Four Ways to Say No

WHEN “YES” IS THE DEFAULT ANSWER

Photo by Morgan Bryan on Unsplash

“Yes” and “no” are very powerful words.
Mean them when you say them.
Respect them when you hear them.
~ Michael Josephson

Saying “no” can be a tricky skill. We aim to please, to belong, to support, to commit. Saying “no”, does it erode that possibility?

Sometimes it feels like it does…

Yet, “no” is the twin of the word “yes”.

When we learn to feel our “no” and respect it, we can then also relish in and savor our “yes”.

However, “no” can feel odd in the body. It can be an “ewwwww” or a contraction or a vacancy or absence or some other emotional contortion.

It feels, well, u n c o m f o r t a b l e.

And then we remember, how we aim to please, to belong, to support, to commit, to be or service. And we don’t want to disappoint, disrupt, disconnect or deny extending the talents we seemingly have in abundance…

Saying “no” can feel like a small inner rebellion!

In this article I invite you to bring more reverence to your “no”. Honor her bodily clarity. Honor that you have cues to know what you can commit to at this juncture. “No” and “yes” live in a sweet inner place inside you. They want to have a chat about all the things and they want you to discern well.

So, on behalf of saying “no” and “yes” here are four ways to practice getting to “no”.

1) Learn to say “No” minus the context

Because we want to please, to belong, to support, to commit, to be of service, and we also don’t want to disappoint, disrupt, disconnect or deny, we may be prone to offering a whole lotta of context with our “no”.

Learning to say “no” without explanation is a healthy practice. It gives you the choice to explain yourself or not. I like choices. And I like agency.

The Practice
In a safe, low risk part of your life, practice saying “no” and allowing this to be a full sentence. And saying nothing more, even when the resistance or response arises. And note, the resistance may be from within or without!

For example, say “no” to the request for a snack 30 minutes before dinner. Or say a silent “no” to a pop up on a website asking for your email address. Or “no” to watching Netflix tonight.

Feel the space between “no” and all the words that you might be tempted to drop in to explain your “no”. Remember, the idea isn’t to withhold your view, it’s to learn to get a little more comfortable with the gap.

2) Say… “maybe next season”

A good friend just completed a significant body of written work, born over years. She’s accomplished and talented and her skills are often sought after. Shall we take a page out of nature’s rule book and declare her to be in a season of fall?

I say “yes”.

Fall is not a time of planting, it’s a time of releasing, acknowledging the bounty born of earlier seasons, but definitely not a time of doing more or starting more or extending oneself.

Fall is the season of “no”, maybe later.

The Practice
Curiosity. That’s it. Get curious about how/when/why we give-give-give and say all these “yeses”. Journal about your own way of saying yes endlessly and how/why this became a practice.

If fall is happening where you are. Go outside and appreciate her. Thank her. Notice just how right it feels to be in fall. There may be a wee bit of sadness as we say goodbye to summer. There may be some exhaustion that shows up in your bones after months (years!) in summer. This is normal.

Welcome fall. And leave more room for “no”, not this season. In spring perhaps there will be room for more yeses.

3) “I’ve got a rule”

Make a rule for yourself that when invited to do something or participate on another committee or are asked for your leadership to take “X” say you’ve got a rule.

You’ve got a rule that you always sleep on decisions before saying yes or no.

Sleep always offers fresh perspective. Always. Let people know that you have a rule and do not offer up a yes or no without observing this rule. Most people don’t require immediate replies, they just want to know when you’ll get back to them with a response.

For bigger commitments, consider a rule of, “I always take a weekend.”

The Practice
Look back over the last week and notice how quick you got to a yes or no. Learn to watch yourself in situations like these, and start inserting a pause. It can be just a breath, but work towards stating your “rule”.

4) “My plate is full”

When my husband and I got married we picked out our dish set, opting for a more day to day style than the traditional china.

When we did, we knew we wanted smaller dinner plates. An extension of our beliefs in eating well but not eating too much, we knew that if we calibrated our meals to plate size regularly we’d eat more aligned to our values and stomach capacities.

After all, you can always go for a second helping if you’ve got extra tummy room.

Start getting to know how “full” your life plate is. Yes, marry up both life + work, because if your plate is too full of work you’ll have no life and if your life is full you’ll probably keep on doing all the work.

Don’t like the metaphor? Use percentage language. “I’m at 95% capacity.” People are less apt to argue or disagree with numbers.

The Practice
Sense into this week and without over-thinking things or making a rigid practice of the inquiry, notice what your capacity is. Give it a %. Yes — include everything in your life. Next week do it again. Simply asking yourself the question is what will create the comfort with the question and truing up your capacity and ability to say yes/no.

Success = reverence for your Yes and No

You need to become skillful in both. We know this already.

There isn’t any kind of committee that exists assessing how many “yeses” you doled out this week… no one is counting.

“Yes” and “no” have nothing *really* to do with anyone else and have everything to do with being insanely intimate with yourself and wholly aligned to your values.

So let’s practice!