Break the cognitive dissonance you feel when enforcing a boundary goes against one of your core values.

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Last week I was in the middle of a really important podcast

interview when my phone rang.

You know when your phone goes in the middle of an important meeting or

while you're doing a presentation and you just want the ground to eat

you up because you've asked everyone else to turn their phones off?

Anyway, I answered it because I saw it was my son, and the day before, he'd

got a nasty head injury playing rugby.

He'd been okay in the morning and gone to school, but this time he

was saying, mom, I'm feeling really unwell, I'm in the nurse's office,

they've given me some paracetamol.

They say, I need to come home now.

I went into a flat spin.

I was in the middle of a really important interview.

I didn't want to just drop everything and go and pick him up.

After all, he was safe.

He was with the nurse.

I felt really flustered and I said, look, I will come and get you when you

I can, but just stay there for now.

Now, one of our most popular guests has been Dr. Chris Turner and he came to

speak at our last FrogFest Virtual event on how to challenge difficult behavior.

He's the co-founder of Civility Saves Lives, he's a consultant in emergency

medicine, he's a really busy man.

He's asked to speak at conferences all over the world, he's done TED Talks

and I feel very honored that he will come on the podcast and talk to me

about this really, really interesting topic of just how do we challenge

difficult behavior in our colleagues.

And whenever I speak to him, I learned so much.

And when my phone went, he was just in the middle of talking to me.

He was explaining all about how different people react to challenges,

how you get the really competitive people, and how you get the really

avoidant people in any way, that podcast will come out in a few weeks time.

But I was really focused on what I was doing.

It had taken a while for us to coincide diaries so that

we could record the podcast.

I didn't wanna let him down.

I wanted it to be a good episode because I knew how tight his time was.

And so I was mortified when the phone went off, and I was thinking to myself,

well, I need to finish this interview, and if I don't finish this now,

when on earth are we going to do it?

This is gonna be a really, really important thing for people to hear.

So I said to Chris, I said, oh, Chris, that's my son.

He's got concussion.

You know, he'll be okay.

He's with the nurse.

And Chris just stops and said to me, Rachel, you need

to go and pick up your son.

And I said to him, actually, Chris, it's fine.

He's, he's with the nurse, you know, he's all right.

He's talking, I'm sure he hasn't done anything too bad.

And he said, Rachel, family always comes first.

We can do this another time.

So we finished up, I, I thanked him and I jumped in my car, and

as I'm driving along the road, I'm starting to feel worse and worse.

First of all, I'm feeling really irritated by what's happened, by

the fact that I had to stop it.

I had to rearrange.

There's gonna be more work now in the editing and stitching it all together.

Then I start to think, actually maybe my son isn't very well, and I start to

feel a little bit worried about my son.

Then I start to think, gosh.

Chris was right.

Family does come first.

What was going on with me?

Why didn't I see that immediately?

Why didn't I drop everything and run?

And then I thought, oh gosh, what must Chris think of me?

I started to go into this absolute shame spiral.

And then it dawned on me, Chris had a hundred percent given me

permission to drop everything, to say no to the podcast, to set

boundaries and go and source out the thing that was really important.

And who had pushed back against it.

Me?

I had pushed back against the, no.

I had pushed back against my own boundaries, against my own

values that family came first.

Even when someone gave me permission to stop, to drop things, to say no to

the podcast, I still couldn't do it.

I was totally my own worst enemy.

Everyone else had given me permission, I wouldn't give myself permission.

And I realized that the biggest barrier to me setting limits

around my work, saying no is me.

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You know, I could have gone off and said to my son, I'm sorry, I just

couldn't stop that podcast because Chris was such an important guest.

And I could have said to my husband, I had no choice.

I just had to finish, you know?

It was so inconvenient for me and I couldn't do it,

but actually I could do it.

I was given permission.

And while it would be really comfortable to blame other people, it was me.

It was me that stopped myself.

Because we have so much internal pressure in these moments, don't we?

Me, I was really hyper-focused on what I was doing.

I was enjoying it.

You know, maybe there was some competitiveness about, well, this needs

to be a really, really good podcast episode that people are gonna listen

to and recommend to their colleagues.

I wanted to maintain a great relationship with Chris and not

feel like I was wasting his time.

But I was very focused on the achievement.

I was very focused on the task.

I felt some pressure.

I felt some time sensitivity.

And this inconvenience of having to put boundaries in and say no to the

podcast was really irritating for me.

I didn't want to say no.

It wasn't that.

I couldn't say no, and it was nothing to do with Chris, and all to do with me.

And it got me wondering about how often we fail to say no and set boundaries.

And it's not about anybody else.

It's not about anyone else not giving us permission or being unreasonable.

Quite often they've a hundred percent given us permission.

I remember doing a talk at a school once for a favor for a friend, and there was

a teacher sat at the back looking pretty pissed off through the whole thing.

And one of the questions she asked me was, well, you say you just

need to say no and set boundaries, but if I don't do it, no one will.

And she said, I have had two teachers in my department off sick.

It's meant I have had to cover all their work, do all their marking.

I'm at my wits end and I just have to do all of this.

Yeah, what could I say to her there and then?

And I said how much I, I felt for her and it was a difficult

situation and all of that.

But as we drove back to the station, my friend said to me, she said, we on the

senior leadership team have told that teacher that she does not need to do it.

We have told her to leave that stuff.

We have told her not to do it.

But she insists she's her own worst enemy.

There is nothing more we can do to give her permission to say

no set boundaries and not do it.

The pressure was entirely coming from her.

She was caught up by everything in front of her, and she almost

was enjoying being this absolute victim of circumstances.

And maybe it made her feel really, really valuable and very, very important

because she was so busy, I don't know.

But when I think about myself, you know, sometimes that's how I feel.

And setting boundaries and being able to say no and stop doing stuff,

maybe that means I'm not quite so important and as busy as I think I am.

Because I think what we get wrong about all of this is that a lot of

the time when we feel like we can't set boundaries or say no, we say

it's due to other people, we blame other people, and that's quite a

comfortable place to be in because it means none of it's our fault.

We can go right into victim and say, I'm totally helpless, there's

nothing I can do about this.

We are victims of our circumstance, but that is a profoundly

disempowering place to be.

It's very frustrating.

We have no control.

There's nothing we can do about it if we feel it's all other people, it

causes to be stressed and overworked.

And it really is the definition of the urgency trap.

We're at the beck and call of everything that comes at us,

and we think it's gonna help us avoid feeling guilt or shame.

But actually I think it's the other way around.

We actually feel more shame when we feel that we can't

say no and we don't say no.

But if we start to acknowledge that one of the key reasons why we don't say

no is the internal pressure we put on ourselves and our internal motivations

and our perhaps warped priorities, and the fact we really get into the

moment, and get blinded to everything else, then we've got a way ahead.

Then we've got things we can actually change.

We can take control of that because if it's us that are stopping ourselves

saying, no, we can change that.

We have control over what we do, and we are much more powerful.

And we've got a hope of things being different.

So how do we do this?

Firstly understand that nobody else can stop you saying no, literally,

unless they've got a gun to your head, nobody can force you to do anything.

It's always your choice.

Whether you stay, whether you go, whether you do that thing, whether

you don't, it's you that chooses.

Now there might be consequences of not doing that thing.

Yeah, you might lose some money, you might lose a job.

You might go to jail if you shoot somebody, right?

There are consequences, but at the end of the day, it is

all a choice that you make.

Now, of course, our internal thoughts, what's happened to us in the past, our

circumstances, the context, they all jumble up, they all contribute to that.

But at the end of the day, you are in charge of your behavior,

what you say and what you do.

You are also in charge of the thoughts that you decide to hold on to.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

So firstly, we need to realize that we are in control.

And if you are someone that blames other people all the time, where your

locus of control is external, you're gonna have a very hard life because

you're just gonna be the victim all the time, you're blaming other people,

and you'll be completely dependent on what other people say or do, or what

you think other people expect of you.

Secondly, we need to realize that saying no actually protects

us from shame and guilt.

We think it's the other way round.

Often we think if we say no to someone, we're gonna feel really bad, but we're

gonna feel really, really guilty.

And yes, we might feel uncomfortable in the moment.

But if you don't say no to stuff, if you focus on what's in front of

you rather than those things that are your core values that are really

important to you, then you are gonna get some cognitive dissonance.

Just think how you feel when you tell your family that it's really, really

important that you are home to eat a meal with them in the evening, and then

you fail to set boundaries at work and you find yourself in an extra meeting.

But you know that one of the most important things in the

world to you is family and being there for them, but you're doing

something that contradicts that.

This is cognitive dissonance, and that's where you start to feel shame.

And that's the root of the shame that I was feeling as I was driving

to pick up my son from his school.

I was thinking to myself, well, I always say family is really important.

I say I want to have a good relationship with my kids and have

them knowing that I'm always there for them, I've got their back.

And yet, hears me acting in a way that shows that the most

important thing to me is the podcast and my busy life, not them.

That's cognitive dissonance.

That causes a lot of shame.

When your actions directly contradict your inner values, it's just like

when I react badly to something, if I shout at someone or I say

something nasty, I feel shame because one of my core values is kindness.

And that sort of cognitive dissonance and shame that we get in those

situations is far worse than the slight discomfort and guilt that we feel when

maybe we disappoint somebody because we don't do immediately what they

want us to do, or we inconvenience them by having to rearrange a podcast.

So then how do we make sure that we don't get this cognitive listening

so we're not just going by the most comfortable thing in, in front of us?

And when we avoid saying no to things, how do we then actually get ourselves

back in line with those things that are really, really important to us?

Well, when we do the talk about how to say no, set boundaries

and deal with pushback, I often tell people to use power mantras.

So your power mantra might go something like, I am choosing to leave work on

time and go to my Pilates class so that I can keep myself healthy and I don't

go off sick long term with back pain, even if someone criticizes me for not

doing those extra reports before Monday.

That's how it goes.

You're sort of predicting the pushback.

I wonder whether we need to use some inverse power mantras.

Think you should say to yourself, I am choosing not to do that thing.

So I'm choosing not to say no, I'm choosing not to leave work on time.

The two supplementary questions you need to ask is, number one, is

there a bloody good reason not to?

So the only bloody good reason I can think of is it's gonna

cause severe patient harm or severe problems in your work.

Like, you know, oh, we're gonna miss out on half a million quid's

worth of funding next year?

Yeah, that would probably be a good reason not to leave work on time.

But there's something else you need to ask yourself, and that's, is that more

important to me than the alternative?

is it more important to me than one of my values?

So I'm choosing not to leave work on time because I need to finish

this insurance report before I go, and that is more important to me

than having food with my family.

If I use that mantra for what happened the other day, I'm choosing not to

stop this podcast now and go and pick up my ill son because it's gonna be

a bit difficult to rearrange, and I don't want to put Dr. Chris Turner out.

And that is more important to me than my son feeling that I'm there

for him and putting my family first.

And when we put it like that, we start to realize that the reasons we

are giving ourselves for boundaries crumbling, not saying, no, not

disappointing the, the people there in the moment are just ridiculous.

There's hardly ever a bloody good reason.

If there is a bloody good reason, then great.

But if you know what your values are, like family, like kindness, like being

present for people, like speaking the truth, like challenging when necessary.

So you might say to yourself, I'm choosing not to have that conversation

with that person about how they upset me the other day because I'm worried

about it being awkward and upsetting them, and that's more important to

me than having an equal and healthy long-term working relationship.

Eek We need to start to get rid of this cognitive dissonance between

what we say is really important to us and what we do in the moment.

So the inverse power mantra is, once again, it's rather than I'm

choosing to, so that even, if we're saying, well, I'm choosing

not to because what's my reason?

What's because it's awkward or I feel, uh, it, it's just gonna

add to my workload in the future, is that a bloody good reason?

Yes or no?

And you need to pay attention to the final statement, and that is

more important to me than making sure I'm fit and well and healthy.

It's more important to me than being there for my family.

It's more important to me than actually telling the truth about what's going on.

It's more important to me than focusing on that really important

project that I know needs to get done.

Because so often we are just our own worst enemies.

Other people have given us permission to set boundaries and say no, but in this

sort of martyr like, I'm so important.

If I don't do it, no one will state, we just go.

No, no, it's fine.

I know you're giving me permission, but No, I will just sit through.

I will just keep on going, thinking that we're avoiding guilt and shame

when actually what happens is we feel guilty and we feel a lot of shame at

a later date that we've just allowed ourselves to be pulled by the moment.

And actually no one is gonna thank you.

No one's gonna give you a medal and go, oh, you know what?

They just ignored the things that were important to 'em and then just pushed on

through with everything in the moment.

Of course not.

And I'll finish with a quote from Glennon Doyle.

She says, discomfort is better than resentment.

That discomfort in the moment when you need to say no to yourself,

when other people are giving you permission to say no, but you need to

say it, that's better than resenting yourself long term and feeling that

bitterness and shame, which comes from you not focusing on what the

really important stuff is for you.

So let's get comfortable with saying no just to, not other

people, but to our selves.

Let's get really honest about the real problem.

And if you recognize that that happens to you when you are in the urgency

trap, just so focused on everything that's urgently coming in at you and

you are focused on ticking all that stuff for everybody else, even if

other people have given you permission not to, then do, join our upcoming

masterclass on the Urgency trap.

We'll get really clear about the really important stuff for you right now.

We'll take your to-do list.

We'll stick it through a mangle, and we'll help you realign to

what's really important for you.

Just click on the link in the show notes if you want to join us.

Last week I was in the middle of recording a podcast interview.

When my phone rang from across the room, I plugged it in.

Next to my chair, just so that it would charge.

It was flat battery because I'd had it next to my phone during

the night, just in case one of the children rang and needed me.

Last week, whilst I was recording an interview for

the podcast, my phone went.

Now, normally I remember to turn it off, but this time it was charged

across the other side of the room.

It was my son.

He'd been knocked over playing rugby the day before and had got

a bit of concussion, and he was phoning from the school nurse to

say he was feeling really woozy.

Not very well.

He'd had some parasol, but I needed to go and pick him up, and

I wouldn't even let him walk across the parking lot for me to get him.

I had to go right into the school and grab him and take him

home and make sure he was okay.

A week ago I was in the middle of a podcast interview with this really

important guest when my phone rang, you know the feeling your phone rings in

an important meeting or while you're doing a talk or something and you

think, why didn't I turn it off anyway?

My son, the day before had been knocked over in a rugby tournament

and got dreadful concussion, and so I was charging it up and just

wanted to make sure he was okay.

I'd forgotten.

I'd let it on, and in the middle of the interview I had to get up, go and

retrieve it, turn it off, and answer it.

Last week I was in the middle of a really important podcast interview

when my phone rang, You know when your phone goes in the middle

of an important meeting or while you're doing a presentation and

you just want the ground to eat you up because you've asked everyone

else to turn their phones off.

Anyway, I answered it because I saw it was my son, and the day before, he'd

got a nasty head injury playing rugby.

He'd been okay in the morning and gone to school, but this time he was

saying, mom, I'm feeling really unwell.

I'm in the nurse's office.

They've given me some paracetamol.

They say, I need to come home now.

I went into a flat spin.

I was in the middle of a really important interview.

I didn't want to just drop everything and go and pick him up.

After all, he was safe.

He was with the nurse.

I felt really flustered and I said, look, I will come and get you when you

I can, but just stay there for now.

'cause I'm in the middle of a really important interview

Now One of our most popular guests has been Dr. Chris Turner and he

came and spoke to us at our Last Frog and he also came to speak at

our last FrogFest virtual event on how to challenge difficult behavior.

He's the co-founder of Civil.

He's the co-founder of Civility, saves Lives.

He's a, he's a practicing emergency physician.

He's a consultant in emergency medicine.

He's a really busy man.

He's asked to speak at conferences all over the world.

He's done TED Talks and I feel very honored that he will come on

the podcast and talk to me about this really, really interesting

topic of just how do we challenge difficult behavior in our colleagues.

Um, and he's,

and whenever I speak to him, I learned so much.

And when my phone went, he was just in the middle of talking to me.

He was talking.

He was explaining all about how different people react to challenges,

how you get the really competitive people, and how you get the

really avoidant people in any way.

That podcast will come out in a few weeks time, but I was really

focused on what I was doing.

It had taken a while for us to coincide diaries so that

we could record the podcast.

I didn't wanna let him down.

I wanted it to be a good episode

because I knew how tight his time was.

And so I was mortified when the phone went off and I was thinking

to myself, well, I don't wanna come and get you right now.

I need to finish this interview, and if I don't finish this now,

when on earth are we going to do it?

This is gonna be a really, really important thing for people to hear.

So I said to Chris, I said, oh, Chris, that's my son.

He's got concussion.

You know, he'll be okay.

He's with the nurse.

And Chris just stops and said to me, Rachel, you need

to go and pick up your son.

And I said to him, actually, Chris, it's fine.

He's, he's with the nurse, you know, he's all right.

He's talking, I'm sure he hasn't done anything too bad.

And he said, Rachel, family always comes first.

We can do this another time.

And I said, well, you know, Chris, it's all right.

Let's just finish it off and then I can go.

He said, no, Rachel, you need to go.

He said, we can rearrange this.

And so we've got another day in the diary in a couple of weeks time

and we'll get together and we'll record the end of that podcast and

you'll be able to hear it soon.

So we finished up, I, I thanked him and I jumped in my car And as

I'm driving along the road, I'm starting to feel worse and worse.

First of all, I'm feeling really irritated by what's happened, by

the fact that I had to stop it.

I had to rearrange.

There's gonna be more work now in the editing and stitching it all together.

Then I start to think, actually maybe my son isn't very well, and I start to

feel a little bit worried about my son.

Then I start to think, gosh.

Chris was right.

Family does come first.

What was going on with me?

Why didn't I see that immediately?

Why didn't I drop everything and run?

And then I thought, oh gosh, what must Chris think of me?

I started to go into this absolute shame spiral.

And then it dawned on me, Chris had a hundred percent given me

permission to drop everything, to say no to the podcast, to set

boundaries and go and source out the thing that was really important

and who had pushed back against it.

Me.

I had pushed back against the, no.

I had pushed back against my own boundaries, against my own values.

That family came first.

Even when someone gave me permission to stop, to drop things, to say no to

the podcast, I still couldn't do it.

I was totally my worst enemy.

I was totally my own worst enemy.

everyone else had given me permission, I wouldn't give myself permission.

And I realized that the biggest barrier to me setting limits

around my work saying no is me.

And you know, I could have gone off and said to my son, I'm sorry, I just

couldn't stop that podcast because Chris was such an important guest.

And I could have said to my husband, I had no choice.

I just had to finish.

You know?

It was so inconvenient for me and I couldn't do it,

but actually I could do it.

I was given permission.

And while it would be really comfortable to blame other people, it was me.

It was me that stopped myself

because we have so much internal pressure in these moments, don't we?

Me, I was really hyper-focused on what I was doing.

I was enjoying it.

You know, maybe there was some competitiveness about, well, this needs

to be a really, really good podcast episode that people are gonna listen

to and recommend to their colleagues.

I wanted to maintain a great relationship with Chris and not

feel like I was wasting his time,

but I was very focused on the achievement.

I was very focused on the task.

I felt some pressure.

I felt some time sensitivity, and this inconvenience of having to

put boundaries in and say no to the podcast was really irritating for me.

I didn't want to say no.

It wasn't that.

I couldn't say no,

and it was nothing to do with Chris.

and All to do with me,

and it got me wondering about how often we fail to say no and set boundaries.

And it's not about anybody else.

It's not about anyone else, not giving us permission or being unreasonable.

Quite often they've a hundred percent given us permission.

I remember doing a talk at a school once for a favor for a friend,

and there was a teacher sat at the back looking, pretty pissed

off through the whole thing.

And one of the questions she asked me was, well, you say you just

need to say no and set boundaries, but if I don't do it, no one will.

And she said, I have had two teachers in my department off sick.

It's meant I have had to cover all their work, do all their marking.

I'm at my wits end and I just have to do all of this.

Yeah what could I say to her there and then, and I said how much

I, I felt for her and it was a difficult situation and all of that.

But as we drove back to the station, my friend said to me, she said, we on the

senior leadership team have told that teacher that she does not need to do it.

We have told her to leave that stuff.

We have told her not to do it, but she insists she's her own worst enemy.

There is nothing more we can do to give her permission to say

no set boundaries and not do it.

The pressure was entirely coming from her.

She was caught up by everything in front of her, and she almost

was enjoying being this absolute victim of circumstances.

And maybe it made her feel really, really valuable

and very, very important.

because she was so busy, I don't know.

But when I think about myself, you know, sometimes that's how I feel

and setting boundaries and being able to say no and stop doing stuff,

maybe that means I'm not quite so important and as busy as I think I am.

Because I think what we get wrong about all of this is that a lot of the

time when we feel like we can't set boundaries or say no, we say it's due

to other people, we blame other people,

and that's quite a comfortable place to be in because it

means none of it's our fault.

We can go right into victim and say, I'm totally helpless.

There's nothing I can do about this.

We are victims of our circumstance, but that is a profoundly

disempowering place to be.

It's very frustrating.

We have no control.

There's nothing we can do about it if we feel it's all other people,

it

causes to be stressed and overworked.

And It really is the definition of the urgency trap.

We're at the beck and call of everything that comes at us, that it's urgent

and we think it's gonna help us avoid feeling guilt or shame.

But actually I think it's the other way around.

We actually feel more shamed.

I'll tell you what.

We actually feel more shame when we feel that we can't say no

and we don't say no.

But if we start to acknowledge that one of the key reasons why we don't say

no is the internal pressure we put on ourselves and our internal motivations

and our perhaps warped priorities, and the fact we really get into the moment

And get blinded to everything else, then we've got a way ahead.

Then we've got things we can actually change.

We can take control of that because if it's us that are stopping ourselves

saying, no, we can change that.

We have control over what we do

and we are much more powerful.

And we've got a hope of things being different.

So how do we do this?

Well, firstly, understand that nobody, firstly understand that nobody else

can stop you saying no, literally, unless they've got a gun to your head.

Nobody can force you to do anything.

It's always your choice.

Whether you stay, whether you go, whether you do that thing, whether

you don't, it's you that chooses.

Now there might be consequences of not doing that thing.

Yeah, you might lose some money, you might lose a job.

You might go to jail if you shoot somebody, right?

There are consequences, but at the end of the day, it is

all a choice that you make.

Now, of course, our internal thoughts, what's happened to us

in the past, our circumstances, the context, they all jumble up.

They all contribute to that.

But at the end of the day, you are in charge of your behavior,

what you say and what you do.

You are also in charge of what you think or certainly the, you are

also in charge of the thoughts that you decide to hold on to Eleanor

Roosevelt said, nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

So I might have these thoughts that I'm dreadful or these sorts

of guilt or shame or whatever, but actually if I keep thinking

them, let's leave that one.

So firstly, we need to realize that we are in control.

And if you are someone that blames other people all the time, where your locus

of control is external, you're gonna have a very hard life because you're

just gonna be the victim all the time.

You're blaming other people and you'll be completely dependent on

what other people say or do, or what you think other people expect of you.

Secondly, we need to realize that.

Secondly, when we say no.

Secondly, we need to realize that saying no actually protects

us from shame and guilt.

We think it's the other way round.

Often we think if we say no to someone, we're gonna feel really bad, but we're

gonna feel really, really guilty.

And yes, we might feel uncomfortable in the moment.

But if you don't say no to stuff, if you focus on what's in front of

you rather than those things that are your core values that are really

important to you, then you are gonna get some cognitive dissonance.

Just think how you feel when you tell your family that it's really, really

important that you are home to eat a meal with them in the evening, and then

you fail to set boundaries at work and you find yourself in an extra meeting.

But You know that one of the most important things in the world to

you is family and being there for them, but you're doing something

that contradicts that this, this is cognitive dissonance, and that's where

you start to feel shame when I was.

And so there's me thinking to myself, well, my family.

And that's the root of the shame that I was feeling as I was driving

to pick up my son from his school.

I was thinking to myself, well, I always say family is really important.

I say I want to have a good relationship with my kids and, and have them

thinking that I'm, and have them knowing that I'm always there for them.

I've got their back, and yet hears me acting in a way that shows that

the most important thing to me is the podcast and my busy life, not them.

That's cognitive dissonance.

That causes a lot of shame when your actions directly

contradict your inner values.

It's just like when I react badly to something, if I shout at someone

or I say something nasty, I feel shame because one of my core

values is kindness, and that sort of cognitive dissonance and shame

that we get in those situations is far worse than the slight

discomfort and guilt that we feel.

When maybe we disappoint somebody because we don't do immediately what

they want us to do, or we inconvenience them by having to rearrange a podcast.

So then how do we make sure that we don't get this cognitive listening

so we're not just going by the most comfortable thing in in front of us.

And when we avoid saying no to things, how do we then.

Actually get ourselves back in line with those things that are

really, really important to us.

Well, when we do the talk about how to say no, set boundaries

and deal with pushback, I often tell people to use power mantras.

And the power mantra goes like this.

I am choosing to go home from work at 7:00 PM so that I can go to say

my Pilates class so that my back is.

So a power mantra might go something like this.

I am choosing to leave work on time this evening so that I can go to my exercise

class and keep myself well, even if somebody pokes their head round the

door and ask me to do an urgent task.

So, so you're.

So your power mantra might go something like, I am choosing to leave work on

time and go to my Pilates class so that I can keep myself healthy and I don't

go off sick long term with back pain.

Even if someone criticizes me for not doing those extra reports before Monday.

That's how it goes.

You're sort of predicting the pushback.

I wonder whether we need to use some inverse power mantras, so I

might be choosing to leave on time.

Maybe I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Let's try this out.

I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Then we've got, so let's,

so let's look at what inverse power mantra might look like.

I'm choosing not to leave on time.

And then I think there are a couple of questions you need to ask after your

inverse power mantra, and you need to be able to say yes to both of these.

Number one, do you have a bloody good reason for not doing that?

Because, so I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Because I don't know, if I don't get this done tonight, we are

going to lose out on half a million pounds of funding next month.

That's a bloody good reason, isn't it?

But not, someone might be a little bit disappointed.

That's not a bloody good reason.

The next question you need to ask yourself is.

The next, yes, the next thing you need to work out.

So how do these inverse power mantras work?

Well, I think you should say to yourself, I am choosing

not to do that thing.

So I'm choosing not to say no, I'm choosing not to leave work on time.

The two supplementary questions you need to ask is, number one, is

there a bloody good reason not to?

So the only bloody good reason I can think of is it's gonna

cause severe patient harm or severe problems in your work.

Like, you know, oh, we're gonna miss out on half a million quid's

worth of funding next year.

Yeah, that would probably be a good reason not to leave work on time, but

there's something else you need to ask yourself, and that's, is it more

important to me than one of my values?

So I'm choosing not to leave work on time because someone's asked for a chat

and you need to say, can you genuinely say, and that is more important to me.

So the next question you need to ask yourself, is that more important

to me than the alternative?

So I'm choosing not to work, so I'm choosing not to leave work on time

because.

I need to finish this insurance report before I go, and that is more important

to me than having food with my family.

If I use that mantra for what happened the other day, I'm

choosing not to stop this podcast now and go and pick up my ill son

because.

It's gonna be a bit difficult to rear, to rearrange, and I don't

want to put Dr. Chris Turner out.

And that is more important to me than my son feeling that I'm there

for him and putting my family first.

Mm. And when we put it like that, we start to realize that the reasons we

are giving ourselves for boundaries crumbling, not saying, no, not, you

know, disappointing the, the people there in the moment are just ridiculous.

There's hardly ever a bloody good reason.

If there is a bloody good reason, then great.

Those are often more important to you than the other things.

But if you know what your values are, like family, like kindness,

like being present for people.

Like speaking the truth, like challenging when necessary.

So you might say to yourself, I'm choosing not to have that conversation

with that person about how they upset me the other day because

I'm worried about it being awkward and upsetting them,

and that's more important to me than our long-term relationship.

That's more important to me than having an equal and

healthy long-term relationship.

And that's more important to me than having an equal and healthy

long-term working relationship.

Eek

we need to work out those things that are important to us, and

then if we don't say no, we know that we are gonna actually.

'cause we start, we need to start to avoid, we need to start to get rid

of this cognitive dissonance between what we say is really important to

us and what we do in the moment.

So the inverse power mantra is, once again, it's rather than

I'm choosing to, so that even if we're saying, well, I'm choosing

not to because what's my reason?

What's because it's awkward or I feel, uh, it, it's just gonna

add to my workload in the future.

Is that a bloody good reason?

Yes or no?

And you need to pay attention to the final statement, and that is

more important to me than making sure I'm fit and well and healthy.

It's more important to me than being there for my family.

It's more important to me than actually telling the truth about what's going on.

It's more important to me than.

Focusing on that really important project that I,

that I know needs to get done.

Because so often we are just our own worst enemies.

Other people have given us permission to set boundaries and say no, but in this

sort of martyr, like I'm so important.

If I don't do it, no one will.

State, we just go.

No, no, it's fine.

I know you're giving me permission, but No, I will just sit through.

I will just keep on going

thinking that we're avoiding guilt and shame when actually what happens is we

feel guilty and we feel a lot of shame at a later date that we've just allowed

ourselves to be pulled by the moment.

And actually no one is gonna thank you.

No one's gonna give you a medal and go, oh, you know what?

They just ignored the things that were important to 'em and then just pushed on

through with everything in the moment.

Of course not.

And I'll finish with a quote from Glennon Doyle.

She says, discomfort.

is better than resentment.

That discomfort in the moment when you need to say no to yourself, when

other people are giving you permission to say no, but you need to say it.

That's better than resenting yourself long term and feeling that

bitterness and shame, which comes from you not focusing on what the

really important stuff is for you.

So let's get comfortable with saying no just to, not other

people, but to our selves.

Let's get really honest about the real problem.

And if you recognize that that happens to you when you are in the urgency trap,

just so focused on, just so focused on everything that's urgently coming in at

you and you are focused on ticking all that stuff for everybody else, Even if

other people have given you permission not to, then do, join our upcoming

masterclass on the Urgency trap.

We'll get really clear about the really important stuff for you right now.

We'll take your to-do list.

We'll stick it through a mangle we'll work on it and we'll get you.

And we'll help you realign to what's really important for you.

Just click on the link in the show notes if you want to join us.

Last week I was in the middle of recording a podcast interview.

When my phone rang from across the room, I plugged it in.

Next to my chair, just so that it would charge.

It was flat battery because I'd had it next to my phone during

the night, just in case one of the children rang and needed me.

Last week, whilst I was recording an interview for

the podcast, my phone went.

Now, normally I remember to turn it off, but this time it was charged

across the other side of the room.

It was my son.

He'd been knocked over playing rugby the day before and had got

a bit of concussion, and he was phoning from the school nurse to

say he was feeling really woozy.

Not very well.

He'd had some parasol, but I needed to go and pick him up, and

I wouldn't even let him walk across the parking lot for me to get him.

I had to go right into the school and grab him and take him

home and make sure he was okay.

A week ago I was in the middle of a podcast interview with this really

important guest when my phone rang, you know the feeling your phone rings in

an important meeting or while you're doing a talk or something and you

think, why didn't I turn it off anyway?

My son, the day before had been knocked over in a rugby tournament

and got dreadful concussion, and so I was charging it up and just

wanted to make sure he was okay.

I'd forgotten.

I'd let it on, and in the middle of the interview I had to get up, go and

retrieve it, turn it off, and answer it.

Last week I was in the middle of a really important podcast interview

when my phone rang, You know when your phone goes in the middle

of an important meeting or while you're doing a presentation and

you just want the ground to eat you up because you've asked everyone

else to turn their phones off.

Anyway, I answered it because I saw it was my son, and the day before, he'd

got a nasty head injury playing rugby.

He'd been okay in the morning and gone to school, but this time he was

saying, mom, I'm feeling really unwell.

I'm in the nurse's office.

They've given me some paracetamol.

They say, I need to come home now.

I went into a flat spin.

I was in the middle of a really important interview.

I didn't want to just drop everything and go and pick him up.

After all, he was safe.

He was with the nurse.

I felt really flustered and I said, look, I will come and get you when you

I can, but just stay there for now.

'cause I'm in the middle of a really important interview

Now One of our most popular guests has been Dr. Chris Turner and he

came and spoke to us at our Last Frog and he also came to speak at

our last FrogFest virtual event on how to challenge difficult behavior.

He's the co-founder of Civil.

He's the co-founder of Civility, saves Lives.

He's a, he's a practicing emergency physician.

He's a consultant in emergency medicine.

He's a really busy man.

He's asked to speak at conferences all over the world.

He's done TED Talks and I feel very honored that he will come on

the podcast and talk to me about this really, really interesting

topic of just how do we challenge difficult behavior in our colleagues.

Um, and he's,

and whenever I speak to him, I learned so much.

And when my phone went, he was just in the middle of talking to me.

He was talking.

He was explaining all about how different people react to challenges,

how you get the really competitive people, and how you get the

really avoidant people in any way.

That podcast will come out in a few weeks time, but I was really

focused on what I was doing.

It had taken a while for us to coincide diaries so that

we could record the podcast.

I didn't wanna let him down.

I wanted it to be a good episode

because I knew how tight his time was.

And so I was mortified when the phone went off and I was thinking

to myself, well, I don't wanna come and get you right now.

I need to finish this interview, and if I don't finish this now,

when on earth are we going to do it?

This is gonna be a really, really important thing for people to hear.

So I said to Chris, I said, oh, Chris, that's my son.

He's got concussion.

You know, he'll be okay.

He's with the nurse.

And Chris just stops and said to me, Rachel, you need

to go and pick up your son.

And I said to him, actually, Chris, it's fine.

He's, he's with the nurse, you know, he's all right.

He's talking, I'm sure he hasn't done anything too bad.

And he said, Rachel, family always comes first.

We can do this another time.

And I said, well, you know, Chris, it's all right.

Let's just finish it off and then I can go.

He said, no, Rachel, you need to go.

He said, we can rearrange this.

And so we've got another day in the diary in a couple of weeks time

and we'll get together and we'll record the end of that podcast and

you'll be able to hear it soon.

So we finished up, I, I thanked him and I jumped in my car And as

I'm driving along the road, I'm starting to feel worse and worse.

First of all, I'm feeling really irritated by what's happened, by

the fact that I had to stop it.

I had to rearrange.

There's gonna be more work now in the editing and stitching it all together.

Then I start to think, actually maybe my son isn't very well, and I start to

feel a little bit worried about my son.

Then I start to think, gosh.

Chris was right.

Family does come first.

What was going on with me?

Why didn't I see that immediately?

Why didn't I drop everything and run?

And then I thought, oh gosh, what must Chris think of me?

I started to go into this absolute shame spiral.

And then it dawned on me, Chris had a hundred percent given me

permission to drop everything, to say no to the podcast, to set

boundaries and go and source out the thing that was really important

and who had pushed back against it.

Me.

I had pushed back against the, no.

I had pushed back against my own boundaries, against my own values.

That family came first.

Even when someone gave me permission to stop, to drop things, to say no to

the podcast, I still couldn't do it.

I was totally my worst enemy.

I was totally my own worst enemy.

everyone else had given me permission, I wouldn't give myself permission.

And I realized that the biggest barrier to me setting limits

around my work saying no is me.

And you know, I could have gone off and said to my son, I'm sorry, I just

couldn't stop that podcast because Chris was such an important guest.

And I could have said to my husband, I had no choice.

I just had to finish.

You know?

It was so inconvenient for me and I couldn't do it,

but actually I could do it.

I was given permission.

And while it would be really comfortable to blame other people, it was me.

It was me that stopped myself

because we have so much internal pressure in these moments, don't we?

Me, I was really hyper-focused on what I was doing.

I was enjoying it.

You know, maybe there was some competitiveness about, well, this needs

to be a really, really good podcast episode that people are gonna listen

to and recommend to their colleagues.

I wanted to maintain a great relationship with Chris and not

feel like I was wasting his time,

but I was very focused on the achievement.

I was very focused on the task.

I felt some pressure.

I felt some time sensitivity, and this inconvenience of having to

put boundaries in and say no to the podcast was really irritating for me.

I didn't want to say no.

It wasn't that.

I couldn't say no,

and it was nothing to do with Chris.

and All to do with me,

and it got me wondering about how often we fail to say no and set boundaries.

And it's not about anybody else.

It's not about anyone else, not giving us permission or being unreasonable.

Quite often they've a hundred percent given us permission.

I remember doing a talk at a school once for a favor for a friend,

and there was a teacher sat at the back looking, pretty pissed

off through the whole thing.

And one of the questions she asked me was, well, you say you just

need to say no and set boundaries, but if I don't do it, no one will.

And she said, I have had two teachers in my department off sick.

It's meant I have had to cover all their work, do all their marking.

I'm at my wits end and I just have to do all of this.

Yeah what could I say to her there and then, and I said how much

I, I felt for her and it was a difficult situation and all of that.

But as we drove back to the station, my friend said to me, she said, we on the

senior leadership team have told that teacher that she does not need to do it.

We have told her to leave that stuff.

We have told her not to do it, but she insists she's her own worst enemy.

There is nothing more we can do to give her permission to say

no set boundaries and not do it.

The pressure was entirely coming from her.

She was caught up by everything in front of her, and she almost

was enjoying being this absolute victim of circumstances.

And maybe it made her feel really, really valuable

and very, very important.

because she was so busy, I don't know.

But when I think about myself, you know, sometimes that's how I feel

and setting boundaries and being able to say no and stop doing stuff,

maybe that means I'm not quite so important and as busy as I think I am.

Because I think what we get wrong about all of this is that a lot of the

time when we feel like we can't set boundaries or say no, we say it's due

to other people, we blame other people,

and that's quite a comfortable place to be in because it

means none of it's our fault.

We can go right into victim and say, I'm totally helpless.

There's nothing I can do about this.

We are victims of our circumstance, but that is a profoundly

disempowering place to be.

It's very frustrating.

We have no control.

There's nothing we can do about it if we feel it's all other people,

it

causes to be stressed and overworked.

And It really is the definition of the urgency trap.

We're at the beck and call of everything that comes at us, that it's urgent

and we think it's gonna help us avoid feeling guilt or shame.

But actually I think it's the other way around.

We actually feel more shamed.

I'll tell you what.

We actually feel more shame when we feel that we can't say no

and we don't say no.

But if we start to acknowledge that one of the key reasons why we don't say

no is the internal pressure we put on ourselves and our internal motivations

and our perhaps warped priorities, and the fact we really get into the moment

And get blinded to everything else, then we've got a way ahead.

Then we've got things we can actually change.

We can take control of that because if it's us that are stopping ourselves

saying, no, we can change that.

We have control over what we do

and we are much more powerful.

And we've got a hope of things being different.

So how do we do this?

Well, firstly, understand that nobody, firstly understand that nobody else

can stop you saying no, literally, unless they've got a gun to your head.

Nobody can force you to do anything.

It's always your choice.

Whether you stay, whether you go, whether you do that thing, whether

you don't, it's you that chooses.

Now there might be consequences of not doing that thing.

Yeah, you might lose some money, you might lose a job.

You might go to jail if you shoot somebody, right?

There are consequences, but at the end of the day, it is

all a choice that you make.

Now, of course, our internal thoughts, what's happened to us

in the past, our circumstances, the context, they all jumble up.

They all contribute to that.

But at the end of the day, you are in charge of your behavior,

what you say and what you do.

You are also in charge of what you think or certainly the, you are

also in charge of the thoughts that you decide to hold on to Eleanor

Roosevelt said, nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

So I might have these thoughts that I'm dreadful or these sorts

of guilt or shame or whatever, but actually if I keep thinking

them, let's leave that one.

So firstly, we need to realize that we are in control.

And if you are someone that blames other people all the time, where your locus

of control is external, you're gonna have a very hard life because you're

just gonna be the victim all the time.

You're blaming other people and you'll be completely dependent on

what other people say or do, or what you think other people expect of you.

Secondly, we need to realize that.

Secondly, when we say no.

Secondly, we need to realize that saying no actually protects

us from shame and guilt.

We think it's the other way round.

Often we think if we say no to someone, we're gonna feel really bad, but we're

gonna feel really, really guilty.

And yes, we might feel uncomfortable in the moment.

But if you don't say no to stuff, if you focus on what's in front of

you rather than those things that are your core values that are really

important to you, then you are gonna get some cognitive dissonance.

Just think how you feel when you tell your family that it's really, really

important that you are home to eat a meal with them in the evening, and then

you fail to set boundaries at work and you find yourself in an extra meeting.

But You know that one of the most important things in the world to

you is family and being there for them, but you're doing something

that contradicts that this, this is cognitive dissonance, and that's where

you start to feel shame when I was.

And so there's me thinking to myself, well, my family.

And that's the root of the shame that I was feeling as I was driving

to pick up my son from his school.

I was thinking to myself, well, I always say family is really important.

I say I want to have a good relationship with my kids and, and have them

thinking that I'm, and have them knowing that I'm always there for them.

I've got their back, and yet hears me acting in a way that shows that

the most important thing to me is the podcast and my busy life, not them.

That's cognitive dissonance.

That causes a lot of shame when your actions directly

contradict your inner values.

It's just like when I react badly to something, if I shout at someone

or I say something nasty, I feel shame because one of my core

values is kindness, and that sort of cognitive dissonance and shame

that we get in those situations is far worse than the slight

discomfort and guilt that we feel.

When maybe we disappoint somebody because we don't do immediately what

they want us to do, or we inconvenience them by having to rearrange a podcast.

So then how do we make sure that we don't get this cognitive listening

so we're not just going by the most comfortable thing in in front of us.

And when we avoid saying no to things, how do we then.

Actually get ourselves back in line with those things that are

really, really important to us.

Well, when we do the talk about how to say no, set boundaries

and deal with pushback, I often tell people to use power mantras.

And the power mantra goes like this.

I am choosing to go home from work at 7:00 PM so that I can go to say

my Pilates class so that my back is.

So a power mantra might go something like this.

I am choosing to leave work on time this evening so that I can go to my exercise

class and keep myself well, even if somebody pokes their head round the

door and ask me to do an urgent task.

So, so you're.

So your power mantra might go something like, I am choosing to leave work on

time and go to my Pilates class so that I can keep myself healthy and I don't

go off sick long term with back pain.

Even if someone criticizes me for not doing those extra reports before Monday.

That's how it goes.

You're sort of predicting the pushback.

I wonder whether we need to use some inverse power mantras, so I

might be choosing to leave on time.

Maybe I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Let's try this out.

I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Then we've got, so let's,

so let's look at what inverse power mantra might look like.

I'm choosing not to leave on time.

And then I think there are a couple of questions you need to ask after your

inverse power mantra, and you need to be able to say yes to both of these.

Number one, do you have a bloody good reason for not doing that?

Because, so I'm choosing not to leave on time.

Because I don't know, if I don't get this done tonight, we are

going to lose out on half a million pounds of funding next month.

That's a bloody good reason, isn't it?

But not, someone might be a little bit disappointed.

That's not a bloody good reason.

The next question you need to ask yourself is.

The next, yes, the next thing you need to work out.

So how do these inverse power mantras work?

Well, I think you should say to yourself, I am choosing

not to do that thing.

So I'm choosing not to say no, I'm choosing not to leave work on time.

The two supplementary questions you need to ask is, number one, is

there a bloody good reason not to?

So the only bloody good reason I can think of is it's gonna

cause severe patient harm or severe problems in your work.

Like, you know, oh, we're gonna miss out on half a million quid's

worth of funding next year.

Yeah, that would probably be a good reason not to leave work on time, but

there's something else you need to ask yourself, and that's, is it more

important to me than one of my values?

So I'm choosing not to leave work on time because someone's asked for a chat

and you need to say, can you genuinely say, and that is more important to me.

So the next question you need to ask yourself, is that more important

to me than the alternative?

So I'm choosing not to work, so I'm choosing not to leave work on time

because.

I need to finish this insurance report before I go, and that is more important

to me than having food with my family.

If I use that mantra for what happened the other day, I'm

choosing not to stop this podcast now and go and pick up my ill son

because.

It's gonna be a bit difficult to rear, to rearrange, and I don't

want to put Dr. Chris Turner out.

And that is more important to me than my son feeling that I'm there

for him and putting my family first.

Mm. And when we put it like that, we start to realize that the reasons we

are giving ourselves for boundaries crumbling, not saying, no, not, you

know, disappointing the, the people there in the moment are just ridiculous.

There's hardly ever a bloody good reason.

If there is a bloody good reason, then great.

Those are often more important to you than the other things.

But if you know what your values are, like family, like kindness,

like being present for people.

Like speaking the truth, like challenging when necessary.

So you might say to yourself, I'm choosing not to have that conversation

with that person about how they upset me the other day because

I'm worried about it being awkward and upsetting them,

and that's more important to me than our long-term relationship.

That's more important to me than having an equal and

healthy long-term relationship.

And that's more important to me than having an equal and healthy

long-term working relationship.

Eek

we need to work out those things that are important to us, and

then if we don't say no, we know that we are gonna actually.

'cause we start, we need to start to avoid, we need to start to get rid

of this cognitive dissonance between what we say is really important to

us and what we do in the moment.

So the inverse power mantra is, once again, it's rather than

I'm choosing to, so that even if we're saying, well, I'm choosing

not to because what's my reason?

What's because it's awkward or I feel, uh, it, it's just gonna

add to my workload in the future.

Is that a bloody good reason?

Yes or no?

And you need to pay attention to the final statement, and that is

more important to me than making sure I'm fit and well and healthy.

It's more important to me than being there for my family.

It's more important to me than actually telling the truth about what's going on.

It's more important to me than.

Focusing on that really important project that I,

that I know needs to get done.

Because so often we are just our own worst enemies.

Other people have given us permission to set boundaries and say no, but in this

sort of martyr, like I'm so important.

If I don't do it, no one will.

State, we just go.

No, no, it's fine.

I know you're giving me permission, but No, I will just sit through.

I will just keep on going

thinking that we're avoiding guilt and shame when actually what happens is we

feel guilty and we feel a lot of shame at a later date that we've just allowed

ourselves to be pulled by the moment.

And actually no one is gonna thank you.

No one's gonna give you a medal and go, oh, you know what?

They just ignored the things that were important to 'em and then just pushed on

through with everything in the moment.

Of course not.

And I'll finish with a quote from Glennon Doyle.

She says, discomfort.

is better than resentment.

That discomfort in the moment when you need to say no to yourself, when

other people are giving you permission to say no, but you need to say it.

That's better than resenting yourself long term and feeling that

bitterness and shame, which comes from you not focusing on what the

really important stuff is for you.

So let's get comfortable with saying no just to, not other

people, but to our selves.

Let's get really honest about the real problem.

And if you recognize that that happens to you when you are in the urgency trap,

just so focused on, just so focused on everything that's urgently coming in at

you and you are focused on ticking all that stuff for everybody else, Even if

other people have given you permission not to, then do, join our upcoming

masterclass on the Urgency trap.

We'll get really clear about the really important stuff for you right now.

We'll take your to-do list.

We'll stick it through a mangle we'll work on it and we'll get you.

And we'll help you realign to what's really important for you.

Just click on the link in the show notes if you want to join us.