If you are spending time talking yourself into a decision or trying to make the “yes” feel more palatable by minimizing the effect it will have on your life (it’s just an hour, it won’t take that much from me), these are signs your body is trying to communicate with you the answer is “no”. 

I was listening to an episode of the Tim Ferris podcast where he interviews Diana Chapman, co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group and a co-author of the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. In their discussion, she talked a lot about connecting with our body and the idea of learning to recognize when we experience a “subtle no”. 

What does she mean by this?

It is about knowing when to say yes and when to say no when faced with an ask, an invitation or a demand. 

The popularized notion of, “if it’s not a Hell, yes, then it needs to be a no” seems great — and quite energizing. 

But it is only easy when the answer is a “Hell, no”. Anything else can become a bit more complicated. And unfortunately, most “no’s” are not that direct and in our face. Most of the things we want to say “no” to are way more subtle and often exist somewhere in the grey, between a hard “yes” and a hard “no”.

They are decisions we can talk ourselves into by saying, “Well, maybe that will be a great opportunity” or “It won’t take that much time for me to do that” or, “I should say yes because it’s importune to X”. 

Many of us have conditioned ourselves to become “Yes People” — or people who say “yes” to everyone as much as possible and often at our own expense. 

Why?

Because we worry about letting people down, people being upset with us, being seen as selfish, or potentially missing out on something.

Our focus has become overly fixated on the world around us rather than within us. 

So instead of learning to let go of disappointment and not assuming responsibility for what is not ours, we take it all on, only to burn ourselves out doing things we never wanted to be doing in the first place. 

And the reality is, we are always saying, “no”, even when we say yes. Saying yes to that meeting you didn’t want to take meant saying “no” to yourself — your wants and needs. It meant saying no to the extra time you could have had to catch up on “X”. It meant saying “no” to your voice

So, what can we do about it?

1. First, listen to at least the first 20 minutes of the podcast episode where Diana walks you through an exercise on getting clear on how your body communicates with you and when it may be giving you the signals for a “no”

2. Second, check out the blog post I wrote to help you in the process of learning to say “No”

3. Third, snag this handout on 5 ways to say “No” without being mean to equip you with the tools to put your plan into motion.

And if this unlocks in you a readiness to go even deeper into the world of assertive and purposeful communication, check out my 10-week course, Level Up.