How To Know When To Say Yes or No To An Opportunity

Welcome to a new episode of Soulfull Sound Coaching! Each month, l’ll be answering your questions about anything related to healing and transformation, connecting with yourself, discovering your gifts and practical strategies on sharing your gifts with the world, or... any burning question you have and sense that I'm the right person to answer it!

This month’s question comes from Katerina.

I find myself blessed to have opportunities coming my way, but sometimes I don’t know which way to go. How do I know when to say Yes or No to an opportunity?

Great question Katerina, thanks for asking. First thing that I want to point out is that you have started this question from a place of gratitude – being blessed with opportunity, so I just want to acknowledge that.

I’m sure there are many approaches to this type of question and so I’m going to share what personally works for me. You may have heard me say this before and I’m sure you’ll hear it many times in the future. My approach with most things is an inside out approach, meaning I focus on what’s going inside of me, as much as (if not more) than that outside of me.  So, while I do know my goals and what I’m wanting to achieve from my business and life (which is not static and always evolving). I also know my personal and self-development goals related to the betterment of myself. And for me one of these is growth.

So, when I have to make to decisions around opportunities that arise, I do a few simple things as a litmus test of some sort.

Starting with the inner – I use my intuition. What is my first response to the offer? Notice what your sensory response is to the opportunity. Our bodies create different sensations to something that is a yes and something that is a no. With some body awareness, you can actually test this out for yourself with a simple exercise.

Try this exercise:

Sit/stand a relaxed manner and just notice your body so you have a starting point. Breathe deeply and relax your body. Then say the word Yes out loud at least 20 times and then stop and notice your body – what are you feeling now? Are you noticing any subtle changes?

Then do the opposite and say the word no out loud at least 20 times and notice the difference. You might notice that for the word yes, your body naturally wants to go forward or towards something and that with the word no, it wants to move backwards or away from something.

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Taking it to a mundane level, when someone offers us something, let’s say a food for example that we don’t like and we say ‘no thanks’, we often slightly bring our bodies backwards in response. It’s worth noticing these subtleties because when noticed, you can then tune in at a deeper sensory level. And when tuning in at a deeper sensory level you then have access to tuning into a tangible/palpable space where you can source your intuition.

Now remember I said a moment ago that one of my personal and self-development goals is growth? So here’s an interesting perspective on this. Where does most of our growth happen? Just outside our comfort zone. 

So very often when an opportunity pops up and it scares me, I use fear as an ally. Meaning that when fear pops up, it sometimes signals the discomfort of potential growth. I remember years ago I was asked if I would be interested in speaking to a large group of high-level corporate men to help with team building. For whatever reason at the time this triggered fear in me and so I responded with an immediate yes on the phone and then after hanging up allowed the ‘freak out’ to pass through me. I asked myself, is this opportunity going to help me to grow? Is it aligned with my goals and purpose. 

"The dance between our intuition and our goals can bring so much movement and harmony into our lives and it just takes awareness and practice.  

So, once you have tapped into that intuition, you can then look outwardly. One of the things that first needs to be in place when making a yes/no decision (based on your rational mind), is knowing what you want and what you don’t want. This way, you make decisions that are aligned with your purpose and goals. So, to answer your question I’m going to presuppose this to be the case – that you already know what you want or don’t want or that your goals are in place.

So what is it that you want cultivate in your business and life? What are you hoping to gain from the opportunities that arise? Do you want to grow and therefore step outside your comfort zone? What are the ingredients needed for you to create your litmus test when making decisions?

There is no cookie cutter approach to this, however there are some strategies that have been more successful than others and when modelled can reap many benefits.

So I’d invite you to experiment with my approach and see what comes up for you. Remember to start with your intuition and move outwardly towards alignment of goals.