Episode Transcript

Hey, guys, today I want to talk about how you are the only person who can tell you no.

So growing up, give you some background. It was super interesting looking back in my life, because growing up as a young child and ‘s young boy and into manhood and being a young man, one of the things that I noticed as an adult that was very hard looking back was the transition period where I had boundaries placed on me and self discipline placed on me by outside forces, by outside authorities, and then a transition occurred in my life to where now I’m the only one who is in charge and responsible for placing those boundaries, and I’m the only authority in my life to say no.

Now I can have outside forces, right and and just just give me some grace on this too, as I get into this, because there are a few places where this breaks. But what I want to say is this, you grow up thinking and believing that somebody else is going to tell you no, because that was your parents. Okay? Your parents tell you no. They can send you to a room. They can ground you. They can do things like that, right? If you don’t acknowledge the No. And then there’s a period in your life where you can tell yourself No, but if you don’t, you don’t have any grounding or immediate consequences like that in your life, the only thing that you have are delayed consequences, which come in much later.

And often times we cannot see the cause and effect because they’re five steps removed. They’re way down the line. And what I’m getting at is this looking in my life where there’s a transition, where I was fully autonomous versus having sub autonomy, some autonomy, versus being completely helpless and completely un autonomous, because I’m relying on my mother and father to feed me, clothe me, all the things that transition occurred over life, and nobody talked to me about this. I did not know that that transition, not in this words, not in these languages, like not in this language, like my father taught me, like, hey, there’s gonna be coming time in life when you’re gonna be responsible for your own decisions and for those things. And that was what was said to me.

But what I didn’t realize, and what took me a moment to learn, and there’s a lot of heartache and headaches along the way, was, I’m the only one who’s gonna build my life, establish boundaries in my life, and I’m the only one who’s going to tell myself No, there’s not going to be anybody else telling me no, to not go down and go to the supermarket buy a whole sleeve of Oreos and then come home and eat them in one sitting.

Because I could do that. I’m not going to do that. I’ve said no, and now I’ve got to be a man of my word to myself, and that’s interesting, because most people think that they need to keep promises to other people, but the most important person to keep promises to is you. Most important person to keep promises to is you. And if you’re not going to keep promises to you, your promises seem to falter in lack when you try and keep them for other people, because you always treat people the way you treat yourself.

It may not always manifest and look the same, but that’s exactly what happens. And so it’s so important to keep the promises to yourself. When you say no, you follow through with no, and this is where self discipline comes in. This is why self discipline is so important. Self discipline isn’t for other people. It’s for you and it’s for your good, and it’s something that you should practice and have daily practices on to continue to build up and edify yourself to keep your promises to yourself. So when you say no, I’m not going to do that. You won’t do that. When you say no, that is not for me. I need to remain focused on this. You do that when you have principles in your life that you want to live and operate by, you are not going to violate them when your place in situations that apply pressure on your life.

Because you experience pressure in your life from outside forces, everybody does, and it’s interesting, because when that pressure comes, saying no to yourself and keeping your promise when nobody ‘s looking now counts more than ever. Saying no when nobody ‘s looking often times is just as hard as when there’s pressure involved, but when we don’t say no to ourselves when nobody ‘s looking and we’re flipping about it, that flippancy ‘s produced elsewhere in our lives.

And I’m gonna go back to the opening statement that I made, you are the only person who can tell yourself No. Other people can say, hey, you need to not do this. They can influence you. They can advise you. They can do things. But when it comes down to actually choosing and following through with that, it is all up to you. Now, here is the big thing about no. Most people think no ‘s negative. No is actually positive. No is what moves you forward. See, if you said yes to everything in life, you would get nowhere. But if you said no to more things in your life than you said yes to, you would move forward more quickly.

Think about it this way, you’re driving down the highway. You have to get off at exit one. You’re starting at exit. 89 if you said yes to get off on every single exit 89 all the way through exit two before you got off on exit one, you would never get off on exit one. You would run out of time, and you’d have to turn around and go back. But if you said no to every exit along the way, which is what we do naturally when we’re driving to a destination, we say no to every exit, you all of a sudden, will end up at the destination in the goal that you place yourself.

So anyways, guys, I’m out of time, and I’ll catch you later. Peace.