Clarity: How to Say No
The ability to express our boundaries opens up the door to sovereignty and to consciously go after what we want
Hi, dears,
Have you ever felt like you compromise with yourself well too much?
Picture this: you are a freelancer desperate to make ends meet. Not only you don’t have enough jobs at the moment but you are also not the best at negotiating with clients.
Today, a potential client reaches out. She offers you a rather low-paying job, and, given the situation, you are tempted to take it. But today is a different day, and so you answer: “Thank you for the offer. I would gladly work with you, and my fee is X. If you meet this offer, you are welcome to get in touch at any time.”
The client doesn't close the deal, but instead, she tells you “thank you for taking care of yourself.”
How would that reply make you feel?
The scene could be anything. A friend inviting you to an event on an evening that you desperately need to get a good night’s sleep. You negotiating changes in your eating habits with yourself. A partner asking you for something that would hurt your sense of being. Your boss demanding something not connected to company priorities and which would stress you out.
Fear of rejection, conflict avoidance, the belief of what it means to be “nice”, lack of clarity about what we want. These are some of the reasons why we have such a hard time saying no to someone.
But by doing so, we are neglecting ourselves and our priorities. Deep down what we are doing is saying that we are not that important and that we don't care about ourselves. Even worse, we imply that our loved ones wouldn’t understand us (which is patronizing their abilities to see us).
Honesty is a funny thing
It’s not like I want to lie to you when I tell you that yes, I am coming to your kid’s birthday party, even if I don’t want to go. I am more concerned about not hurting you and avoiding conflict, so I end up not telling you the no I wish I did.
But then I go to the kid’s party and get to the end of the day feeling drained because I was out of alignment with myself. Meaning, I compromised with myself too much. Ever felt that?
We overbook ourselves to please, we take more jobs than we can, eat keep repeating habits that are not good for us. The result? We end up too busy to even be aware of what is it we really want.
We dread to expose ourselves. To show our true cards and be fully seen for what we are. To look selfish, shallow, “bad”, “wrong”. Whatever those things even mean, given our social constructs. All these things weight us down and don’t allow us to be ourselves — or rather, the best versions of ourselves.
Yet where there is no honesty, there’s no clarity. Where there’s no clarity, there’s miscommunication and confusion.
And this confusion is not only between me and you. It is also between me, myself, and I.
The first step of honesty is self-awareness: our ability to be honest with ourselves.
What do I want, what do I need? What brings me joy? What is it I am doing that is bringing me down and keeping me stuck?
Once I have that sorted, I can make a proper diagnosis of what is a yes and a no. How many of us are conscious of what we need, and stand for it?
That’s what being able to say no means. Because the thing is,
before we are able to express our boundaries, we need to know within us what those are.
It's not like they are set in stone; these boundaries can move and we learn more about them by experience. Yet, we are to discern, with awareness, day by day.
If anything, by saying yes to everyone else (and to ourselves, as in allowing ourselves to keep engaging with all kinds of habits that are not in our own best interest) we keep busy and lack spaciousness within us to get to know what we want.
Being comfortable saying no brings us into alignment with ourselves.
It’s an act of clarity, of self-love, one that says that I know what I want and that this is as important as what anybody else wants. When we are honest, we can go after what we want open and consciously. We don’t spend energy putting up masks — to others, or to ourselves.
By acknowledging our truth we open the door to sovereignty, to take charge of our lives and no longer be victims of circumstances.
Self-awareness allows us to discern between what we want from the depths of our hearts from the desires of the ego – if we dare to look deep enough.
This is not a call to be selfish. We want to be there for our loved ones. But to be there from the right place, from a place of love and care. It's no different than to be there for ourselves: we keep saying yes to so many things we tell ourselves we "must do", but are these true at all? Is what we are doing constantly allowing us to build and live the life we want to live?
“The middle ground”
Sometimes we find this “middle ground”, and give excuses. We avoid saying no or yes at the same time. White lies. Win, right? No.
Say we are good friends, and it’s your birthday. You invite me to go to a bar, but I am exhausted, in a terrible mood. What do I tell you? The truth, or do I tell you that I am sick? Have you ever used “I am sick” as an excuse to not go to a social event? What about work, have you ever called in sick when you weren’t?
We learn to be shady early on. As a kid, we learn that saying to our parents that we don’t want to go to school won’t get us anywhere. But, if we are sick, we can stay home. And, just like that, we learn that if we are honest we don’t get what we want. So we play and carry this shady behavior throughout our lives.
Every no is a yes
Trade-offs: a sacrifice is needed. I know, this sounds so dramatic. But the truth is, we can’t say yes to something without saying no to something else. Every yes is a trade-off. Are we aware of what this trade-off is? Is it worth it?
The beauty of this is that this means that when we say no to something, we are saying yes to something else. What is that we are welcoming? Say no to a toxic relationship, open up the path to self-respect and love. Say no to an unfulfilling job, say yes to your potential. Say no to an event you don’t want to attend, say yes to something else you want.
We suffer because we only look at the pain of the no, instead of the greatness of the yes.
If you need more encouragement, how about focusing more on what you are saying yes to through that no instead? Bring your awareness and heart to that yes.
Here is yet another twist:
how do we think we can get a better life and get what we want while keeping filling up life with things that we don’t truly want and are not good enough?
Honesty is the path to clarity
The ability to say no when I can access the trade-offs opens up the door for a much bigger dimension of life: what’s the point here? What do I want, what do I need? It puts the big picture at the center. It allows me to be myself, not what others expect me to be. Every no (as well as every conscious yes) brings confirmation of internal alignment.
Clarity shows us our boundaries.
Be it with a partner, family, and, of course, yourself and your habits. What is important versus what we are not able to do without compromising the quality of the most important.
We are taught that saying no is rude, and we are socially rewarded by saying yes. The result of that is a lack of self-connection, which in its turn results in compliance with the status quo, self-consciousness/shame, and not creating our dream life.
Sometimes we are to say yes, sometimes we are to say no. Discernment is key.
Clarity is the name of the game
It is easy to say yes to things coming from the outside and follow the stream. The world is full of shiny objects in the shape of fun classes, good parties, amazing museum exhibitions, heavenly smelling coffees. Have you ever felt like a busy bee and yet stuck, no new land in sight?
Sometimes, the role of our busyness is to cover up for the fact we don’t know what we want, and that is scary.
When we have a clear purpose and are aware of the life we want to live, then it's time to work to make that life come true — and to keep it up. To do that kind of B-I-G work we need clarity. We need honesty with ourselves. Self-awareness, and self-connection. From that place, saying no with clarity, alignment, and love is a natural consequence.
Some Practices
Sometimes it's hard to know if something is a yes or no right away. And it’s ok: you don’t have to answer everything right away. You can say “let me get back to you later”. Take your time to align, to check in with yourself if this is right for you or not.
Walk the talk. If you want to be able to say no, you need to be able to hear no from others. We all have different things going on. Practice saying “Thank you for taking care of yourself” to people who tell you no. Let people know they are heard and seen.
When asked for favors, ask yourself if it is as important as other things. If not, return the conversation to the topic of priorities. If we were doing this new thing, what would we stop doing? Do trade-offs together. Bring this awareness to those around you; shifts are more powerful when we do them together.
Ask yourself when you wake up: what do I want to experience today? Calm, playfulness, focus? Then ask yourself, what are the three main things for today? Align with your intentions and desired outcomes, bringing more clarity to your everyday life. If you get tempted to say yes to something new throughout the day, simply be aware of the trade-off.
If you don’t know what you want, then it's a completely different matter. Sometimes we need to slow down and stop saying “yes” to everything (even to ourselves like stop being on our phones, listening to podcasts or on Netflix) so we give ourselves time in silence to go into our own personal questions: What matters to me? How do I want my life to look like? Who do I want to be as a person? Meditate, journal, take your time.
For more clarity of what you want, take my online course: Set Your Intentions: what do you want? This course is all about self-connection, for clarity comes from within.
See you next week,
Aline
Ps: Confused about your next steps? Check out my online course: Set Your Intentions: What Do You Want?