You said no but you ended up doing all of the work anyway and it sucks.

That moment you look back on something and realize you had said no but you did it anyway, feels awful. You hate that you allowed this to happen or feel so regretful for the time and effort lost on something you didn’t even want in the first place. Sometimes we can start to be unkind to ourselves or think poorly about ourselves.

It really sucks, I know, I’ve been there.

For my birthday a few years ago, my boyfriend was house hunting. He was living in his parents basement while looking for a new home. Living with his parents was fine, they have a good relationship, but he is a grown up and he wanted his own space again. He hadn’t lived with them since highschool, so being in their house again wasn’t what he wanted.

We shopped for houses together, but ultimately it was his decision. He found a house he loved and was under budget (which at the time in Colorado, was unheard of, yay for our manifesting powers!). When I congratulated him on the find, he told me that the signing of the papers would be the weekend of my birthday.

I knew at that moment that I absolutely did not want to be spending my birthday deep cleaning a new house or buying furniture or packing up a moving truck in the heat (June in Colorado can be hot). So I told him, “No, I will not be doing any moving on my birthday.”

He fully respected that and to his credit, never asked me for help with anything. But as the weekend got closer, I found myself saying yes to little things that were in the category of moving. I said, “Let me just deep clean one room of the house. That won’t feel like I’m giving up anything on my birthday, just one room” 

Four hours later, almost the entire house had been deep cleaned, and I was sweaty and exhausted.

On the day of my birthday, I said, “Let’s go shop for a new couch and dishwasher, I can manifest a good day even if it’s not what I want to do”.

We spent 8 hours out shopping at different stores for large furniture and appliances. We got home and I was exhausted.

The next day, the day I had originally planned to celebrate, we were supposed to go to an arcade & sushi dinner. I woke up that morning and was so bone deep exhausted, I couldn’t get out of bed. My body and soul were sore, and I felt like I had emotional whiplash. 

I canceled the celebration I had planned.

I was devastated. I looked back and realized I had just given away my entire birthday weekend. No one forced or pushed anything on me, my boyfriend was totally flexible and easy going about it all. He kept being so surprised when I would offer to do moving things. That’s probably because I had already told him no. A few times, he even asked, “Are you sure? You said you didn’t want to do any of this on your birthday weekend?” I would reassure him and go along with it, the thing I had said I didn’t want.

The moment I realized I had given away the thing I wanted was awful. I hated that I allowed that to happen.

At that moment, I realized that just making the decision (saying no to moving) wasn’t enough. I had to follow up with all of the other decisions after that.

The first big “No” doesn’t make a huge difference if I said “Yes” 5 more times after that. I had given away what I wanted by not making choices that lined up with my decision not to move.

The only thing to do was move forward and bring my awareness to how I followed up with my decisions. Next time I made a choice, I was sure to follow that choice up with more things that lined up with it.

It can really suck and you might hate that this happened, but just know everyone makes mistakes, including me! And I’ve been practicing this stuff very intentionally for over 5 years, and I still allowed this to happen. Everyone slips up occasionally, even “professionals”.

So give yourself a break. Stuff happens sometimes, and that’s ok. Know that in the future, you’ll follow up your decisions with other choices that line up with that decision, and you’ll be more powerful for it. This was just an experience for you to have better knowledge and wisdom in your life moving forward.

If you want to hear more about how I moved through giving up my birthday after saying “No”, take a listen to this podcast episode. https://www.manifestingsuccessstories.com/search/?q=vicki Episode #389. We go in depth about how making follow up decisions that align with your first decision is so powerful. And how when you don’t follow up, it is also powerful, but in a way you don’t want.