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We hear our kids start using the word “NO” around the age of two. It’s an act of control, testing limits and they know it’s going to get a reaction out of you. Strangely it’s also a word that we, as women, have a hard time using. It carries with it the fear of disappointment and of missing out. It can create social anxiety. It’s only two letters but it carries power and control. In today’s podcast I am going to share with you 3 reasons you are having a hard time saying NO and how to make it easier.
Topics in this episode:
Why centuries of women being submissive still has a cultural effect on our ability to say NO.
Saying NO does not make you a bad employee, less of a team player or a bad manager
The 3 most common drivers behind saying YES too much
What does being a “good manager” really mean, if it’s not being 100% available
How to self-coach yourself to make saying NO, easier
Show Notes & References:
Schedule a free coaching call to learn how to start saying NO so you can create space and margin in your life. Click here to schedule your call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
We hear our kids start using this word around the age of two, and then it increases both in quantity and intensity until around the age of five or six. It's an act of control, of testing limits. And I know that it gets a real reaction out of you because it gets one out of me, too. Strangely, we as adults have a hard time using this word. It carries with us a lot of fear, of disappointment, of missing out. It can create social anxiety. It's only two letters, but it carries power and control. I'm not sure there's another word in the dictionary that has as much weight as this one. You ready for it? No. In today's podcast, I'm going to share with you three reasons you're having a hard time saying no, what your brain is trying to make saying no mean about you personally, and then ultimately give you a little practice in order to help you start saying no with more ease. You ready? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson, let's get to it.
No is not a word that a lot of women feel cozy with. It's inherently negative. If you just think about the history of this word and women over the centuries, there's a lot that we can dive into. Historically, we were taught as women to be yes people. We were submissive, meaning that you say yes to whatever your man wants of you. You say yes to your father, you say yes to the person that you are married to. Whether you chose to marry them ultimately or not, you had very little choices.
Not that long ago, you were considered less than a man in society. The kind of power and control that no brings you, a century ago, when we were fighting for women's liberation and voting rights, we didn't have that power. I think this very brief look at the history of women and our ability to say no, it's a really important way to start this podcast, because even though we are living in completely different times with, ‘gender equality’, of course we know we're still working on that - It's hard to undo centuries of societal norms that did not allow us to say no to many things. We did not have the power to speak up, to choose our life, our values, our pursuits, the people that we married. We can't be told for thousands of years that we ultimately don't really have a choice, that no is something wrong that we're not ultimately allowed to even really say. And then all of a sudden, in about a 100 year span, when laws change instantaneously and make a switch, the culture shift does not happen that fast. Which means although we have the right to say no to whatever it is we want, we are still fighting intrinsic and cultural norms that tell us we can't.
Saying no is okay.
In today's podcast, we're going to talk about the fact that saying no is okay. I'm going to talk about the common reasons people tend to say yes or have a hard time saying no. And then talk about one of the coaching activities I do with my clients that helps them to start saying no with much more ease.
So, with this little brief discussion about women's history, what I want you to hear in all of this is if you struggle to say no, if you're a people pleaser or a yes person - there's nothing wrong with you. It's very common. In fact, on some unconscious level, society or culture has instilled that in you to be a person that says yes and does not say no to be agreeable. That's a cultural norm for us as women that we are fighting. Still, part of you becoming a person that curates your no, is you joining with millions or billions of women around the world working to change this cultural norm for us as women. This is a really big deal. I would be lying to you if I were going to tell you that this is easy. Likely saying no is not ever going to be something that you're fully comfortable with. I do 100% believe that it gets easier. I see that with my clients. I've seen that in my own life. The more and more you curate your no, meaning intentionally deciding what you're saying yes and what you're saying no to, the more you do it, the easier it gets. But it will likely always be something that carries with you or with it a bit of discomfort.
It is your right to say no.
So let's start with some core beliefs about saying no. First, it's your right. Nobody else gets to decide your yes or your no other than you. You are always in complete control of what you choose to do or not do. I was just having a conversation with a new client and she was describing to me all of her commitments, her obligations and tasks that she has to do in her job. And she was describing it to me like it carried an immense amount of weight. ‘These are the things that I have to do. This is the length of my to-do list. These are the demands that are being put on me…’ And when I reminded her that she has agency over her own life, that she could decide to say no to some or all of these commitments, in fact, I reminded her that she was in an at-will employment situation, meaning she has the right to quit her job at any time - she could just say no to this job and move on. Just a reminder of this kind of core belief about herself and her power that she had choice have brought a lot of tears, for sure, but it also brought an immense amount of determination, motivation, and grit. She forgot how much power she actually has, and just reminding her of that truth that she could say no, that it was within her right. She immediately hired me as her coach. We started working on deciding what it is she really wants, if she really wanted that job, and then working to put herself back in control of her happiness. So the first thing I want you to hear in all of this is that it's your right to say no. It's within your power. You are a human being that exists and thus you have the right to say no.
No, actually means no.
The second core belief around saying no is that it's really a no. And usually we would say this is like a yes and meaning that you get to have both of whatever it is you're choosing. But in this case, it's a no. And oftentimes people don't want to say no out of fear. They fear that people won't like them. They fear they won't be a good manager or a good leader if they're saying no, or that they'll be stifling their growth in some way. So I just want to suggest to you that you can hold the belief that you can say no, and people will still like you. You could say no and still be a good manager. You could say no and move your career forward. When you believe that it's true that you could say no and then also have whatever else it is that you want, then we could actually have a conversation around how to make that happen. Foundationally, you have to believe that no is not going to be a barrier to you living the life that you want to live, or being the person that you want to be. You have to believe that at the foundational level.
Okay, so two core beliefs:
You have the right to say no always.
Saying no does not get in the way of you having the life that you want to have or becoming the person that you want to be.
Now, let's talk about saying yes. So if you have a hard time saying no, usually what it means is that you say yes to too many things. You are a yes person on some level, and there are three sorts of flavors for saying yes. What I mean by that is, like, there's three kind of energies behind why people say yes to something when they really know that they should be saying no. And that's a really important caveat. As I'm talking about this, the first flavor or the first kind of yes comes from obligation. You say yes from a place of feeling obligated to, like you have to. And usually this comes from thoughts like, ‘I can't say no to my boss, or I don't want them to be disappointed, or I don't want to let anyone down, or I want to be a team player’. All of these thoughts bring about a feeling of obligation, like, you don't have a choice. And the reason it does that is because if it were true that you turning down a meeting and saying no would in fact make someone disappointed in you, like they would actually look down upon you as if you hurt them in some way, then it would make sense why you wouldn't want to say no and why you wouldn't want to turn down that meeting or turn down that request that they had for you.
If it was true that you turning down a meeting would make someone actually believe that you were not a team player, then it would make sense that you wouldn't want to turn down that meeting, because your image as a team player is on the line. Now, is that actually true? Is it true that you would, in fact, not be a team player? That we could give you that label, give you the sticker, stick it on your shirt, not a team player because you turned down a meeting? Is it true that someone else would actually feel disappointed, like you hurt them, you hurt their feelings if you turned them down? In 99% of all cases, the answer is no. Your brain wants you to think that, but it's not actually true. So the first type of yes, is a yes out of obligation.
Doing more things does not make you more valuable to your company.
Now, the second flavor of yes, if you will, is what I like to call the hero yes. It's like, well, I know I can help them, or I know that they just really need me. People love to feel valued. They love to feel like a hero. And saying yes to everything and sort of making yourself indispensable is for sure, one way to do that, but it's not going to be leading you to a balanced life. And we also know that doing more things does not make you more valuable. Let me say that again. Doing more things does not make you more valuable to your company. Solving more problems, making things more efficient, bringing money in or clients in, eliminating wasted time. These are the type of things that make you valuable to your company.
I hear this a lot from my clients that are managers. They have a team of people that are coming to them, and they're the expert. That's why they've been promoted to manage that team of people. And so their team comes to them asking for help and support, and they have the thought, oh, I know how to do this. I know how to help them. And so they say yes, and they do, but they do that too much. And then all of their time is spent putting out fires and supporting their team instead of doing all of the things that they're supposed to be doing as the manager. Just because you know how to do something or how to help does not mean that you should say yes to it. It does not mean it's the best use of your time as a manager. Usually the best use of your time is figuring out how to support your team in supporting themselves. It's helping your team become intrinsically resourceful instead of constantly needing someone else, including yourself, in order to do their work. That usually means that you need time to step back from your team, consider how to better train them, how to better resource them, so that they can start making decisions on their own.
Just last week, I was having a coaching call with one of my clients and we were discussing what it means to really be a good manager, because she was being sucked into all of the day to day details of her ten person team. And her brain thought that being a good manager meant being available to them and answering all of their questions all of the time. When in reality, what she came to was that being a good manager meant letting them fail and learn, because they would learn more by failing than they ever would from having her essentially make decisions for them. Just because you know how to help, or because someone says they need you, does not mean you need to be the hero and say yes.
Feeling the need to prove yourself.
Now, the last reason I find people say yes, kind of the last yes energy, if you will, is there's a need to prove themselves. I don't want them to think I can't do it. I have to show them that I'm good enough. I'm new in this job, so I need to prove myself. This sort of mentality comes from a place of feeling sort of inadequate or insufficient. You make up for it by saying yes to everything. I remember a call I had with a woman that was interested in working with me and coaching. She was a doctor and this was her to a T. She didn't want her patients or her colleagues to think that she wasn't a good doctor or that she wasn't there for them. And so she spent way too much time with each patient. She took on things that she really didn't have time for. She ended up sacrificing time with her family because she was over-committing herself. All from this place of ‘I don't want them to think I'm not a good doctor, that I don't care about them.’ This deep down feeling of almost inadequacy in some way.
And the truth is, her being a doctor doesn't make her adequate as a human being. Her value does not come from how good of a doctor she is. Her value is intrinsic. It comes from her just existing and being good enough because she exists, not because she spends extra time with her patients, not because she takes on more patients, she just simply is enough. She doesn't need to prove it to anyone.
When you say yes to too many things, it gets in the way of you experiencing balance.
So there are three mindset energies that drive people to say yes when they should say no obligation, needing to feel valued, which was the hero complex, or needing to prove yourself, kind of making up for potential inadequacies. And I wanted to go through these with you because I think it's important for you to be able to self-identify why you are doing something that you don't want to be doing. In this case, it would be saying yes when you really believe that you should be saying no, right? when you're saying yes to too many things is getting in the way of you experiencing balance. We know that culturally, we as women are fighting an uphill battle. There's a little voice that is constantly telling us to say yes because we feel inadequate or not valued or insecure. And this points to the sort of self-coaching that you could be doing on a daily basis to really combat these thoughts.
If you're saying yes to too many things and are having a hard time saying no because you feel inadequate and you're trying to prove yourself daily, you need to be reminding your brain how amazing you are, how adequate you are at your job. And as a mom, if you're feeling the need to prove yourself, then you need to be reminding your brain on a daily basis how valuable you are to your company, to your family, to the world, and if you're saying yes to do many things out of obligation on a daily basis, you need to be reminding your brain that you are powerful and in control of your own life, that you have agency, that you are deserving of the sort of control and power that you have. This is the sort of internal work that's going to help you get to a place where say no becomes much easier for you.
It's okay to say no.
Working Moms, if you take only one thing away from this whole podcast, I hope it's this: it's okay to say no. You can say no and still be highly valuable to your company, to your team, to your family. You can say no and still be amazing at what you do and be 100% in control of your yes and your no. I'm here for you working moms if you need that extra support. Want to talk to me about coaching? I have opened some time up in my calendar. I would love to connect with you over a free coaching call. You can go to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to find a time to chat. Okay, Working Moms, have a great week and let's get to it.
Outro
Hey, before you go, I want to take a moment and tell you about an opportunity to speak with me directly. If you've been listening to this podcast and still feel like you need help balancing a fulfilling career with motherhood, then I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call. On this call, we will get crystal clear on exactly what it is you want out of your career and how you want to balance that with motherhood. And then we'll create the next steps for you to start moving toward a more calm and fulfilling working, mom life. Head over to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to apply for this free call. Till next week, and working moms, let's get to it.
