Learning to say no

• Why your “yes” means nothing without a “no” (4:22)
• Choosing peace over victimhood (8:22)
• Embracing calm and connection (10:46)
• Loving yourself by saying no (11:06)

QUOTES: 

“The harder you try to say no and fail at saying no, the more you will struggle to say no. Is that a brain teaser or what?”

“Corporate America loves when you are always a yes. …If you already have a tendency to say yes, and then you enter corporate America and they want you to work constantly, it just can turn you, a) into a workaholic, b) it turns you into someone who struggles to say no.”

“Do you want to keep choosing to live as a victim of family, of culture, of other people, of your workplace? Or do you want to have a life where you feel peaceful and balanced? And I know for myself I always want to choose peaceful and balanced. And

“I’ve learned that saying no allows me to support the whole in a different way than might be traditionally interpreted.”

“Saying no is an act of love to yourself, because you’ve been in this nightmare where saying no brings the world crashing down on you, full of guilt and shame for putting yourself before others. And that really is not true.”

“Saying no is something you do so that you can say yes to yourself, to another social option, whatever that looks like. Remember that saying no is actually the most loving thing you can do for yourself.”

NICOLE

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the School of Self-Worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong. I hope you have been having fun with some of the remarkable guests who have been coming through the School of Self-Worth. I’ve had the best time, having awesome conversations with really remarkable women, and now that we are fully into summer, I wanted to jump into this topic, because it might be a time when it is tough for you to stand your ground. And I’ve been seeing this and experiencing this with some of my clients, where they’re struggling to say ‘NO’, and this is true for everybody.

If you suffer from FoMo, this is the place for you, and this is real in summer, right? There’s so many opportunities and so many things happening. So I wanted to spend time today on the topic of learning to say ‘no’. I’m going to take you through a really simple two-step process for that, especially when you are tempted to say ‘yes.’  This is a learned pattern, and especially for immigrant daughters. But once you learn to nip it in the bud, it becomes so much easier. It took me years, though, to learn to say ‘no’, and I still consider it truly a practice. So this is one of the podcast episodes for you to save and really know, so that you can come back to it if you’re struggling with saying ‘no’.

I am so excited to dive into this with all of you. Before we get started, if you’re an Asian American corporate woman who wants to master her emotions and her mind, so she can manifest the promotion and life of her dreams, dm me dreams @NicoleTsong on Instagram. I’ve got something there for you.

Alright, friends, let’s dive in today. Welcome to the School of Self-Worth. A podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a bestselling author of three books and work/life balance expert, helping ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfilment and radical joy. Every single week, I will bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insight about what it takes to be brave, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough.

So here is a not so fun fact about why it’s probably hard for you to say ‘no’, when you want to say ‘yes’, especially if you’re an immigrant daughter. And it’s this: The harder you try to say ‘no’ and fail at it, the more you will struggle to say it. Is that a brain teaser or what? But there’s a simple two-step process that I’m going to share with you about how to move through this challenge around saying ‘no.’

First, just a little bit of story time. From my experience when I was a journalist, I used to struggle a lot with saying ‘no’, especially when it was a really cool, special project. But I even struggled to say ‘no’ to working nights or weekends, because that was some of the expectation at work, or to put in extra hours, and this was always in service to what I was working on. I had a really, really hard time setting boundaries on that. The truth was, though, every time I said ‘yes’, it was a giant cost to myself. Since that time, I have become really good at saying ‘no’. In fact, you might even ask around. I have a little bit of a reputation for this, and it’s really because, over the years, the better I got at saying ‘no’, the more people, unsolicited, would tell me that they appreciated my clarity.

Do you want to know why your ‘yes’ means nothing if you don’t have a ‘no’? I learned this from my teacher, Suzanne Conrad. It’s really important for us to remember, if you are someone who says ‘yes’ to everything, it’s going to be super easy to always ask you. So if you become the ‘yes’ person, you’re the person who is the ‘go to’ whenever something falls apart. But if you’re someone who is known for saying ‘no’ when it’s not a fit, people are much more mindful about what they ask you to do. They understand that your ‘yes’ is a powerful thing to receive, and you’re not someone who gives it out lightly, so they are more thoughtful when they ask you to do something with them. So your ‘yes’ means something, and it changes the way people interact with you. That is an important thing to remember when you’re trying to practise learning to say ‘no’.

Before we dig in on how to do it, let’s also talk about why you struggle with it, especially my immigrant daughters who are out there listening. If you grew up, especially in Asian American households, you probably learned that group harmony is the way, and it means that the whole is prioritized over the individual.

In certain cultures, Confucian culture in particular, this is really how you did it. This is why you honor your elders. You really care more about your parents, your grandparents, and other people are really important for the choices that you’re making as an individual, and your actions are influencing the whole and reflecting upon your family. So your choices were always to do things that don’t embarrass your family. In fact, you wanted to try and make them proud so that they can say, “Oh, wow, our kid is doing so well and honoring our family,” because otherwise people might think less of your family, right? It’s not just about you, the individual.

So you learn this. You come into this whole practice of putting everyone else first. You’re making sure your parents are proud of the choices you’re making, that your siblings, your neighbors, other people are coming before you. Then you come into corporate America. Corporate America loves it when you always say ‘yes’. They will take advantage of that at every turn, and then it can get even worse. So if you already have a tendency to say ‘yes’,  and then you enter corporate America and they want you to work constantly, it just can turn you A) into a workaholic, and B) it turns you into someone who struggles to say ‘no’. So when we’re working on all of this stuff, it’s really important to understand the context from which we came from.

Let’s also add in now, as you know, if you’re living in America, that this is a society that really prizes the individual. How do you figure out this balance? How do you work out how to say ‘no’ in a way that’s still honoring family and still honoring where you come from, and how do you navigate and balance that? There’s this one more level, though, to get into before we dig into that part of it, and the next level is where things really get real. This is the moment where you finally get the guts to say ‘no’. You’re like, “I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been working on it. I can do it.” And then you feel super guilty, so you keep thinking about it instead of doing it, but you’re thinking about it, and now you’re getting more and more guilt. Coming in and thinking about saying ‘no’ attracts even more guilt. I’m talking about the Law of Attraction here, that whatever you’re feeling, the more you do it, the more it amplifies, so guilt creates more guilt. But I also know this is true of any human who is listening, that you are creating your reality, moment by moment. You are a powerful creator of your own life, and when you really finally wake up to that, you can start to realize that now is the most powerful moment to stop feeling guilty. And this is when you can start to deliberately choose any feeling that feels good.

The only certainty any of us have is that life will end at some point – now or in the future. And you are alive, right here in this moment. So, the question to ask and check in on yourself, for yourself, is do you want to keep choosing to live as a victim of family, of culture, of other people, of your workplace? Or do you want to have a life where you feel peaceful and balanced? And I know for myself I always want to choose peaceful and balanced, so I’ve learned that saying ‘no’ allows me to support the whole in a different way than might be traditionally, internally interpreted. I know when I am fully resourced, happy and balanced, I can show up for my family in a totally different way. I’m not showing up out of guilt, out of requirement, out of feeling like, “Oh, man, I’ve got to do this.” I show up for them because I choose to, and I have energy for it. I feel like I can contribute in a deeper way.

It might look like I don’t spend as many days with my parents as I might have previously, but I still go visit them. I just visit them for a shorter period of time because it allows me to be present, connected, and happy during the time I’m with them, instead of going longer and feeling resentful and mad and, like, pissed off that I’m there. Can you see the difference here? That it’s really important for us to start to say, “How can I actually contribute in a meaningful way, not merely contributing because I feel like I have to, or it’s a requirement.”

So let’s get into what it takes to do this. How did I start to do this for myself? And how can you start to bring this into your own life? This is a really simple two-step process here today. I just want to keep it short and sweet. But the first step for all of you to start to play into, is to choose the identity of somebody who can say ‘no’, and become that person. What does it feel like to be able to say ‘no’ to something that doesn’t work for you? Practise this by thinking of a social event where you really don’t want to go, but you said ‘yes’. So imagine saying ‘no’, and imagine what you would do instead.

So if you’re a homebody, you imagine, “Oh, man, I get to stay home, finally finish watching Bridgerton, and have some takeout food in front of the TV.” That makes you so happy. Or maybe for you, you’re like, “No, I’m going to go to another event,  if I’m actually in back-to-back events with my kids.” And it’s crazy! Imagine what it’s like to be able to choose just one, and you can just relax and fully connect with the people that you’re hanging out with there. So you have to choose it. You have to really feel. What does it feel like if you’re not someone who’s rushing around or madly trying to make everyone else happy? How does it feel for you when it’s calm or it’s peaceful? What does that feel like? And can you really choose, then, the identity of that? Like, when I say ‘no’, this is the experience I get to have in my body.

The second step to this is also really, really simple, and it’s for you to now choose the incredibly powerful new reality, that saying ‘no’ is an act of love to yourself, because you’ve been in this nightmare where saying ‘no’ brings the world crashing down on you, full of guilt and shame for putting yourself before others. And that really is not true. Saying ‘no’ is something you do so that you can say ‘yes’ to yourself, to another social option, whatever that looks like. Remembering that saying ‘no’ is actually the most loving thing you can do for yourself. You’re now in the powerful act of choosing things that feel good, instead of doing things that feel bad. When you choose things that feel bad, it only brings in more things that feel bad. When you choose things that feel good, that’s how you draw more things that feel really expansive to you. So choose the reality that saying ‘no’ is an act of love. I promise you, when you start to really lean into that, that’s when you’ll discover the truth is awaiting you. That is actually the truth. That is the life that you get to lead, that your ‘no’ allows your ‘yes’ to be powerful, and that you get to have a life where you feel balanced and whole. Choosing yourself is not an act of guilt. It’s actually something remarkable.

All right, friends, so that’s what I’ve got for you today. I’d love to hear what you got from this episode. Dm me on Instagram @ NicoleTsong, with any insights. And if you’re an Asian American corporate woman who wants to master her mind and her emotions, so she can manifest her promotion in a life of her dreams, dm me dreams on Instagram @NicoleTsong.

Thanks friends, and I’ll see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. Before you go, don’t forget, if you are a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots preventing fast intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you, so make sure to dm me Quiz on Instagram @NicoleTsong, and thank you for being here and for listening. We read every note that we get from you about how the podcast is making a difference in your life.

Please know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong, and this is the School of Self-Worth.