Imagine you looked inside and realized you were hungry for intimacy. Or friendship, or spirituality. Imagine you listened to yourself long enough to hear the buzzing vibration of hunger deep within and held that hunger and said yes. Yes, I will give you what you need. Yes, I will give you what it is you so deeply and knowingly want. Yes to intimacy. Yes to friendships. Yes. yes yes. Imagine then, what it is in your life right now, that you are doing, choosing, and prioritizing that is at odds with this thing that you want. Imagine how in order to get to your yes, you need to say no. A client who is afraid of being alone says yes to every social offer that comes along. She has, over the years amassed a quite large community around her. But many of these people are not the deep intimacy that she craves. Some are partying in a way that doesn't work for her. Some are relationships limited by the bounds of work boundaries. Some require her to give in ways that are not reciprocated. And still, she says yes. But in these yes’s she is saying no to her inner need for true intimacy. She hides who she really is, she engages in activities she doesn't love and that don’t serve her. She avoids disappointing anyone but herself. When she says yes to her own hunger for intimacy she finds that she wants to say no to many of these invitations because they deplete her. She says no and protects her resources and realizes she wants to say yes to her desire to call upon one special friend. She asks for an intimate small group gathering. They say yes. She says yes. But she had to start with no. We are always saying yes to something. Yes to people who don’t have our best interest in heart. Yes to other people’s needs. Yes to our fears or depression. Yes to drugs or unhealthy life choices. And in doing many of these we are saying no to our inner hunger. Our true needs. Our deepest wants. In every choice we are saying yes to something and no to something else. What happens if we prioritize saying yes to our own inner needs? Our own goals. Our own dreams. What if we got comfortable saying no to things that stand in the way of our own true self? Say no to say yes.
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