develop these skills.
Just remember, it might seem like it would be really nice to say yes to everything, but without a no, there is no yes. And for better or worse, our time, energy, effort, et cetera here are limited. So there might be a million things you would like to do. But if you want to do any of them thoroughly or well, you’re probably going to have to make some decisions and prioritize some things above others.
And if you don’t prioritize, then whatever gets on your calendar is going to be the default priority. So you may as well make the decisions yourself.
All right, that’s what I have for you this week. If you would like support in finding your nos and changing your life and making the big and little transitions that you need to make to bring your life more into alignment with how you want it to be, I can help you with that. I currently have space for a few new one on one clients and I would love to have a conversation with you about you becoming one of them.
You can slide on over to my website and sign up for a consult call and we can talk all about what your life would look like with some new and improved yeses and nos and how coaching can help you get there.
All right, talk to you later. Bye.
One more quick announcement, as I’ve been hinting at, the podcast name is going to be changing. It’s been a pleasure and a delight to host the Love Your Job Before You Leave It podcast and as you’ve probably noticed over the years, I’ve shifted from just talking about career stuff to talking about all kinds of life stuff.
And in line with that, I am changing the name of the podcast to Satisfied AF, and mostly it’s just going to be the name that’s changing, but also there are some topics I’ve wanted to talk about that were so far away from career that I just didn’t bring them up, even though I have a pretty broad take already.
So there are new and exciting things we’re going to cover, and when you see the name change from Love Your Job Before You Leave It to Satisfied AF, just make sure to stay following the podcast, don’t unsubscribe, it’s still me, it’s still going to be all the same great stuff and even more exciting things, and also there is going to be a campaign to share about the podcast as it makes the transition, and I’m going to have some really juicy prizes.
So be sure to listen to the next episode on the day it comes out, so that you can hear about the campaign, share about the podcast, and be in the running for those really wonderful prizes.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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