YYou probably don’t need to be told that your life would improve if you could learn to say “no”. Take a look at your to-do list. Take a look at your diary. How much of that can someone else do while you are a bath in epsom salts and listened to a podcast about ghosts? How much resentment and sadness could you have washed away as you rolled around in your acres of untainted me-time?
Natalie Lue, the author of The Joy of Saying No, spent nearly the first 30 years of her life saying “yes.” How did it work out for her? “This led to feeling sick, frustrated and resentful with family, at work, even with friends.”
But it’s not as simple as just deciding to say “no” more often. As Julia Bueno, a psychotherapist and the author of Everyone’s a Critic: How We Can Learn to be Kind to Ourselves, points out, “You run the risk of exposing yourself to someone getting pissed off, or judging you, or to criticize you.” It is a lifelong journey, for an inveterate pleaser, to learn how to get a true sense of “where you end and others begin”, and set a boundary.
So take everything one bite at a time. Build your “no” muscle with repetition. Start somewhere with low stakes, and lie if you have to: “no” experts are pretty unanimous about the value of the white lie. I personally find all “no” situations equally impossible, but here are tactics for 13 scenarios you may find yourself in.
Family
Will you all go? in on a five-day family Christmas, because that’s what you do every year?
If a “no” will break someone’s heart, Bueno recommends a white lie: “My work rota has come through; it will have to be three days.” But your family is going to be your weak spot: a close sibling will probably know you’re lying, and it’s very hard to get out of character if you’re the person who usually goes with the flow. That’s what makes it even more important to say no, Lue says. “These are the people from whom we learn our relationship with ‘yes’ and ‘no’.” If you have a hangover from the childhood dynamic and feel like you can’t say no, focus on the long game. “On my dad’s side of the family, no matter how old you get, you’re still the kid to the adults,” Lue says. “It’s a very African-Caribbean thing: many immigrant cultures take respect very seriously. So there was a lot of friction for a while, and I felt really hard at times. But here we are, all these years later; we are in a much better place.”
Keep your answers to yourself, says Bueno. “How you progress will depend on the relationship at hand. If it’s a sibling you’re very close to, you might be explicit.”
Will you babysit your toddler nephew again?
People tend to ask for things because a pattern has built up: “There’s a part of us that says, ‘I’ve done this many times, without complaining.’ We understandably get pissed off about what their reaction will be if we say ‘no,’” says Lue. And probably there shall be a reaction, whether it’s making a face, or a full-scale conflict. “It’s not about the ‘no’ being wrong – it’s about the dynamic. Actually, your ‘no’ was overdue.”
If you are worried about the situation flaring up, you can try the startling “no”: I can do it this time, but next time I need more knowledge.
can you lend me (your brother or sister) some money?
If you have it, and it’s a one-off that will stave off catastrophe, do it. But if it’s part of your relationship, that they always ask for money, never pay it back and think you’re made of gold, you’ll have to say “no” at some point. Do it with compassion – this situation, in which you are the moneybags, was half created by you. There is a risk that the first “no” will be so awkward and unfamiliar to you that it will come off as brusque and unfriendly. Beware of the relapse. You’ll probably have to say “no” more than once to keep it. It’s actually quite liberating if the other person gets mad at the refusal: more likely they don’t, and you just feel guilty. Ask yourself, advises Lue: “Does what you usually do help? Are you preventing that person from figuring something out for themselves? We can be sensitive to what someone is going through without depriving them of their responsibilities.”
Your spouse wants something. It doesn’t matter what – it could be a garden center trip, a mini-break, a game of Scrabble. What matters is, you always say ‘yes‘ and now you want to say ‘no‘
“When you talk about marital relations,” says Bueno, “it’s more of a negotiation: it’s much easier to know in less intimate situations where I end and you begin.” In a relationship, you may have collapsed into each other somewhat, and if you try to re-establish boundaries unilaterally, it is quite threatening.
“Your partner might think, ‘Are you mad at me?’, ‘Are you punishing me?’, ‘Are you withdrawing from me?'” says Lue. “If they feel threatened by that, you have to have a conversation that starts: ‘I realize that I have pleased people.’ Give some specific but brief examples. Say, ‘I want to change the way I do things, but I’m not the one taking you out.’
Friends
Would you come out for a drink even if it’s a Tuesday and I’m a canner and you like to be in bed by 10pm?
A straight “No, I’m tired” would be fine, but we often offer alternatives: “Would you rather come over?” It’s fine if you want your friend to come, but often that counter offer is just to keep the negotiation in play because it feels hard to close it. Lue says, “If someone says, ‘Hey, do you want a threesome?’ and you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t go, ‘I don’t want to do a threesome, but how about you tie me up instead?’ Don’t offer alternatives if you don’t want to do the alternative either.”
Will you come to my party even if you have a terrible time?
The golden rule on all invitations is “stop and think”: if this happened in half an hour, how would you feel? Many parties won’t clear this hurdle, and now you have to figure out what to say. It’s very simple, says Lue: “It all comes down to knowing your audience: there are certain friendships where, if I say, ‘I can’t be arsed,’ nobody thinks anything of it. Give those relationships your honesty, because they can hack it.” For the friendships that can’t cut it, a simple prior engagement will work. I always say it’s my mother’s birthday. She was about 15 times 80.
Will you come to my wedding, even though it’s going to be very expensive and you can’t afford it?
The nightmare scenario is that you’ll do what everyone else does, says Lue: “You know you can’t afford to go to the wedding, but you don’t want to feel like a bad friend, so you put it off: “Yes, I’m coming – that would be great.” It drones on and on, to the point where, when you realize you have to say something, it kind of feels like it. And then they get annoyed. And you think, ‘Hang on, why are they getting annoyed with me? If I can’t afford it, I can’t afford it.’”
Come in early and say the hard thing. But don’t use money as the reason if it is not the real reason. If you get in early enough that they actually adjust their plans to make it cheaper, and you still don’t want to go, no zealous expert in the world can help you.
A big gang of us went paintingfrolic on a date yet to be determined. Are you prepared for that in principle?
It feels very mean to reject a plan before it’s even made, like you’re raining on everyone’s parade. Bueno’s advice covers many scenarios, including this one: “If your immediate reaction is always ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, sure,’ take a moment. Say, ‘Can I get back to you on that one?'”; “Let me think a little.” Just buy yourself some time. Most people don’t care.” By the time you’ve decided it’s a “no,” the message will have already gotten through that you’re not in the mood, and it won’t feel so blunt.
You might worry that if you turn down a group activity that they’ll all turn you down when you’re not there: certainly, if they think you’re lying, or you’re known to flake out at the last minute, they will they knock you down. They probably already have a sub WhatsApp group without you. But if you’re straight, there’s not much to say: “Tsk, that X; always be clear about his/her needs and preferences, on time.”
Work
Will you, self/employee, take on this project that you don’t have time for?
“You have to set a boundary, but you don’t want to seem unwilling,” says Marie O’Riordan, an executive coach. “The first thing you say is: ‘Thank you very much for the opportunity.'” Then you just have to spell out what that would mean: “I’m going to have to postpone project X, which was important to the client. So which one would you like me to prioritize?” It is more stressful at work because there is a formal chain of command, and the expectation is that you will say “yes”. But this is where Bueno makes clients practice saying “no” because it’s less emotionally charged. “I can set homework and say, ‘Just say no to that extra project—give it to someone on your team,'” she says. “And customers come back with this look of great joy, to say ‘no,’ and it was OK. Nobody died.”
Will you mediate between these two warring colleagues, or manage a difficult client?Again, O’Riordan suggests you “show mercy. Say: ‘I’m very happy to do this. But it might be confusing for them – they might wonder why I’m stepping into that role. are you on your way Did something happen?’ What you do strategically is to try to unnerve the boss, while remaining compliant.”
Would you take this promotion, which you don’t want, either because it’s a lot more work, or because the work is less interesting, or because there’s no more money in it?
You have to get it right, because an enthusiasm failure can mark your card. “You can say something like, ‘I want to spend more time with my family, and that might interfere with the commitment required.’ It may not be entirely true, but it’s a good way to say ‘no’ because they actually want you 24/7,” says O’Riordan. Give the family lie a time limit – “while the kids are doing GCSEs”, “while my dad is ill”, “until the youngest starts primary school”: that way you haven’t pegged yourself as a permanently unambitious person and you can on your own grid again comes into play. Once you start on a big, long-distance lie, maintaining it is your responsibility.
The world
I am about to perform a medical examination of an intimate nature; do you mind if five student doctors come to see?
Many people feel intimidated by the medical profession, and others feel they have a civic duty to be guinea pigs, because how else are students supposed to learn? But having a hearing in any kind of medical examination is not the same as withholding the admission of a learner driver, and there are a number of reasons why you might not want one. “Just think, ‘There are other patients,'” Lue says. “There are all kinds of people, many of whom won’t care at all.”
Can I stop you in the street and ask what you think about cancer/animal abandonment/knife crime and also get your bank details?
It’s such an unfortunate feature of modern life, the chump: they have to act incredibly cheerful around people who just want to be left alone; you feel their humiliation, and yet at the same time cannot afford to take out every possible charity subscription. I always go with, “Thanks, but I’m already donating to X,” so I validate their cause and therefore their effort. They know that I might be lying, but they also know why, so the exchange is quite pleasant in the end, although of course it would be more pleasant for them if I just gave them my bank details.
