Getting to Yes with Yourself: The Art of Inner Negotiation

In this episode, we explore one of the most underrated yet powerful skills in personal growth: learning how to negotiate with yourself. Drawing inspiration from William Ury’s book Getting to Yes with Yourself, we unpack the internal barriers that often sabotage our goals—not external resistance, but the silent friction within. Whether it’s sticking to a health plan, changing careers, or taking time off, the hardest “yes” to get is often from ourselves.

This episode offers practical insights into self-awareness, emotional honesty, and the tools of effective internal dialogue. It's about learning to listen to your true needs, treating yourself with empathy, and crafting realistic solutions when life doesn’t go as planned.

Top Topics Covered:

1. The Hardest Person to Convince is You

We often think the struggle lies in convincing others—our boss, our family, or our friends—but in truth, the biggest obstacle is internal. This episode opens with the reminder that we must first believe in our decisions before we can pursue meaningful change. The first "yes" must always come from within.

2. Understanding BATNA: Your Backup Plan

A key negotiation concept, BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), is explored through a personal lens. If your original plan—like taking an expensive vacation—falls through, what’s your alternative? Maybe it’s a cozy weekend in the woods. We discuss how to turn a “not now” into a satisfying “instead.”

3. Listening to What You Really Need

What looks like a luxury car might actually be about needing safety. What sounds like a dream vacation might just be a cry for rest. By taking a step back—or going “to the balcony” as Ury calls it—we can see the deeper emotional drivers behind our surface-level goals.

4. Facing Old Fears and Updating Them

Much of our resistance to change comes from outdated fears. We dive into how these past experiences show up in new contexts, often holding us back. The goal isn’t to dismiss the fear but to acknowledge it, understand its origin, and gently update it based on current reality.

5. From WATNA to Minimum Viable Progress

The episode also introduces WATNA (Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) and how to redefine “failure.” Sometimes, the smallest action—like a 10-minute workout—is still a win if it keeps you moving. It’s about flexibility, compassion, and defining the bare minimum you can accept without giving up.

Key Takeaways:

Negotiating with yourself isn’t about tricking yourself into doing hard things—it’s about respect. Real change doesn’t come from bullying yourself into action but from having honest, thoughtful conversations with your inner self. You’ll learn that getting a “yes” from yourself starts by recognizing your true needs, challenging outdated beliefs, and being flexible enough to find the next best solution.

This episode will inspire you to rethink how you make decisions and how to create a path forward even when the ideal solution isn’t possible. It’s not about perfection—it’s about progress that sticks. Whether you're trying to improve your health, make a big life shift, or simply feel less stuck, the art of internal negotiation might just be your most valuable tool.

Jill’s Links

http://jillfromthenorthwoods.com

https://startwithsmallsteps.com

https://www.youtube.com/@startwithsmallsteps

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/startwithsmallsteps

https://twitter.com/schmern

Email the podcast at jill@startwithsmallsteps.com

By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal experiences and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed healthcare provider, psychiatrist, or counselor. Any advice or suggestions offered should not be considered a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.Jill’s Links

http://jillfromthenorthwoods.com

https://startwithsmallsteps.com

https://www.youtube.com/@startwithsmallsteps

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/startwithsmallsteps

https://twitter.com/schmern

Email the podcast at jill@startwithsmallsteps.com

By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal experiences and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed healthcare provider, psychiatrist, or counselor. Any advice or suggestions offered should not be considered a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.

Have you ever noticed that the hardest person to convince is not your boss or your spouse, but you? That's what we're going to talk about today. Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods talking about how to make life better one small step at a time.

Of course, we're at the new year, and it's always easier to think about how we can make life better for ourselves. And one of the biggest things is—it is the hardest thing if we're trying to change our lives. Oftentimes, like I said, it’s not convincing your spouse or your friends or whatever—it’s yourself. The hardest person is yourself. You have to go through you and get you to agree to change. That’s the most important thing.

I mentioned that Steve Jobs—you know, if you're trying to start a new business—Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, any of these entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, right? The first person you have to convince when you're trying to start a new thing is not the bank, it's you.

And there's a famous quote from Tina Fey: she said, "Say yes, and you'll figure it out afterwards." That only works if the yes you're saying is honest and doesn’t ignore reality or fear or, you know, the realities of your life. The idea is that we're going to try to figure it out.

This idea comes from a book from William Ury called Getting to Yes with Yourself. I always try to give a book in case you want to read a little bit more. What I loved about the approach in this book was—stop treating yourself like an enemy and start treating yourself like a negotiating partner.

You know, think about it—like, I'm going to go on a diet or I'm going to save money, and you say, “I'm never going to behave. I'm never going to do that thing. I'm never going to exercise when I'm supposed to.” What Ury says is that when people ask him what's the most important negotiation skill, his answer is the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes.

But here's the funny thing—you’re negotiating with yourself. You are in your shoes, but you still need that skill because, surprisingly, we're not actually listening to ourselves and what we need.

For example, you say, “I want to go on an expensive vacation.” But what is your brain really asking for? Your brain might be saying, “Look, I’m so tired. I need a rest. I have to stop working so many hours.” But instead, what you're doing—planning an expensive vacation—you’re going to work harder, maybe do overtime, save a bunch of money, and do all these things to get to this vacation. And maybe that's not what you're really saying to yourself. You're just saying, “I need a rest.”

There are two very different problems—what you're telling yourself versus what you really need. Quite honestly, if you just needed rest, you could go up to the Northwoods, rent an Airbnb, and hear the babbling creek right next to your cabin while you're roasting marshmallows on the open fire. And that’s maybe all you really needed.

When it comes to this internal negotiation, it breaks down because oftentimes we are not listening to what we need, which is kind of an interesting thought. We argue against the surface request instead of looking at the deeper need. We say, “I'm not going to go on this fancy vacation this year,” instead of hearing, “Oh, I just need to get away. I need a break. I need to do something else.”

This is where we're going to talk about what a BATNA is—the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. This is something you would do when you're trying to get a job, right? Like, “I'm going to go into my boss and say, ‘Boss, you're going to give me an extra $10,000 a month.’” I'm not going to negotiate that. The BATNA is: what is the best alternative to that?

So it's possible the boss will go, “Well, I'm not giving anyone raises like that anymore this year. We do not have the money.” But maybe what I can do is help you get that second degree you were looking to get. I just had a friend of mine's kid who got put back into college from his organization. So I can't give you the raise you're looking for today, but I can make you more valuable than ever. Oh, well, that’s a pretty good alternative to the negotiated agreement. I wanted a raise, but instead I got something else of value.

Or maybe the boss says, “I can't give you a raise, but I'll give you an extra week off,” or whatever it is. So if this deal doesn’t happen the way I want it to, what's the next best alternative?

You know, it’s kind of funny—where did that thing go? I had this thing that looked like a magic wand. I brought it out here just to show you. But essentially, it just looks like a magic wand. The reason I had it is not because I believe in magic at all. But I was listening to the old-fashioned, before-podcast talk radio thing. Someone called in, and she was having difficulty with her marriage. And the radio host said, “If you had a magic wand and you tapped it, and the perfect thing happened that fixed this situation, what would it look like?”

The point was—the lady didn’t even know what she wanted. So how could she know what would fix it? She didn’t even know what she wanted to happen.

In the case of BATNA, if you can’t get exactly what you want, what’s a great alternative? So maybe I can’t go on this fancy vacation I wanted to go on. Maybe this year is not the right year. What would be a good alternative to that? You can start thinking. And like I said, if you listen to yourself, maybe yourself just wants a really good rest.

"I'm just going to rent a cabin, go up to the Northwoods. It’s going to cost me a couple hundred bucks instead of a couple thousand bucks, and I’m just going to get away and relax. Read some books, roast some marshmallows." Right?

So maybe your dream was this fancy trip, but your BATNA is a simple getaway, a camping trip, or a few intentional days off with no obligations.

In my life, I just wanted to travel more and save money. Those two things seem like incompatibilities. But when I stopped arguing with myself and started negotiating with myself, I landed on camping more. The rooftop tent for my car—it goes right on top of my car, on top of the rack—and it's nice up there. It’s still camping, it’s still adventurous, and it’s very restorative because I sleep great up there. It wasn’t the dream, but it was still a win-win. That’s a good BATNA—when it doesn’t feel like a failure but instead feels like a win.

Then Ury talks about getting back to the book—about going to the balcony. Stepping back and looking at the situation from a higher vantage point.

I always think of it more like looking from the mountain. When you're hiking, and you're in the midst and the depth of all of this, it's hard to know in the trees: should I go left or right? But when you're standing on top of the mountain, you can see—over this side, it's rocky; over here, there's a river to cross. You get a better perspective.

He used the “balcony.” Because sometimes we think we want to solve a problem that is not actually the problem we're trying to solve.

So, for example, if I said I wanted to get a new car, I might say to myself, “You know what? I really want this expensive car.” But when you step back and you look at the real issue, the anxiety that you're having is that your current car isn't reliable. The uncertainty that you might get stopped in the middle of the night on the side of the road in a scary place is scaring you.

Now you're not having fun going on trips or visiting your mom up north—because the reality is your car is about reliability, not luxury. So instead of waiting forever until you get the perfect car, you buy something that is reliable, and now you have solved your problem—the actual problem that you were trying to solve.

Sometimes, if you have a balcony view of things, you will actually see what the real problem is and then find a real solution to that instead.

Part of it too is thinking about old fears versus new realities. This is where it gets very, very interesting, because sometimes, if you're having trouble negotiating with yourself, your resistance is actually coming from old data. It's not actually realistic for you to have this kind of resistance because you're thinking about something in kind of an old way.

When I grew up, we were poor. And like I said, having a car to us meant safety. There was a point in my life when my dad was particularly scary, and I wanted to get a new car as a 16-year-old—not because I wanted to drive my friends around, but because I wanted to be able to escape with my mom if my dad got particularly scary. So to me, it was a getaway vehicle.

Now it's really kind of interesting, because when my car gets unreliable—I just got done with a car that I had for 15 years—suddenly, that old fear starts bubbling up. And you don't even know what's really happening to you. That's the interesting thing about our brains. Suddenly I start getting nervous. I got this car, and then I’m sitting there thinking, “You're having an old fear.”

You're sitting there and thinking about the day when you were 16 years old, and having a car meant you could escape something scary. Today, my life is completely different. If something happened to my car, there's ride-sharing. I could probably rent a car. I could probably lease a car. That original danger no longer exists, but the emotion is still deep down inside of here.

Just to give you another side story about that: my dad died about 15 years ago, and I had terrible insomnia. I didn’t sleep until 2 in the morning. And when he died, suddenly a good chunk of that insomnia went away that night. It was like the first good night of sleep I had in my whole life.

And I realized it was because I was mentally staying up until my dad got home at 2 in the morning—which was bar time—and making sure my mom was okay. And as soon as—unconsciously—like I said, 35 years later, all of a sudden I realized I still had this embedded fear I didn’t even know I still had.

So it can happen for sure. But Ury says in this particular situation, the goal is not to dismiss fears when you have them—even if they're deep and they're old and they're unconscious. It’s instead trying to get us to update it, to acknowledge it.

Sometimes, if we ignore these fears—even if they’re completely irrational—if we don’t listen to them, they get worse and worse. Like I said, the mouse that looks like the big shadow monster. Instead, a fear that gets listened to often gets smaller.

This is time for you to have some personal change and start addressing some of those fears. Because if you're trying to negotiate with yourself—let's say you’re going to start your own business, you’re going to start your own podcast, you're going to move to the other side of the country—your own personal fears might be the thing that's stopping that negotiation.

Then you really just want to start naming the fear instead of avoiding it. That brings us to the next thing, which is called WATNA—the Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. And this is a part we often don't talk about because the worst isn't a failure.

So imagine, like I said, you're going to your boss: “I want a $10,000 raise.” What’s the worst thing that could happen in that negotiation? The boss says, “No, I can’t. I’m not giving raises out. You can't have anything.” Or worse yet, “You know what? It just doesn't seem like this job’s working out. You want something I'm not willing to give you.”

Oh no.

It’s that stagnation of doing nothing. Staying stuck. Living in that same year with the same frustration.

But the idea is: if I don’t get anything, what is the worst alternative? What’s the worst thing that could happen to me in this case?

Maybe you stay home, and you don't even rent a cabin. You don't go camping. Now you're burned out. The job change? You don't grow and get stuck where you're at. Or you don't go fix your health. What used to be healthy for you, without changing at all, now becomes more and more unhealthy and you start having health issues.

Whatever it is, you can do that.

So the big thing about WATNA—and I sort of think about WATNA in a little bit different way—I sort of think of it as, what’s the minimum I could live with? What’s the worst alternative that doesn't have me walking out the door?

You can even kind of back it up a little bit.

So if it's exercise, right? “I'm going to exercise every day for an hour.” Well, that maybe is unrealistic.

What’s the best alternative to that negotiated settlement? “Well, I will exercise five times a week for about 45 minutes.” Okay, that seems reasonable. That gives me a little flex time and days I can’t do it.

What’s the worst? “Maybe the worst is I do 10 minutes on the treadmill, and then I'm done.”

So I tend to think of it a little bit differently. I think of it not as the worst thing, but like, what am I at least willing to live with? The bare minimum.

The next part about negotiating with yourself is: do you know the why?

Why is it that you need something?

Sometimes this comes from the Simon Sinek book, who talks about Start With Why. He tells you to keep asking why until you hit a hard truth.

So you say, “I want a new car.” Why? “Well, because this old car isn’t reliable.” Why? “Well, because it has a number of years on it and it’s too old. I haven't maintained it, I haven’t gotten it fixed, I don't take it in for oil changes.” Why? “Well, I just don’t schedule. I get disorganized.” Why? “I have a lot of responsibilities and I don’t have time to take vacations.” Why? “I never schedule it. I never give myself that time.”

Okay, that’s the deep problem. The deep, dark problem is that you never give yourself time off. You're always working. You're always doing something.

I have that problem myself. I got sick last week. You know why I got sick? I never stop. I never give myself a break. And suddenly, my body drops me to the ground.

So, that’s the idea. But sometimes when you get through the five whys, you might see why you deeply need something. You might feel like you desperately want something. You might even find a new solution.

Ury uses this great metaphor. He says that when you pour water from the tap, it’s full of bubbles. And if you wait for a few minutes, suddenly the bubbles clear, and you can see straight through the glass.

Emotions in ourselves are a lot like that. So if you decide, “I have to negotiate right now,” sometimes the best time to negotiate with yourself is to wait a little bit so the bubbles settle.

You can revisit a conversation with yourself. Not every moment is a great time to talk to somebody else—your spouse, your friend, you know, about something. And sometimes, it’s not a great time to talk to you about something.

Maybe you need to have an idea and let the bubbles settle just a little bit. Give yourself a little negotiation time to think things over.

So Getting to Yes with Yourself is about not forcing yourself or bulldozing yourself into this—but instead listening to yourself. Figuring out what the real need is here. Figuring out what the fairy wand perfect solution is. Then figuring out the best alternative to that.

Then instead of getting “what’s the worst,” ask: what’s the minimum I’m willing to do here?

The minimum is, maybe I go camping for a weekend in a campground that’s five miles away. The idea is that you go through the BATNA and the WATNA after you understand what the real needs are. And then you treat yourself with some respect—someone that is worth negotiating with and trying to actually meet the real need instead of meeting the need that is the first thing off the top of your head.

“I’m going to go on an expensive vacation.” Well, what if you can’t? What’s acceptable in this situation?

That’s the most important thing.

If you find along the way that you have some unnamed needs, if you have a deeper need than you even expected, or that you have some fears—some honest fears built into that—this is the time to listen to those fears. Name them. Acknowledge them. Deal with them, instead of having them constantly haunting your life.

If someone forces a “yes” out of you—like your boss or someone like that—it feels terrible. And if you force yourself into a “yes,” it can sound equally terrible.

So if you're trying to get change where the change actually sticks, that’s where Getting to Yes with Yourself is about making it not painful.

And that’s the great place to be.

You know, the idea is that we think of entrepreneurs as overnight successes, and that’s just kind of a myth. Most things are a long time in the building. When we have creative alternatives, when we have health goals that are seen as negotiations—and not moral failures like “Gosh, I never lose weight, I never get what I want”—when doing something is better than doing nothing or waiting for the perfect option, that’s when the negotiation with ourselves really makes the most impact.

All right, everyone—thanks so much. Appreciate you watching, listening—however you’re getting this.

Please remember, you can go to jillfromthenorthwoods.com. I’m still working on this website and hope to get something better up there. I mean, it's not bad or anything like that, but it has all my links, all the shows, and every way you can contact me. I'd love to hear from you.

Put comments right here if you want. And remember to subscribe and tell a friend. And, you know, someday I would love to figure out how to build a sort of community around changing our lives.

Appreciate you being out there. Thanks so much for listening.