Voicing our NOs
It is soooo hard to say NO to the people we love the most and people in general ! Isn’t it ?
You know when your best friend organizes a party that sounds really good on paper but you know that you are going to hate it?! Do you tell her or you go anyway?
We all know that kind of situation where the people we love ask us to do something and we don’t want to do it or go but we end up going anyway and it makes us feel like sh** before during and after.
We knew beforehand and yet we didn’t listen to ourselves because we put their needs first or were scared of their reaction or didn’t want to hurt/ disappoint them.
In the stories I did earlier this week about setting boundaries and saying NO, I left many things out as I simply wanted to react briefly about Gabor Mate’s podcast snippet and I would like to develop on the topic a bit more here. It will be a blogpost though so not everything will get covered as it is such a VAST topic.
There are many steps that come before being able to voice our NOs but let’s start with that anyway and I will touch on the pre-requisites later.
By now my closest friends don’t hesitate to cancel or say NO right away when they don’t feel like doing something with me (after all not everybody likes bad-taste mini-golf parties, fair enough!) and I don’t take it personally I understand and I do the same because I know that it’s not going to be a problem, they won’t take it personally either when I say NO or cancel! But those are my closest friends they know me, I know them, we love and respect each other and we see on a regular basis so if we disagree to do something once in a while it’s fine, we’ll meet again in a week or 2 from now.
But where I still fall into the pleasing-trap from time to time is with the friends and family of my partner for example! And when I don’t fall into the pleasing-trap, I tend to feel guilty when I say NO to way-too-much-time-spent-all-together or an activity I am really not interested in.
What I learned and think about action taken from wanting to please or a place of guilt, is that it’s never worth it because it won’t feel good for anyone. The other people will probably feel the resentment and my face cannot lie very well (at all). I don’t want to be distributing bad vibes, there are enough already! Secondly, like I said earlier, I will not only feel sh** during the event but also before and after! Is it worth it? Nope. My time and well-being are too precious and this is too much energy spent stressing about an upcoming event and being angry about a past one. And I’m not even talking about the resentment towards my partner!
On the other hand what I learned about voicing my NO (despite the guilt) is that oftentimes alternatives that are more aligned for everyone will show up. And that in those moments when I choose to be there, I can be fully present and connected to the others.
So how to get there ?
I think the first times are the hardest because we might not be used to doing it and it takes practice. For me it got better when I noticed that most of the time people actually understand and don’t take it personally. In fact it gives them permission to do the same with me or others.
If emotions are rising up, as best I can, I feel, acknowledge and give space to them (it might be fear of what could happen or what people could think or guilt or not feeling reliable…) either in meditation or with a space holder like a coach or therapist.
Every culture has another way of declining an invitation in a polite way. I practice communicating a clear NO in a gentle and loving way without justifying myself with made-up excuses (aka lying) because ‘justification calls for negotiation’.
We can also invite the energy of trust in difficult conversation, to help us trust that everything will turn out great for everyone and that it will be a win-win situation. We can also ask to be guided by our highest-self to find the right words at the right time.
But what if we lack clarity or don’t know how a NO feels like ?
Decision-making has never been my strength because I am a Libra! So I started training, the little every-day-life decisions. Do I want tea or coffee ? Sushis or Pizza ?
In those ‘small’ decisions it might be easier to notice how it feels to know what you want or that it’s a yes or a no. It might be experience, it might be that you are lactose intolerant, it might be that Sushi will remind you of your honeymoon in Japan, whatever the reason or sensation, emotion, notice it, so you can apply that to the ‘trickier’ decisions in your life.
Whenever I lack clarity about a decision, I wait until I can feel it’s a clear YES or NO. If I don’t feel a clear YES then it’s often a NO.
The question we can ask ourselves is: Do I actually want to do that (without thinking of the consequences or of what X, Y, Z will think)? And if you find yourself thinking ‘pfffffff’ then the answer is probably NO.
Again we can also ask our highest-self to show us what could be the best option for us.
And sometimes we only find out in retrospect and it’s okay. We just need to keep it in mind when a similar experience comes around again.
The good news about getting older is that we gain clarity (hopefully)!
What can you say NO to this weekend to be fully present during the things you said YES to?
Tea or Coffee?
Sushi or Pizza? Or maybe it’s a third option you haven’t considered yet ;)
To understand, from a scientific point of view, why it’s so important to listen to ourselves and voice our needs, listen to the full episode of one of Gabor Mate’s Podcast here
