The Power of NO (and how to harness it)

Saying No is a radical act of self care, but it's not always easy. Here's how to get better at it.

Okay, you gorgeous thing! You’ve earned a little relax in the sunshine. Let’s make our coffee iced, and head outside to the patio. And, by the way, don’t you dare start with the ‘I’ve earned nothing…’ talk. You’re brilliant, and you deserve lovely things. So, let’s go.

Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash

As part of the April Spring Clean theme, the final thing that we’re going to touch on is the theme of saying no. It’s time to clear out the commitments we are hanging on to or we make from a knee jerk reaction.

I know, I know. For some people this can strike a sense of horror in the heart! Not you though; we’ve got this!

So many people that I know (mostly women) self-identify as chronic people pleasers. They recognise that this can be one of their achilles heels and yet don’t seem to be able to get to a place where they can say strong confident ‘no’s without guilt or embarrassment.

Saying no can feel like we’re letting people down. Like we’re somehow dismissing or diminishing them. But it’s not. It’s actually diminishing you. You deserve to have priorities, dreams, desires. And when you’re dismissing them in favour of other people’s, you’re doing no one any favours.

Let me explain…

How many times have you accepted an invitation for something you knew you were going to turn down later? As soon as you said yes, you knew you weren’t going. It was just a case of when you were going to cancel. And how horrible did it feel to have that hanging over you? And I wonder how it felt to the person you cancelled…

Imagine now if you could be invited to something, take a beat to decide if you wanted to (on your terms), and then say a comfortable yes or a confident no, without the guilt hanging over you.

So how can we get to that point? I’m going to share here some ways you can buy yourself time, understand the power of saying ‘no’, get comfortable with saying it and stop apologising for saying it.

Ready? Let’s dive straight in with The Honey…