CHAPTER 6
The psychology of NO
No is a pretty simple word: in most languages, it is one of the shortest:
no – non – na – ne – nee – ni – nie – nein – nem – nej – net – nu – nao – aon – ei – eki – ikke – di – dim – jo
So you might think it is also one of the easiest to say. But far from it. Most of us actually find it very hard to say ‘no’, even when we know we should.
Saying ‘no’ does not just free up time, it releases a greater sense of control over your life which in turn gives you more self-confidence and self-esteem. It will enhance people’s respect for you as you shift your reputation from a yes-to-everything doormat to a careful thinker and reliable contributor.
There are many good reasons to overcome the barriers to saying ‘no’, but first, you need to understand what those barriers are.
Why NO feels so difficult
There are many separate reasons why saying ‘no’ feels difficult. For many of us, several of those reasons will be compounded in any one situation, making ‘no’ feel particularly difficult. Let’s start by identifying the basic problems, before we move on to understanding the psychology that underlies them.
Basic problems
We can divide the reasons why saying ‘no’ feels difficult into four basic problems that we may have with it. You could be worried about any – or all – of the following:
- the response you might get from the person you say ‘no’ to
- what might happen as a result of saying ‘no’
- how you might look to other people if you say ‘no’
- how you might feel if you say ‘no’.
We will go through these four, one at a time.
Their response
When your principal concern is how you anticipate the other person will respond, and this is stopping you from saying ‘no’, you are essentially reading their mind. Since mind-reading is impossible, what you are actually doing is believing you know what they will think. Most often, you are projecting your fears and what you might think on to them. Here are some typical mind-reads.
Offence: They will be offended by my saying ‘no’
This mind-read suggests that you think there is something wrong with saying ‘no’ – otherwise, no offence could be given.
Truth: There is nothing wrong with saying ‘no’.
Hurt: If I say ‘no’, it will hurt their feelings
As well as assuming that the other person has somewhat fragile feelings, this mind-read assumes the other person will take your ‘no’ personally.
Truth: Most people are not as fragile as you fear.
Dislike: They will dislike me if I say ‘no’
Here, you are assuming the other person has such fickle allegiances that one ‘no’ will create real enmity. In a work context, this mind-read can cast your ‘no’ as a CLM: a ‘career-limiting move’.
Truth: If they respect you, then one appropriate ‘no’ won’t turn like to dislike or respect to disdain.
Disappointment: They will feel let down if I say ‘no’
When this is your mind-read, you are really projecting your belief that you are the only person who can help, assuming more power for your ‘no’ than the other person may really perceive.
Truth: Most times, they will have alternative options, even if you are their first choice.
There are two fundamental problems with mind-reading:
- Very often, it will be wrong: You can’t read my mind, so any mind-read is a fabrication of your mind. It is based on your assessment of me, the situation and how the two interact. Unfortunately, it is also contaminated by your fears, your prejudices and your faulty thinking.
- My emotions are not your problem: Even if I take offence, get upset or am disappointed, these are my emotions, not yours. You do not have to take responsibility for how I feel: your responsibility is for how you act. Saying ‘no’ respectfully and for a good reason is perfectly responsible. Of course, if your reasons for saying ‘no’ are capricious or through laziness, then it isn’t just me you have let down, and you don’t need to read my mind to know it’s wrong: you feel bad because you should!
What might happen
Whatever you do will have consequences. Worrying about what might happen if you say ‘no’ is fundamentally a fear of those consequences. To make this a reasonable fear, you need at least to consider equally all of the consequences of saying ‘yes’. However, because saying ‘yes’ is the easy, expected, default position, we tend to put this out of our mind. Some of the most common fears are explored below.
Argument, confrontation and conflict
Most of us fear conflict. Saying no immediately creates conflict, it is true. But without conflict, there is no creativity. Without the ability to say ‘no’, you are making everybody else right, all of the time. Conflict is not, itself, a bad thing. When you maintain respect and listen to each other, conflict can drive you both to better results.
Loss of opportunities
Saying ‘yes’ can create an obligation in the other person and, knowing that, you fear you will lose the opportunities which flow from their need to reciprocate. However, if you say ‘yes’ too easily – maybe even defaulting to it and never saying ‘no’ – then its worth becomes devalued to the point where you cannot expect any reciprocation.
Last chance
‘If you say no now, you won’t get another chance.’ This is one of the most powerful persuaders there is. It latches on to our psychological aversion to loss, our desire for what is scarce, and our fear of failure. It is designed to elicit an automatic response. Whilst sometimes it is true, often this is just a bluff or a rhetorical device. And, even if it is true, objectively, how much should you care that this is your last chance? Don’t fall for the automatic ‘yes’ – evaluate the request first.
How I might look
We all worry about how we look – at heart, we are all narcissistic to one degree or another. If all you care about is your image, however, you will never, ever, be happy, content and fulfilled. So get over it and focus on the substance. Let’s examine three common fears about how you might look if you say ‘no’.
Nice guy/gal
Ooh, how we shudder when we see or read a dramatic portrayal of someone who really doesn’t care if people like them or not. It’s worse if we meet someone like that in real life. The need to be seen as a nice or good person is powerful in most of us. But ask yourself, ‘Is saying no going to cancel all that is good in me?’ Of course it won’t. And if you do it well, you can say ‘no’ and still have people think how nice you were when you did it.
Looking bad
Nobody wants to look bad – particularly in front of people they like, respect or want to impress. Will saying ‘no’ make you seem incompetent, or unwilling, or not up to the job? It will if you shy away from all of the important tasks but tackle the trivia. If you do the opposite, and if you can offer solutions when you say ‘NO’ for a good reason, then maybe people will see you as all the more competent and capable.
Risk-averse
‘Scaredy cat’ is a particularly pernicious school-yard taunt, but it sticks. The problem is that it is also the cause of serious accidents. Don’t confuse prudence with cowardice. Fear is a perfectly reasonable response to real danger. Saying ‘no’ when the risk is too great is just fine. Let’s also remember that there are risks in saying ‘no’ too, and sometimes that is the brave thing to do.
How I might feel
As we have worked our way through the basic problems with saying ‘no’, we have dug deeper and deeper into our psychologies. Now we have reached the depths of not saying ‘no’ because of how you might feel if you do.
At the heart of this is a lack of self-esteem. Saying ‘no’ does not feel OK. Sometimes, you can only feel good by saying ‘yes’: ‘I am OK if I say yes’. Saying ‘yes’ can make you feel good and saying ‘no’ can make you feel bad. We’ll begin with the positive feelings.
Feeling good when you say ‘yes’
- Pride in yes: Some people take a pride in their willingness and ability to say ‘yes’. It almost defines who they are for them. ‘I’m the one people come to’ or ‘I’m always there for Alex’.
If this is you, consider who is now responsible for your happiness and success in life. By all means take pride when you can say ‘yes’ and deliver, but take all the more pride because you don’t have to say ‘yes’ every time.
- Want to help: Other people find it hard to say ‘no’ because they genuinely want to help. They want to do the task or they want to help the person, out of genuine caring for the problem or compassion for the person. It is admirable.
If this is you, then think about how you can have the greatest impact on the issues you care about or on the people you challenge. Saying ‘yes’ to everything will soon exhaust you. By choosing carefully what you say ‘yes’ to – and therefore, sometimes saying ‘no’ – you can be more successful in helping.
- Want to say ‘yes’: Finally, some people just want to say ‘yes’. They like the feeling of the positive response it gets – it makes them feel liked, and helpful and the people around them feel good, too.
If this is you, you are basically in a state of ‘I’m OK if other people like me’. You have mentally devalued yourself as much as possible and are now a soft touch for easy exploitation. It’s time to get up and take control.
Feeling bad when you say ‘no’
The negative feelings attached to saying ‘no’ are powerful, and drive the most determined inner Gophers.
- Obligation: A sense of obligation means that somewhere in your mind, you feel you owe the world something in exchange for your existence. This is not about reciprocating a favour with a friend or colleague, but the deep-seated aversion to saying ‘no’ to anybody or in any situation, because you feel it is your duty and responsibility to say ‘yes’.
When we pick up these feelings of obligation and duty, they can extend from a reasonable sense of responsibility arising from equity or loyalty, to absurd degrees. Some people put themselves out endlessly for someone to whom they have long since paid any moral debt and well beyond the point where their effort is reciprocated, thanked or even acknowledged.
- Guilt: Guilt for a misdeed is a good reason to apologise and make amends. But, having done this, it is time to move on. Yet there are people who carry their guilt around with them and become an easy target to all comers by saying ‘yes’ for no other reason than to assuage a sense of guilt that they have long since paid off.
Examine your history of misdeeds. Are there any you still feel guilty about? If there are, think through what would be the appropriate way to say sorry and offer recompense. Then do it. Allow yourself to acknowledge that you have discharged your guilt-debt and move on.
- Fear of rejection: Have you ever heard this sort of ugly monologue play out in your mind: ‘No leads to rejection, rejection leads to isolation, isolation leads to loneliness, loneliness leads to misery. I must say yes’? If you started to believe any of that, then of course you would never say ‘no’.
But none of the links in the chain is true. Rejection by one person callous or shallow enough to reject you because you made a Noble Objection will not lead inevitably to misery; it may even be a cause for celebration. And rejection is far from inevitable when you say ‘NO’ for a good reason, and you say it with respect. Acceptance is more likely.
The underlying psychology
What is going on underneath the bonnet when you are finding it hard to say ‘no’? A powerful model that will help us to understand this comes from the psychological field of Transactional Analysis (TA) and the study of what are called ‘drivers’.
Recall the four types of Gopher we met in Chapter 1: each one felt either OK or not OK. Psychologist Taibi Kahler discovered sets of behaviours we carry out to help us feel OK; to feel good about ourselves. He grouped these sets of behaviours into five groups and called these groups ‘drivers’. Since his research, there is a sixth driver that has been posited. It is far from widely accepted by expert practitioners, but we’ll consider it too.
So, we each have a subconscious internal model that says ‘I’m OK if I can…’
- be perfect
- be strong
- please others
- try hard
- hurry up
- be careful (the sixth).
The theory behind drivers is that we pick them up as behaviour patterns in early childhood, possibly as ways to reduce our anxieties about ourselves, and maybe even to cope with injunctions and demands from parents and care-givers. However they arise, most of us can recognise in ourselves a primary driver – or maybe two drivers – that we use most often.
Be perfect
A strong ‘be perfect’ driver will give you a compulsive need to get everything just right, making it hard to say ‘no’ to even the little details. Seeing completion, accuracy and compliance as signs of perfection will lead you to say ‘yes’ when it isn’t always necessary. The antidote to a driver to be perfect is to tell yourself that you are good enough as you are and if you want to say ‘no’, that is OK.
Be strong
The need to tough it out and get on with it – especially in a crisis – can cast ‘no’ as a sign of weakness for people with powerful ‘be strong’ driver. The solution is to get in touch with what is most important to you, and then to be open and express what you want in a situation. This will not always be to say ‘yes’ and knuckle down.
Please others
If you have a lot of friends, but are fearful that you need to work hard to keep them, then you may have a strong ‘please others’ driver. This will manifest in your need to keep them happy at your expense – leaving you angry and resentful that you can’t bring yourself to say ‘no’ to them. You need to start to please yourself, by knowing what will please you and observing that the people who really care for you will celebrate your ability to go after it.
Try hard
The ‘try hard’ driver manifests itself by going for everything but really succeeding at little or nothing. If this is you, you easily get bored and frustrated and revert to something else that you can say ‘yes’ to instead of focusing on your original commitment. You need to just stick with what is important and do it. Say ‘no’ to the peripheral stuff and allow yourself to really succeed at something that matters, and then experience how good it feels.
Hurry up
The rush-rush-busy-busy approach to life that is characteristic of the ‘hurry up’ driver can leave you exhausted. You don’t have time to think things through, so you say ‘yes’ easily to move on to the next thing. You need to take your time and enjoy the moment. Say ‘no’ to more things, to give yourself the space to relax and savour the good things.
Be careful
For people who are afraid to lose what they have or to risk failure, the ‘be careful’ driver dominates. As a result, they see a threat in every decision they make so prefer to default to the safe option and do what is expected of them and, in so doing, discharge some responsibility, too. When they are asked something, the expectation is that they will accede, so a ‘no’ answer feels dangerous. You need to take chances sometimes to achieve the fulfilment you want. This doesn’t mean being reckless, but it does mean that it is OK to find yourself a little outside your comfort zone.
Guilt
Guilt is at the heart of finding ‘no’ difficult: feeling guilty about the effects on the other person or about the effects on you. Certainly if your heart says ‘yes’, then saying ‘no’ will rightly trigger guilt, but it is an unnecessary emotion when you know that NO is the right answer.
This doesn’t mean that there may not be a shade of regret that you can’t willingly say ‘yes’. It is fine to want to help yet to also know there is something else that is more important. Keep the two things separate. Guilt belongs to circumstances where you do something wrong, beyond your ethical and emotional boundaries.
The surest way to evade feelings of guilt is to ensure that you always act with integrity. Make all of your ‘no’s a NO: a truly Noble Objection.
How to make NO feel easier
Before we consider how to make saying ‘no’ feel easier, let’s ask: do you always want it to be easy? Anyone who can say ‘no’ and feel good about it all of the time may just have a thin streak of callous running through their heart. Some things should be a little difficult.
That said, when it is as important as this, it also needs to be a little easy. If it is too difficult, you won’t use your NO often enough and you will end up paying the price. So what are the techniques?
Process
Every decision – every yes or no – has consequences. But making that yes/no decision is your choice, so start by recognising that there is no default position. When you are asked a question, instead of thinking, ‘Do I have to say yes or do I have to say no?’, think, ‘What do I choose to say?’
To help you to make your choice, use the ‘SCOPE process’.
- Stop: A reflex response is unlikely to be a resourceful response. Take a pause to consider what choice you are going to make.
- Clarify: What is the choice in front of you? What are you being asked? What are the potential consequences? The next section will help you think about consequences from different perspectives.
- Organise: Sort out your thoughts and make a decision as to whether you will answer yes or no or, rather, YES or NO.
- Proceed: Give your answer, clearly, courteously and wholeheartedly. We looked at how to say ‘YES’ in Chapter 5, and we’ll examine how to say ‘NO’ in Chapter 9.
- Evaluate: Periodically assess the outcomes of your choice. It is never too late to make a new choice and do something different. Politicians may fear a ‘U-turn’, but the rest of us know that if we find ourselves going the wrong way down a one-way street, it is probably the best course of action.
Consequences
View the consequences of your choice to say ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ from different perspectives, to help you make a reasoned decision.
- Alternatives: If you decide ‘NO’, what are the alternative uses for your time? If you decide ‘YES’ what do you have to forego to do it?
- Time: When making your choice, it pays to get some emotional distance from your decision. For each option, yes or no, ask yourself, ‘What will be the consequences in one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year, one decade, one lifetime?’ This won’t give you the answer, but it will give you a different perspective.
- Person: Another perspective is to think of the consequences of success and of failure for each yes or no from the perspectives of yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your community. A bad ‘yes’ can affect many people other than just you.
Change
We are going to work through the techniques for saying ‘NO’ in Chapter 9, but, here, we will review a powerful psychological method that will help you to feel good about doing it and make it seem easier. You’ll need to set aside 10 to 15 minutes to work through these 5 steps in a quiet place, where you won’t be disturbed. You may want to have some notepaper and a pencil to jot down your thoughts. You can find a worksheet at www.theyesnobook.co.uk
Five steps to make ‘NO’ easier
Step 1: The moment of choice
Think about the moment of choice, when you have to respond with a yes or no. Make a note of two or three occasions when you have fallen easily into an uneasy ‘yes’. These are times when you did not feel in control and you said ‘yes’ for no better reason than that it felt easier than saying ‘no’.
One at a time, relive those experiences as fully as you can. It may help to close your eyes when you do this. Notice what was said, how you felt, and what went through your mind. Was there a moment when you suddenly felt compelled to say ‘yes’ against your better judgement? Did you ever think ‘no’, or was ‘yes’ completely automatic?
Step 2: Your mental models
What did you think about at the time? To what extent were you in control? What did you believe about the other person or people involved in those events? What did you believe about yourself? Were those beliefs rational, or not? Thinking back, to what extent could you have done something different?
Step 3: Consequences
What happened as a result of what you said or did? How did things change as a consequence? What opportunities opened up, and what opportunities closed down? How did your beliefs guide you to do something you regretted?
Step 4: Challenge
Now start to challenge your beliefs, one by one. What is the evidence for each belief? What alternative beliefs does the evidence support? What would be the consequences of a different set of beliefs about yourself, other people and the choices you have available to you? How would those alternative beliefs change your actions, world and the outcomes you can achieve?
Step 5: Action
Make a note of the actions you can take, to seize control of a ‘yes/no moment’. What will you do differently? How committed are you to these actions, on a scale of 1 to 10? What would it take to move you even closer to 10? How can you do that, too? When you know what actions you are going to take, write them down in this form:
- ‘Will I…’
- ‘Will I…’
- ‘Will I…’
Yes/No in an instant
No. A small word: a big challenge. There are a lot of reasons why we find it so difficult to say, underpinned by some pretty deep-rooted psychology. Use the SCOPE process, a review of the consequences and a five-step change process to make saying ‘NO’ feel easier.
| Yes/No: | Has ‘NO’ been the hardest word to say? |
| Yes/No: | Is ‘NO’ starting to feel a little easier? |
| Yes/No: | Are you ready to put ‘NO’ to work? |