Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Are We Too Nice? Exploring the Power of Saying No
Today's episode dives into the empowerment found in setting boundaries, especially for moms. We explore the challenges of saying no and how it can lead to greater confidence and peace.
• Discussing the emotional weight of saying yes too often
• Sharing personal stories of confidence highs and lows
• Five key areas to focus on for boundary-setting: time, friendships, parenting, social media, and marriage
• Practical steps for implementing boundaries in daily life
• Encouragement to celebrate the power of self-love through saying no
If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mom who you think might like to hear this reminder!
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You're listening to Confidently Beautiful with Ciera, a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful, because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out and I'm here to show you how Body image, dreams, parenting, style, personality and more. Here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. Ready to stay confidently beautiful. Welcome back to the Confidently Beautiful podcast. I am your host, sierra.
Ciera:This podcast is all about confidence, beauty and helping moms feel their best in every season of life. Today we're talking about something that can be really tough but is so freeing. This is saying no, setting boundaries and protecting our own peace. Like I know, I am so not good at this, but it's something that I'm driving to be better at and I actually have come a long way. But before we get into it, let's do a little confidence check in, because we all have highs and lows and I like to share a little bit of mine so that you can see a little glimpse into my life, and it's fun to hear a different perspective from another mom.
Ciera:My confidence high is that my little guy's first birthday party was just a couple weeks ago and I feel like it was a huge success. We went all out with a cute smiley face, one cool dude theme, and it was adorable. It was everything I wanted it to be and it was a lot of fun. We actually had to postpone it because he was sick the first time we were going to do it, so I was really happy that we were able to get it all put together and it actually ended up being better that we had to postpone it because some more people were able to be there that weren't going to before, and it just turned out really great. It was really fun. It was just fun to see him happy. He was a little bit confused about what was going on, but had a really good time and it just was one of those mom moments where, like, okay, I like put together the party that I had in my head and I did it and I made this really sweet memory. I mean, he's not going to remember much, but I definitely will, so that was a fun thing to be able to do. And then my confidence low was that the weather is warming up, which is wonderful I'm so happy about, but that also means that I'm wearing fewer layers. I'm wearing fewer sweaters, and hiding in my warm, comfy clothes is a lot harder when I'm wearing more short sleeves and I'm just becoming a little bit more self-conscious. It's been a year since I've had baby boy and I am just like, oh, I'm not where I feel like I wanted to be. So having that confidence is kind of hard right now, but I am working on it. It's something that I really really am trying. I think women in general, but I think especially moms like we just it's something that can be really hard, but it's a mindset and framework that we need to just embrace our bodies for what they are and ignore the number on the scale, and I am trying to focus more on doing things that are helping me to feel good and be able to be the best mom that I can be for my little kids.
Ciera:Let's dive into today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about boundaries and the power of saying no, and why is saying no so hard, especially for moms? Why is the pressure always there to feel like we have to please everyone, to be able to be everything to everyone, we have to do everything for everyone? I don't know why we have that, but saying no, I have learned, is not selfish. It is a way that you can become and show up as the best person for the people in your life that you love and care for, and I feel that confidence comes from knowing what serves you and what doesn't. So that will give you the confidence of when to say no, when to say yes, and it gives yourself permission to protect your time and your energy and your peace. Setting boundaries in key areas. I went through and I thought of five areas in life that I feel like can be problem areas with setting boundaries or maybe tricky areas to figuring out how to set your boundaries, but also can be very freeing in lots of different ways in your life if you can set the proper boundaries. But before we dive into those five things, let's take a quick minute to hear a little bit about Flowdesk and why I love this for my email system.
Ciera:All of my listeners who are a doula, a photographer, you have an Etsy shop, you have a clothing boutique, you're an esthetician, you're a realtor, you have a house cleaning business, you're a life coach, whatever it is if you have a small business, listen up, because I have something for you. I have come across an amazing email system. It is flowdeskcom slash C, slash, confident. If you go there, you can get 50% off your very first year. That's a big deal. 50% off, that's awesome. Flowdesk is amazing, and let me tell you why I love it. I can segment all of my customers into different, basically groups. Think of it that way and I can have it so that if somebody joins my email list, they are automatically sent out a drip of emails. I changed it to it so that it was over a week time, but you can completely customize it to yourself and this will automatically get them set up on your email campaign. Get them the information that you're wanting, send out those freebies, whatever it is that you're offering. It automatically sends it to them for you, and you can easily create emails that you can send as often as you want. I do mine once a week and it's just so easy. I have the template, I have my brand, I can make it all look the same every week, so I have that consistency and I absolutely love it. So go to flow desk F L O, deskcom, slash C, slash confident, and you can get 50% off your first year. Let's get back to the episode. All right, we're back.
Ciera:So setting boundaries in key areas of our life. I have five areas that I think are going to be very beneficial in setting boundaries. The first one is boundaries with your time. You don't have to say yes to every single play date, every volunteer request or every extra responsibility. I constantly am getting like PTO emails for my kids school saying we need volunteers for that, we need volunteers for this, and I want to be super, super involved. But I am just at a stage where I still have two young kids at home and so it's hard to say yes to everything, and so I have had to learn how to set up boundaries to protect my my time with my other two little kids not do too much, but also to feel like I'm doing enough, that I'm involved with my older kids.
Ciera:One thing that I have found that's really helpful when I'm setting boundaries with my time is to think of these questions. If something comes up, I ask myself does this align with my priorities and my family core values, my personal core values and also my family core values? If it does, then I can consider saying yes. If it doesn't, that's like an automatic no for me, if it doesn't align with my priorities or throws them out of whack like I'm just not going to be doing it. And then the other thing I think of is are my non-negotiables. Being that, so non-negotiables to me?
Ciera:I think of some different areas in my life that are like yes, this will happen. So, for example, like family dinner, this is a really big non-negotiable for me. I try very hard to not have things interfere with our family dinner time, even if we have to have a five minute family dinner time or I won't be eating dinner because maybe I'm going out with some friends, but I still sit there with my kids while they eat their dinner and Seth and I will talk with them. That's like a non-negotiable for me. So if this is going to prevent something that is like a non-negotiable from happening, then the answer is going to be no. Or am I saying yes out of guilt, like this is a big one? Do I really want to do this? Or am I just saying yes because I feel like I have to? Those are some questions that I ask myself. That helps me to be able to distinguish whether or not I should say yes or no, because our time is precious and we don't want to be giving it away too freely.
Ciera:Number two is boundaries in friendship and family. So not every relationship is healthy or uplifting. We all know that we have some people in our lives. I'm sure that we don't feel like our best selves when we're around. It's okay to distance yourself from that negativity or the people who drain you. If you leave not feeling good, it doesn't mean you don't love them, it doesn't mean that you don't care about them, but you can distance yourself a little bit. You don't have to say yes to everything. I have learned to set my expectations of people in my life to where they can meet them, like where, what, like, what is their capacity Like? And then I bring my expectation down, like so that it meets them, so that I'm not like having all these high hopes and then realizing they don't, they're not even capable of doing this for me, or maybe they don't even have these priorities for me, so then I'm automatically going to be let down. So setting those boundaries can be very helpful. I've learned to say things like I love you, but I can't take this on right now, and it's okay. I don't have to solve everyone's problems. I want to solve everyone's problems, but I don't have to, and so setting those boundaries can be very helpful.
Ciera:Boundaries and parenting oh my goodness, mom guilt oh, it's is so real. I have done podcast episodes on this. I can link them in the show notes. But oh man, mom guilt is, it's a thing. But I just try and remember that I don't have to fulfill every request from my kids, which is so hard, because you know, we want to give our kids the world. But teaching our kids to respect our time, like saying things like mom needs 10 minutes of quiet time right now, then we can play, do that rather than just being like a slave to like doing whatever it is that they want to do.
Ciera:I'm at the stage where my kids are getting older and they just want to do everything and I'm still trying to protect their boundaries as well. I'm still trying to teach them how to protect their boundaries, how to protect their time, how to protect their priorities, and so I have had to learn to say for their benefit, sometimes like just to protect their priorities, and so I have had to learn to say for their benefit, sometimes like just to protect their time is, I would love to sign you up for that class. Would you like to do this class or soccer this season? Because we need to be careful with your time and where you're spending all your energy. Because I need to protect them, I need to let them still be kids, I need to not let them be on such a strict and rigid schedule all the time. And then I've also kind of learned this with like teaching them about money and like finance, like that would be great, but this camp is $200 and we're going to do soccer and that one's $150. So which one would you like to do? Because I think we should probably just pick one so we can use our money on all sorts of different interests that we all have as a family. And teaching in those kinds of boundaries, and I think the modeling the boundaries for them helps them to grow into confident and self-respecting adults. It's going to teach them to do things that I would want them to do as they are adults.
Ciera:Number four is boundaries with social media and comparison. So about like a couple of times a year, usually like usually about the beginning of the year and then like around fall time, then I will do like a social media clean out and I will unfollow or mute accounts that just don't make me feel good, that I just am tired of seeing on my feed, or I just feel blah or anxious afterwards after seeing them. I just I either unfollow them completely or just mute the accounts and get it off my feed, and I do that, you know them. I just I either unfollow them completely or just mute the accounts and get it off my feed, and I do that, you know, like I said, a couple of times a year and I think that has been really helpful with my social media use.
Ciera:Another huge thing with my social media use is I went into the settings on my phone. I can't think of what, the what, the exact word is, but it's basically like a time limit, a screen limit. I sent a screen limit on my phone and I said, okay, for social media apps I only want 30 minutes a day. That's what I have on my phone. And because I found that all those like times where you're like, oh, carpool pickup, I still have five minutes before the kids come out, so you start scrolling, or maybe you have 10 minutes before an appointment, or you're in the waiting room and you don't have kids with you, so bugging you, so you're like, oh, I'm just going to take this time to check some social media, all those things add up and I found that I was using so much more like your phone will tell you your usage and I was using so much more than I thought I was and I was like, wow, what an unproductive use of my time for one thing. Like I can be doing so many butterfings and I mean I'm not against like scrolling and laughing at the reels and the TikToks and all the things, like I definitely do that, I do my fair share and Seth and I send each other things. But I think that there is a really healthy balance and finding that boundary is really important. So I have found that, having that on my phone, it will just pop up as I'm like if I open the app, it will pop up and say time time screen limit and it will like block it out and it even I love it because it will even like fade it out on my home screen. Like if I go to the app like so I can't even really open the thing without it popping up and saying like hey, are you sure you want to open this app? You're out of minutes for the day, and so then I can decide like, oh, remind me in 15 minutes, I'm going to just do 15 more minutes or I can get out of it, or I could just ignore it and I definitely could do that if I wanted to but I think having that reminder is helpful for setting that boundary.
Ciera:Creating a digital space that inspires and lifts me is like another thing that I really tried with social media, especially because I post on social media for my you know, for this account and for my Etsy shop. I'm posting on social media a lot, so I'm really really careful about what I'm posting on social media. I'm making sure that it is uplifting. It uplifts not just me but anyone who's going to be seeing it. I don't want to be on one of those accounts that somebody's going to want to mute or unfollow, and so I try that really hard for everything that I post on my own feed. And then also I do that with even my personal stuff. I think about like okay, if my kids see this in 10 years, are they going to be happy that I posted this, or are they going to be like mom, why'd you do that? And so stuff like that, like I want it to inspire and uplift, and even for myself, like I want to be, you know, posting good things, and it doesn't mean that I have to like just post the highlight reel. I think that social media definitely gets like a bad rep for that. I do try and make sure that what I am posting is uplifting and something that I would want to go back and look at later in the future.
Ciera:Okay, I just had a classic Sierra moment. My computer died and so we moved situations and you might hear a little bit of different sound because I am in a different spot. I had to be closer to the charger, but that is definitely a Sierra move. I never had anything charged. My husband's like how do you even function? Everything is always very low power so. But we are plugged in and we are good, so you may hear an adjustment in the audio, but we are going to keep going as we are continuing to talk about boundaries. So, continuing on with the boundaries with social media and comparison, I talked a lot about like what I personally do with my social media apps and how that is very helpful for me.
Ciera:Another thing with comparison that's easy to fall into that comparison trap with social media and so I have found that if I can focus on giving somebody a compliment each day like a real live person that I see in the real life, not just on social media. If I can give them a compliment each day, that can be really helpful. And then also, if I am commenting on social media or like via text or anything that is digital like that, then I try and make sure that I am saying uplifting, happy comments, something that I would actually say to them in real life and just uplift the people that I am talking to. This sounds so cheesy, but look at yourself in the eyes each morning. Be grateful for yourself. I have found that this really helps with the comparison. If you start your day truly looking at yourself and just being grateful for the person that you are, then you can be a lot more compassionate with yourself as you are going through and seeing other people and maybe comparing a little bit of where they are and where you would like to be.
Ciera:And the fifth and final area that we set boundaries is with our marriage or our partnership. Whatever relationship it is that you have. Communicating our needs is key. I have almost been married for 14 years, which is crazy. It will be 14 years this year and we have been, but we have been together for so much longer. We have been together since 2007. So we know each other like pretty pretty well and but I have learned in all these years of being together that communicating needs is key. My husband is not a mind reader, as much as I would like him to be, he is not a mind reader. And so if I don't tell him what it is that I'm wanting or what it is that I'm needing, then he's not going to know. And I think oftentimes we just assume that people in our lives have the same desires and priorities and wants that we do, and they may not. And so even if you think that they're picking up on cues and stuff, they're probably not, because they don't think that's as important to them as it is to you. Research shows that couples who set clear boundaries around responsibilities and personal time have higher relationship satisfaction. I think that is so true If you are feeling like you're being used and neglected and that you were doing all of the hard heavy lifting, you're going to have really negative feelings towards that person. So setting those boundaries up front, I think, can be super helpful.
Ciera:What my husband and I do is we have a weekly check-in. We are lucky and we have my cute sister who is willing to hang out with our kids for an hour every Sunday. I do pay her, but she's willing to hang out with the kids for an hour every Sunday so we can have a little power hour is what we call it, and this is when we can. We will like start with a prayer and then we talk about our calendar, our finances, we set goals, discuss any needs or things that are bothering us, like anything that and just anything that we need to unpack in that hour. It's like if that is the time to do it. We have no kids and so we just like unpack it all and we make sure that we are especially on the same page with our finances and with our schedules, because we are running kids everywhere and he needs to be places, I need to be places, so we're just trying to make sure that everything is covered. So those are the five areas that I thought of with setting boundaries that I think can be very, very useful for us if we can set the boundaries in those areas.
Ciera:So some practical ways to start implementing boundaries are to start small. This is a lot of stuff, but just start small and just choose one of those five areas that you feel the most drained, if only one of those areas could change, which one would make the biggest difference in your life? And just start with that one. Have a go-to phrase. Think of something that you can say within that category that you pick. If you're thinking that you want to choose the category of family and friends and setting that boundary, then think what's your go-to phrase going to be? Maybe it's going to be I can't commit to that right now, but thank you for thinking of me so that will maybe say it'd be what you say if somebody asks you to do something or go somewhere or do something that you don't feel like you can do.
Ciera:And then remind yourself that saying no to one thing means that you get to say yes to something that you really, really feel that matters, like something that's going to be within your priorities and your non-negotiables, and so saying no will always lead to a yes. And remember that boundaries are a form of self-love. You are worthy of peace and space and energy for all of the things that bring you joy. It doesn't mean that we won't ever have to do things that we don't want to do. I mean definitely we will, but we can set those boundaries and we can learn how to set up our life to be the way that we would want it to be. That's going to bring us the most confidence and the most joy. So my challenge for this week is to practice saying no to at least once, in a way that honors your own confidence and your well-being. Thank you for listening.
Ciera:If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mom who you think might like to hear this reminder, and let's connect on Instagram. I love to hear from you. Dm me and tell me what boundary you're setting about this week, or post about it and tag me. I love to hear from you. Keep shining, keep setting those boundaries and remember you are confidently beautiful.
Ciera:Did you know that I finally did it? I finally have an email newsletter and I'm so excited. I have put together a brand new website, confidentlybeautifulwithciera. com C-I-E-R-A. com, and you can sign up for my newsletter there. I will have a newsletter full of my favorite things podcast episodes that maybe you have missed. Anything beauty and self-care related is going to be there. It's going to be full of things that I hope bring some value to you. So if this is something that you are interested in signing up for, head on to my website confidentlybeautifulwithciera. com and sign up for the newsletter, or you can click the link in my bio or in the show notes and it will take you directly there, and I can't wait to be in your inbox. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram at confidentlybeautifulpodcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.