Ep #06: The Art of Saying No
episode summary
If you’ve ever said or thought:
💭I just don’t know how to say no
💭I feel so guilty when I say no
💭She will be mad at me if I say no
💭If I don’t do it, no one else will
. . . this week’s episode is for you!
I’ll teach you the exact steps for saying no, and explain why it’s hard to do sometimes. I’ll help you evaluate what your REAL answer is, and teach you how to communicate that concisely. By the end of the episode, you’ll know the exact steps to take to say “no” when you mean it.
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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What You’ll Learn:
Why we fear saying no.
How to say no, including details on each step:
Pause and give yourself time to think.
Use the Love and Fit Test to determine whether you want to say yes or no.
If the answer is no, think through saying it and notice how you feel. It’s ok if you feel uncomfortable, it will probably be uncomfortable at first.
Say no clearly and without a lot of explanation.
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast.
Hello, hello again, my friends. Welcome to episode six. I am feeling extra calm today because not only did I get a great night's sleep, which is a whole side story because I love sleeping and I make it a real priority and it makes a big difference in my life.
But also, last night, my teenage son and I took a heavy bag boxing class. I don't know if you've ever done that, but it was so much fun and such an amazing way to get rid of any frustration. We'd never done it before and I felt so cool and tough because we had to buy the wrist wraps and they wrapped our hands in our wrists and then let us borrow some boxing gloves and they taught us all the punches.
It was so cool and the bag was super high tech, so it kept track of the punches. So I can tell you for sure that I punched that bag over a thousand times and that one hour workout last night. So if I sound extra calm today, it's because I have zero frustration left in my body between all the mindfulness work I do.
Plus a thousand punches. It's gone. Today we're going to talk about the art of saying no. I coach my clients one-on-one and I work with people who are feeling overwhelmed and stressed. And the source of this is many things, but almost always there is a part of it that is the inability to say no or feeling so bad, saying no.
When you don't say no, when you want to say no, what happens is you say yes to being overwhelmed or having more stuff on your schedule than you want. So learning how to say no is a really important skill and a really important thing to implement in your life. If your goal is to make your life less stressful and more intentional.
Being able to say no, like the actual word coming out of your mouth is not the problem. Right? If you could just say no right now, you can just say the word. It's not that. It's our thoughts about saying no that trip us up. So instead of saying, I can't say no, what we're really saying is the thoughts I have about being able to say no are so overwhelming I don't know what to do with them. So I just say yes to avoid it. That's essentially what's happening. So today I'm going to dig into that. We're going to get into the details of it. I'm going to walk you through exactly how to say no and give you some tips that will make the whole process feel better for you, feel less stressful and relieve some of the guilt that you feel when you say no today.
If we think about why we say yes, when we want to say no, it's often rooted in people pleasing and really worrying about what other people will think of you if you say no. If you want to know more about people pleasing after you listen to this episode and you haven't already done so, go back and listen to episode three, which is tied in with this topic, but is all about people pleasing.
The other reason we often don't say no or we say yes when we don't want to say yes is because we want to be the person. We want to see ourselves as a person who can do anything. I used to totally fall into this category that I just wanted to prove to the world as if anyone cared, that I was the person who could handle it all.
I used to literally think there's nothing that can happen that will upset me. I can do everything. First of all, that's not true. Why was I aiming for that? I don't know. But sometimes we get caught up in acting from old beliefs and things that we don't even want to do anymore. So we're going to investigate a little bit about what's going on for you.
If you're a person who has trouble saying no, by the end of this episode, you will have some very good tools that you can use to work on that. Here are the exact steps for how to say no. The first step, and you're going to notice that this is the first step in a lot of the tools that I teach you, because this is not human nature, especially when we're under stress.
The first step is to pause. Just pause and think about what you want to say. So when someone asks you to do something, instead of immediately saying yes. Just pause and think about what you want to say. This might seem really obvious, but when I work with my clients, we will often come to realize that she is not even pausing to think about what she wants to say, but instead just defaulting to a yes.
Remember when you get asked to do something, there is no requirement that you respond immediately. You can just let a text sit there. You don't have to answer an email immediately. If you're face-to-face or on the phone, you can say, oh, thanks for asking. I'll think about that and get back to you. You can definitely take a pause.
The next thing to do is while you're pausing, think about what your answer actually is. And to do this, I recommend using the Love and Fit test, which are two key questions that you have to ask yourself in order to decide if you want to do that thing. The first is, do I love this idea? Do I love the idea of doing this?
Think about if your answer to that is yes or no, then ask yourself, does this fit? Does it fit into the life that I'm trying to create? So for example, if you are trying to create a life where you are more part of your community and have more social connections, answer it that way. If you're trying to create a life where you are trying to be less overwhelmed and less stressed, does it meet those requirements?
So does it fit with the kind of life that you are trying to create? When you ask yourself those two questions, if you get a double no, so no, I don't love this, and no, it doesn't fit into the kind of life I'm trying to create, then the answer is a no. And if your answer is a no, I'm going to tell you in just a second how to communicate that and how to think about it.
So if you get a double yes. So yes, I love this and yes, it fits into my lifestyle, then that's definitely a yes. So for example, the other day, my handsome man friend asked me if I wanted to go see a concert on a Thursday night. And it's a band that I don't really know that well, but someone that he really likes and he thinks I'll like to.
So do I love the idea. Yes, I definitely did. Sounded like fun. Does it fit? That's where I had to look and see because I like to try to do things. We don't live together, so I like to try to do things with him a couple times a week. But I also have kind of an unwritten rule that I don't do things like I.
Several work days in a row, several work nights or school nights in a row. So I checked out the week. We didn't have anything else on the calendar, and so that made it a yes for the fit. So yes, sounds like fun. I would love to do it, and it fits into the lifestyle that I'm trying to create. So that is a yes.
Now you've got your double no and your double yes if you have one yes and one no. Your answer could go either way. And here is how you decide on figuring that out. If you have one yes and one no. So maybe, yes, I love it. No, it doesn't fit, or no, I don't love it. But yes, it fits. You just have to decide what you want to do.
It's not as clear that way, but at least if you have the double no and the double yes answers, then you know exactly for sure when those are a yes or no. So let's go through when you have one yes and one no, what you should do. My example of this is my daughter takes horse lessons. She loves riding her horse.
It is not my favorite. I do not love, especially when she used to lease a horse and we went to the barn like four times a week or something because for me it's just sitting there and I, um, did not grow up riding horses. I am not, I mean, I think the horse is really cute and I'm glad it makes my daughter happy, but it's just not my favorite thing to do, so I don't love it.
Maybe say I like it kinda, but it fits into the type of life that I'm trying to create because I want my kids to have passions and she basically just decided she wanted to do this and pretty much badgered me. I. Until she was able to start riding horses, and as soon as she did, she loved it just as much as she thought she would.
So for me, I don't love it, but it totally fits into one of my core values and what I want my kids to have. So my value isn't, I want them to have the same passion as me. My value is I want them to know what theirs are and get to, you know, investigate that and spend time doing that. So even though that was a no and a yes, that's still a yes for me.
So I can tell her, yes, you can take horse lessons. Yes, I will take you and sit in the barn for several, several, several hours per week. Um, you also might have a situation come up. I gave the example of, you know, getting to go out on a date to a fun concert during the week, but had that been a week where my schedule was really busy, yes, I would've loved to do it, but it didn't fit in with the kind of life that I'm trying to create for my kids and me.
So I would've said, no. In that case. So it just depends on, you know, how strongly you feel about the one that's a yes, and how strongly you feel about the one that's a no. But the main thing is you just have to take the time to think about it and decide. It almost doesn't matter what the answer is, as long as you're clear on what it is.
So now we're to the point where you have paused, you have used the love and fit test to determine if you actually want to do this thing. By the way, just as a side note, I was talking to one of my clients the other day and we were talking about the love and fit test, and she said, this just sounds really hard to me, but I know that you actually do this in your life, so this is actually possible.
So if this right now feels like what are you crazy? Everything on your calendar passes your love and fit test, I would say. It seriously does, I'm not kidding. It is completely possible to live a life that is totally in alignment with how you want to live your life. Okay. That was just a little side note.
So by the end of this step, you're clear on your answer. You know, if you're a yes, you know if you're a no. If it's a solid, yes, this is the easiest part, say yes, put it on your calendar. Good to go. If it's a solid, no, at this point, here are the steps that I want you to take. So again, we're going to slow down.
This is before you're even going to talk to the person again, or answer the text or reply to the email. Picture yourself responding to the person with a no, and just notice how it feels and what you're thinking. For example, I have this friend named Katie, and Katie is a sales rep for a company called Noonday.
You guys may have heard of them before. They sell the cutest jewelry and bags and things like that, but the purpose of the company is to empower workers in many countries all over the world to do their trade. So they train them on how to do the job, or maybe it's a family trade that they've always known.
For example, beating or hand making bags out of goat leather is another thing that they do. So they train people, give them a secure job. Pay them a fair wage. And then people in the US and other countries sell these goods. And the money, of course, goes back into these people who are, um, working in various countries.
And on top of that, they support adoptive families, which both of my kids are adopted. I don't know if you guys knew that. So this is, uh, I mean this is close to my heart. These are many of the issues in the world that I care about, empowering women, paying fair wages, adopted kids, all these things. So anyway, my friend Katie asked me recently if I would host a trunk show for noon day and invite a whole bunch of friends over and have them shop so that we could, you know, raise money for this company and support all the things that are important to me.
I gave it the love and fit test. Love is a definite yes. Like in all caps. Yes. Fit was a no because I thought, when am I going to have the time to have that party? And you know, it's not just having the party, it's like preparing your house for the party and making the food and thinking about who to invite and giving Katie all their email addresses and all those things.
It just felt overwhelming to me. And so I thought, I totally support the purpose of this company, but this is a no for me right now. So I replied back to Katie's email the next day and said, I can't do this right now. Totally appreciate what you're doing. Love the company's motto. Happy to come to a party at your house anytime, because she hosts lots of parties and I always go and shop when she has them because I love the company.
So that felt really good because it was just true. I didn't have a lot of drama around it because I'm very practiced at this. But let's just say that this would've been me like five years ago. I would have, first of all, I probably would've just done the party because I wouldn't have wanted to say no. And when you do that, then you just take so much time and you're kind of half-hearted in it when it's not something that you really want to do.
And my thoughts would've been, she'll be mad. She'll be mad that I'm saying no again, because she's asked me before and I've said no. She's asked me before and I've said yes too. I've done it before. She's going to think I'm a horrible friend. She's going to think I don't care about people in other countries, blah, blah, blah.
Like all the thoughts that I could have had about it. So that's what I want you to do When you're hesitating to say no, just notice. What am I thinking? What am I worried about? It's very likely going to be what the other person is going to think about you. And I just want to remind you, again, go back to the people pleasing episode if you want more info on this.
But you can never control how another person feels. So there's nothing I can say or do that can make Katie mad. She can only get mad by the thoughts that she's having in her head, right? And a lot of times when we have thoughts about what other people are thinking or going to think about us, that's a good clue that that is not a useful thought.
The other thing is when you're picturing yourself saying no, you will very likely feel uncomfortable. It is totally normal to feel discomfort when you say no, especially if you don't say no very often. Now it causes me no discomfort, but it used to cause me a lot. So just remember that discomfort is okay.
It's just a feeling. A feeling is just a vibration in your body. It doesn't last forever and it won't kill you. So think about the discomfort I could have felt typing that email back to her and hitting send versus the discomfort of actually hosting that party and how much time and effort that would have taken me.
So the discomfort was much shorter, and my relationship with her, with Katie is much more honest because I just said no upfront. So once you realize what you're saying and you investigate your thoughts, like I'm worried that she's going to think I'm a jerk and I feel really uncomfortable saying it. Just know all those things and say no.
Say no with minimal explanation. You do not have to tell. Like for example, I didn't have to say, well, here's the thing, Katie, you know, I'm a single mom. My business is really busy right now. My kids are getting towards the end of school, so we have lots of homework. My parents are going to be here, but you know, on and on and on.
Like, I don't need to explain all that. She doesn't probably care about all that. All you have to do is say no. Just know that feeling that discomfort is totally normal. Embrace it. Say it, get it over with. Just for fun. When I was writing this episode, I reached out to my friend Katie, who I'm using in this example, and I asked her about this situation.
I said, Hey, I'm recording a podcast episode about saying no, and I just wondered if you'd be willing to share with me your real thoughts about what I said No to you about hosting that party. This is exactly what she said. I'm reading her texts. Truthfully, I was super relieved to get your honest. No, most people don't respond at all either because they forget, or I'm guessing more likely because I don't want to be mean when I really just want an answer.
So I think that her response now, if she would've said, well, actually, I kind of thought you were a jerk for saying no. I still would've said no anyway, but her response, I think is the more, more often response. People like the truth. Just tell the truth and tell it quickly. No one likes the long no. You know, when you just don't respond or say, I'll get back to you, or kind of keep putting the person off.
That is so much worse than just being direct. Being kind, being honest, and just saying no. Okay, so now we've gotten to the point where you've said, no, you're sitting with the discomfort. That's fine. You can feel discomfort. Now, just for fun to reinforce how great this is going to be for you later in your brain, put that event that you just said no to on your calendar.
So in my example at the party for Katie, I'm going to go out a couple months on a Friday night, I'm going to put. The noon day party I would've hosted, and then I'm going to put on the Thursday before prepare all the food for the noon day party. And on the Wednesday before, I'm going to put clean up the house for the noon day party, find something for my kids to do during the party, et cetera, so that when I actually get to those days, I can look and see, oh my gosh, look how much time I saved myself.
Good job me. Good job me. Okay. That part's just for fun, so you can reinforce that. Saying no really, really helps your schedule. So here's the deal. Anytime you say yes, when you don't want to say yes, you're saying no to something else. So you're saying yes to hosting a party and no to having a chill, relaxed Friday night.
You're saying yes to volunteering at your child's school and no, to being able to, um, make a work meeting. And maybe that's okay, but just realize anytime you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. Anytime you say no to something, you're saying yes to something else. The steps, once again, super simple.
Number one, pause. What do you want to say? Figure out what you want to say. If you want to say yes or no by using the Love and Fit test, do I love this? Does it fit into the kind of life I'm trying to create? The answer is yes to both of those. Great. Say Yes. If the answer turns out to be no, think about saying no and what comes up for you.
Notice your thoughts, kind of evaluate them. Think about if they're really true. Embrace the discomfort that you feel and just say, no. No, in and of itself is a complete sentence, but just keep it short. Say no, say it quickly. Say it honestly. Then just move on. That's all you need to do. Okay? I hope that you can go out today, have a great day, and somewhere in a small way, say no to something.
See you next week.
Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website@michellegauthier.com.
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