Do you have trouble using the word no?

A lot of people do. Especially people that grew up wanting to please.

I’m going to take you down a trip down memory lane to really drive home my point.

When I was a little boy, my mother was extremely depressed.

I mean, who could blame her?

My brother passed away when I was three and a half and he was 10 months old. My father was a completely shut down emotional being.

So my mother had nobody really to talk to.

My mother basically spent a lot of her life depressed.

Now, I don’t know what my journey would be in life if I lost a little baby at 10 months old. I can only imagine what my mother felt like.

So what did I do as a little boy.?

I was a people pleaser.

You see, my mother was depressed all the time, so I always took it upon myself to make my mother feel better, because as little kids we’re just energetic beings.

That’s all we are.

We don’t understand what an adult is going through. Big people feelings.

And as a little kid, we think everything is our fault.

Because we are deep feelers. We’re not over-thinkers like most adults are.

So my life was always spent pleasing people.

A lot of my adult relationships were all about pleasing people.

I would say, yes, I’ll do that.

Sure, I’ll lend you the money.

Sure, I’ll take care of you.

I was being played… or was I?

You see, I wasn’t being played. I was playing the role that I was designed to play.

You see, our parents spent a lot of time crafting who we are.

We have no choice. We are just blank canvases coming into this world and our parents are literally are crafting exactly who we are.

So my mom was crafting me to be a people pleaser.

I like to use the term “nurturer,” but in reality, I was doing things that weren’t even in alignment with who I am.

And we play out these patterns. We play them out over and over and over again as we get older. We don’t even realize it until one day we wake up and all of a sudden we have a life lesson or two or three that presents itself.

So what’s the life lesson that I learned?

Well for one, I learned the lesson of why people take advantage of me left and right when it came down to money.

My grandfather and grandmother basically, well, bailed my father out of money non-stop.

So whenever anybody was in trouble, I learned that that’s what you do. You bail them out with money.

You don’t make them take responsibility for their life. You don’t make them take responsibility for action, you just write a check.

I probably have given away probably $600,000 or $700,000.

Granted, I’ve also been in the financial position to do it, but if I look back upon it right now I wouldn’t mind having that extra $600,000 or $700,000 sitting in the bank.

It would certainly make my life even easier than it already is.

But you see, I was a people pleaser in that way and I was also an enabler that way. Instead of making people earn it or actually quantify why they needed the money, I was basically a pushover.

And that behavior pattern got me into trouble at times in my life, because I started regretting all the things that I did for these people.

Years ago I was told by a good friend of mine: stand in my sacred no.

The next time somebody asks me for something, say no.

And I started learning that. I started learning how to stand in my sacred no. I started telling people to go fuck themselves, literally.

Because I started valuing my time. I started valuing who I am, valuing what I stand for as a man.

It was hard and it was definitely a valuable lesson to stand in my sacred no, because I kept getting the same lessons over and over again.

Pleasing people.

People asking for money.

I got all those lessons until I finally starting saying no to all of them. I started saying no to the enabled relationships that I created — to the shock of the people that the relationships were a part of, they couldn’t believe that the money train was over.

They couldn’t believe that I was actually standing up for myself.

You see, part of what I do for a living is coach people through all these lessons.

What makes me good at coaching you through these lessons?

Well I fucked up many times and I’ve learned my lessons and I’m continuing learning my lessons and my programming through childhood, and my biggest one is standing in my sacred no.

So, take a look at your patterns and the things you always say yes to.

Take a look at where that pattern came from and start standing your own sacred no and watch what really happens.