Honouring Your Yes, Trusting Your No

Georgie and I once gathered with a group of women for Nest + Rest.

The room was full of blankets, cushions, soft layers, scattered flower petals, cups of tea, and that particular kind of exhale that seems to happen when people realise they don’t need to be anywhere else for a few hours.

As part of our time together, we spent some time journaling.

One of the questions we explored was this:

As life becomes fuller and busier, where do you find it easiest to honour your yes? And where do you find it hardest to honour your no?

It was one of those questions that followed me out of the room.

Because there are times in life when everything seems to expand. Invitations multiply. There are more things to do, more places to be, more opportunities, more people asking something of us.

And whilst there can be so much beauty in that fullness, there is also a subtle challenge:

Can we stay connected to ourselves as life gets fuller?

When life begins to feel full

I've noticed that when I start moving too fast, my no becomes much harder to hear.

I override it.

I convince myself I'll be fine.

I tell myself it's only one more thing.

I squeeze something else into a space that wasn't really empty in the first place.

And often, I don't realise I've gone past my limit until I'm already there.

Perhaps you recognise that feeling too.

The strange thing is, I don't think our no necessarily disappears.

I think sometimes we've simply become very practised at talking over it.

The body often knows first

Something I loved about the conversation at Nest + Rest was that we moved beyond mindset and into the body.

Not simply:

What do you think when you're overwhelmed?

But:

What does it actually feel like?

Does your chest tighten?

Do your shoulders creep towards your ears?

Does your breathing change?

Do you feel heavy?

Restless?

Agitated?

Exhausted?

Perhaps there's a feeling of contraction. A subtle pulling away. A heaviness that appears when you think about adding one more thing.

Or perhaps your yes has its own language too.

A sense of expansion.

Curiosity.

Energy.

A softening somewhere inside you.

Our bodies are often speaking long before our minds are willing to listen.

And perhaps part of knowing ourselves is becoming familiar with that language.

Building trust with ourselves | Honouring your yes

Perhaps the practice isn't simply learning how to rest.

Perhaps the practice is learning how to recognise when rest is needed.

To notice the signs.

To hear the no before it has to start shouting.

To trust what we're sensing.

And then, perhaps most importantly, to respond.

Not perfectly.

Not every time.

But often enough that we begin building trust with ourselves.

Because I wonder whether every time we notice what our body is telling us and choose to honour it, we're quietly saying:

I hear you.

You don't have to shout.

I'm listening.

And perhaps, over time, something changes.

We don't need to wait until we're completely exhausted to rest.

We don't need to become overwhelmed before saying no.

We don't need to justify every boundary before we're allowed to have one.

What might become possible if you listened?

There was another question we reflected on together:

What might become possible if you trusted yourself enough to listen?

I think there's something enormous tucked inside that question.

What might change if you trusted the tightening in your chest?

The tiredness.

The excitement.

The resistance.

The pull towards something.

The desire to step away.

Not as instructions that must always be obeyed without question, but as information worth listening to.

Perhaps honouring our yes and our no isn't about getting every decision right.

Perhaps it's about developing a relationship with ourselves where our own voice is allowed to be part of the conversation.

So maybe that's the question to carry with you:

What might become possible if you trusted yourself enough to listen?

With love,

Emilie x

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