The Cost of Saying ‘It’s Fine’ When It’s Not

You don't lose alignment all at once. You just leak it slowly through these tiny little choices you make. I'm fine. Or discounting your prices, just one more time, discounting your worth.

Or staying silent when you know you need to speak up. One broken promise to yourself leads you away from that alignment. If it's important to you, that's all that matters. However, when you continually do this over and over and over, one day you wake up and you ask yourself, why do I feel off?

You don't feel off because you're broken. You feel off because you've been overriding yourself and your values for months. Alignment doesn't collapse into chaos. It erodes in compromise.

You're listening to The Unblocked Woman, the podcast for high-achieving women who feel stuck but know they're meant for more. I'm Amy Sanders, coach, author, speaker, and creator of The Unlocked Method. This show is your permission slip and power portal. Each episode helps you see what's holding you back.

If you want to learn more about yourself, shift it at the root and rise into that self-led magnetic woman that your next level requires. You're not stuck, you're blocked, and that's fixable. Let's get you unblocked. Hello and welcome back to the podcast.

I'm so excited you're here and I love this topic we're talking about today. We are talking about the little ways that we betray ourself. And most women don't blow up their life by one big dramatic decision. We usually do it from tiny decisions that add up to be thousands over time.

And it's not the obvious ones either. It's not like the big headline worthy moments that define your life. It's the quiet ones. It's fine or it's not that big of a deal.

I don't want to make it weird. I'll just handle it. All of those tiny little moments, those micro self-betrayals, they don't feel dangerous, but they are the reason. You're most likely feeling off, disconnected, feeling resentful, and most importantly, out of alignment, even when things look good on paper, even when you are doing all of the things.

So today I want to talk about the little ways that we betray ourselves. And I'm going to give some personal stories as to when I have done this. So it becomes really real for you and how those micro moments slowly move us further and further away from who we actually are. A micro self-betrayal is when you override your truth to maintain comfort, to maintain the approval from someone else, or to maintain control.

And it's really subtle. It's when your body says, Hey, that doesn't feel right. And you just say, it's fine. You override it.

Alignment rarely causes self-betrayal. It's when your body says, Hey, that doesn't feel right. And you just say, overnight, it usually collapses and erodes through repetition. You continually self-betraying.

So every time you override yourself and say, it's fine when it's not fine, your nervous system registered something important, which is my truth is not safe to hold. And that's when your identity updates. Self-betrayal doesn't look like sabotage either. Most self-betrayal is just like being the one that's easygoing.

It looks like being flexible or being the mature one. But when your body is telling you no, and your mouth says, yes, that is not maturity. It's also not being flexible. It's actually self-abandonment.

And every single time that you do that, you teach yourself, my truth isn't safe here. It is not okay for me to speak up. And be who I am. And that is how women, powerful women slowly disconnect themselves from others.

And to make this real, I wanted to give you some scenarios that have happened in different areas of my life. And the first one I want to talk about is early on in my business. And if I'm being honest, it wasn't even that early on. I did this over and over for years, when I would be on a sales call, and it would come down to pricing, I would totally hesitate, I would pause.

And I could feel as soon as we get into that part of the conversation, my chest would get tight, I would start to feel hot, and my heart would start racing. And I would totally spiral. So instead of holding my price or holding my value, I would start over explaining, I would start over justifying, or I would add bonuses, I would offer payment plans before the person would even ask for them or tell me whether or not the pricing works for them, I would completely start discounting, and spiraling and doing all of the things. Before I even knew if this was something they wanted, I would soften my tone, I would even offer discounts, because I wanted so badly for them to be my clients that I would undercharge my worth before they even had an opportunity to say yes.

And on the outside, maybe I looked flexible or generous or being really supportive. But on the inside, it was super icky. And it was icky, because I was self betraying. My body knew that the price that I had originally cited on for me was aligned.

So every single time I didn't hold my pricing, my value, I reinforced a pattern that I can't hold premium prices, or I have to earn my worth. I need to make this easier for them, even if it's not aligned for me. So looking at this as a whole, this was not a strategy problem. It was actually an identity protection.

It was that micro collapse that was moving me further from the woman I was becoming. And it continued to show up in my life. It showed up in my dance studio, my fitness stuff, my coaching, everything. It was literally showing up everywhere when it came to pricing.

Another story that I think a lot of people can relate with was one about my marriage. Not my first marriage, but my second one. So when I... When I remarried, I continued to self betray to keep the peace.

So I grew up this way. I grew up not speaking, trying to just be very obedient to keep the peace. And then I ended up in a marriage that wasn't a good marriage. And I was trying to keep the peace.

And so then I ended up divorcing. And now I'm in another marriage doing the same exact stuff I was doing in my first marriage. So instead of speaking up, I was quote, quote, keeping the peace. And then I ended up peace.

Even though Chris is an incredible human, again, was not moving from integrity. So there would be moments where something would bother me. And I would become resentful because maybe there was a tone or a comment made or decision made that I didn't agree with. So my body would start tightening.

And instead of speaking up or saying, Hey, that didn't land well for me. I would say nothing. I didn't want to create tension. I didn't want to be too sensitive.

I didn't want to disrupt the peace. I wanted so badly not to be the quote evil step mom. And so I would override myself and I would be quiet and not really speak my truth. And here's what happened.

Resentment builds quietly and resentment is almost always a receipt of self betrayal. So the issue wasn't him and actually wasn't even his kids. Regardless of what they were doing or not doing. The issue was that I was abandoning myself in the moment.

And then I was resenting him or his kids in the process. And every single time I stayed silent, I would reinforce the message that my needs are secondary. And it's safer to keep the peace. But when I did that, my alignment continually eroded, and it leaked into our relationship.

And the truth is, after eight years of doing this, trying to keep the peace trying to be that perfect step mom, our lives quite literally crashed and burned. Because of all of this resentment that I had built up, I sat him down. And everything came out, which sent him spiraling because he wasn't ready for like eight years of my self betraying coming out all at once on the couch one night. And he spiraled so hard that over the next 12 hours, he was like, I'm not going to do this.

I'm not going to do this. 12 months, walls became even thicker, and we almost divorced. And next thing you know, we decided to choose each other. And we both started speaking up.

And what I learned was that he does value my insight, and that he does value my voice and that he wants to show me that I'm important. But I wasn't giving him the opportunity to for eight years, I was swallowing a lot of my own worth and my own voice trying to keep the peace in the name of being a good step mom. And I was like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this.

And I was completely out of alignment, which leads me to my next story, because it ties right in here. So after we got married, I have always been into fitness, my entire life, I've been into fitness. And so by the age of 18, I became a fitness instructor. And I loved it, started teaching all these fitness classes.

And this is what I did for the next 20 plus years. However, when I married Chris, and I started blending our families, I let my fitness slip. I stopped making myself a priority, even this was completely part of me, my identity. And yet, once I started blending our families together, and things got rough, I let my fitness slip.

And I gained weight that I had never had before outside of being pregnant. And to give you an idea of what this looks like, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am right now. So in a short matter, I don't know how long it was that I was pregnant. And I was maybe a year or two.

But I started gaining that weight. And the thing is, I'm disciplined, I know what to do. That's why I just told you about like my fitness background, I know exactly what to do. But what would happen is that mornings would come and I would think I'm too busy to work out today.

schedules would shift, kids would need something work felt urgent. So instead of honoring the commitment that I made to myself to work out, I would think, I'm too busy to work out today. I would say, Oh, I'll do it tomorrow. Or it's fine.

I'm busy. And just one time, doing this one or two times is not that big of a deal, right? It's not catastrophic, nothing really changes. But when you repeat that over and over day in and day out, and continually break those small promises that you have made to yourself, your nervous system registers that she doesn't follow through for herself.

And that identity piece quietly updates, my body became completely unrecognizable. And I'm like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. Which brought more shame and more guilt because I knew better.

I remember looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself. I remember grabbing my belly fat or my leg fat and like pulling it away from the bone and being so mad. And even yelling, I truly thought that I hated my body. But the truth is, I was hating myself, not because of the way my body really looked.

But it was because deep down, I knew that I was self betraying, I knew better. One of my core values is health. And it has been my whole life. But I wasn't moving from that core value.

I was fully capable. But I had put my own needs behind everybody else's. And I betrayed myself in microwaves, those small moments. I'll work out tomorrow.

I'll work out later today. And then today comes later today comes and I don't do it. The small daily choices add up over time. And that's how your trust erodes.

You don't lose alignment all at once. You just leak it slowly through these tiny little choices you make. Just like I did with my fitness and with my marriage. I'm fine.

Or discounting your prices just just one more time discounting your worth or staying silent when you know you need to speak up. One broken promise to yourself leads you away from that alignment. If it's important to you, that's all that matters. However, when you continually do this over and over and over one day, you wake up and you ask yourself, why do I feel off?

You don't feel off because you're broken. You feel off because you've been overriding yourself and your values for months. Alignment doesn't collapse into chaos. It erodes in compromise, not choosing yourself in those micro moments.

The cost isn't just in the moment. The cost is actually your identity. Who you believe you are, who you are becoming, because identity is not what you desire. Identity is what you repeatedly reinforce over and over.

So if you're repeatedly overriding yourself, you become someone who doesn't trust herself. And when you don't trust yourself, everything can feel unstable. And it's not because there's something wrong with you or you're broken. It's because you have trained yourself not to.

Listen. So how do we interrupt the pattern? This is where the work shifts. And this is what you can do.

It's not dramatic, but you do need micro integrity, meaning those tiny little daily decisions you make every single day, standing firm in your power. Here's what it looks like. You see it. You have awareness.

You notice the moment you're about to override yourself. So you catch the moment where you're saying, oh, it's fine when it's not actually fine. You catch yourself when you start to make the discount. And instead of making the discount, you just pause.

You catch yourself when you are going to go silent because it's what you're used to. And instead, you speak up. And when you speak up, you see if it's okay. Wait, am I okay to speak up?

You catch that self-betrayal when you don't do the workout that you plan to do. And there's no shame in this. It's just awareness. It's just seeing it.

It's catching it. And as soon as you catch it, you then can shift it. You can do something different, which looks like choosing one clean act of integrity. Nothing crazy, nothing hard, just one clean act.

So you hold the price. You say the thing. You speak up. You keep the promise that you have made.

You leave the conversation when things feel icky and someone's maybe gossiping. You leave the conversation. You leave the relationship. That might be a big one.

You might not be ready for that. So it doesn't need to be aggressive. It doesn't need to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be big.

It just has to feel aligned. And as you move through these small alignments over time, they shift into your new identity. And here's the thing about alignment is it will feel uncomfortable in the beginning because you're doing something different. You're doing something that you're nervous system is not used to.

So it could feel uncomfortable. But the difference is that even though it's uncomfortable, you still feel relief and you still have an openness in your chest. It feels like the right move. Instead of the tightness, maybe in your throat or in your chest or in your heart, it feels better, even if it's uncomfortable.

The next part is holding it. This is the part most women skip, but this is the part. That changes everything. So when you hold it, you stay with the discomfort.

You let someone be disappointed. You let it be quiet. You let your body recalibrate. You have a really hard conversation you need to respond to.

And you're like, you know what? I'm going to take a minute. And then I'm going to come back to it. You hold it.

And when you hold it, that is where your identity can shift. Identity does not shift through intention. It shifts through repeated proof. So again, you see it.

You become super aware. You shift it by taking one clean act of integrity, one clean aligned action. And then you hold it regardless of how uncomfortable it feels for a minute, because you know that you're choosing yourself. If you feel resentment, you can look at resentment as a receipt, a receipt of where you betrayed yourself.

We love to think that resentment is about them, what they did, how they showed up, what they said, what they did. What they didn't do. But resentment traces back to the moment, the one moment where you knew something didn't feel right. And you stayed quiet anyway.

Resentment isn't proof that they crossed you. It's often proof that you crossed yourself. That's the work. Seeing yourself honestly and openly and deciding to choose something different.

Most women think that they need some massive breakthrough. And once I have this breakthrough, everything's going to change. Truth is that you don't. You just need one.

You just need to stop abandoning yourself in small ways and choose alignment. The woman that you are wanting to become, she doesn't just explode into existence. She's built in micro moments that nobody sees. So instead of asking, where am I blocked?

Ask, where am I betraying myself? And just start there. It's a simple question. Where am I betraying myself and my relationships?

Where am I betraying myself in my business? Where am I betraying myself in my pricing? Where am I betraying myself in my daily patterns? Inside the collective, this is what we practice.

It's the kind of work that you just can't just understand. You actually have to apply it in real time. Not surface confidence, not hype, but the real work. Living in micro integrity and repeating it long enough until alignment becomes your default.

It becomes who you are. And when alignment becomes your default, that is when everything changes for you. So if you want to practice this work, you can join us inside the collective and I'll see you on the inside. Otherwise, I will be back here next week with another episode to help you become unblocked.

And with that, I will see you next week. Hope you have a great week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the unblocked woman.

Listen, you don't rise by waiting. You rise by leading. So if this episode has been helpful to you, please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell button. And if this episode sparked a shift, send it to a woman who needs to hear next.

And if you're ready to go deeper, join the unblocked woman collective or begin the unblocked method at amysanders. co. And remember, see it, shift it, become magnetic. Your next level starts now.