I said no to freeze tag.

A while back, my kids had dragged me outside, begging me to play. Just one game. Ten minutes.

And I wasn’t busy. Not really.

But I genuinely believed I couldn’t afford it. Like every yes I gave away was one less unit of energy I’d have for the things I needed to do.

So I said no.

And it killed me quietly.

Because I wanted to play. I really wanted to. But I said no because I believed I’d already used up too much.

And I was terrified of running out.

Today, we’re talking about why saying yes feels so expensive as a Five, and a simple shift that will give you back more energy than saying no ever did.

When energy feels like a battery

Back then, I was treating my energy like a battery.

Every morning, I’d wake up with a fixed charge. And every yes I gave away drained it.

Every commitment.
Every text message.
Every moment of attention I offered someone else meant less charge for the work that mattered.

So I learned to guard that battery like it was the only thing keeping me alive.

The strategy made sense. And honestly, it wasn’t wrong. The problem was what lived underneath it.

When you believe your energy is finite, saying yes starts to feel like losing. So you build walls:

• You say no to the meeting because you need that mental bandwidth for the proposal
• You say no to the hangout because you’ve already spent social energy on coworkers
• You say no to freeze tag because you’re afraid that one yes will tip you into emptiness

And then something strange happens.

You end up with all this protected energy. But you’re also disconnected. Isolated.

You’ve got the battery fully charged, and nothing to use it for except protecting the battery itself.

The river changes everything

Here’s what changed for me: I stopped thinking of my energy like a battery and started thinking of it like a river.

A battery has a fixed charge. You pull from it, and it’s gone.

But a river flows. And a river doesn’t run dry because of how much moves through it.

A river runs dry when you cut it off from its source. When you build a dam. When you hold the water still because you’re afraid there won’t be enough.

That’s exactly what I was doing.

I wasn’t running out of energy. I was damming it up. And the more I held on, the more stagnant it became.

And the irony is that I was exhausted trying to save energy.

Here’s what I’ve learned since making that shift:

• Fear-based no’s don’t recharge you. They just keep you still. And stillness isn’t the same as rest.
• The things that drain you aren’t the yes’s. It’s the guilt, the overthinking, the constant calculating of whether you can afford to show up.
• When you let energy flow, it regenerates. The river doesn’t run out because it keeps moving.

The real cost of no

Saying yes when you’re a Five costs you differently than it costs most people. That’s real.

But the question is whether the cost of yes is actually higher than the cost of no.

Because no has a cost too. No is invisible. It doesn’t show up as exhaustion or a missed deadline.

No shows up as disconnection. As walls. As small moments where you chose protection over presence.

And that cost compounds.

It becomes the story you tell yourself: I don’t have enough energy. I have to choose between myself and other people.

That becomes your operating system.

The cost of not playing, the isolation, the distance, the guilt, is steeper... It actually dries up the river more.

Your turn

This week, I want you to notice something...

1. Identify your dams

Write down three things you’ve been saying no to recently. For each one, ask yourself: Is this a real boundary, or is this a fear-based wall?

A boundary protects something real. A wall protects you from your own fear that you’re running out.

2. Let one thing flow

Pick the smallest item from that list. Say yes to it this week. Don’t plan it. Don’t optimize it.

Just let it happen. And pay attention to how you feel afterward.

3. Rewrite the story

The next time you catch yourself thinking I don’t have the energy for this, pause. Replace it with What if I do?

You’re not forcing yourself into a yes. You’re just questioning the assumption.

Just noticing: Where am I damming when I could be flowing?

Your energy isn’t running out. You’re just holding it back.

It's time to let it flow again.