Saying No with Assertiveness
I read a great article this morning by Lucy Kellaway in the Irish Times on “The Sheer Bliss of Just Saying No” talking about no being the new yes. When I read the fact that there were colouring books for adults on saying no I thought “Oh here we go another fad”!”
However, it is so much more than that. When we learn to say no using our own internal gauge – when no is better than saying yes – then we can do so knowing that what we are doing is right for us and an act of self-love! We may say no to someone who is draining our energy!
Sometimes no might suit us better in the present moment, but yes might be more beneficial to us in the long run.
In this case, it is a matter of stopping and feeling into whether answering no best serves us right now and if so, owning the fact that we have said no even though there might be a consequence in the future.
I am all for owning our stories whether we say yes or whether we say no because we are taking ownership of our story, there is no pushing and pulling in our energy body. There is no “I should have done this or I should have done that”. We make a decision, we own it and we know where we were coming from when we made the decision.
To me, saying no is about becoming assertive rather than being passive aggressive. When we are passive aggressive we say yes but all our energy and communications say no. Often people pick up this energy and may not know what to make of us!!! What they will see is someone that said yes who is being quite aggressive towards them. This gets confusing and can cause conflict.
There is nothing worse than working with someone when we know they don’t want to work with us, it’s just too hard for both parties!
The internal gauge we can use is asking ourselves “Does it feel right?”
It might sound very simplistic but we do have our own internal knowing and our very own body signals that tell us whether something is good for us or not. Our emotions are telling us how we feel about what we are doing. If we feel shame around saying no, this does not automatically mean we should say yes. Shame is an emotion we carry around all too often and sometimes we don’t even know what we feel shame about. Perhaps it is connected to an old story, maybe a story that belongs to our parents like the shame of not doing something in case the neighbours would think bad of us. BUT, this is not our shame around this particular story.
Jealousy is another reason that might make us say yes instead of no. We might really want what the other person has and feel if we say yes to what they said yes to, then we will have it all. However, life does not work like that. Jealousy is a great signal from our energy body letting us know what we really desire. If we say yes to it now out of a place of jealousy maybe it’s just not the right time for us. A no might be a better answer at this moment in time. In this scenario, we gain an awareness of something we really want and, we can keep a note of it for the future when the time is better for us.
We can use all of our emotions as gems of wisdom to indicate to us the best route to take in any particular situation and to help us gauge the best answer to give. Our emotions and our feelings come from a place deep inside of us and are great tools for teaching us what’s best for us here and now.
Of course, we have to decide whether or not it’s a yay or nay on whether to listen to them or not!!
Until next time, keep the faith, Dolores Andrew-Gavin, Founder IrishHealthHour, Founder Global Emotional Health Summit, Soul Care Practitioner, Energy Therapist, Author and Mum
