Permission to Say No: Letting Go of the Yes-Person Identity

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In this week's episode of the podcast, I’m talking to all the go-to women—the yes people—the ones who hold it all together. But what if being a “yes person” is the very thing burning you out?

In this episode, I’m challenging the idea that always saying yes is what makes you successful. I’ll help you untangle your identity from your availability, redefine what balance really looks like, and show you how saying no more often can actually increase your impact. If you’ve ever felt trapped by your own reliability, this one’s for you.  

Topics in this episode:

  • What it really means to be a yes person—and why it might be sabotaging your success 

  • How to shift from being available to being reliable (and why that difference matters) 

  • The four essential priorities of a balanced life—and which ones yes people often neglect 

  • Why saying no is a form of leadership and not a threat to your success 

  • Reflective journaling prompts to help you define your new version of success 

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

What if your biggest strength, like the thing that you pride yourself the most on, is also the thing that's burning you out? 

In this episode, I'm talking to all the yes people out there, the go to women, the ones who get it all done, who hold it all together, who say, yeah, sure, I can do that and deliver every single time. 

But here's the truth. The version of success that worked before kids, before burnout, before the season, it's probably not gonna work anymore. And learning how to say no without losing yourself in the process is a shift that literally will change everything. 

In today's podcast episode, we're talking about what it really means to edit your yes, protect your version of success and still be a strong, dependable, reliable woman. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

The End-of-School Transition Is a Big Deal—for You Too

Hello. Hello, working moms. I'm excited to be with you today.

I know that for many of you, school is wrapping up right now, and I just want you to know I'm thinking about you during this transition. I want you to really remember that this is, in fact, a transition. It is not just a transition for your kids—it's a transition for you, too. It's a transition for the whole family—for the whole neighborhood, for that matter. Right?

And with transitions, we have to remember, come lots of big emotions. Not just for our kids, but for ourselves as well. New rhythms have to be established, which can be frustrating. There could be some trial and error.

I just really encourage you all to have a lot of grace and compassion for yourself during this season and really be sure to focus on taking care of your own needs—particularly during transitional moments. It's the time that you really need to be taken care of, when things are sort of out of rhythm.

You could probably still hear it in my voice, but um, I've been... I don't know, I lost my voice about a week ago. I've recorded now two podcasts with my voice feeling this way. Hopefully it will return soon, but you could probably hear it in the back of my voice.

Today's topic comes from a conversation that actually came up during the Work Life Design Retreat. That's the retreat that kicks off the Ambitious and Balanced program—or it has in the past.

What Is the Ambitious and Balanced Program?

And if you don't know what that program is, it is a three-month program for working moms where I teach you how to create a foundation of sustainable work-life balance that you feel totally in control of.

And in this three-month program, we kick off with a retreat. And in the middle of the retreat, you sort of learn the entire process. We kind of workshop together about redefining success and understanding what work-life balance truly is—and the tools and all the things.

And so we just met over this past weekend, and a conversation came up that, to be honest, is a pretty common conversation for a lot of my clients—for a lot of ambitious women I know. And I wanted to bring that conversation here. It felt really relevant.

Why Ruthless Prioritization Is the Key to Balance

And so here's how the conversation went during the retreat—and how it goes, to be honest, pretty much every time that this comes up.

Okay, so we're in the middle of talking about boundaries and prioritization and the idea that really what it takes to create sustainable work-life balance is a life of ruthless prioritization. That's what I like to say.

Meaning that you have to really know what is important to you at a super foundational level and what kind of opportunities you want to say yes to, and what kind of opportunities you want to say no to.

So that when that meeting request comes in, you know exactly if you should be saying yes to that or not. Or when an opportunity comes in, you know exactly if you should be saying yes to that or not. Or if that “Hey, do you have 5 minutes?” type of request comes in, you know if it aligns with your priorities and your goals and your values—and you know if you should say yes or no to it.

The Moment a Client Said, “I’m a Yes Person”

And so someone in this group, she raises her hand and she says, "I'm a yes person. I don't like saying no.” And you could just see how uncomfortable she was at the idea of becoming somebody that says no.

And so we started to unpack this idea of being a yes person. And for my client—and for a lot of the women that identify in this way—it feels like an identity, right?

Just think about the way you probably would even say that, like, "I am a yes person," right? It starts with “I am.” And it's almost like, this is who I am.

Why Being a “Yes Person” Feels So Good—And So Hard to Let Go

And if we start to dive into what we mean by this—like you being a yes person—what does that really mean?

Most people, when they start talking about it, what it means to them is that they're very dependable and reliable. Right? People don't have to worry if you're gonna get your stuff done. You know that you're gonna get your stuff done.

You sort of pride yourself on being that person that can figure it out without a whole lot of help, and being super capable of doing it within a timeframe that a lot of people can't. Right?

So you have a reputation of being someone that can deliver in tricky situations or can just kind of make things happen. Right? Somehow, it almost feels mysterious to other people—but you are just that person.

Every team wants a yes person on their team, right? You don't have to worry about them. They take on a good portion of the workload for the team. Like, yes people are amazing.

And yes people, I think, really enjoy saying yes. Right? They like to problem-solve and do things that other people can't do. They like to be sort of the hero at times. They like other people needing them, and they like being able to kind of take the load off of their team or off of their boss in some way. There's like a joy that comes with being a yes person.

When Saying Yes Becomes Your Reflex

I had a client that worked with me one-on-one, and she told me the story about how she was sitting around a leadership table. I think it was her executive leadership team. And the CEO made a request of the team, and I think there was maybe eight or ten people around the table.

And it fell silent. And it was like—literally—like crickets.

And so after a little bit, my client, who probably couldn't handle that uncomfortableness very long, she raised her hand and she was like, "Yeah, I'll do it. No problem."

But she did that multiple times throughout this one meeting, where she ended up saying yes to five or six things that the rest of the team wasn't raising their hand for and was kind of waiting around in these awkward silences, right?

She was like the hero in that moment, taking these things on. And it feels good to be that person.

When Saying No Feels Like Losing Yourself

And so during my retreat this weekend, when I suggested to this person that what it was gonna take for her to truly create sustainable work-life balance was to learn how to say no more often than she is right now, you could just feel her whole body go into panic mode. Really. You could feel the shakiness in her voice.

She’s like, “Who am I if I'm not a yes person?”

That was a really honest question coming from her—because the thought terrified her. The thought of not being a yes person anymore was terrifying. Almost like she would be dropping a piece of her identity.

And that becomes the challenge for so many women that identify themselves as being yes people. That when we really start to dig into what it takes to create sustainable work-life balance—and the process, the proper process, if you will, of prioritization and boundaries—it's like their identity gets threatened. Right?

So the challenge then becomes a couple of things for the yes person. I want to go through a handful of them with you.

Step One: Detaching Your Identity from Being a Yes Person

So the first one is this. It really is addressing the sort of paralyzing idea that if you started to say no more often, you would no longer be a yes person—as if your identity was found in that.

Of course your identity is not wholly found in being a yes person. Maybe it's a piece of who you are, it’s what you like to do, but it’s not who you are as a human being.

And we have to actually start to pull apart your identity away from being a yes person—from being that deliverer, if you will, of a yes person. Because otherwise, if you continue to remain super intertwined with this identity as a yes person, whenever you are faced with a request where you have to say no or you're choosing to say no, like—you’re going to freak out. And it’s going to be really uncomfortable. And you're going to have a hard time doing that sustainably.

The Cost of an Overcrowded Schedule

The second problem with being a yes person is that your schedule is just literally overcrowded. It's crowded with a lot of tasks and projects related to work—and probably related to a lot of other people.

So your work, and the things that you need to get done on your own to-do list—those things don't get done likely until you're off work time. Because you're spending... you have so many things to do that is unedited, and you have not taken the time to actually prioritize it, that during your normal workday you're just in back-to-back meetings or back-to-back kind of expectations, if you will.

When Saying Yes Takes Over Your Life

And so then there's a large impact in the way that you then have to make up for that—because then you start to work on the weekends, or you work on your off time, in the evening times.

And then, of course, that has a big impact on your personal life—on your marriage, on your ability to be present with your kids, on your fun and adventure. Creates more stress because you're always in work mode all the time. You never really shut down.

So a lot of yes people, not only do they have overcrowded schedules that make it difficult to have any space in there to have any kind of life outside of work—work just becomes their life.

So if we're really talking about work-life balance, you actually have to have a life outside of work in order to have work-life balance. Right? And that's a challenge with the yes person that has an overcrowded schedule—because that is what tends to happen.

The Strategic Work Never Gets Done

The third challenge that yes people face is that the strategic things that they've had on their list to do—like probably for the last several months or even up to a year.

Like the SOPs that you want to write that would make life so much easier, or that document that you need to get to your teams to help them along, to like teach them, or that retreat that you want to plan for your team, or that networking that you want to do that would be really important for your kind of future career—right?

These are things that are not urgent, but they would make a huge impact on yourself, on your workload, on your team, on getting your team up to speed. They’d probably make your job easier. That has an impact on your future job opportunities.

Things like that—they never get done if you're a yes person. Those things just keep going from one to-do list to the other to-do list to the other to-do list. You never actually prioritize them because you never actually see them as a priority. There's too many other urgency and deadline-driven things that have to take precedence. Right?

And so the strategic things that actually make you super valuable to your company and to your team and to your job don't end up getting done. And then, of course, every time you transfer those to new to-do lists, you feel terrible about it.

When You're a Yes Person, You're Always Last

The last challenge I wanna bring up with being a yes person is that you are at the bottom of the to-do list. Like literally—your haircut, your doctor’s appointments.

I have a client that recently told me she's been delaying her kid’s doctor’s appointment that really needs to get scheduled with a specialist because it's so hard to find time during the day to schedule it during business hours—let alone to actually take her son to the appointment—that she just hasn’t been able to do it.

Your workouts, your yoga class, reading a good book just for fun, literally taking care of your body and filling up your soul—if you're a yes person, you likely don't do these things. Right? You're at the bottom of the list.

And when you're at the bottom of the list, you feel drained all of the time. That is a sure sign that you are gonna head into burnout if you never have times where you are filling your cup—and you’re not.

Because as a yes person, everything else feels more urgent and more pressing than taking care of yourself.

The Four Essential Priorities for Work-Life Balance

But here's what I teach in the Ambitious and Balanced community and in my programs. There are four essential priorities that are required in order to experience a life of true balance in a sustainable way.

One of them is your off work time. Another one is your me time. Another one is your uninterrupted work time, where you actually get your stuff done. And the last one is your kid-focused time.

The problem is, with a yes person, three of those four things are almost nonexistent. You probably do make some time for your kids—maybe not as much as you would like to—but there's no me time, there's no off work time. You just feel like you're always working, and your brain is always thinking about work. And your workday is just filled to the brim with things to do.

And so there's never time to get your work done in the way that you need to get it done—those strategic tasks. And so likely, as a yes person, three of the four essential priorities in work-life balance aren't happening, or they're happening in a very limited way.

Why Balance Requires Saying No (Even to the Good Stuff)

So, friends, in a balanced life—in order to correct this—you have to say no. And you have to say no more often than you probably think.

And yes, you are likely saying no to good opportunities, to some things that you'd really like to do. But truly, a life of balance is a no life.

You become a no person, not a yes person.

But I know that if you are a yes person, that would likely feel very uncomfortable for you—to switch into being a no person. Right?

 

So I want to talk about that shift a little bit here, help you reframe it in such a way that hopefully it doesn't feel so hard, it doesn't feel so icky, and give you some practical things to reflect on and journal about at the end of this episode. 

The first thing I want to dive into as we start talking about reframing being a yes person and ultimately becoming somebody that's willing to say no more often. 

Being Available vs. Being Reliable

The first thing I want to talk about is the difference between being available and being reliable.

Because I have a feeling, if you're a yes person, it oftentimes comes down to this—you’re afraid to say no because you don’t want to be seen as not reliable or no longer dependable. Because on some level, that's like a yes person's greatest asset, right?

You are somebody that everybody can depend on. You are reliable. They know that you are going to deliver on the things that you say you’re going to deliver on. And so nobody has to think about you or worry about you. There’s no fear in whether you're going to actually do the thing that you say you're going to do—because you follow through. And you are dependable and reliable.

And those are two things that have been really important to you and your success.

The Real Difference Between Availability and Dependability

But I think we need to pause for a moment and really think about the difference between these two characteristics.

Because I have a feeling, if you are a person who has a hard time saying no, it’s because you’re likely—at least on some level—mistaking reliability with availability.

To be reliable and dependable is to be someone that follows through with what you say you’re going to follow through on, right? People rely on your result or the outcome of whatever it is you’re doing.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s probably 100% of the time, but generally speaking, people can rely on your deliverables, if you will.

Availability Isn’t the Same as Value

But being an available person is something else entirely.

Being available means that you are someone who either has or creates space in their calendar. If somebody needs something from you, you respond very quickly. If somebody says, “Hey, do you have five minutes?” the answer is always yes—and you figure out how to make the rest of your schedule work around it, right?

If somebody comes and knocks on an available person's door, the majority of the time—as long as they’re there—it is open, and you can come in.

But notice how different these two identities are. And if you had to choose—which one would you rather be?

Choosing Between Availability and Reliability

Would you rather be reliable—meaning that most of the time, more often than not, you deliver at exactly the time and in the way that you said you would deliver—or available, meaning you respond to people’s needs and their requests at exactly the time that they say they need it or want it?

Both are wonderful qualities to have. I'm not saying that. But if the goal is work-life balance, you're likely going to have to choose one.

And my hunch is, having worked with so many women over and over and over again, it really is about being a reliable person—a dependable person—not necessarily always an available person.

And when you start the process of actually prioritizing correctly and putting up boundaries in the way that you need to—and thus you’re going to start saying no a little bit more often—that's not actually going to make you less reliable or dependable. It’s just going to make you less available.

You're still going to be somebody that delivers, or even overdelivers, whenever you say yes to something. You're just not going to say yes as often. Okay?

Every Yes Is a No to Something Else

Because the reality is—and here's the second point I want to make about this—when we're talking about kind of moving out of a yes-person identity, the reality is: when you say yes to something, you're choosing to say no to something else.

You actually are, in fact, a no person when you say yes to something else.

Like, this is an interesting misnomer on some level. I don't even know if that's the right word actually. Is this a misnomer? Hmm, I don't know.

We think about a yes person as being somebody that's saying yes to lots of things. When in reality, they're saying yes to lots of things and every time they say yes, they’re saying no to something else. Right?

And if you're a yes person, you probably struggle with burnout—likely because you're not being honest with yourself about what is really important to you and what really matters to you. You don't have clarity about that in your mind.

And so the reality is: when you say yes to too many things, you are likely also saying no to being present with your kids, to having a really connected marriage, to getting a good amount of sleep, to more laughter, more friendship, to looking at yourself in the mirror and really feeling good about the way you look.

You have said no—literally, you've said no—to those things over the years in order to be a yes person. You just haven’t thought about it consciously.

The Trade-Offs You Can’t Ignore Anymore

And my hunch is, if you're listening to this podcast, the trade-off at this point that you've been making—the ways you've been trading off your family and your marriage and your health and your time with your friends and yourself—like, my hunch is, what you're recognizing is that trade-off is becoming conscious to you, and you don't like it anymore.

It's not working for you anymore. Or it's not going to work for you long term.

And so it's time to change.

The Hidden Fear: Saying No Might Mean Less Success

Another thing I want to address is sort of like the story—I would call it the story behind being a yes person. Because it's probably not that your identity feels wrapped up in being a yes person. It’s that your success feels wrapped up in being a yes person—and somebody that doesn't say no.

And so there’s a lot of fear around saying no—and that doing so would actually make you less successful.

And there's also a fear of how other people will perceive you if you start saying no. Right?

If they would perceive you as being no longer successful, or not a team player, or not as valuable. Right?

And so there’s this kind of impact to your success that starts to creep in—or a story about the impact to your success—that starts to creep in as we think about putting up more boundaries and prioritization and saying no more often.

The Story You Tell Yourself About Success

And so with my clients, I like to talk a lot about the stories that they tell themselves. Right? I like to frame them as stories because when we start talking about work-life balance, the story that you have about what has made you successful is probably really important—because you want to make sure your success story matches the future goals that you have as a working mom.

And I want to offer that you saying yes to everyone is not what has made you successful. That’s not a real helpful story to believe, ultimately. And I don’t actually think it’s true.

People don’t care if you say yes so much as they care that you deliver on your yes. Again, it comes back to being reliable. It comes back to being dependable.

Why Overdelivering on Less Creates More Opportunities

Your boss and your team would rather you overdeliver on everything that you say yes to instead of saying yes to everything and sort of delivering on all of those things and being burned down in the process. Right?

People care about your follow-through. And if you start saying no, you’re going to be able to execute on your follow-through even more strategically.

And to be honest, it’s true that you will not have as many opportunities if you start saying no. Like literally—you’re denying opportunities. That’s what’s happening.

And it is possible that not as many opportunities are going to come your way as a result of that. We can’t read into the future. We don’t actually know if that’s what’s going to happen or not.

But the good thing is that opportunities are something you create. You create them for yourself by being somebody that is always useful, by being somebody that is clear on what they’re good at and what they want—and believing that they can deliver on that.

That is when opportunity comes your way. You literally have control over creating that.

Saying No Created Space for Something Better

Before I became a coach, in my corporate job, I was offered the opportunity to take over my department.

I mean, sort of. I was offered the opportunity to interview for it. And a lot of people in my company assumed that I would—and that I would probably be the most natural candidate.

And no question—it was a really good opportunity. Certainly would have been more money, a promotion, would have set me on a path in my career.

But I didn’t want it.

And now, as it turns out, I realized I didn’t want it because I didn’t really want to be in the industry anymore. It didn’t resonate with me anymore.

Trusting That Another Opportunity Will Come

And now what I see, in retrospect—a couple of years later, after that opportunity—I ended up getting pregnant. I ended up finding coaching, getting certified as a coach, and going down the path that I’m on right now.

But at the time, I remember people around me—kind of my parents, for sure—going, What are you doing? Like, Take this opportunity. You deserve this.

But if I had, I don’t think I would be where I’m at here today. I wouldn’t have set myself up for the path that I’m on today. Living a life—literally living my dream life.

So oftentimes, when we say no to an opportunity, we don’t know exactly what other opportunities will come.

Sometimes we do. Sometimes it’s super clear—like we’re deciding between two opportunities. Sometimes we’re not. We’re saying no to an opportunity, we’re not sure what else is going to come—but we’re leaving ourselves open to trusting God, to trusting the universe, whatever it is you believe in, that another opportunity is going to come your way.

What Will People Think If I Start Saying No?

The last one I want to talk about is: What are other people going to believe if I stop being a yes person? If I start saying no, what are people going to believe about me? What are they going to think about me?

And it's a great question.

Here’s the thing: they're going to think whatever it is they want to think about you.

And it is possible that people are going to be disappointed. It’s possible that they’re going to be frustrated—because hearing the word no is often a disappointing or frustrating situation to be in.

If you ask your kid to go clean up their room or go clean up that mess or do something, and they say no and they run the opposite way, that’s frustrating, right? You get irritated at them.

But you don’t think, Oh my gosh, my son is a terrible person. You don’t think, Oh my gosh, they’re so lazy. You don’t think that they’re less valuable to this world.

You Can Be Respected And Say No

Part of living a balanced life is not coddling everybody else’s emotions all the time.

So yes—somebody else may be disappointed. They may even be shocked for a while that you said no. But if you remain someone that is able to follow through and is reliable and dependable on the things that you do say yes to—people respect that.

You probably have the utmost respect for women in your life who are able to say no more often than you. Like, the ones that are really able to prioritize—ruthlessly prioritize—and hold to their boundaries. You have a lot of respect for them.

They could be irritating. They could be frustrating. You might think they're not taking on as much as the rest of the team. But there’s some respect there.

And when you become someone that says no more often—and aligns their yes with the things that matter most—you will also be respected.

All right, if you're at this point in the episode and you're like, Okay, I'm on board with it. Rebecca, you've convinced me. It's time to shed this identity as a yes person, say no more often—let's talk about what you practically can do.

It starts with almost every process I ever start with. It starts with clarity.

Get Clear on What Success Looks Like Now

It starts with getting clear on what your goals are, what your values are, what it means to be successful to you in this season of life. Literally, you have to paint a picture for your brain of success. You have to—because otherwise, your brain doesn’t really know at any given time what to prioritize. Right?

For my clients, I walk them through a couple of different practices. In the Ambitious and Balanced process, we walk through vision casting—what balanced, successful working mom life is like. Literally, we put words to that. We put words to what success means to them. We put words to the vision. We put words to the actual priorities.

In my one-on-one practice, we do all of that and we put words to what I like to call their compass—to who they are, what they value, what their identity is, and what their purpose is. Right?

Literally, what you’re doing in all of these types of exercises is you’re giving your brain some sense of a North Star. It’s saying, Hey, these are the things. These are the values. These are the things that matter most to me.

And if you’ve never done anything like that before, now is the perfect time. There’s no more perfect time, I would say, than after having kids—because it is a normal transition time where things already, at this point, have shifted for you. Your goals likely have shifted. Your vision for your life has shifted. Your priorities have shifted.

So now it’s just time to actually put words to them.

Ask Yourself These 3 Reflection Questions

Okay, so that’s essentially what you need to do. So let me give you a couple of questions that you could just reflect on on your own to do this for yourself—at least to kick it off.

The first one is:
What does thriving look like in this season of life?
And what are the things that I do and the mindsets that I have when I thrive?

The second question is:
When I look back at this season three years from now, what do I most want to remember and say that I did and prioritized?

There are so many other questions you could ask yourself that are going to help get your brain to this place of a clear picture—and what really matters to you.

But from there, I would ask yourself:
In order to actually live that version of success, what do I need to let go of, and what do I need to say yes to more often?

Remember: without clarity, your brain doesn't know what to do. You’ll simply wake up tomorrow and prioritize exactly the same things that you prioritized today. You'll do nothing different if you’ve never told your brain otherwise.

That’s why clarity is so important—and why it’s always the starting point.

Redefine Your Success Story

After you've gotten clear on your vision and what success actually looks like, now it’s time to redefine your success story.

If being a yes person is what you have thought has made you successful, what I want to offer to you is that it hasn’t.

And if it hasn’t—what has?


What are some other possibilities of things that have actually made you successful in your life?

Because if you continue to believe that being a yes person—always saying yes and making sure nobody’s disappointed and doing all the things—is what has made you successful, then it’s going to be really hard to sustainably say no in the future. Right?

And the last question I want you to reflect on is this:
Why do you want to say no more often?

What’s the purpose behind even shifting this to begin with? Why does it matter to you?

If you deeply reflect on that question, what you're going to find is a lot of motivation to make the change. It’s the purpose behind the change.

You’re Not Losing Yourself—You’re Focusing Yourself

My working mom friends, you are remarkable. You have some of the highest capacities to achieve and to deliver. And none of that changes when you become ruthless about your yes and your no.

When you align your yes with the things that matter most to you—your version of success—it’s not that you’re losing a piece of who you are. You are focusing who you are and your energy in a very specific direction—not being swayed by other people’s priorities and what they want. You get to decide for yourself.

This is the life of an ambitious, balanced person. And I know it’s possible for you.

As always, if you are looking for a guide through this process, I’m here for you. If you find that you listen to this podcast and you have a hard time actually implementing things on your own, I totally get it.

Book a Free Breakthrough Call

Please schedule a free breakthrough call and let’s talk about what it would look like to coach together. I can walk you through this entire process of redefining success, of finding your North Star.

If you’ve been somebody that has felt lost and confused since becoming a mom, this is the opportunity for you and I to actually lay a clear path forward in this breakthrough call around what success for you actually looks like.

We’ll break it down in terms of what the coaching process looks like, how you’re going to achieve that, and ultimately decide if coaching together right now is the right thing for us.

If you’re interested in booking that call, you can go to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book and that’s going to lead you to a link where you’re going to fill out a little prep form so I can get to know you, and then it’ll take you right to my scheduler.

Working moms, until next week—I hope my voice is totally back by then—but until then, let’s get to it.

Rebecca Olson