This Is WHY You Shouldn’t Say Yes To Every Opportunity

I'm always kind of choosing between what's worse, the resentment or the guilt after saying no.

Yeah.

And for me, yes, the guilt sucks. But I've learned the resentment is worse. And so the work that I'm doing right now is knowing that I'm getting rid of the resentment by saying no, which is worse than the guilt. And now my work is around the guilt. And we're back with another episode of.

He Said, she Said.

How good does it feel to come in off the boat every single night? Like, how good have you been sleeping?

We're getting a good three days in a week, maybe four.

Four. A solid four days a week of wake surfing.

I'm so proud of us. This is the me, the me, the me of last year or even two years ago, would not believe that we made room in our schedule or forced ourselves to do this.

Why do you think it's different this year? What have you done differently?

Number one, making space and committing and knowing. I think I'm just at a point in my life where I've realized you run out of summers. Like, I feel very mortal at this point in my life. And I looked back over all the summers that we have had, and I've just worked through many of them. Meaning just work, work, work, work, work. And I don't necessarily know if that work serves the greater purpose of what I actually want done with. Meaning I recharge and do better on podcasts. I do better when I'm speaking. I do better in my business because I get more focused when I have joy to look forward to at the end of the day, and I get shit done faster.

Okay, wait a minute. This is really important for everyone who finds themselves working their life away out there, because there were stages where we did that. And you just said, well, all the other summers in the past, I would work, work, work, work, work. Right? Like, I remember coming out to the motorhome, be like, sorry, you got calls all day. And I'd be like, you want to go boating? You know? So to everybody who finds themselves in that position, when you look back at the work you were doing, specifically in those summers, what percentage of that work could you have said no to without making any. Without changing where we are today, in other words, without hurting our lifestyle.

I mean, minimum 20%. Because I look at a lot of it, and it was calls that I felt bad about or podcasts that I felt bad about because I wanted to be on these things. I wanted to do these things. You felt bad saying, no, I. I felt bad saying, no. And also, like I said, it's not that I didn't want to be on them. I did. But that goes into what we're talking about today.

It's interesting that you said that, because that is one of the reasons for my success or one of the reasons I thrive as a human and in business and in general. Listen, there's a million things I do wrong, right? I'm sure you probably keep a running list somewhere.

It's just a small notepad.

Just a small notepad of everything I do wrong. But the one freaking thing that I really get right lately is I do not respond to other people's agenda. And I think the best way to demonstrate that is email. I get into my email probably twice a week, and some people might hear that in panic, like, what if there's something important in there? Listen, here's my view around email, and here's my view around responding to other people's agenda, right? What other people need, what other people want to get done. Number one, I don't care. This might sound bad, but my life and my joy is more important than somebody else's agenda. Judge that as you may. But number two, if it's important enough, they'll find a way to reach me with it. In other words, if I don't get my email for three, four, five days and it's important, they're going to know to reach out to Taylor, my assistant. They're going to know to find my number. They're going to know to ask a friend of a friend or DM me a hundred times if it's important, they'll find me. And by taking that stance, I realized, holy crap, 99% of the requests in my email or in my DMs, or, you know, however people get hold of me, are other people's agendas that are important to them but not important to me.

What's so interesting is you've been able to move your life and businesses forward so fast lately, meaning things are moving really quickly for you. And. Okay, so my question to you, though, Chris, is the past me listening and even me now gets a little bit triggered around that. Like, but, but what if you miss out on an opportunity? But what will people think of you, who you need to respond to? Or what about people in your business? How do they access?

These are two separate things. These are such good questions. I'm going to separate them. Like this one question is, oh, my God, what if I miss out on an opportunity? The second question is, what will people think of you?

And Then what about people in your business? How do they access you? Who are your clients?

Ah, see, my clients and my business partners have my phone number, my real phone number, and they text me. And every day I get down to basically zero inbox for text. Right. Even though I get a lot of them. So those who really need me, whose agendas I care about on a regular basis, my clients, my business partners, they know to text me, and they know that they'll get a response that day from that text. Everybody else that doesn't have that number, then you'd have that number if I knew it was something important. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

All right, so, but let me ask you these two questions, because these are very important. The first one, Gosh, I'm forgetting now. The first one that you said was. The second one is what people think of me. The first one was, oh, what if I miss an opportunity? This is what screws people up. This is why they yes themselves to death. And that's not a judgment, because I've done that. And I've watched you do that in the past.

I did it for years, you guys.

You probably won't believe me, but if I could somehow open up your head and install this one piece of information into your brains and have it resonate as truth, it's this. There are more than enough opportunities at any given time. And you do not need to say yes to the one in front of you simply because you think that if you say no to that one that it's the end of opportunities. Opportunities will never stop coming. Opportunities will never stop presenting themselves. Opportunities are always going to be there, especially if you're a proactive go getter. People will flood you with opportunities. So you can't say yes to everything. You can only say yes to what serves your agenda.

You know what's so interesting? You know who's such a great example of this? That just is blaringly clear to me. Jenna is Jenna Kutcher.

I knew you were gonna say that.

And, you know, she pretty much said no to everything for a very, very long time. And what happens is the more that you focus on your own stuff and get yourself out into the world in such a clear way, like, she is clear on who she is, right? Like, she is a. A marketing genius. And she has an incredible podcast. She has incredible courses. And she focused so hard on those things. And family time like that, those were her main things. It was family and her business. And in fact, the opportunities grew so large because she was out there in such a focused clear way that when she decided she wanted to be out in the world for a while, it was like endless massive opportunities. I would say even more than if you were watering down your message and taking all these different opportunities and taking yourself away from trying to figure out why you're really here and what message you want out in the world. Like that girl focuses on her social, her podcast and her family and it's like never ending opportunities in her inbox.

And she has a great life like we know firsthand because of it. And this is I'm going to keep using email as my metaphor, but it also applies to other parts of life, right? I just don't care about everybody else's agenda if it's going to chip away at my agenda of happiness and how I want to design my life. And I refuse to respond to everybody else's agendas when I look at my email every few days, guess what it's full of besides advertisements. After I get through the advertisements, it's full of I want to be on your show or I want you to invest in this or I want you to do X, Y and Z for me. It's all I want, I want, I want, I want. Now they, they spin it better, they pitch it better, they right. They've got a great approach to the way but the truth of it, if you get away, dig, dig through all the pretty words, it's I want, I want, I want for me. And that's somebody else's agenda that is important to them and I love that they're go getters. But it doesn't have to be my agenda and I just don't let it be right.

And it's not that you are telling people to stop doing that. It's very important for you to keep outreaching and doing those things but also understanding which this is so great. Like it's not personal with you. Which goes to show you guys, if you're not getting your answers right away, they're probably overloaded. Like many people who are. The people that you want things from are probably overloaded with the same exact type of asks that you're asking. It doesn't mean to stop stop asking. It means to understand, to not take it personal if they're not responding to you right away. It also means to be diligent, right? And figure out different ways to add value to get attention. Probably somebody right for you Chris and your if they're DMing you and emailing and showing up in different ways that add value, you're probably going to look at their email first. Over many other people.

Somebody's done that in the past and it actually worked. That emailed me a couple times, didn't know, didn't care. Then they DM'd me not hey sent you an email. Why didn't you see it? But they actually DM me, hey sent you X, Y and Z. It's a really great opportunity. Didn't want you to miss out. Also totally not attached if it's not for you, but just wanted to try and reach you in a different way. And it was, what they had sent was kind of cool. So then I went back and I looked for their email and that was even cooler. And you know, we started working together.

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So my second question to you is the not caring. How did you get to that place? And it's not like he's like, f off. I don't care about you. It's that what has gotten you? Were you, like, so full of resentment or so full of frustration? Or to a point where you couldn't live your life the way that you were living anymore to get to a place of not caring? Because I know, especially for women, we care way too much. Where this might be triggering for even some people to listen to because they're like, that's. I'm not even capable of not caring like that. I don't understand it. So explain that.

I care about people greatly. Like, you know, at an insane level. I care about my very short life more than I care about everybody else's agendas. You can care about two things at the same time, but care about the other thing more so that you protect the thing that you care more about. Does that make sense? I care that you listening have a business goal. I care that you listening have a life goal. I care that you listening might be in a jam and need some help to get out. I also simultaneously care about my very short life on this earth being awesome and full of memories and success and projects. I want to do a little bit more than I care about. Your current request doesn't mean I don't care about your current request. It means I care about my life more. And I know it sounds selfish, but you got to choose. You got to choose. And here's what you're going to choose the rest of your life. Guys. It took me a lot of years to realize this. You're going to continually choose everybody else's cares and agendas, or you're gonna start choosing about your. That's it. And you're gonna make your decisions, your yes and no's around that.

Mine is just. I'm not gonna go over all of it because it's exactly the same as yours. It's been learning how to say no and let it be okay that I'm disappointing people, whether it's family or whether it's my inboxes or people who really want me on their podcast or people who really want me to speak. I have just learned that where I have resentment, if I say yes is where I either need to figure out what I would need around the yes to make it feel good for me, where it's a win win, or I literally have to say no and make it okay that I have upset them because the resentment is worse than the feeling of the guilt. So this sounds terrible, but you guys know this already. I'm always kind of choosing between what's worse, the resentment or the guilt after saying no. And for me, yes, the guilt sucks. But I've learned the resentment is worse. And so the work that I'm doing right now is knowing that I'm getting rid of the resentment by saying no, which is worse than the guilt. And now my work is around the guilt. Like, I'll say prayers and send good energy and really think, like, okay, I hope that they understand. Or I hope that even if they don't understand, one day when their schedules get really busy, they'll look back on how I said know in such a loving way and cheered them on and maybe even gave them suggestions of someone else or something else, and understand that I was doing it from a place of just protecting my energy, my family, and my reason why I'm on this planet. And you guys, when you say yes too much, let me just tell you that you're saying no to your destiny. You're saying no to your big vision. And you're probably not. Probably you're saying no to people in your family and the vision that you want to build when you are in resentment saying yes to everyone else. So, you know, I didn't used to think it was possible to not have years of yes, because I do think that they are important. But at the same time, Jenna is just my, like, blaring example of someone who said no all the way to a life, a full life of yes. And I know that wasn't easy for her, I know that, you know, she had to do the exact same things that I'm doing now. And I really thought that success wouldn't come, but I'm watching it just explode for her because of what she's done.

I just had a download when you're saying that, by the way, my choice of my agenda over everyone else's and your strength of building your no muscle and being okay with disappointing people, of all the times that we have exercised these strengths, there's a very clear pattern that's presented itself. And it's this. The people that we actually really want in our lives, they never care and they never build a story around us saying no to them. They just continue to show up down the road just as cool and positive with full opportunities, you know, because they understand the human EQ of why we're saying no. The people who later on reveal themselves were like, oh, glad we dodged that bullet. They're the ones that have resentment and get weird when we say no. So let this be a litmus test for you. Who's listening? If you really build these muscles well and you start using them consistently, you're going to then see a pattern. The ones who are upset with you rejecting their agenda or their request, they're the ones that end up revealing themselves down the road is like, cuckoo, cuckoo a little bit glad that we didn't, you know, end up partnering. And the ones who are totally okay and respect you respecting yourself, they're the ones who continue to show up later with value adds and you're excited that they're in your life.

And so the way to know that you are someone who is probably going to create what you want and create the relationship that you want is when you are getting rejected and people are saying no to you, are you okay with it? And this is such a practice, and this for me is when the tables really started turning, is when the women that I kept asking and feeling rejected by and building a story around, like, they don't like me. Oh, my God, how selfish of them. Like, they can't even spare an hour of their time after me asking for two years. When I let go of that story and said, I don't need to know the why, they might really just be, like, wanting to. Maybe they don't need other people in their life. Maybe they're so packed that they feel resentful already. Maybe they feel like their dreams are not happening. Maybe they just don't want to. Or maybe they just don't like me when I fully decided to Let that be okay is when everything started opening up for me and I couldn't miss the opportunities that were for me. So practice that. This might not even be about you saying no. This might be about you accepting all of the no's fully and letting it be okay that other people have beautiful boundaries to protect why they are here on this planet. And it might not include working with you ever in this lifetime. And that is okay. It doesn't mean to stop asking. It means to accept all of the no's and not build a story around it.

By the way, I'm sitting here laughing because I just realized someone is listening to us right now, thinking we're talking about them.

Oh my God.

We are not.

I swear to God. Like the God I pray to every day. I swear to God, I don't have a single human in mind. This episode is not spawned by a recent reach out or anything at all. So don't build a story.

Oh my gosh, no. This is like our 12 years in business of figuring out our own life.

And figure out, okay, what are we going to talk about today to add.

Value personal and us trying to figure it out.

Oh my God, that's funny. I thought I better throw that disclaimer in there. Don't build a story. It's not you because we're not thinking about anyone in particular.

Oh my gosh. This is just for you guys. So anyway, we're sending you so much love today and always grateful for you tuning in.

Yes. And by the way, don't forget, always happy to text you a positive money mantra or business perspective. Every single morning that I wake up. I. You know what's really funny, Lori? Do you even know this? It costs a couple thousand dollars a month for me to send out those texts.

I do know that now because the price went up, right?

And I don't care because I love it so much. No agenda attached to it. I love when I get the responses every day. Oh, I needed that. Oh, that totally changed my mind this morning. Oh, I feel so much better. Oh, this got me through the day. So if you want me to text you positive money mantra or a positive business perspective of the day, send me the word daily. Text me the word daily to 310-421-0416. Again, text me the word daily to 310. 4210416. Thanks for listening. We always love and appreciate you.