Relationships: If It’s Not a Hell Yes, It’s a No!
In Episode 9 of The Business Mamas Podcast, I introduced a Framework for Enhanced Well-Being - Focus on Beliefs, Relationships & Making Heart-Guided Decisions.
I've been talking about how implementing this framework in my life has given me so much peace and joy. I've found that I've been really present in my life at work while I'm working and also in my relationships both with myself and with the other people that I love.
Today, I want to talk more about relationships and I will share something that I hope will be a great tool for you to implement. You can use this tool to help you decide when you should accept an invitation for a potential relationship or a potential commitment that you could make.
I live by this philosophy: “if it's not a hell yes, it's a no!”
Be true to yourself and practice saying no to spending time with people and accepting invitations that don't resonate with you.
It could be that the person who is inviting you is not someone that you think you could benefit by spending time with.
It could be that you have other major goals that you're focusing on right now and the invitation doesn't help you in reaching those goals that you're working on.
It's okay to say no. Actually, it's critically important to say no. When you say no to things that you should say no to, you make space to say yes to the wonderful things when they come your way. I love and live by the philosophy, “if it's not a hell yes, it's a no!”
A time in my life when I think about someone making an invitation to me that I enthusiastically said “hell yes” to was when I was 20 years old and I was spending my third year of college as a study abroad student in Chile. I was a student at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, the capital city of Chile, and I was taking upper-level Political Science classes with Spanish-speaking university students. I had studied Spanish throughout my education, starting in elementary school. I took the highest level Spanish classes offered at my high school and I took two years of college Spanish before I left for Chile.
As I sat in my Political Science classes, I understood about 20% of the words that were coming out of my professors’ mouths. It was terrifying. I knew that I was likely headed for law school or a master's program after undergrad. The idea that I would fail all of my junior year courses because I couldn't even understand what the professors were saying, was very scary for me. I remember coming out of class during the first week of school and the look of utter confusion and terror must have been written all over my face because I was the recipient of an act of kindness that I will always hold in my heart.
A Chilean student approached me and in very slow Spanish, she introduced herself to me. Her name was Geraldine. She offered to help me figure everything out at the university. Instead of buying textbooks, there was a system of checking them out of the library to photocopy them and then return them so that everyone else could copy them too. She showed me the systems that were so unusual and different for me. She invited me to study with her. This entailed us reading the material out loud together and then discussing it for me to ensure that I actually understood what I was reading. Geraldine's patience with me was never-ending. Although my grades from my year abroad in Chile still ended up pulling my overall G.P. A. down, it didn't completely tank my G. P. A. as I had feared it would in those early weeks. Had Geraldine not taken me under her wing, I can't imagine how I would have made it through that first semester.
I spent the summer between 1st and 2nd semester with a backpack traveling all around South America and luckily by the start of the second semester, my comprehension had skyrocketed and I could actually meaningfully participate in class discussions. I had many students come to me after class my second semester and tell me that they appreciated my insights in class and they hadn't realized I was smart since I was incapable of effective communication in my first semester.
My dear friend Geraldine's invitation meant more to me than I think words could ever express. She also taught me patience, empathy, and kindness, which I am forever grateful to have learned from her. Her invitation forever changed me. I know what it feels like to live in a foreign country where I didn't speak or understand the language. I know what it feels like to be in a culture that seemed hard to understand and so different from what I was accustomed to.
One way that I try to repay Geraldine for the beauty and grace she showed me all those years ago is to embody that way of being for other people. In my law practice, I have the opportunity to show empathy and kindness and to have patience with my clients. I get to show up in this way not only for my English-speaking clients but also for my Spanish-speaking clients too. For my clients who do not speak English well, I understand how that can not only make life more challenging but can make having a legal case even scarier than it might otherwise be.
I am forever grateful to my dear friend Geraldine and I try to pay forward everything that she shared with me. It not only means a lot to me to be Geraldine's friend and to have her be my friend, but she changed me for the better and her friendship has made me such a better lawyer and human being. All of that was a chain reaction from Geraldine extending the invitation.
How I ended up in Chile at 20 years old, doing my junior year of college by study abroad, was by practicing, “if it's not a hell yes, it's a no.”
The way in which I ended up in Chile is that I had to say no to something else in my life that had been important to me, but that was not a hell yes, which was being on the college track team. I started off my freshman year in college on the track team. I was a pole-vaulter. It’s been so many years now, I don't remember exactly how many hours a day I was spending training with the track team but memory was that it was about four hours a day. It was a lot of time.
I had only spent two years in high school pole-vaulting, my junior and senior years, and I felt like I hadn’t yet reached my full potential. Although I loved pole-vaulting in high school, I just wasn't experiencing that level of joy and satisfaction with pole-vaulting in my first year of college. It wasn't that it was terrible. It was fine. There were a lot of good things about it. I enjoyed my teammates and I enjoyed being an athlete. I'd always enjoyed being in good shape, but I was sacrificing a lot by working out four hours a day and not having that time to dedicate to other things like friendships and studies.
I also really wanted to do study abroad and that wouldn't have been possible if I was going to stay on my local college campus and be on the track team. I ended up saying no to the track team. My freshman year was the only year that I did college track.
I said no to that and then I opened up the opportunity to say yes to things that were completely a “hell yes” in my book. Going to Chile and doing study abroad was 100% a “hell yes” for me. Even though it was an incredibly challenging experience, with all of my heart, I knew that it was the right thing for me to go live in Chile for a year. It has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life, and I'm incredibly grateful that I said no to something that was good, and was even fun. There was nothing wrong with being on the college track team, and yet I knew that it wasn't as great as what study abroad would offer me. That was the right decision for me to make.
When you come across decisions in your life, directions that you can go, a situation that maybe isn’t too bad, you know, there could be some pluses in the plus column, and there's a few in the minus column, you have to weigh it out.
I have never regretted using the philosophy of “if it's not a hell yes, it's a no”, because life is so short and I want to make sure that there's always opportunity for me to say yes to those things that are absolutely falling into the “hell yes” category. If I fill up my time with too many things that are pretty good, there just won't be room to say yes to those extraordinary opportunities that I know are there if I leave some space for them.
My call to action for you is that you ask yourself:
1) What is something you are currently doing with your time that is not a hell yes?
2) Can you identify at least one thing and can you say no to it?
Believe me, the magical “hell yes” opportunities are just waiting for you to create the space for them!
If you enjoyed Episode 18 and this blog post, I would love it if you shared the blog or the podcast with someone you think could benefit from them. I would also be incredibly grateful if you could leave an honest rating and review of The Business Mamas Podcast on Apple Podcasts as that helps more people find the show and it helps me in sharing this message of practicing self-love and self-care with more people whose lives I know could be enriched by hearing it. Sign up to download my Morning Routine Guide and receive my twice-monthly newsletter at The Business Mamas Podcast.
Until next time and with gratitude, Kara Stein-Conaway, @karasteinconaway on Instagram.
