It's Okay to Say "No."
It can be all too easy for us to fall into the pattern of saying “Yes,” when something is asked of us. Whether it be your boss asking you at the last minute to stay late at work and miss your child’s sporting event, or your friend consistently asking you for help paying bills because they have fallen on hard times - we experience pressure to say “yes” almost on a daily basis. Of course what’s being asked of us may not always be extreme, but sometimes little things take just as much of a toll. Saying yes to helping out the people we care about, or to further our careers, is a good thing in moderation. You should never feel like you have to say yes to every single thing that someone asks of you, especially if it will have a negative effect on you. Here are a few things that you can say and do the next time you’re presented with a situation in which it’s hard to say “No.”
I would love to help, but I don’t have the time to do what you’re asking of me right now.
This lets the person know that you aren’t saying no to their request just to say no. You’re telling them that you would be willing to help them out another time, but that you can’t comfortably agree at that moment.
I don’t feel comfortable doing that.
It may seem like a simple thing to say, but it’s easy to get pressured into doing things that are wildly out of our character. Learning to tell someone that their request isn’t something that you feel comfortable doing, even when the pressure is on, is extremely important.
I’ve noticed that you’ve been asking this of me a lot, and I don’t want to make it a habit.
Maybe you’ve already done what they’re asking you once, twice, three or even four times. It may have been something that you were okay helping with the first couple of times, but now the person is relying on you to continue doing the same thing on a regular basis. It’s okay to say that you no longer want to do what someone is asking of you, even if you’ve done it before.
What are some situations in which you’ve had to say “no” to someone? Have you ever been in a situation that you could have used one of the lines we talked about in this post?