Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
We’re the Vallottons, and we’re passionate about people! Every human was created for fulfilling connections in relationship and family, but it’s not always what comes easiest! We know this because of our wide range of personal experiences as well as years of working with people. So we’re going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
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Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
121. When Yes Means No: The High Cost of Self-Betrayal
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In this powerful episode, Jason and Lauren Vallotton explore the quiet, often unnoticed habit of self-betrayal—the moments when we say “yes” to others while saying “no” to ourselves. Whether it's to avoid conflict, gain approval, or protect a fragile connection, self-abandonment can masquerade as kindness while silently eroding trust, peace, and authenticity.
Jason and Lauren unpack the mindsets that often drive this behavior—like the belief that it's selfish to have needs, or that disappointing others is dangerous. With wisdom, compassion, and real-life stories, they offer a roadmap back to honest boundaries, emotional integrity, and deeper connection with both self and others.
In This Episode, They Discuss:
- What self-betrayal looks like in daily life and relationships
- How people-pleasing and performance mindsets take root
- The difference between peacekeeping and true peace
- Core beliefs that lead to self-abandonment (“If I say no, I’ll be rejected”)
- Why honoring your limits is essential to relational and spiritual health
- Practical language and tools to say no with clarity and compassion
Reflection Questions:
- Where in your life have you been betraying your own needs to keep the peace?
- What fear is hiding underneath your yes?
- What would it look like to practice honest, courageous boundaries this week?
Listen in and be reminded: You don’t have to disappear to be loved. Wholeness begins where self-betrayal ends.
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Welcome & Why We Missed Last Week
Speaker 2We're the Valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. Happy Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2Happy Wednesday, happy summertime.
Speaker 1Golly, I'm loving it.
Speaker 2Some of you guys may or may not have noticed that we did not record and publish an episode last week. We've only done that twice in the history of Dates, mates and Babies, with the Valetins and folks. I gotta say it was a wild week.
Speaker 1It was a wild week.
Speaker 2Y'all we're sorry, we are sorry, we had a lot going on last week and you know what, sometimes you just can't do it all.
Speaker 1Oh, that might be the topic this week.
Speaker 2It's a maybe, that's a subtopic of our overarching topic this week.
Speaker 1Yeah, but we did have a fantastic week. Last week we went down to Santa Cruz. My dad had a really cool Regis business summit.
Speaker 2A leaders, business leaders summit. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1And yeah, we just had a really fun time meeting with leaders and loving on them and bringing the supernatural and yeah, it was a work trip.
Speaker 2But when you get in the car and drive with your spouse and no children for four and a half hours, it feels like vacation.
Speaker 1I know.
Speaker 2So it was like a vacation work trip.
Speaker 1So many people are jealous right now that we got to spend four hours driving in the car together.
Speaker 2I know it was awesome and our kids did really well overnight for three nights.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's true. I don't think they changed their clothes at all.
Introducing Self-Betrayal
Speaker 2They didn't, and I definitely know Edie hasn't brushed her hair since the previous week. We're going to get to that later today we will, but we actually do have a riveting episode set up for you guys. We're excited about this one. We're going to talk a little bit about self-betrayal.
Speaker 1Why we say yes when we want to say no.
Speaker 2Yeah. Why in the world do we say yes so often when we actually want to say no? It's a great question.
Speaker 1It is. I'm a recovering addict from this.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think you know some personality types would be more bent towards this tendency than others, but we all get there sometimes. This is a very relatable topic for everybody, some more than others. Yeah, let's talk about what is self-betrayal first.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Besides saying yes when you really want to say no, I think that you should tell that story.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, I mean I could probably refer back to this a few times throughout the course of the episode, but essentially I had a conversation with somebody not too long ago, um, a really high caliber leader, somebody who is leading both in ministry, in business, in family. We're kind of wired up pretty similarly. We discovered our personalities are quite similar and she was asking some great questions about how to set healthy limits, especially in the ministry context, like in ministry, and how to figure out where to where to where to spend your time. When you have a lot of things, a lot of plates spinning and a lot of opportunities, where do you spend your time?
Speaker 2And anyways, we kind of just got into this conversation and and kind of uncovered the fact that she often says yes to things when she doesn't really actually feel like she has the capacity. She finds herself in situations quite often where she feels very responsible for something and and and feels pretty obligated to dive in and say yes, but truthfully, she doesn't really have the bandwidth and when she's in the midst of it, she ends up feeling quite frustrated, sometimes resentful, and she's really looking to figure out how to set her life up for success better, you know. And so I mean honestly, her story is a thousand stories.
Speaker 1It just is right, it just is.
Speaker 2So, um, so it was a little inspo for this week's episode, but yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, I think for me, I really am a recovering please-aholic.
Speaker 2Yeah, people pleaser for sure.
Speaker 1Part of it is I really enjoy pleasing people.
Speaker 2And helping people and helping people.
Speaker 1I love it. It's why I'm a counselor, and definitely more personality types are geared more towards certain things and for me, this is a. This is a big one. This would be a massive one, Same with you. Uh, this would be a big.
Speaker 2I think our motivations are very different but, yeah, we both get into the same and we can talk about that situation.
Speaker 1Yeah, but we all know when somebody comes to us and say, hey, can you?
Understanding The Root Causes
Speaker 1take this thing on, you'd be great at it, or man, we really need help over here. Um, love for you to step up, and we don't want to do it. It's not just that we don't want to do it, it's like because there's a difference between like I just don't like doing that thing and like I don't know how I could take on anymore. Sure, but we go, yeah, no, yeah, no, I can do that. And as soon as they leave, you have that feeling in the pit of your stomach like why am I doing this? Why do I keep doing this? But then you revert back to those things of uh that we all tell ourselves, you know, and, and so I think the self betrayal is abandoning your needs. It's, it's. You have a boundary. You said that you needed to rest. You said that you know you got to slow down and take care of yourself, but you blow right past that boundary.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. Self-betrayal is like you have a boundary.
Speaker 1it's set up and then you voluntarily push it down so somebody can step right over into your yard like you're letting people in yeah, and, and I think often we recognize that we're doing it in the sense that we have this feeling inside of us that we don't like, but we just do it anyways Right.
Speaker 2It's basically not listening to that still small voice inside of you, because you're more in tuned with external expectations than you are with, like, your internal needs, boundaries, convictions, et cetera.
Speaker 1Yeah, for me, you know, in my first marriage and not that I haven't had this in my second marriage, but in my first marriage I had this I lived with this lie that and for me what it looked like was I would not enter into conflict.
Speaker 1I wouldn't actually share when my feelings were hurt. I wouldn't share when I was frustrated, which wasn't her fault. I would hold all this stuff in and I would tell myself this lie. I would tell myself that like I'm just, you know, I'm protecting her, I'm really caring for her in this. I don't want to. It's not that big of a deal. Also, I would tell myself, like this is what God would do. Like this is what Jesus would do. Like I was really stoked. I actually-.
Speaker 2Guide to yourself.
Speaker 1I really had this thing of like I'm carrying I'm, instead of getting my needs met, I'm just going to make sure that she gets her needs met which also wasn't true, right, but I was carrying this thing inside of me that I was so like I'm a great husband because I don't have to do this conflict right now, because I can just take it and move on. And golly, it wasn't until later on that I realized like, oh, all this bitterness, resentment, anger, frustration that I have when I realized I am not telling her because I love her and because I care for her and because I want to be like Jesus and I just want to please her, that's not actually what's going on inside of me.
Speaker 1Actually, what's going on inside of me is I'm terrified. I don't want conflict.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And I have this false belief that I can, that I can carry this all. Yeah, and I can't. It's my job to make her happy, or? It's my job to like our relationship can't handle conflict in there, whatever. There's a bunch of different lies in there, but when I realized that I was living underneath this lie, it wasn't until my marriage was almost over that I actually realized oh, I'm not showing up in the marriage like I should like, I want to. Our marriage is void of tons of conflict because I'm actually lying to myself.
Speaker 1It's a really painful place to be.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I remember back to the season where we started dating and you really wanted to articulate for me where you knew you had failed in your first marriage. What you had done to contribute to ultimately the breakdown of the marriage connection was in this area.
Speaker 2And I think this happens a lot. You know my um, my tendency to betray myself would show up most often in my taking on too much responsibility for things that are not mine to control. Um, kind of looking over into somebody else's yard going like, hmm, looks like they might need help trimming that tree, so I hop over the fence and I do it for them, and they're not actually very thankful for my help and I'm definitely not stoked about the fact I spent my time doing it. But for some reason I just keep hopping over into other people's yards doing something that really is theirs to do, but I don't know where to where my responsibility ends and where theirs begins sometimes. So you know, this can show up a lot of different ways. But let's talk about mindsets, ultimately, that lead to self-betrayal. So, cause we might be doing a lot of the same kinds of activities, and different mindsets actually fuel our activity. If we're on autopilot with it, like if we don't realize what we're doing, we start betraying ourself when we have these kinds of thoughts.
Speaker 1Well, when we talk about the mindset we've talked about this so many times is that we get these mindsets, these ecosystems, built into us when we're young, when we're born. And again, some of it could be more of a propensity because of your personality type, but personality types are also formed by your environment. Sure, and so you know, when you grow up in a home where overperforming is praised, you're going to overperform and we'll go through the mindsets.
Speaker 2Yeah, you act out of your belief system. So, what we're really talking about is what belief systems lead to your self-betrayal.
Speaker 1Yeah, and why I think that's important is even when we start to really identify these is. It's not just about going. I need to stop this belief system. It really helps to know where did this get created and reinforced in my life, over and over and over again. So one of them would be if I disappoint people, then I'm failing.
Speaker 1And so to let somebody down to disappoint them, if you got, if you got shamed for disappointing your parent you know disappointing somebody in your family then you're going to carry this a lot. I'm failing, I can't let anyone down. Or the fact that somebody is disappointed in me means they're sad makes me bad, Basically. Totally, it's rooted in performance-based love.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Conditional acceptance. Really, it's the fear of rejection, especially if your value was tied to being agreeable or good.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1So that's going to be the pain point.
Speaker 2And maybe we could take each of these and like throw in, like how could this manifest? Because it would be so different for you than me, because look at this one, if I disappoint them, I'm failing. How that works in my life is. It's not that I'm afraid people will think, it's not that I will fail them and they will be let down. For me, I don't want to disappoint them because I don't want them to think I'm a failure, because actually I really want promotion. I actually care a lot about like I'm wired for significance and I actually look for opportunity and so I don't want to let people down because I'm I will ultimately be afraid that it's going to undercut my ability to be launched into whatever I'm supposed to do. Does that make sense.
Speaker 2Whereas for a lot of people it would be like um and I would say that's rooted in my value is tied to being agreeable or good. That's true, like in my house. I remember being a little kid Like I usually did the right thing, quote the right thing. I followed the rules because I saw how being agreeable and good got me places.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They trusted me, they gave me more, I would get included in adult conversations, even though you know I got to sit at the adult table, not the kid table. I liked that.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2It was way less about fear of rejection for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think for me it was that one would be tied to. I have this belief that I can really help people Right. And so I have unlimited capacity to really help people. And so if I don't help you and you're disappointed like I'm, I'm letting you down, so it's good, um, I think. Number two is it's selfish to have needs. I was really drowning.
Speaker 2Yeah, the mindset that it's actually selfish or wrong to have needs.
Five Mindsets Leading To Self-Betrayal
Speaker 1Yeah, so super common in religious or high responsibility households and we internalize this belief that self-sacrifice is holy even when it leads to self-.
Speaker 2Erasure.
Speaker 1Yeah, erasure, and so I think this idea that it wasn't for me, I wouldn't have said it's selfish to have needs, I would have said it's like God to not need anything.
Speaker 2And look at how much stuff I can handle.
Speaker 1I can handle all of this stuff. It really was a badge of honor for me, not even in a pride way, in a false responsibility and a misunderstanding of my capacity. Or like a false humility kind of almost responsibility and a misunderstanding of my capacity or like a false humility kind of almost. Yeah, I really wouldn't have said I live in pride because it wasn't about. It wasn't like look at me, look at me. It was a very big misunderstanding of what I felt like my responsibility to God was on this earth.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I would say more so. I just wasn't as aware of the needs I had. It was like it's not necessarily that I wanted to forego my own needs. It was like I wasn't really raised to consider how are you feeling? What do you need, you know? How are you feeling, what do you need, you know? It was more like make quiet observations about the world around me and decide how to optimize myself in the midst of it all you know yeah, do you want to do this?
Speaker 1third one yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So the third mindset would be if I don't keep the peace, everything will fall apart oh, I think this is your big one, this is me, this is me to a T, so you know the notes would be. If you're taking notes, this is often rooted in childhood roles, right, like the fixer or the peacemaker or the firstborn or the firstborn daughter, right Like. You're almost born into this role sometimes, but it creates a bunch of pressure to hold that harmony at the cost of your personhood or what you really need and I think um my personality is very much to protect the people that are in my sphere of influence.
Speaker 2So growing up I felt like I had to protect my younger brothers, not from anything in particular, babys.
Speaker 1Even during babysitting, like you would, you would be very nervous that the babysitter wasn't going to care for you.
Speaker 2Yeah, like when my parents would be gone and I there was a babysitter at home and I can remember being five years old, my um brother below me was one, you know, like zero to one and I remember, I mean I had stomach aches for a long season.
Speaker 2My parents had me on rice milk, I remember, because they thought maybe I had a lactose problem because I had tummy aches all the time and really it was anxiety. I remember specifically I wasn't just carefree playing in the house while we had a babysitter, I had my eye on my little brother all the time and I don't know why, like it's not like we were ever put in a super dangerous situation. I he had a peanut allergy and I remember as a baby watching him be like violently sick when we discovered he had a peanut allergy and I don't know if something in my mind went like I have to protect him. But it is largely how I'm wired. I know that. I know that now. So you know my tendency to be it looks it looks courageous and heroic, to be others focused like that it looks very others focused.
Speaker 2Um, the truth is is I was always trying to save people from things falling apart around them.
Speaker 1So that you would be okay.
Speaker 2So that I would be okay. Yeah, no, it's not. It wasn't just so that I would be okay. It's that here's where it gets, here's where it gets messy. I don't actually know how to be okay if the people I love are not okay. So it's like I actually do want them to be okay for themselves. I don't want my little brother to be sick. I want to make sure he's taken care of, because I don't know how to be okay if he's suffering. So this weird, even as a little kid, this kind of like codependent thing starts forming. So in my adult years what happens? Right? Like we have, I step into a step parenting role and I have three kids out the gate and I care deeply, I feel very responsible for their wellbeing. So you know, I'm going, I'm going to work over time to keep things from falling apart, because I'll be better if they're good, Like I want everything to be good for them, because I don't know how to thrive if they're not doing well.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's real, it is holy cow.
Speaker 2But then I have, you know, my best friend is the textbook peacemaker, so she's looking for, she's working over time to build connection and peace in a room full of chaos or whatever. So this can look a lot of different ways, yeah.
Speaker 1It's why we're going through each one and giving an example and everyone should be thinking like what does it look like? For me, they're not all rooted in evil and selfishness. It's just when we take it to the max right that they're bad. Fourth mindset we only have five mindsets that we're going to talk about today. Um, they'll only love me if I'm easy to be around. So this is man. If, if, yeah, I just makes me feel so sad for for this mindset.
Speaker 1It's rooted so much in shame um, this belief that I'm too much or I'm only lovable, uh, if I'm low maintenance. It leads to chronic people pleasing and emotional suppression, you know. So it's just, uh, it's, it's so painful, uh I I don't think that this is a deep-rooted one in me. My family, my dad, was good with conflict.
Speaker 1He was fine with us doing conflict back and forth. I didn't carry this thing inside me that I'm too much or I'm only lovable if I'm too low maintenance. I think all of the mistakes my dad just tells stories about his mistakes, so this wasn't a massive one for me, but it is for a lot of people.
Speaker 2Well, and yeah, it is, and I even think about, I'm cognizant of this even at home with Edie in particular, our daughter, because she does have some high needs, and I've watched her as she's gotten a little bit older. She's cluing into the fact that things are hard for her that aren't hard for everybody, and so sometimes she makes things hard in our home that wouldn't otherwise be hard and I've watched her notice that about herself and I'm very, I'm very cognizant of that. I don't want to see that thing take root. That goes like um, I'm a problem.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2We don't want her to start believing that she's a problem, because I know what it looks like in adults who believe that they're a problem and you know I have a lot of friends who have had to overcome, especially people with big personalities, people who naturally take up a lot of space in a room. Now listen, you got to learn how to read the room, right. But it's not great when that unhealthy mindset of I'm too much becomes a foundation or like a lens through which you see everything.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's real.
Speaker 2Okay, the next mindset, last one we'll talk about today, is my. No will be misunderstood. This might hit yours in the head better than any other oh gosh, I always say probably my greatest fear in life is being misunderstood and not having the capability to explain myself.
Speaker 1If I want to trigger you more than anything in this world. Send a message, send you a message that you're going to be misunderstood Totally.
Speaker 2Oh man, my gosh. I don't know why that's so painful for me, but it sure is the idea of being misunderstood and not being able to explain myself, or like what's the courtroom terminology. It's like not defend myself but like the rebuttal. Yeah, if I feel misunderstood and I can't explain, ooh boy, for a lot of people I think that's you know it's there's a fear that you would seem cold or unkind or rebellious or whatever the thing might be. But especially common in church settings or tight-knit communities where yes is kind of seen as like loving and no is seen as selfish. Right, Totally.
Emotional Impact & Finding Balance
Speaker 2I'm very apt to. I'm like, yes, I will take that on. Yes, I will do that thing. I don't want oftentimes I don't want no to be misunderstood as like low capacity. If I can't explain to you like, if I say no it's actually from a powerful place of knowing my season, my limits, my vision. I want you to have a lot of confidence in me. That's my thing. I want you to have a lot of confidence in me. So if I say no, you might misunderstand that for low capacity, and I want you to know I don't have low capacity, sir. So you know. But ultimately there's a tension to all of this.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, here's the thing is it doesn't help anybody, especially yourself, when you live a life where you are betraying yourself, where you don't have, where you're not proud of the decisions that you're making.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1Okay when you aren't living with integrity and you go like, well, I don't, I'm not looking at porn, I don't do any of those things. It's like no integrity to what your core belief is and if you take care of people, ultimately the way that you take care of yourself. So when you do a really great job of going, my needs matter, my boundaries are important. What I feel and think and desire is really important. Where I'm at in this season is really important. Your ability to really really care for you ultimately gives you tons of capacity to care for everyone else and what God's called you to.
Speaker 2Totally Okay.
Speaker 1But we also have this tension of life. Isn't all about you.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1It's not all about what you want to do. It's not all about doing the things that just bring you life and making sure that everything in your life is in harmony and in balance.
Speaker 1Life isn't really lived like that. So we have this tension of I don't just say yes to the things I want to say yes to. I also don't say no to the things that I should do. I am living with a conviction and I'm constantly tending to and stewarding that conviction that God's given me, while paying really close attention to my body, my soul and my spirit. So I need to do things that I don't want to do, because I'm vision directed, because I'm loving God, because I'm following his mission in my life, because it's important to my kids, because it's important to you.
Speaker 1There's things that you ask me to do, that I don't want to do, but because it's really important to you and I want to sow into you and I want to send a message I care for you. What you need is also important to me. You know I'm not just looking at my life going so, but a betrayal. Why we use the word betrayal is important. There's a difference between a betrayal and I don't. I'm not in the mood today, or I don't want to today or wow, that would cost me a lot.
Speaker 1This being able to sacrifice for another person's good is one of the ways that we care and love for people. Jesus came and he sacrificed everything, but he also had really good boundaries. He also was on God's mission.
Speaker 2He also only did what the Father told him to do yeah he didn't betray himself in order to love people and I think that's the thing is true. Maturity is learning to really honor your limits while showing up with love and service and responsibility for people. Right, it's not self-protection at any cost, it's integrity, it's being honest and aligned with your yes and your no. And this is a big deal because there's a huge emotional and relational impact when we don't actually have boundaries, when we betray ourself. There's a big emotional and relational impact, at least when they start compounding.
Speaker 2So after they start compounding, horrible things happen, like tons of resentment towards other people or towards yourself, or ultimately it leads to a bunch of relational disconnection because you're not being fully honest. Right? This is what happened in your first marriage. It led to major disconnection because you weren't actually fully showing up and I would walk around a lot in this battle. Internal. I'm battling it. Yeah, you're battling it out in your mind because you're not actually having conflict with her.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I don't feel taken care of, I don't feel seen, I don't feel loved. So I'm walking around with like this thing of like, if you really loved me, you would do.
Speaker 2X.
Speaker 1Y or Z, but really I'm not stating needs.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know, for me, I would say, when I've been in seasons of not, my yeses have been self-betrayal. It's followed by burnout, ultimately, and a bunch of passive aggression, um, a bunch of judgment, um, sometimes emotional withdrawal, like I'm saying yes to doing something for people I really care for, but internally I want to withdraw from them. And then ultimately right, you just erode self-trust over time, you stop believing that you can really listen or advocate for yourself, and then you get lost it just you feel you're kind of lost.
Speaker 2And I would say, when I had this conversation with this lady, uh, a while back, this high level leader, that's what was starting to happen is she was feeling a bit lost in herself because she no longer knew how to trust her yeses or her nos.
Speaker 1Yeah, so being able to show up and to really validate what you need and what the other person needs is super powerful. Right To be able to go. Hey, man, I see right now that you guys have the that there is this need, and that's that's awesome. Right now, I don't feel like I have the capacity for it.
Speaker 2Right, I would love. That's a great line and actually would love to feed people. Maybe like four or five lines to try, because sometimes it's hard to know exactly what a healthy boundary should look like or like. How do I actually communicate what I need? This is what my friend and I were talking about, as I was kind of coaching her through this a little bit. This is the recommendation I gave her is hey, that doesn't work for me, but here's what I can do.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2That's a great line. When somebody needs you to do something or when there is a problem at hand, rather than jumping in and giving a blanket statement yes, it's whatever you need from me, actually tell people powerfully what you can offer.
Speaker 1Yeah, that I really want to, that I said earlier, but I don't have the capacity is also another one of those that says it's like when the kids are in the car and they're crying in the back seat and Liam says I want mom and you're not here, and I go, I really want mom too. I want mom so much, buddy. All of a sudden he feels understood and known and cared for, but mom's not here.
Speaker 1I'm so sorry, right, it's being able to empathize with people, because we often see these boundaries as like a, this cold thing where I'm leaving the person. But it is that it very much can be those. Hey, um, can I have time to check in with myself before answering? That's another really great line right Like can I think about it and then get back to you. What's it say? It says I really do care for you. I really am weighing what's going on, but I'm not sure that I'm that I'm going to be able to do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2I use that one a lot when, uh, for me, you know we're in the business of people, we spend a lot of time with people and the truth is is sometimes I don't even have time to see the people I'm deeply committed to, much less, you know, new friends or acquaintances. So I use that line a lot. Can I have time to check in with myself and my calendar before committing and that lets people know I actually give my yeses with a lot of intention. I can't just sling them around Like I actually have to be focused and then, related to that, I think it's really disarming when we use lines like I'm learning to really honor my limits when it's even when it's uncomfortable. It kind of lets people know I'm growing in this.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a stretch for me.
Speaker 2It's a stretch for me to say no to you, but I'm learning to honor my limits. It's an invitation even for people to consider their own.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 1And it's quite disarming to use lines like that. I think we have really developed this skill set and even this phrase list a decent amount, because we live in this world of being pastors. I've been 20 years a pastor, where people are asking and they should. People ask all the time for different things Can I take you to lunch? Can we have dinner together? Hey, my son has this need. Could you meet with him? Hey, I'd love to invite you over to this thing. And that is a world of horror for a person who feels obligated, feels over-responsible, who doesn't know how to set a healthy boundary. So really getting strong at going oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. I actually right now I can't do that, but, man, I love that you're doing that or any of those things are really, really helpful, so good.
Five Steps Toward Setting Healthy Boundaries
Speaker 2Okay, this is where we're going to end, but I really want to. I really want to include this a quick, five-step pathway towards wholeness. If you know you're a chronic over-committer, if you know that you say yes often when you really should be saying no.
Speaker 2here are five quick steps and we won't go deep into these but, we'll let you know, and then this could be a great place for you to kind of dig in and explore a little bit more. But number one would just be to recognize the trigger to actually pause and notice when you feel an internal no.
Speaker 1Yeah, when you really don't, when you really feel that conviction, yeah, being able to name the fear.
Speaker 2Number two name the fear yeah.
Speaker 1What are you afraid will happen if you say no?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So being able to pinpoint that it's going to be super key.
Speaker 2That question what are you afraid will happen if you say no is the thing we would normally gloss over in our subconscious. You don't pay attention.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But we're challenging you to stop and actually name it. All right? Number three check the story. Is challenging you to stop and actually name it. All right, number three, check the story. Is it actually true? Is the story you're telling yourself actually true? Will you be rejected? Unloved or unsafe, if you actually say no, yeah, or am I the one?
Speaker 1that really is responsible for this thing right now. Yeah, I think. Number four practice, bravery practice, bravery practice, bravery practice, bravery practice, being brave Honestly Um, I screwed that up. So bad Practice, brave honesty.
Speaker 2My bad, Sorry you guys, start small right.
Speaker 1Let your yes be yes and you know, but you know, really, ultimately it's confronting that fear that you have. It's being able to show up and go. I know this is outside of my normal. Here I go and being able to really step up and say what you need.
Speaker 2Absolutely. And then number five just let relationships recalibrate right. Some are going to stretch with you and others just won't. And that's not necessarily your failure, it's clarity.
Speaker 1Yeah, If you have set a tone in your life, with the people in your life that you are okay with betraying yourself. When you start to grow and change and set healthy boundaries and even have different conversations than what you used to have, people go, um oh.
Speaker 2It's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1Okay, but as you start to change, they will also change and it will give them permission to do the same.
Speaker 2Remember the line I'm learning to honor my limits limits even when it's uncomfortable, it's beautiful.
Closing & Upcoming Events
Speaker 1Listen y'all. Thank you guys so much for checking out this podcast, listening to it. We hope that it helped you. We have added a few Patreon um contributors with us this last month, which has been so awesome. If you love this content and you want to help us, help to fund it, help to feel it be a part of helping other families have healthy families, if you believe in what we're doing, man, throw five bucks, 10 bucks, a thousand bucks our way.
Speaker 2Join the team.
Speaker 1Yeah, join the team and help us out. We also have a Braveco conference coming up, june 11th through the 13th.
Speaker 2Next Wednesday. It's not too late to sign up.
Speaker 1Yep and a gala on Friday, so or sorry, on Saturday.
Speaker 2Do you want to talk about the gala, the 14th?
Speaker 1Yeah, the gala is awesome If you're looking for a really incredible Airbnb getaway, a hunt, some sports memorabilia, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1So we auction off all kinds of items at our gala and trips and trips, lots of trips. Those are the airbnbs every year. So, like we have one to fiji, we have one to cabo, we have one in the hamptons these really incredible, beautiful places that people donate to us so that we can then auction them off. Everything that's purchased is tax-deductible. So literally, you could buy a $7,000 trip because you bid on it and only pay, really like so much less than that because of the tax deduction and so, anyways, it's a really cool way to support braveco. Yeah, again, it's here in Redding, california on the 14th, on the 14th of June, on the 14th.
Speaker 1Yeah, so there's dinner. It's a husband and wife event. There's 23 guns that you can win as well, so there's tons of guns and cool stuff as well.
Speaker 2So, guys We'll link the conference registration and also the gala information here in the show notes if you're interested. But we'd love to see you next week here in Redding.
Speaker 1All right, y'all have an incredible week We'll see you next week.