rwrobinson4633@gmail.com: Jesus said no to sick people. Yeah. Let that land for a second. People were lined up to be healed. Real suffering, real need, and he walked the other direction. If that makes you uncomfortable, then good. Because the reason it bothers you is the same reason your calendar is destroying your life. Welcome to Shifts and Lighters, I'm Ryan Robbins. This show is for high performers who look like they have it all together on the outside. but feel like they're falling apart on the inside. Every episode, one pattern from the life of Jesus, one principle from lean and process improvement methods, one shift that changes everything for you in your life. That's what this podcast is all about. Today, we're going to talk about the most powerful word any leader can have in their vocabulary. It's a word Jesus used without apology. It's the word most of you have been trained to feel guilty about. You wanna know what that is? It's the word no. Yeah. And by the end of this podcast, I'm going to give you two tools and a script word for word. So you can start using this literally today without feeling a burning single relationship. So let me describe someone and you tell me if you know them, okay? Their calendar is a war zone. Every slot is filled. Every margin is eliminated. They pride themselves on being responsive, available by text, email, Slack at all hours. Okay. They say yes to the meeting that should have been an email. They say yes to the product that isn't their responsibility. They say yes to the request that interrupts their actual priorities. And they tell themselves it's servant leadership. It's being It's what good people do. Here's the truth that nobody wants to hear. Their yes has no value because they never say no. In process improvement methods, we call this having value added activity and waste. Value added activity is anything that the customer would actually pay for. Anything that moves them toward a real goal. Everything else is waste. is one of the most insidious forms of waste. This what it is, it's called motion. It's activity that feels productive but doesn't actually advance anything, least anything that matters. And most high performers are drowning, drowning in motion. They're busy, they're addicted to busy, but they're not building anything. They're active, but they're not advancing anywhere. They're saying yes to everything, which means saying yes to nothing and they're giving their full commitment to what appears to be something fulfilling. It's not. So Jesus addresses this very thing directly. Yeah, Jesus himself. Matthew chapter 5 verse 37 says this, all you need to say is simply yes or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Now, in context, he's talking about oaths, people who've made elaborate promises to sound more trustworthy. But the principle cuts deeper. Your yes should mean something, and your no should mean something. The space in between them should be very, very clear. The Bible says, let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. So when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. When every request gets a yes, your yes is worthless. The people who make the greatest impact are the ones who have the clearest boundaries. They know what they're there for, and they ruthlessly eliminate what they're not there to do. People will call you mean. But it's the truth. You are there for a specific reason and you need to guard that. All let me give you another example. Luke chapter 10, the story of Mary and Martha. If you don't know, I'm going to read it to you. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. He had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. Okay. Now let's pause there. Martha wasn't doing anything wrong. Hospitality is very important. Preparations are real. And she was working, legitimately working while her sister just sat. All the older siblings got a little itch right there. God incarnate incarnated in Jesus was in her living room and Mary was stressed. Sorry, let me say this again. God was in the living room by the form of Jesus and Martha was stress cleaning the kitchen. Let me get back to the scripture. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself. Tell her to help me. And here's Jesus's response. Savage. Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed or indeed only one. And Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from. Whoo, it's powerful. Now, this passage gets misused a lot, all right? So I'm tell you, people turn this into ⁓ a weapon. They turn into a spiritualized excuse for laziness or dismissal of actually doing work. And that's not the point of the scripture. But this point is priority. Martha was fragmented through activity. adding steps that weren't adding value at the moment. She wasn't wrong in wanting to serve. She was wrong for letting the serving distract her from the actual priority in the room. And notice Jesus didn't fix her schedule. He didn't tell Mary to go help. He named the condition and told Martha, are worried and upset about many things. And that's the inner state of someone who can't say no. They're worried, they're upset, they're scattered, managing many things instead of focusing on the one thing. And here's what most people miss about this story. Martha didn't just fail to prioritize. She tried to recruit Jesus in validating her fragmentation. You tell her to help me. I could just hear that sister hollering. She wanted Jesus to co-sign her chaos. So she wanted this permission to keep doing the things the wrong way. She just needed help doing the wrong thing. And how many of us have done, how many of us have recruited people to help us do not the right thing, but the thing that doesn't matter the most. Instead of cutting commitments, we ask for more resources. Instead of saying no, we hire an assistant to manage all the yeses instead of simplifying and removing We drive ourselves to optimize complexity. I'ma wait. That's not the solution, y'all. That's managing waste. You're not eliminating the problem, you're just getting a better handle of the overflow. And many people call that, I call it, organize, sorry, firefighting, but doing it. in beautiful clothes. It looks good, but you really didn't have to do it in the first place. So we put this badge of honor on when we really should be removing the very thing that's causing us to be firefighters in the first place. So what does this leave us? What does this all talk about when it comes to integration? I need to catch you with this piece. This isn't just about productivity. A person who can't say no is a person who doesn't know who they are yet. Think about it. If your answer to every request is yes, your identity is being determined by whoever's asking. You're not leading, being led. You're not choosing, you're being chosen for. And your boundaries don't exist because your identity hasn't been established. That is fragmentation. That your sense of self is being outsourced to the expectations in the room. Wholeness is when your boundaries flow from your identity, not from time management hacks. Mary could sit at Jesus's feet because she knew what really mattered. And Martha couldn't stop moving because she didn't. Now, the difference with this isn't a discipline thing. It was clear about who was and who actually was disciplined in that room. But this is the thing, a whole person says no from the same place they say yes. And that is a settled, clear, and undivided sense of purpose. Okay, so I need you to sit with that for a minute. All right, so here's where we get tactical. Okay, I promised you two tools and a script. let's get to that. The first tool is what I call the 90 % rule. You might have heard it in other places, but I'm gonna bring it to you. I've read three fold, several hundred books. But at this point, this is what this boils down to. When you're evaluating any opportunity, a meeting, a project, a favor, a commitment, ask yourself two questions, okay? On a scale of one to a hundred, How excited am I am? Woo, let me say that again. On a scale of one to 10, how excited am I about? Okay, the next one is from a scale of one to 10, how aligned is it with my actual priorities? If either answer is below a 90%, it's a no. Not let me think about it. Not maybe later. Not sure I guess I can make that work. It's a no. N-O. Now this sounds extreme until you realize what it does. It clears space for the things that actually are a 95 or 100. It creates room for the opportunities that you can pursue with full commitment instead of fragmented attention. And here's the counterintuitive truth here. People respect you more when you say no clearly than when you say yes weekly. A half-hearted yes serves nobody, but a clear no serves every- I'ma say that again for the people in the back. A half-hearted yes serves nobody. A clear no serves everyone. Okay, that's tool number one. Tool number two, pull up your calendar right now. I'm serious. Look at the next two weeks and every single commitment that's on there. For each one ask, does this move me toward actual priorities or is this someone else's priority dressed up as mine? categorize it in three buckets. One, delete. It disappears, don't reschedule, remove it, gone. Two, defer. It happens later when you can give it attention that it actually deserves. And then number three, delegate. Someone else handles it. Someone for whom you actually, this actually is a priority for. Now the goal is to get your calendar to reflect your values, not to let other people's expectations drive it. And when I first did this exercise, I deleted like 40 % of what was on my calendar. Probably mostly close to 50, really. 40 is very safe. And you know what happened? Nobody noticed. Yeah. The meetings I deleted, nobody followed up. Commitments I dropped. Nobody asked where I went. That tells you something about how much your schedule is essential. It literally gives you a sobering perspective of what really matters. And you think somebody's going to be mad at you, they really not. They worried about their own schedule. They're not worried about you. They're trying to offload their work to you. OK, so the script is what you're really here for. Here's a word for word script on saying no. OK, there's three escalating levels. OK, so there's like an initial note. That's the first one. I appreciate you thinking of me, but I'm not able to commit to this right now. Okay. Very nice. The second one is a pushback response. I understand this is important to you, but my schedule does not allow me to give this the attention it deserves. And I'd rather be honest about that than to do it halfway. All right. Very well said. Now this is the last one. The guilt trip response. I care about this relationship, which is exactly why I'm being upfront instead of over committing and under delivering. No explanation, no over justification. Just a clean no that protects your yes. Okay. One more thing. The guilt that you feel when you say no, that's not conviction. It's conditioning. You've been trained and to associate, let me say this again, you have been trained to associate your worth with your availability. You've internalized the lie that good people say yes to everything. But Jesus didn't model that. He said no to crowds in Capernaum. He said no to his family when they tried to redirect his ministry. He said no to Peter when Peter tried to stop him from going to the cross. His no wasn't selfish. His no was strategic. And it protected the yes that actually mattered. Your boundaries aren't walls that keep people out. They're the structure that allows you to show up fully for what you're actually called to do. And Jesus is the best example on how to have healthy boundaries and not sin and not cause rifts. And you know what? Boundaries cause rifts anyway. When you say no to someone, it's going to shake them up. But also we've been... so conditioned that no makes you mean instead of realizing that no is kind to be fully present. If I can't be fully present with you, why would I say yes? Anyway, so here's the challenge for you this week. Find three things on your calendar that should be a no and make them a no. Not a soft, ⁓ maybe. Not let me see what I can do to make that work. That's my corporate voice doing its thing. Not a reschedule that pushes the problem down the road more. No, a clear, kind, unapologetic no. You can use the script. We can put that in the show notes. You can do the calendar purge, share, apply the 90 % rule to your next request that hits your inbox and pay attention to what comes up inside of you when you do it. The guilt, the anxiety, the fear that you've... been seen as difficult or unhelpful or selfish. That reaction is your diagnostic. It's telling you exactly how much your identity is wrapped up in their approval and how much you're aligned to them and not for who you are. That's information that you need if you're going to build a life that is integrated instead of a life that is fragmented. So the next episode, we're gonna get into a couple other things, like knowing who you are. This is such a powerful ⁓ thing that we need to get to, because you can't say no if you don't have an identity of who you are and how you show up in every room. So we'll get to that in the next podcast. If you haven't taken the fragmentation score yet, the link is in the description. It's free, it takes two minutes, and it shows you exactly where you are in life, where you're leaking energy so you know. which notes to start with. And if this episode hit you, send it to one person. You know who they are. They're the one who's always available, always saying yes, always exhausted, wants a badge of honor for being busy. They need to hear this. All right? I'm Ryan Robinson. This is Shifts and Ladders. Let your yes be yes and your no mean no. Until we meet again. We'll see you in the next pod. Peace.