Episode #466 – Boundaries Aren’t Mean; They’re Math.

Hello and welcome back to The Brilliant Balance Show. We’re going to talk today about boundaries, specifically my premise that boundaries aren’t mean.

They’re just math. And I hope that makes you think and just gives you a little bit of pause as we get into this episode today. I also hope that you had a great day, a great weekend, whatever led you into this moment where you’re listening to this episode.

As I record this, I was thinking back to this weekend when I took my mom to see a play. The Great Gatsby is touring, like their Off-Broadway production or Broadway Across America, so they come through our city, and we went to see The Great Gatsby. I love musical theater. So does my mom. So it was part of her birthday gift to go and see the show.

While we were out, my dad actually came by the house to help my husband with a repair project that he’s been kind of putting off. My dad is one of those guys who can fix literally anything. I mean, anything. You name it. He can fix it, build it, take care of it.

My husband is not so much like that. So this was a genuine favor my dad was doing us to come and help. And when they finished, my husband predictably said to him, like, “Hey, why don’t you stick around? You can watch the game.”

And my dad said, “Well, I’m going to tell you exactly what my dad said because I think it matters here. He said, ‘I appreciate it, but actually I’ve got a few errands that I want to run. You know, I’ll swing back by later to get Carol, my mom.'”

And that’s it. That’s the whole story. Like, he said what he wanted, and he did it. And my husband was fine with it, and told us the story when we got home. I was fine with it. In fact, I love this about my dad.

He hits this beautiful balance between being unendingly generous with his talents and his resources and his time, and being so nonchalant about asking for what he wants and getting it when the time comes for that. He just does it so instinctively.

And I instinctively called it balance just a second ago, which makes me giggle because, of course, the whole brand is rooted in that idea of kind of finding your center between two opposing things, two opposing things that you want.

I mean, often when we think about balance in this context, we think about work and the rest of your life. But I think it applies to so many premises where we have tension between two things, right?

And I kind of picture it like a teeter-totter or a seesaw. It can easily go in one direction, get outweighed in one direction, and then you kind of overcorrect, and the seesaw can swing in the other direction.

But if we do it right, we’re sort of straddling the center, right? Sometimes we say yes, sometimes we say no.

And I think my dad is just a really shining example of that. So we’re going to work through it today. It was one of those great examples where life kind of imitates art. And I thought I’d share that story to open the episode because it is genuinely admirable to put other people first sometimes.

We all like—I believe this. I think it feels good to be of service. I think it feels good to say, “Yes, I will be generous with my time, right? I’ll be the person who shows up.”

Or I’ll be generous with my money or my talent. And I am certainly not here having this episode to talk you out of that.

Some of the best seasons of my life have been ones where I set my own agenda aside for a few hours, a few weeks, a few years to take care of someone who needed me more than I needed whatever I’d had planned.

But I think the fact that I even have to put that disclaimer in here is telling, right? The fact that we’re going to talk about saying no, and I immediately have to say, “This is not going to veer into selfish abandon in which you never help anyone else ever again.”

I shouldn’t even have to make that disclaimer, and yet I do. I just want to settle your soul about it because the problem is not generosity. It’s never been about generosity.

The problem with saying no is not about kindness or being a giving or a good person. The problem is when it stops being a choice. Right? When that yes that you’re giving to everyone else has stopped being an intentional choice.

And it started to be the only setting you have. It’s like the faucet is stuck in that direction and you can no longer adjust it in the other direction.

Right? When yes isn’t something that you’re offering with an open heart, but you’re just defaulting to it. That’s what I want to talk about today.

Because I think this shows up for a lot of people. I would go so far as to say most women, although I think the data says it’s like 52%. I guess that’s technically most, as a specific identifiable pattern.

Right? It’s not a personality flaw. There’s no flaw in this. It’s just a character trait, like a predisposition that I think a lot of us have.

And that pattern has a history and, honestly, a pretty good excuse for existing. Like, I think the origin story, like all origin stories, is noble. There’s something that happened that sort of set the stage in that direction.

And I think I want to use a psychological term here, so I’m going to define it because sometimes, if this isn’t something that you have a lot of experience with, you haven’t done a lot of reading about it or noticing of it, I don’t want to just throw terms out and you’re like, “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Therapists call this the fawn response.

Fawning, right? F-A-W-N. So you’ve probably heard of fight, flight, or freeze. And those are the ways that we traditionally say your body or your nervous system might respond to a perceived threat, right?

When something is happening in your environment that is threatening, we either want to fight it. Picture, like, I don’t know, like a giant dinosaur runs towards you, right? You’re either going to fight it, or you’re going to run away from it—that would be flight—or you’re going to freeze in place and kind of not know what to do, almost like that notion of being paralyzed in fear.

So if you think about anything that creates that fear response, fight, flight, or freeze are the three that most of us have heard about.

But there’s a fourth response, which is fawning. And fawning is where, instead of running away or fighting or shutting down, you manage the danger by making yourself agreeable, useful, almost sort of impossible to be upset with.

And this was first named by Pete Walker. I’ll credit him here, who saw this pattern in people who had grown up with an unpredictable or emotionally volatile parent. Someone whose mood you had to read and you had to manage in order to feel safe in your home.

This is not the only people who have the fawning response, okay? So don’t freak out. But this is where he kind of noticed it as a pattern.

So the child learns something like, “If I can figure out what this person needs before they get upset, then I’ll be safe.”

Right? That’s like a genuinely smart survival strategy if you are a kid with no other options.

For some reason—and this is kind of dark—but I think about this sometimes in, like, hostage situations where someone is taken captive. Like, you can imagine the fawning response of being very agreeable, doing whatever you’re told, being like a survival strategy for how you might get through that experience even in extreme fear.

Yeah. But here’s the part that matters. Whatever the origin story is, like, sort of genetically or epigenetically of that experience, we have to outgrow it, right?

If we are no longer in that situation but we’re continuing to operate as if the strategy doesn’t retire when it’s no longer useful, then it kind of goes underground and it generalizes. It becomes our default pattern of operating.

So it stops being about one specific authority figure. Could be a parent, you know, could have been a teacher, could be wherever this kind of pattern took place.

And it starts being about everyone.

Right? Our boss, our friends, our spouse or our partner, our kid. It’s like, this is the person who just learns, “I’m going to do whatever everyone around me wants.”

Because that’s the way that I learned to sort of stay safe.

Okay. So it’s, again, not the only origin story of this behavior. I think that is sort of the psychological underpinning of the fawning response.

But when we see this—like people pleasing, giving everyone else what they want, having a hard time saying no if we think someone else will be inconvenienced—that is also deeply socially conditioned, particularly into women.

Right? I mean, not many of us—women my age, younger, older—grew up in a place where we were just encouraged to assert our own desires and opinions.

Right? We’re very much probably raised to go along to get along. And so it becomes automatic in our relationships.

And it gets fed and fed and fed constantly. I mean, we still don’t have a neutral reaction to a woman who simply says what she wants and then does it. We just don’t.

Think about the range of responses that you might give or get. What do we kind of see? What’s available to us?

On one end, I think you get the, “You go, girl!” response, right? Where people are like, “Wow, she did something bold. Something that’s worth commenting on because it’s unusual. Somebody who stands their ground or says, like, ‘Yeah, this is what I wanted,’ and I got it.”

And on the other end, you get that kind of eyebrow raise, you know, the “Who does she think she is?” Just saying no to that thing. Just not doing that thing.

And I think that’s fascinating, right? I’ve watched myself give people those same two responses. Like, the over-responding encouragement or the sort of, “Wow, you’re doing that?”

And I’m not proud of that, but I’ve watched myself do it.

But what’s missing almost entirely is this middle option, the one my dad got, actually, without even trying, which is nothing.

The response was nothing. Oh, look at that. He just said what he wanted and did it. No commentary, you know.

That person just did what they wanted instead of what would have maybe been the most polite. Like, I guess that’s the alternative here, or the most generous in some cases.

Right? Nobody has to clap for them. Nobody has to be offended either. It’s just like, “Oh, yeah, you had errands to run. You had something else you wanted to do with that time.”

But it’s so hard for us to find neutrality around this. And we just don’t give that kind of boring, unremarkable normalcy to women nearly as often as we do, I think, to men, especially men like my dad, right?

Older men hold a lot of authority. So when the reaction to holding your ground is always like, noticed, you get a lot of attention for it.

Then it teaches you that wanting things or saying what you want and holding to it is an event to be heralded. It’s going to get a really positive, almost exaggerated positive reaction, or it’s going to get this negative reaction.

It’s not really a baseline.

Okay. And I’m arguing that we need to make it a baseline. It needs to be okay to just say what you want to do or not do and carry on with your day.

If you think about your—if you have children, if you’re watching them, some of them will more naturally be inclined to do this. Pay attention to that.

Pay attention to what is making them feel safe enough to just say, “Yeah, I don’t want to do that thing,” or, “I do want to do this. Can we do it?”

Like, to ask for what they want. I think it’s a very powerful characteristic, but we sometimes almost condition it out of them.

I think it’s worth nurturing, especially when they’re doing it in a way that’s balanced, where some of the time they are able to be generous with their time, their energy, their attention, okay?

So I’ve said this for years. I think this is it. This is kind of where the math premise starts to come in.

And it’s a really simple sentence. You’re going to get this right away, which is that every yes has a no.

Every yes has a no, okay?

If you say yes to something, you are, by definition, saying no to something else. It’s just silent.

So we get very, very focused on the yes that we want to give to the person who’s asking.

Right? Somebody says, “Hey, do you want to grab dinner after the kids’ game?” And you say, “Yes.”

Okay. You’re very clear what you’re saying yes to.

“I don’t want to disappoint this person. I don’t want them to think I don’t like them. I’m going to go to the game.”

But what are you saying no to?

Anything else that you would have been doing with that time. You could have been—you were going to run errands. You could have been—you were going to go make dinner and have it with your family. You could have been—you had a phone call you were making. You were going back to work. Whatever was going to happen.

I’m not saying it was a good or a bad decision. I’m just saying that yes has a no. Right? There’s something that’s not happening because you said yes to that invitation.

It’s just math.

Right? There’s no way around it.

So what I have been noticing lately is that when someone asks you for something—”Hey, do you want to go to dinner after the game?”—whether they’re asking for that or a favor or a glass of water, anything they’re asking for, they are thinking about what they get, but not what you give up.

It’s like human nature to think about, well, yeah, I know what I’m asking for. Like, I would like your company at this dinner. I would like a glass of water, whatever it is that they’re getting.

But they are not thinking about, “What do you have to give up in order to say yes to that?”

Right? That’s kind of yours to consider. And really, therefore, only you can balance that equation.

Assuming that they are thinking about that or have that context or know that, that’s not fair.

Right? We’re not mind readers. We don’t know.

If I say to you, “Hey, will you pick my kid up from practice and bring her home?” and you say, “Sure,” I don’t know that you had to give up something important to you in order to do that.

And it’s not fair to ask me to have cognizance of that.

And the tables turn, the same thing, right? We can’t expect people to be mind readers about what we’re giving up. Only we can balance that equation and make sure that the yes and the no that are inherent are worth it.

Right? That we would choose to balance the equation in that way.

Now…

Here’s the other part of this that’s wild. People pleasers, if you would identify as a people pleaser, I bet you’re sitting there right now going, “You’re wrong. When I ask somebody to do something, I am painfully aware of what they might be giving up.”

In fact, even if I don’t know what they’re actually giving up, I’m inventing scenarios about what they might have to give up in order to do this.

If you’re like a hyper-developed people pleaser, you might not even make a phone call to somebody in the evening if you think, “Oh my gosh, they could be having dinner right now. They could be doing something with it.”

The mere thought that they might be inconvenienced by taking your call could be enough to prevent you from even making the call.

So this people-pleasing thing runs on a spectrum, right?

If you are somebody who is strongly in the people-pleaser camp and you’re like, “I know that’s who I am. I know that it’s very hard for me to ask for what I want, but I will always do what other people want,” then when you do kind of think through asking for something, you are, in fact, thinking about the other side of their equation.

And so, fairly, you then think everyone’s doing that for you, but they’re not.

Right? The baseline is we’re not.

The baseline is we are asking for what we want. We’re very focused on that. It might be hard to ask, might be easy to ask. Or we’re saying what we want and what we’re going to do.

Again, whether that’s easy or difficult, but we are not thinking about the implications to everyone else.

A classic, classic, classic example of this is your children. You just don’t have to look any farther than that.

Think about a kid who just asks you for what they want right then.

Right? They’re sitting watching a movie and you’re doing whatever, and they’re like, “Hey, can you make me whatever? Chicken tenders in the air fryer?”

And you’re like, “Girl, I am in the middle of doing 92 other things,” but what do we do?

We get up and we do it because they’re not thinking about what we have to give up in order to do it.

Right? Or the teenager is like, “Hey, can you come pick me up?” And it’s, you know, whatever time, late. And you don’t want to be out again, but you go because they’re not thinking about what they’re asking you to give up, right?

That’s not really their job.

But I think a lot of us never build that capability.

So most people, I’m just going to underline the key points here.

Every yes has a no.

If you are going to say yes to someone—”Yes, I will come pick you up at midnight. Yes, I will make you the chicken tenders in the air fryer”—whatever you’re saying yes to, there is something on the other side of that that you will not be doing because you’re doing that instead.

Right? There’s some kind of a trade-off.

Only you have visibility to that whole equation.

So when you are trying to decide, “Does this get a yes? Or does it get a no?” you have to be thinking about both sides of the equation.

Cannot assume that the other person asking is thinking about that because they’re not. It is so rare that they are thinking about that.

Now, if you run into another person just like you, maybe they are. But it is rare that we are thinking about other people, like, “What are the implications?”

Okay?

And then I have one more point I want to make about this, which is that why don’t we just say no sometimes?

Right? I mean, we certainly don’t want to upset them. I get that. We’re like, “I don’t want to cause conflict or friction. I want to be a nice person.”

But I think sometimes it’s because we don’t have a strong enough second option.

Right? Like, if somebody says, “Do you want to go to dinner after the game?”

And you’re like, “I really don’t.”

But all I was going to do was chill out, right? I was going to just be quiet for a while. I was going to be home in my house with nobody needing me.

Well, sometimes that doesn’t feel like a big enough yes. Like, it’s not an exciting enough yes.

So, in other words, every yes has to have a no. So if I’m going to say no to this other person, what is my yes to myself?

And I think we judge those yeses a lot. We’re like, “I don’t think that’s a good enough reason. I don’t think I have a big enough reason.”

I can technically make this work. I can say yes to this thing—volunteering at the concession stand, being on the fundraising committee, making the costumes, whatever the things are that we’re saying yes to.

We’re like, well, I don’t have any direct conflict with that.

It’s actually the easiest for us to say no when we have a direct conflict. Like a schedule conflict. We will say no.

Some of us, some of you will still be challenged by that. But often something that direct, like a schedule conflict, we know how to say no to that because we can look at our calendar and go, “Well, there’s my reason. Right? I can’t do it because I have a conflict.”

But saying, “I can’t do it,” when we don’t have a yes on the other side of the ledger that feels worthy enough to justify it, that’s hard work.

Right? If you’re like, “Well, I don’t have anything better going on,” you’ll say yes almost every single time. Not because you necessarily wanted to, but because there was nothing to weigh it against.

Okay.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Just because you could create that capacity doesn’t mean you have to.

So this inner kind of internal barometer of what do I want, what feels good, what feels right—that’s the thing that we’re trying to develop.

And it is just sort of turned off for a lot of us at this stage of life.

So if you’ve lost track of that internal compass, right? What do you actually want? What deserves a yes? What doesn’t? What should you say yes to? What maybe should you start saying no to?

I want to give you two ways back, kind of two ways back to center.

Because depending on where you’re starting from, one or the other of these will be a stronger kind of first step.

Yeah. The first thing you can do is you can start small.

Right? If you’re like, “I just need some at-bats here,” right? “I’ve lost the muscle for saying no out loud,” then practice on something really low-stakes.

Like, practice on something where you even know the stakes aren’t that high.

Like, go out to dinner with a group of people and order exactly what you want.

Even if it is markedly different from what everyone else is doing. Everybody’s getting chicken Caesar salad. You’re looking up and down the table and you’re like, “I really want the burger and fries.”

Don’t apologize for it. Don’t explain it. Don’t order the safe thing. Just…

Small reps, right, of like—or somebody says, like, “Hey, do you all just want to split this thing?” And you’re like, “Actually, I did not want to split that thing. I wanted this thing. I wanted that.”

Right? Practice in a place like that where you’re getting exactly what you want.

So many of us just have forgotten how to express a desire.

“What kind of ice cream do you want?”

“I don’t care. Whatever’s fine.”

Is it, though? Or do you have a favorite?

Right? So practicing in small ways to get the thing you actually want.

The second way in here is if you genuinely are like, “I have no idea what I like or want anymore.”

Right? That’s not going to be fixed with small at-bats. That’s really fixed with radical clarity.

Okay, we’re going to do it radically clear about who we are and what we like and what we want.

So if you’ve genuinely lost touch with what you want, and saying, like, “I don’t really care that much,” is doing a lot of covering for you, then this is the time we’re getting radically clear about what you actually want.

This is the deeper work. It’s harder. I’m going to be transparent about that. That is not the easiest work, right?

It’s easy for me to tell you, “Go practice in some low-stakes occasions, kind of build the muscle.”

But if you’re like, “Toward what? I don’t even know anymore. Like, where I would choose to spend my time if it were up to me. I’m so accustomed to just reacting and responding to everyone else’s requests and needs.”

I don’t even know what I would do with a whole Saturday or Wednesday that was unscheduled. I don’t know what I would do with a whole weekend to myself.

Like, that’s a radical concept, right? And it might be a radical concept, and you may not have one of those coming anytime soon.

But I’d like you to know what you would do with it if it did, right?

I’d like you to be able to say, “I know what a great day looks like for me.”

Right? And if you can imagine it in a frictionless environment where you don’t need anybody’s buy-in, you don’t need anyone to go along, you don’t need anyone to do it with you or to want it with you, you just get to want what you want.

If you can imagine it in that context, like, just sort of under false pretenses, remove all the friction and just let it be imaginary, then we can start to work on how you actually incrementally make it your reality.

Okay. But you have to have something you’re steering toward. That radical clarity has to come first.

Sometimes that’s hard work.

And sometimes figuring that out is overwhelming.

If it is, reach out. I do this work with people all the time.

If you’re like, “I don’t even know what I want. I would like some help figuring that out,” call me.

Right? Book a call on my calendar. We’ll figure it out.

This is something that sometimes requires thought partnership.

If it’s really been kind of sanded down to a place where you just don’t remember anymore, I will stand by that it is important.

Okay, because if we want to be in a place where we can hold some boundaries and we can live the life that we actually want to live, we’re going to have to say no to some things that other people ask of us so that we can say yes to the things that we really want the most.

Right? That ability to build that muscle and to believe that we’re worthy of making those decisions and still can be generous, kind, interconnected humans, right?

Both of those things can be true at the same time.

That’s what we’re going for. That’s what we’re going for.

That’s called balance.

Right? That really is what we’re going for.

So, thanks for tuning in today.

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Till next time, my friends, let’s be brilliant.