How to say no with love

Rock Solid Relationships

Speaker A: You. If you ever find yourself saying yes to things when you really want to say no, and then feeling either exhausted or overwhelmed or resentful to the person who asked you to do that thing, or if you find that you feel guilty every time you say no when you don't want to do something, then this podcast is going to be so useful for. So stay tuned because I'm going to teach you why you feel resentful and why you feel guilty, and then how to say no with love, and how to say yes when you really mean it. Listen in. Ready to create rock solid relationships with the people that matter most to you. You are in the right place. My name is Sarah Payne, and I'm a master certified relationships coach. And each week I teach you how to create the connection and love that you desire because you know that the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your relationships. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the podcast. Are you ready to talk about how to say no with love? And also how to know when you should say yes and when you should say no? I'm excited to teach you about this. This is a pretty hot topic. This is something that I coach my clients on all the time, and I think it's something that many of us struggle with, like how to say no, because we have all sorts of ideas about what it means to say no and the kind of people who say no and how we shouldn't say no. And so we're going to kind of uncover some of those things. And then you can learn to say yes when you mean it. Yes with love. And also to say no with love. And not feel guilty when you say no. And not feel resentful when you say yes. We're going to talk about all of that, but before we begin, I do have to tell you about this book that I'm reading that I am loving and that I just want to give to all of the people I love and your people that I love. So I'm going to tell you about it. It's called at 1 minute, and it's by Thomas McConkey. And it's all about just like living a life that is more embodied, more present, more grace filled. And so I've just really been enjoying it. And so particularly if you are a person of faith, which I think most of you are, most of you who listen to this podcast, I bring faith, and I wouldn't even say religion so much. It's just like faith and love into so many of my podcast episodes that I think that it will resonate for most of you. So go check it out. It's at one mint by Thomas McConkey. But okay, before we talk about how to say no with love, we need to understand why it's hard for us to say no. Like why we say yes when we mean no. And I think there are various reasons. But one of the reasons is it's hard for us to say no because we were taught to say yes. We're taught that it's rude to say no. We're taught that you should serve and love and help, especially if you are a woman. You were taught this, right? I think we were all taught this. But women, especially from the time that we're very little girls, are taught you should serve and you should love and you should say yes. I'm all for all of those things, just not at the expense of your well being and not at all costs. It's also hard to say no, because oftentimes you're choosing what you want most, which is whatever you're going to get by saying no. Whether it's time to yourself or working on a different project or taking a nap or whatever. It's often choosing what you want most, which is what you will get by saying no to choosing what you want in the moment, which is often like avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. Because, let's face it, it can sometimes be awkward to say no to someone in the moment. And so we choose what we want in the moment, which is the comfort of saying yes to what we want most, which is whatever we're giving up by saying no. And it's also hard because you don't want to see yourself. Most of us don't want to see ourselves as selfish or unhelpful, and we don't want others to see us that way either. So we often say yes when we mean no. So now that we understand what's going on, likely going on in our brains when we say yes, when we mean no, now we can talk about how to know when we should say yes and when we should say no. I think it's really important to ask yourself, what do I want here? That is, like, cringy for a lot of you. I know it is. I know some of you just bristled like it's selfish to consider what I want, and I respectfully disagree with it being selfish to consider what you want. And also, I just want to give you permission to. You can decide what you want and still say. Still choose something different. But being honest with yourself about what you want is really a way to build a relationship of trust with yourself. So sometimes that means that you might pause and you might not answer right away. You might not say yes right away because you want to consider, what do I want? And like I said, this is just an opportunity to be honest with yourself. It doesn't mean you have to act on it, but you can acknowledge it. And then you want to weigh the factors, including what you want as well. So you want to weigh what it would look like to say yes and what it would look like to say no. You want to recognize that saying yes to something means you're saying no to something else, whether it's, like I said, time to yourself or more space to do what you've already committed to or any number of things. But saying yes, when we recognize that saying yes to something means saying no to something else, it can just give us a little bit of perspective, and it can have us pause before saying yes to everything. Right? Saying yes when you really mean no often comes with resentment. It's like, does this sound familiar? Like, why do they have to ask me? Don't they know that I do everything? How dare they? Seriously, I can't believe they have the nerve to ask this. That feels awful, right? It feels, like kind of self righteous a little bit, speaking from personal experience here, but it also feels terrible because it comes to so much judgment of the person who asked us to do the thing. And I think sometimes we think in such a either or way that it's like, oh, I can either say yes and feel resentful, or I can say no, and then they are going to resent me. And so in this weird power play, we try to manipulate what other people are going to think of us, and so we say yes when we mean no. And there are just more options than that. Is it possible that the person is going to resent you if you say, yeah, no, absolutely. But they could resent you if you say yes too. Like, they should have said yes with more gusto or with more. Like, they should want to want to do this. Right. So when we find ourselves trying to control or manipulate how other people perceive us, that's just a good reason to take pause and to notice that, like, oh, I'm trying to control what they think of me. Good to know. Maybe that's not the best reason to say yes to something. And then that brings me to my next point. Like, your reasons for saying yes or for saying no. And one of your reasons can just be because I want to like, because I want to say no. That's reason enough. Sometimes I say yes to things that I don't want to do because I like my reasons why. And sometimes I say no to things that I actually would like to do because I like my reasons why. And we're going to get into a couple of examples. But once you make a decision, like your reasons, and then make a decision, and then you can get creative about how you deliver that. If your decision is a no, you can get creative about how you say it. Let me give you a few examples. No, but I can't do that. I'm not willing to do that, but I am willing to do this. Or you can say, can I get back to you, like, just giving yourself that space? I'm not saying you don't get back to them. You can still get back to them, but you don't have to say no. When you're feeling, like, activated or heightened. I'm willing to fill in the brain do this. I love to say, oh, my goodness. I am so flattered that you asked. This happened recently when I said no to someone. I am so flattered that you asked me and no, because I wanted to give this person an explanation, but you definitely don't have to. Which brings me to my last point. You can just say, no, thank you. And that is a complete sentence. You don't have to explain your reasons to anyone. You can, but you don't have to. And you don't have to be mad about that either. You can say, no, thank you with love. And that can be the end of the conversation. That being said, let's take some examples. So recently, my son asked me to play pool with him. We have a pool table in our house here in Colorado, and he asked me to play pool with him. I don't like to play pool, y'all. It's not my favorite pastime. And initially, I was like, it's a no in my mind. Like, that's what I thought. And then I kind of went through these steps and I paused for a second. Then I asked myself, okay, what do I want in the moment? I don't really want to play pool, but I do want to connect with my son. This is the dialogue going on in my mind. So I weighed the factors. Okay, playing pool is probably going to take, I don't know, like, half an hour, and then I'll still have time to do some of the things that I had planned before. He asked me to play. And then I recognized, okay, if I say no to playing pool, it means I will have less time to say yes to the things that I had planned. Good to know. Do I like my reasons for saying no? And in the moment, I was like, I don't really like my reasons, actually, because I want to be a person who, a mother who says yes when her son invites her to hang out, especially, like, weighing what else I had going on in my mind, I was like, oh, I was going to relax and watch a show, but I wasn't feeling, like, super burnt out or tired. I was just, like, looking forward to it. But in my mind, I was like, oh, I like my reasons for saying yes because I want to. Want to play pool with my son. Are you picking up this whole conversation I'm having in my head? And so I liked my reasons for saying yes, and I checked in with myself. Do I feel resentful? Am I feeling like he's asking me to do one more thing with him? No. I'm actually looking forward to spending some time with him. Even though my first choice wouldn't be to play pool. Like, I owned my decision. I could say no here, and I could say no with love, and that would be okay. I am choosing. This is key, my friends. I'm choosing to say yes because of who, like, the kind of person that I want to be. There's no right or wrong here. I could have chosen to say no and liked my reasons for that, too. But the key here is, like, giving myself the ownership and the responsibility over this decision. And so that's how I came to the decision of choosing to play pool with my ten year old son. Now, there was another time where I was working in a position in my church, in a leadership position in my church. And my pastor asked me to do something. He asked me to head up, like, all of these dinners with, like, over that spanned there was, like, one a month indefinitely. And I didn't want to do it. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. So first I recognized what I wanted, right? I took a pause. I did not answer him right away. I took a time to pause and find out what it was that I really wanted. Okay. So now I know that what I want. Let me weigh the factors. Okay. He wants me to do these dinners. I don't want to do those dinners. What else do I want to include? Well, this has been a tradition in our congregation. Okay? So that's good to know. Do I want to do it just because it's been a tradition? And I was like, actually, no, I don't and are there other factors that come in? Yes, there would be other women that would be helping me with this. Okay. So I want to consider them, and the opportunity gives them to serve, and I also want to consider the things that they have going that are on their plate. Right. And consider. Okay, do I want to ask them? Because it would be me asking these women to participate in these dinners, do I want to ask them to do this thing? And after I weighed it and I liked my reasons, I decided it was a no for me and that I could say no with love. So it sounded like, I know that this has historically been a tradition in our congregation, and I'm not going to be in charge of it anymore. And I so appreciate eight, you asking me, and it's a no. And then I allowed my pastor to have his own experience with it, to think whatever he thought. I'm sure he thought plenty of things about me and my possibly, like, unwillingness to do the status quo, what had always been done. But because I liked my reasons for saying no, it was so much easier for me to allow him to have his own experience. Now, what ended up happening, this isn't always the case, but what ended up happening is because he saw that I was willing to say no. And because I took into consideration all of the factors, it developed this relationship of trust with us. Because he knew that I was willing to say no when I meant no, and that when I said yes, I meant yes. I was all in, so I wasn't going to say no and then be resentful. If I said yes to him, then he knew I was going to be all in, and I knew I was going to be all in, and I knew that. I learned from that experience. Oh, my goodness, I didn't die when I said no and allowed him to have his own opinion of me. That didn't make me crumble. It was like such a self confidence builder as well. And so let me just review these steps one more time to not just to saying no, but also to saying no when you mean no, and saying yes when you mean yes. When someone asks you to do something, pause, then ask yourself what you want and take that into consideration. Just to be honest with what you want. Then weigh the factors and include it in it. What you want. Recognize that saying yes to something automatically means saying no to something else. This was key for me in saying no to my pastor. I was like, if I say yes to this, it's going to take up a significant amount of my time and also the time of the women in my congregation. And I think that there's better uses of our time. There's ways that we can serve more effectively in our community than this. So I took that into consideration, and after considering that, the next step comes into play. I liked my reasons, and so I made the decision to say no. And I chose an uncomfortable conversation in the moment over long term comfort of liking my reasons for saying no. And then I did get a little bit creative with how I said it. I was like, no, we're not willing to do this because I want to make time to do XYZ. Instead, we're not going to do these dinners for the people in our congregation because I want to be able to free up time for the women to. That was where my leadership calling was. Like, I had a stewardship over a large group of women. And because we are saying no to serving these people in our congregation, we can say yes to serving in the greater community, like soup kitchens and the Salvation army and things like that. And I liked my reasons, and I got creative about it. And then I would add that the last step is to allow people to have their own experience with your no. I hope this podcast has been helpful. And if you struggle to say no, I want you to know that you're not alone. This is something very common, like we talked about at the beginning. Of course you struggle with it. You were taught to say yes all the time. And all that's going on is that you're choosing to say yes to the comfort in the moment of people not having thoughts about what kind of person you are that says no. And then over the long term comfort of owning your own decision and taking into account what you want most. So if you struggle with this and you're like, I want help, sign up for consultation. Call. You can do that. Easiest way, honestly, is to go to my Instagram account, Sarah Payne coaching, and there's a link in my bio, and you can sign up, and I will help you get started. We can talk about how to work together, because this learning, this skill will truly change your whole life. It's going to change all of your relationships for the better when you learn how to say no with love. Can't wait to meet.