Trust, Commitment, and Protecting Your 'Yes'

In the virtual Lemonade Stand, Emily is flying solo to discuss why consistency is not just a buzzword but the heartbeat of lasting relationships. She talks about the following:

0:08 - Building Trust in Relationships and Work
9:21 - The Importance of Avoiding Overcommitment
18:59 - Protecting Your Yes

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• Episode Transcript

  What's up, lemon heads? Welcome back to another episode from the Yellow Chair. I'm Emily and I'm flying solo, but I wanted to do a little, a little part two session, if you will, from episode 95. That was titled growing your culture, and episode 95 was ultimately how the culture inside of your company equates to trust, and we talked about ways that you can build trust through transparency, through empathy and through consistency. But I wanted to kind of do this two part phase because having a great culture at work is fantastic and can contribute so much to your overall quality of life. But we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about your personal relationships and how you can build trust within your own, the own relations that you have at home with your family, with your friends, with your children, with people that you interact with at church or in support groups or whatever that might be, whoever your community is. And so you might be saying, like, how does this relate to marketing? Well, there's a lot of truth in what can be built upon when you have consistency and commitment and things like that. But ultimately we're only as good as we are at home. We're not truly killing it at work. We're not truly making a difference or impacting people in our world or in our company if we can't also do that at home. And so I want to take this next little bit to just share some things that I have been trying to learn more about and to be more conscious of, and I shared a good part of this at the E3 conference in Huntington Beach with a group of ladies from the E3 organization, and so it was received really well and everyone said, like man, I really needed to hear this, and so I just want to share this with our Lemonheads here. So, without further ado, let's sip some lemonade, alright? So, like I said, this is a part two of episode 95 of Trust Building your Culture, your Company Culture, through Trust and those three pillars. Those three elements were transparency, empathy and consistency, and so I would really encourage you guys to go back and listen to that. That one, if you haven't already. But one thing that really hit home with me that I didn't mention in that first episode, I don't think, but I've been playing and chewing around in on it on my mind, commitment will get you to the starting line, but it takes consistency to get you to the finish line, and, as I mentioned, I gave this talk at the E3 event and literally as we were there in Huntington Beach, there was literally a marathon going on outside, like they. When we're like, what are all these porta-potties doing here? It's like, oh, they're doing a race here, I see the finish line. But you know, it was really kind of inspiring to me because you could make a commitment, like, hey, I'm going to run a marathon, I'm going to go online, I'm going to sign myself up, I'm going to enter in all my information, I'm going to pay my money. Okay, I'm committed to that. But will that commitment get me all the way through those 26 miles, 26.2 miles? No, okay. Will me running one day before the race get me to that finish line? No, okay. Will me running once a month, or really hard for the last week right up before that, will that get me to the finish line? No, in reality, what does is the consistency. Okay. So, beyond just a commitment to doing something, you have to have that consistency and those small but meaningful little steps that add up to big things. So where I'm going with this is who's ever had a friend, you know, and I'm thinking of, like our own friends, like we have a, you know, little girls group chat and you know everyone is busy and everyone has things going on. But do we all have that friend that you know we're scheduling something and she's like, yes, I'll be there, yes, I'll bring that. And then the day of somebody sick she's sick, a kid's sick, something came up at work. Like it never fails, she will consistently not show up or not be there. She committed but she didn't actually have the consistency to follow it. Or she is consistently not consistent or not showing up, not doing the things to where? Like, do you trust her? Like, do you trust that? Like, hey, she says she's doing this, but is she really? Okay, that's a friend kind of relationship does. Does your family kind of have the same thing, like you know? Do you tell your parents like, yes, I'm going to come by, I'm going to come help you at your house and clean the garden, or yes, I'm going to stop by for a weekend visit and have dinner, but do you consistently bail out on them? Or with your kids, like, what is the first thing that's going to get cut if you have to, if there's a big project at work and you didn't manage your time efficiently, or there were other fires where, what's the first thing that's going to give. Okay, a lot of times it's not our work or it's not um, re-prioritize, it's going to be taking away from our time with our family or with our kids. Like it's just one gymnastics practice that I'm going to miss, it's just one baseball game, it's just one night. You know, you guys can just get take out and be okay, like it's, and that's okay. Every now and then we all have to have grace for ourselves and there are times where, like true emergencies or truly, things just kind of fell through the cracks. But what I want to kind of talk about in this consistency piece is it has to be an inconsistent thing. It can't become the norm, okay, it can't become your shortcuts, and so, in my opinion, a huge part in building better trust, to having better personal relationships and even in your own company culture, can be the power of saying no. Okay, and I want to let that sink in the power of saying no, because that seems counterintuitive sometimes. Like I think people can be like, um, oh, I mean you never know what opportunity there is, and like you should always be yes. And like you know, stay ready. Ain't got to ever get ready. Like you know I'm quoting Luke Gustafson there and like that is true, stay ready, ain't got to get ready, um, but sometimes Are. Saying yes to everything in reality leaves us no capacity, no margin, no room for any error, and because we've said yes to any and everything that might pop up our way, sometimes we don't have the capacity to then say yes to what we should have really said yes. And so the power of saying no actually gives us control of our own lives. So if, if I'm talking to a friend and she does not have the capacity to tell me no, for whatever reason, can you bring Chick-fil-A to the school? Can you run this errand? Can you make this phone call for me? Can you um, you know, make the craft for the Valentine's Day box? Can you do this? If she does not have the power to say no, I control her life. All I have to do is ask. Okay, she has no control over it. Everyone else has control. All they have to do is ask, and she doesn't have the power to say no, um, and so when we can say no, it gives us control of our own lives. But say no can be really hard, and sometimes that might be because we feel the need to impress people? Um, maybe we feel the need to say face Um. You know, maybe like, uh, I messed up there so I got to tell him yes this time, or I've got to tell him yes for this, or like I've got to make up for all this. Maybe we're trying to say face Um, maybe we're trying to gain acceptance or we have that kind of fear of rejection and that's why we can't say no. Um, maybe you have a great way of saying no to some people, but like, not to other groups of people or not to other circumstances, situations. Um, but what is that consistency? Um, can you not say no because you need to feel a void? Um, like, maybe you have some things that, like, you don't want to deal with, like in your own mind. So maybe some some trauma or some you know self-reflection that you are truly avoiding show, I'm just going to fill myself up with everything else that I don't have to deal with that, so that I can kind of feel this void or this whole that's in my life. Um, maybe you can't say no because, like I know I can do it better, I can do it faster. Um, if I don't, who will? You know? I've, I've felt that before you know, in um, sometimes in like doing graphic designs for our team or for a client, or um in serving in like nonprofit boards, things like that. Well, if I don't, who will? And like, well, I mean, I hate to ask them to do it because, like I know, I could do it better, I could do it faster. Um, a friend approached me not too long ago, a few days ago, and she was asking me about, like, what size to make a design for a T-shirt. She was wanting to make a T-shirt for a girls trip and she's like I can just do it on Canva, and you know. But like, what size do I make it? Like, how do I pick a fun? And da, da, da, da, da. And so, like I know, in my head, I'm like I can, I can spend five minutes and I can make her a T-shirt design, or she can try to figure it out, and she was willing to. She was like I can figure this out myself, I can do it, I can make it on Canva, I'm not going to bother you. Um, and finally I was just give me the shirt, like let me do it for you, okay, and it literally took me five minutes and she's like, oh my gosh, that literally I had spent over three hours and I was nowhere near as close to you are on that, and so sometimes that can be our reason to not say no. It's why we're going to say yes, because I know I can do it better. I know I can do it faster. I don't want to cause you any more heartache or pain or suffering. If you will, it's trying to figure out Canva. Okay, to make a T-shirt design. Um, so that can be one of the reasons why we can't say no. However, an over commitment can kill our passions, our perspectives, our sense of calling um over commitment. Um over commitment will leave you weak and tired and disillusioned. Um, our ability to make decisions, our ability to um have quality time with our significant others, with our children, things like that, those can all get shattered and get so diminished by an over commitment. Okay, and so was I wrong in telling my friend no, or yes, I can make a T-shirt design for you? I don't think so. Okay, it literally took me over, just, you know, five or 10 minutes. But I'd also said notice some other things to where I had created some capacity and some margin, to where, like when that quick little thing popped up, I could tell her yes, and then I could actually fulfill all my commitment. Okay, cause there has also been a season in my life where it's like, no, I can do it for you, I can help you, da, da, da, and then I never actually get around to it because just all the things in life I'd over commit in myself. And so I've been trying to like consciously walk through my own mind as delicate balance and my husband is really good at encouraging me and trying to kind of help me shift my perspective, cause he's a lot better at it than I am but like, how do I create margin so that when I want to say yes to something, when I do want to do something, I can actually fulfill on that? And I have that consistency and I've built that trust Like I'm actually going to do what I said I was going to do, versus me, I don't want to tell you. No, I don't want to tell you. You know, I don't want to tell you. So I'm just going to say yes and then we'll see what happens. We'll see if I actually ever get around to that design or not. We'll see if I ever actually get around to scheduling that dinner for you guys to come over. We'll see, you know. I want to know that, like my yes is powerful, okay, there's power in me saying no, so that my yes is meaningful and I can make a difference. You know, I in my presentation I was sharing this number 86,400 and you might know what this number is. I know it's been shared a lot and when you kind of put in this perspective, so 86,400 is the number of seconds that are in a day and you know what, I have the exact same amount of seconds and minutes and hours in my day as you do and as the girl in my office and my husband and my kids. We all have the exact same amount of time. There is nothing I can do to get any more. There's nothing I can do to make you have less. There is nothing I can. I can't barter or buy or, you know, wager myself into getting more seconds. No, we all have the exact same amount of time, okay, so when people say I don't have time to do this, I don't have time to do this, you have the exact same amount of time as I do. The difference is, what are we choosing to do with that time? Okay, what we choose to do with it and what we fill it up with. That is the difference, okay, and are we filling it up with things that don't matter? Okay, I'm sure you might have all seen this illustration and if not, I'll try to describe it as best as possible. But you have a jar like a glass vase, you know that's, that's nice and thick and kind of tall, and you have these different Rocks that you have to put in there. So you have these big, like river rocks with the big, you know, kind of the size of your hand and of your palm, and then there's like smaller rocks, there's like little pebbles, and then there's sand. Okay, you got to put all of those things into the glass vase. Well, I might start with the sand, like that's easy, dump it in, it's lightweight, and then I'll put it in the pebbles and then I'll put in the big rocks. It'll never fit like. It is always Overflowing, it never melds well, fits well. And you could kind of think of the sand, the pebbles and the rocks as kind of Like the priorities in your life, like what are the big rocks in my life, what are the, the medium things, and then, what are the small, least priority? Okay, and then am I filling my vase up with the little things that don't matter as much? Okay, am I putting those into my vase first? Am I prioritizing them? Because the only way to make them all fit is if you put the big river rocks in your jar first. So, like, what is your biggest priority? Your family, your faith, showing up for your kids, giving your significant other time and attention and love, taking care of your family with your parents or other people that need you? Those are your big rocks, those are your priorities, your, your spiritual health, spending time with the Lord, if you're a Christian or you know whatever that might look like with you. You've got to put those in your place in your life first. Fill up your vase with those first, and Then you put in the pebbles and those kind of can fill in the spaces, okay, and then there's still room, there's still capacity, and then you can add in the sand on top of that, and the sand it shakes out and shifts out and kind of falls in the cracks wherever they may lie, okay, if there wasn't room for them, they wouldn't find a place, but because you've prioritized and built these other Bigger things. They've had a home. The sand can shift and shake down in there to those small little nooks and crannies and crevices that if that had been filling it up first, if the sand had been filling it up first, there would have been no room for the big rocks or the big priorities. So I hope that kind of painted a picture for you and you can YouTube it just kind of look up like Rocks, pebble, sand, glass base, and because I did this not too long ago and I actually found several examples and they'll visually illustrate that for you. But the point of the matter is we all have 86,400 seconds. We all have the exact same amount of time, but how we prioritize it and what we do with it is up to us. Okay, so you it's a bad saying to say I didn't have time to do that, I didn't have time to do that. You had the exact same amount of time as I did. But what you chose to do with it, what you chose to fill your time up with, that's up to you. So you didn't make time to do this? Okay, it's not that you didn't have it, you didn't make the time, you didn't shift out other things, you didn't remove some of those small sand. Sand what was that? Particles, kernels, not. You know what I'm saying? The sand, the little pebbles. Okay, you filled that up. You didn't make the time for the bigger rocks, and so In that, 86,400. What it illustrates is we all have our limits. Okay, again, no one else has more time than the other one. We all have our limits, and so we have to be able to know when those limits are, because None of us I don't think truly anybody Doesn't like to have a full life like, or at least be like, a little bit busy. Okay, um, I, we do like. There's not a large population of the people that, like I, consistently, every single day, day after day, week after week, month after month, just love sitting at the house twiddling my thumbs, looking at the ceiling or the sky, whatever it is. No, I mean, we do like to be busy, but the problem is when we have an over commitment and we are Consistently moving too fast For too long, when we're living in that, from one thing to the next, to the next to the next, where there's no margin in between, we ultimately just become crisis managers. We're living in reaction, from the next thing, from one thing to the next. Okay, I Can see this kind of habitually in and work. Okay I can, when I stack in meetings back to back, to back the second that I can't get a file to open, or I don't have the right zoom link, or, you know, I'm missing the phone number for this client that I'm supposed to call. So, like I'm then living in crisis because I didn't create any margin from the last meeting to this meeting to have 30 seconds to now Figure out this problem for whatever went wrong. Or the team member that comes in my office like, oh my gosh, you just call the call. Okay, yeah, I came with you. You're like, oh, I'm jumping on the call with this other client. Like, oh, I've created no margin or any room for air and so I'm living in crisis. Same thing with my kids and my family. Like I can be in the morning if I'm not prioritizing to the night before, help them get their clothes laid out and their shoes laid out. And If the next morning, like I just get something on. And like, oh, we missed the alarm by an extra, I slept in 10 minutes too late and so now, like the whole morning is messed up and like I don't know if you're even gonna have time to eat breakfast and like, yeah, like it's literally a crisis and we are just flying by the seat of our pants. There's no room for margin or air, and so everything is just living in reaction to the next thing, to where, like if the kid can't find One of the shoes, like that becomes an ultimate crisis because we've created no margin. Okay, um, and so when we're living in crisis and just having crisis management Firefighting if you will it'll lead to what can be detrimental shortcuts. Okay, so some shortcuts might be like fast food diets or Hasty credit card purchases or little to no spiritual time, less personal interaction with people that you love. Some of those things are okay every now and then, like it's okay to have a fast food night or a drive-thru night, it's okay to just swing through and pick up something or to eat in the car, you know, on your way to a baseball practice, on the every now and then. But when that becomes the consistency, when that becomes what's consistent, you can see the ultimate impact that it has on your health, on your relationships. Um, has these little shortcuts become the norm? To where, like, you never cook for your family or you never have a meal that we sit down at a table where all your whole family sitting there looking at each other. You know, is it from the backseat of a car as I'm tossing you the drive-thru bag to the backseat? Those can just lead to detrimental shortcuts that have a true impact on my personal relationships. Is that hasty credit car purchases because I I'm going on this trip and like I need a new shirt or I need a new blazer? I need a blazer, but like I know I have one, but I don't have the time to go look through and like, is it at the dry cleaners or not? Like I don't know, I don't have time to pick what, so I'm just gonna buy a new one, okay. Or same thing if I'm out of grocery store, hey, I'm not gonna do the fast food diet, so I'm gonna pick up something you know at the store and I'm gonna cook dinner. Well, I don't know if I have spaghetti noodles or not, so I'm here at the store. So, like I'm just gonna buy some more. Or I'm gonna buy this sauce or whatever it else might be, and those might seem like little things, like you know. Buying a new shirt okay. So what big deal is just one shirt or buying some extra spaghetti noodles. Okay, like it's two dollars. Okay, we're not breaking the bank here? No, you're probably not. But it's these little bitty things that add up to being bigger things, that become a much bigger issue. Okay, your spiritual time, your spiritual health and wellness, you know, if you are a Christian, crystal and I are Christians and we talk about this kind of often and so, like it's important for us to to build a relationship with with Jesus, with the Lord, and it's not about a religion for us, it's about a relationship. But when we are constantly moving in in crisis management, or when I'm moving in crisis management, that can be one of the first things to go to get cut. You know, what went from a 30-minute devotional might go to just a 10-minute devotional that's an audiobook as I'm driving on my way to work, and then that might come to Even nixing that. Or it's just a one-minute fly-by-night type thing, like I'm just gonna say a quick prayer, really quick, like that can be an easy thing to cut when I've created no margin or room for myself. And same thing with my family. Like you know, I can be guilty of this sometimes, crystal and I are crazy at work and we're crisis managers and Putting out fires all day and stuff to where sometimes like we don't have any time to talk to each other. And so crystal and I often are talking to each other for an hour, hour and a half, multiple nights a week, and you know there's nothing wrong with that, like we need to catch up with ourselves. But when we have to do it every single night and week after week and week after week, who's time does that take away from my husbands, my kids? You know I'm on the phone with crystal. It's important things. It's things that we needed to know and talk with each other about and Know what's happening with our team. It's important, but it hasn't become at the capacity and at the risk of my own family, my own personal relationships, and so we have to realize that we've got to get better at work in our time that we do have together and in our time in managing the business and that compartment to where we can compartmentalize what's at work is there and when that family is there. So the point I'm trying to make is your personal relationships. Those will most likely be the first ones to get cut or to get next, and so I hope we can find some trust and some consistency to help that, because when we run too hard, for too fast, for too long, we lose our perspective, we lose our joy, we lose our sacred sense of being present in the moment, and it can have a tremendous impact on our own health and our own relationships. You know, losing perspective, I think, is a big one, like when I am living in this crisis. It's like, ah, everything sucks. Like I suck, the company sucks, everyone on the team sucks, you know. And then like I can get like my car sucks, my house sucks, like this all sucks, everything sucks. Absolutely not. That is not the true perspective. But sometimes, when I can live and dwell on that negativity, when I'm going too fast, when I myself am depleted, when I've had no room to recharge or to relax and refresh, when I'm just depleted I've been running a sprint and a marathon for too long I can lose my perspective. I can lose the joy in what can be from my work or from what I actually do as a skill. I can lose that. I can lose being present with my family, with the relationships that really matter to me. So when you say yes and there's nothing wrong with saying yes. Okay, there are times where you need to say yes, and I think the majority of us. We say yes to good things, okay. We say yes to like volunteering at church, or I will serve at that service or I will watch the kids in the nursery. We say yes to being on that nonprofit board and to volunteering at the local fun run or whatever it might be. We say yes to hosting the girls night, like, yes, you can do it at my house. Or yes, we're going to have happy hour here at this restaurant. Da da da. None of us are saying yes to things that are ultimately, like, truly that bad. Okay, like most of us aren't at the stripper clubs, you know, or at the casino with a gambling addiction and that's what we're saying yes to Like. If you could just say no to that, that'd be nice and your life would be so much better. No, we're saying yes to good things. Okay, we're saying yes to meaningful causes and meaningful things. But again, if we over commit our yes just because we are afraid to say no to a safe face or the fear of rejection or the fear of missing out, it can cost us. So what are your commitments costing you from a time perspective, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. What are those commitments costing you? And so I want to just encourage you to protect your yes. Okay, protect your yes. Are you being consistent in what you will say yes to and what you will say no to? Are you the one that is having the control and the power over your life because you can manage and decipher and determine when you're going to say yes and when you're going to say no? It's not up to someone else to determine your future, because all they had to do was ask, okay, protect your yes. Um, you know, and when I can protect my yes, when I can say no to other things. My husband can see that. So, like, when I can say no, someone else can go to that show and travel. Someone else can do that speaking engagement, someone else can work on that project. Tonight, it's not going to be me, it doesn't have to be me. I can build that trust in my own personal relationships because my husband and my family, they can see that they are still a priority to me. It's not just work and everything else and everyone that everyone else has asked me to do. Um, I can prioritize and protect that time and that um, even energy, like even just the presentness that I have with them at the time. So, yes, I might physically be at home or I might physically be in the car with you, but am I consistently on my phone or am I still answering emails, things like that? So, um, protect your yes, because when you can be intentional to build, to build trust through transparency, through consistency and through empathy, and when you can be intentional to protect your yes, it will have tremendous benefits to your relationships, um, both personally and in work at the office, and so, um, I hope that has resonated with you guys. A lot of this content kind of came from a book that I've been reading um, your Sacred yes by Susie Larson. Um, it's a great book. I would encourage anyone if you're, if you're struggling, um in the power to say no that that is a book that I would encourage. It's it is a Christian book and from a Christian perspective, um, so disclosure there. If it's great, if that's what you're looking for, and there's a lot to be found. Even if you're not a Christian, there's still a lot of great content and principles that you can find from there, and so I've had the opportunity to, to learn and to grow from this and some of the kind of like mull on, and I have some mentors that Invest in me and invest in the time, and it's ultimately been like when they've told me no before and it's like, oh, you know, like I can't meet today but I can meet in two weeks, it's like, oh, okay, I see the power that they are illustrating and and representing for me, setting the tone, and so that has been truly encouraging to just be able to learn from others and See how, when we protect our yes, how it can affect so many things. And so thank you for listening to me. Kind of hopefully wasn't too much of a ramble or a rant. It's hard having a one-way conversation, but it's something that's been a lot to me and I hope it's been a lot to you. And so thank you for listening to another episode of from the yellow chair. Leaving a review or a comment or, if you see crystal or I to show it truly means a lot to us. It helps us to to keep going with this podcast. Sometimes it can be hard because, again, we've overcommitted ourselves to where, like, the first thing that's going to get cut is a podcast recording and Our podcast manager, rachel. She's like yep, that's the truth. I'm begging y'all for some content, but it helps us to encourage us to keep going. So if you have some thoughts or ideas for episodes, please Shoot us a message. Follow us on all the social medias. Come up to us at a show. We'd love to see you and hug your neck. You know we're the southern girls, so thank you for listening to another episode. We'll see you next time.