Clarity

Being able to say no

This is a topic many struggle with their whole life. Sometimes it isn’t because you don’t have the skills to say ‘no’ – one can be assertive and have clear cause to say ‘no’ many times a day and do so without thinking. In many ways you don’t say ‘no’ more often because you don’t want to – we want to say ‘yes’ to things. Attracted by the ‘bright shiny’ opportunity that you may be creating in conversation with someone else it is easy to say ‘yes’ now to creating something that seems great in the future. However, this is a practice that you may need to work on to keep on top of managing our resilience. This also linked to the earlier topic of how you respond to an obligation – once you’ve said you will do it you may then feel you have an inner and extended obligation to follow through on it. The article linked below, on ‘the power of saying no’ includes a useful technique for imagining your future self’s response to something you said ‘yes’ to today.