What value does your YES have when you never say NO?
It was late afternoon, in a quiet, remote corner of the Netherlands - pretty much “where Jesus lost his flip-flops”, as they say in Spanish.
I had just finished a training and was trying to figure out how to get to the nearest train station. When a colleague offered to make a small detour to drop me off, I hesitated. Who would want a detour after a full training week? - I thought.
Not wanting to inconvenience her, I started searching for an alternative that would make it easier for her - maybe I could ride with her all the way to her city and catch a train from there instead.
Without a moment's pause, she replied: "Oh, no - I need some time alone in the car to clear my head before I get home."
Something clicked. I could trust her YES precisely because of how easily she could say NO. There was no need for me to attempt to protect her from discomfort - she knew her own boundaries and stood by them.
This brought back a question our teacher had posed just days earlier: "What value does your YES have when you never say NO?"
Real, authentic connections depend on our capacity to express (and receive!) both a heartfelt YES and a firm NO as equally valid and acceptable options. It’s when both are available to us that we can show up with authenticity and respect for ourselves and for the person in front of us.
There's an important nuance here. The capacity to say NO comfortably doesn't exclude the capacity to say YES — or, at times, to stretch beyond our usual limits to support someone we care about. I want to emphasize this because people often assume that anyone who says NO easily must have healthy boundaries. Sometimes that's true - but not always.
For some people, rather than being an expression of healthy boundaries, NO is the default answer that gets expressed even before the question is fully formed. And while it may feel like a choice, a closer look can reveal that it’s simply another way of keeping ourselves at a distance: from ourselves, from others, and from the vulnerability that a YES might expose. In these cases, the growth edge isn’t learning to say NO more firmly. It’s developing the capacity to sometimes say YES and to allow a little more openness and vulnerability in the presence of another.
A YES that exists without the possibility of NO is - perhaps more than we’d like to admit - just going along. And a NO that never softens isn’t really a boundary, but a wall.
And if you’re up for a little challenge, here’s an invitation to a brief reflection exercise.
Bring to mind someone you're close to. Notice what happens in your body when you imagine saying YES to them. Then notice what happens when you imagine saying NO. Which feels more available? Which feels safer? Any new insights for you?
