The Difference Between a Clean Yes and a Guilty Yes (And How Your Body Already Knows)

A few months back, I was asked to teach yoga. Yoga is my first love and it honestly felt like someone asked me to get the band back together.

And y'all, for about a day, I was on cloud nine. "Oh yeah, I'm back."

Here's the truth... I really miss teaching yoga. It felt so good to be asked. My ego was already doing the happy dance.

But before I answered, I tried something. I said the yes in my body first — just tried it on, like I'd already agreed to it — and paid attention to what happened in there.

What happened was: I was the boss for years, and now I'm going to be on someone else's schedule every week? The yes felt a bit tight. It also felt a bit heavy. Like something I'd have to carry but it might not carry me.

So I said no. And it wasn't comfortable — saying no to something flattering never is. But the relief showed up fast, and it stayed. That's how I knew. If I'd said yes right away, I'd have been carrying that yes every single week.

That little move — saying it in your body before you say it out loud — is the whole game. Because your body already knows the difference between a clean yes and a guilty yes.

A clean yes feels light and open. No red flags, no fine print. When you get one of those, trust it.

Open the door and walk through it — and then quit standing in the doorway relitigating it. Just go.

A guilty yes is a different animal. It's tight. There's dread in it. There's a little voice going "well, I guess I should, because they did that thing for me in 2009," or "but she's my friend" or "it would make their life so much easier."

And here's what I finally figured out about the guilty yes, and I'm proud of myself for making this up:

A guilty yes is your no wearing a yes costume.

Specifically, it's your no wearing that sweater from 25 years ago. It's out of style. It's too short. It's too tight. It itches. And once you say yes — you gotta wear it.

I had to do a lot of digging on this one, because most of my guilty yeses were dressed up as kindness. It's the kind thing to do. It would make their schedule better. But when I really got underneath it — a guilty yes isn't kindness. It's self-abandonment dressed up as being nice, so somebody else can get their way. When that one landed, I just sat there. Geez. Wow.

Now, if you're wondering why this is so hard for us in particular — there's actual science, and it made me feel a lot better. Judith Orloff talks about this in The Genius of Empathy, pulling from a brain imaging study: emotional empaths have a more developed emotion center in the brain. So when a decision shows up, the emotion center is running the show at full volume, and the decision-making part can barely get a word in edgewise. It's basically being told, "Get in the back."

Which means we're not indecisive because something is wrong with us. We're indecisive because we're feeling too much to hear what's really going on. We end up thinking that it's some kind of character flaw. It's not. It's just that the volume of your feelings is turned all the way up.

So here's the picture I've been carrying around in my mind: a tree follows its roots, not the wind.

The wind is everybody else's opinions — including that thing we do where we call five more people before we make a decision, and every call makes us feel more stuck instead of less. That's not wise counsel at that point. That's just more wind.

And the storms? Storms are intense, and they're loud, and they always pass. Fifteen minutes of chaos and then it's back to a regular day. The mistake is making the decision during the storm. Because I wrote this down during the call and I'll stand by it: most decision regret comes from ignoring our first gut feeling.

So the next time a decision shows up with somebody standing there waiting on an answer — try this. Say it in your body first. Feel for clean or guilty. And if you can't tell yet, you're allowed to say "I don't know yet." And if "I don't know yet" isn't okay with them, then the answer is no until they can give you more time.

You already know. You knew before you finished reading this.

And the next time a guilty yes comes knocking, holding out that itchy old sweater — you don't have to wear it.