How to Say No Without Apologizing

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everybody, Tami Green. This is about how to say no without apologizing. Right? And this is one of my most empowering lessons. So I kind of give two different kinds of lessons if you could. So broadly categorize them. 

One is how to change your thinking, which is really important and the other piece is what do I do? And I went to therapy for years and said, okay, what do I do? I need skills, I need to understand how to do this stuff. And this is a really good example of this is if, how exactly you do this, so how to say no without apologizing. I'm going to give you four pieces to it and it's going to be a pretty long lesson because I'm going to give you so much. So I encourage you to go to controlthefuture.tech/say-no. Say no. Say-no. Controlthefuture.tech/say-no. And get the notes on this because there's gonna be some really cool stuff.

In the lesson today, I'm going to teach you a few things. Number one, the reasons we say no so often, right? And we shouldn't really or it's not getting us anywhere. And I want you to understand that. Number two is the good reasons to say no. Number three, how to say no without apologizing. I'm going to give you specific examples of what you can say. And then the last piece is that thinking piece, and I'm going to weave this in throughout the lesson a little bit because it's those self critical thoughts sometimes or the self thoughts that keep us from being effective. So we're gonna learn to recognize and replace self critical thoughts at the end. Number one, reasons why we don't say no, right? Why don't we say no? The reasons we don't say no is, and there's all kinds of reasons why we don't, but see if any of these resonate with you. 

Number one, we're afraid of what others will think of us. We don't want to lose those relationships or we're uncomfortable with saying no, it just doesn't feel right. And sometimes we say yes when we wanted to say no, just because we haven't practiced thing. No, we don't know how to do it. And I'm gonna teach you how. Sometimes we say yes because we were not taught as a child to put our own needs first. We had to say yes to other people and no one taught us how to believe in ourselves or stand up for ourselves or ask for what we want so we just don't know. Sometimes we're shut down when we speak up. That can be a current relationship or that could be past relationships were just shut down and one of the reasons we don't say no is because we don't really know who we are or what our own preferences are, so we just say yes to everything because what other people do might sound more interesting to our nothing. 

And then sometimes when we're taken advantage of or even violated, we feel helpless and we feel, and this is like a deep belief belief system we might have, we don't understand how to defend ourselves or stick up for ourselves because it's so deepness and then two more reasons why we might want to say no and you could add more to this or your own, but let me know if any of these resonate with you. Sometimes we just want to maintain an image of being a kind and a giving person. We want to maintain that image and we want to be able to meet everyone's needs and then the other reason in this, a lot of these reasons were my reasons, but another one that's really good is we're just very sensitive people and we care about how our words might affect others because they affect us so much and let me just say something on this point before we go on and that is that when we're very sensitive people, we think other people are sensitive like that and not everyone is. 

Now. Everyone's so affected like we are by rejection, so start thinking about that. All right. I'm going to give you some really good reasons to say no and then I'm going to teach you how to say no without apologizing, but this is going to tell you more about why you shouldn't apologize to number one. A good reason to say no is saying no will give us more resources to say no to what we want to do with our lives. Sometimes we say yes to other people's requests and we give away things. We give away our time, we give away our money. We loaned stuff out and we didn't really want to do that and then we don't have it for ourselves or to give to. We really want to give to. Right, and when we don't say no, very often our relationships become a lot of work and we start to feel really resentful. 

So learning to say no, we'll help you to enjoy your relationships more. You're going to feel more free in those relationships to enjoy with that person. What you want to enjoy instead of resenting everything you're doing. Now I like, I wanted to tell you, this is a lot that I'm going through, but I want you to have this information. So go to my website, control the future.tech forward slash say dash. No, and I'm going to give you all of this. It's a worksheet. I spent a lot of time on it for you and I hope you like it. Okay. Sometimes we don't give a strong no. And then we have to fend off future requests over and over again. Right? And so one advantage of learning how to give a strong though is then they people know it's a no, and we don't have to keep going through this over and over again. 

How about with our kids, right? If we're a parent or our parents, if we're a child, a grown tile, all right? So sometimes when we say yes, when we want to say no, we don't feel very strong and confidence. So saying no is going to make you feel strong and confident and you probably haven't thought about this one. This is a really good one. There's two last ones I want to give you about why to say no and they're about relationships. Number one, if you say no, you're actually going to have stronger relationships. Sometimes we think by saying no, we're going to have weaker relationships, but if you're worried about keeping your relationship just because you say no, what's gonna happen is the other person is gonna. Feel your doubt about the relationship, right? If you say, no, I don't want to do that, they're going to feel, oh, well, okay, that's just about that request. 

So if you feel like you're going to lose a relationship, thank you. If you feel like you're going to lose a relationship because you say no, they're going to feel that from you and that's going to make your relationship weaker. And I love this one. This is a great one. When you say no, you're going to attract higher quality relationships because when you say yes a lot, who are you? Who's. Who are you? Who are you going to be in a relationship with? You're going to be in relationship with people who are going to manipulate or use you, but if you're saying no, those people aren't going to want to be around you because they can't manipulate you and they can't use you because you're saying no. So you're going to attract better quality relationships. We train people how to treat us. We do, and this is a big way to treat other, to train other people how to treat us with respect, right? 

If you're fed up with someone not listening to you, you can do something about that. Learn to make your no and no and don't change your mind and I'm going to teach you a little bit about that and I used this word over and over again. It's practice. You're going to practice this until you get it right and some of the people in your life aren't going to know what's going on, but you're just going to keep doing it and I'm going to show you how to do it. Thank you. Okay. Before I say how to say no without apologizing, I want you to think more about this thought about your relationships and how you saying yes is affecting your relationships. When you keep saying yes, people view you as timid and lacking confidence and people will treat you that way and when you say yes to them, you are treating them as fragile or frail, like they can't handle the truth and they don't want to be treated that way either, so it's a much more respectful way to treat one another. 

Okay? You convinced it. You're ready to understand how to say no without apologizing. It's easier than you think, but it takes practice because of all this other stuff I just talked about. That's in our minds, so that's what I wanted to give you this piece first about getting the facts straight in your mind about what it's really like to say no, now we're going to practice saying it. The first thing that I say over and over again and one of the things that was missing for me in therapy and one of the huge pieces about being a life coach is getting clear on what we want ourselves. Because like I said at the beginning of this, we don't say no sometimes because we don't really know what we want. So spend time doing the other exercises in the lessons I teach you on what you really want out of life, but drilling this down specifically to conversations with people. 

There's three things I want you to keep in mind. You have three basic objectives in every conversation. One is to keep the relationship. One is to accomplish something or two is to accomplish something and three is to keep your self respect and in any given conversation you're gonna. Think about if you have the time to prepare for it, you're going to think about what do I want in this conversation like with a child? You might want the self respect. You want the child to understand that you're the authority, right? Sometimes you are at a place in a relationship where you really need to keep the relationship and so you might want to say yes at that point, but if you want to keep the self respect, you might want to say no. And then sometimes it's about an objective, like I talked about earlier, it's I don't want to spend time, I don't want to spend time giving away my time or resources. 

So there's three things in any conversation to get clear on your own objective and sometimes you can have more than one, but you want to prioritize them. You don't want to lose a relationship, but you really want your self respect and I'll tell you, if you're on this episode, you most likely are the person who's trying to keep the relationship more than the other things, so really wouldn't worry about that one very much, right? You probably have those relationships nailed down pretty well and you might want to let go of a couple of relationships of ones who are just trying to lose you or use you anyway. Something to think about. Okay, so those are the three things I want you to think about before any conversation. If you have the time to go into it. Now, I want you to practice for a solid week, not apologizing, not apologizing at all, never sing, sorry, one time, not even for mistakes that you make. 

Here's the reason why we all make mistakes. We all make mistakes, but unless it's really hurting someone, we shouldn't be apologizing for all of our mistakes. We should just maybe apologize for the ones that really hurt someone because if we're apologizing for every mistake I promised you, I'd be apologizing 50 times a day because we all make mistakes. It's part of life, so I want you to practice for one week not apologizing at all. That's gonna. Reset your brain on how to do this. Okay? Some things I want you to remember when saying no. First of all, keep it simple. Many times long explanations, send a message that you're uncomfortable saying no, so just say no, that doesn't work for me, or no, I can't do that. Just practice this. Okay? We're going to talk about being done with it too, and that may sound a little harsh just to keep it simple and short, but you've probably been way on the other end with long explanations, so to get you back to center, let's practice doing the extreme. 

Now you probably don't want to start practicing this extreme with your wife. She's maybe not going to know what's going on, but certainly in other situations with a sales rep or whatever, just practice. No, I can't do that right now. No, I'm not interested in keeping it short. Okay. Now, especially in our relationships, we want to keep you can say, no, that doesn't work for me, but you can say it in a gentle manner, in an easy manner. Keep the word short, but say it in a gentle, easy manner, right? You're going to learn how to be firm without having to yell. Sometimes we get so frustrated because people don't listen to us that we ended up yelling and sometimes it's their fault because they don't take no for an answer and sometimes it's our fault because we are wishy washy about our no, or they know if they keep pushing us like our kids, if they keep pushing us, we're going to give in until we yell and then we have to raise our intensity in order to get the know across, but the more from you are, the more you say no consistently, you're not going to have to yell as much and this is going to help all your relationships. 

All right? If you aren't sure of what you really want to do in any situation, it's okay to say, I'm not sure. Let me get back with you now. The more you practice everything I'm telling you, the more clear you're going to get and the more quickly you're going to be able to say yes or no because you're already going to know going into any conversation what you really want out of your life and that in that relationship and that conversation, but at first say, I'm not really sure I have to think about that. I'll get back with you and then if you could sit, I'll get back with you tomorrow or in an hour or some time that like close to the timeframe. They're not going to be following up with you or you're not going to leave it nebulous. You're going to get back with them. 

I'll get back with you tomorrow on that. Right now. The more practice you do on this, the easier it's going to be. Like I said, I'm learning new things every time and before I get good at them, I'm terrified. I'm afraid I don't have confidence. It feels like I'm in kindergarten and the first day and it feels uncomfortable. You're going to be afraid. You're going to be uncomfortable. Just do it. Just practice and like everything else, my kids just finished pre k and kindergarten the first day. They were so scared by the end of it, they got it really by the first week and that's going to happen with you. You're going to be a little timid, concerned or whatever emotion just do and with practice you're going to get. You're going to get so good at this, right? That's really important. If you want more practice on these kinds of things, join my course. 

It's called retrain the brain. Actually. Actually it's called a retrain your brain and you can visit my website, control the future forward slash retrain to get information on it so it's control the future.tech forward slash retrain. Bring okay for my class, so let's finish our lists and now here you're going to like this. You're gonna like this piece, okay? Sometimes you'll say yes because you're sure you want to do something, but then you change your mind later. That happens. Now, if you're doing it all the time, the reason why is because you haven't done the other work on what you really want to do, what you really want to do with your life, so do that work first, but I promise you in life you're going to schedule something and something that takes priority over that's gonna come up and you have to say no after you said yes, right? 

You'll say something like, I wanted to meet you Saturday, but I just learned I can't because I have to work again. Don't apologize. Don't say sorry. Just give the reason I don't say sorry. Just give the reason. If you get one thing out of this whole lesson, it's that. Don't say sorry. Just give the reason. Okay? All right. In this one, this is the last piece, and then I'm going to give you several exact things you can say, right? Um, without saying no. Sometimes you're going to encounter difficult people, especially if you have been saying yes to everyone, but there are people out there that when you say no, they're not going to like it. There are some people that will not take no for an answer and there's going to be some people that try to make us feel guilty or try to manipulate us. 

That's how they work in life. They tried to make other people feel guilty and they try to manipulate. Other people are not like that, so you don't get that and you don't do that, but guess what? There are a lot of people that do that. Don't let them make you feel guilty or manipulate you. Just saying no and repeat no. Over and over again. No, I'm not going to do that. No, I'm not going to do that. Eventually they're going to get it or you're going to end the relationship, right? Few examples on how to say no without apologizing. I'm just going to give you the statements and again, if you go to control the future.tech forward slash say Dash, they're all in there. I can't because I really can't take on anything else at the moment. Great. Um, I'm quite busy right now. Perhaps another time. 

Now if you say perhaps another time that's going to open up for a softer no, and then they might follow up with you or try to push you on it. So think about that. Is that really true? Do you really want to do it another time and you can just say, I'd like to help you out, but I don't feel up to it at the moment. So this would be a situation where you really do want to help the person out, but you just don't feel well right now. So sometimes it is a no and sometimes it's not right now kind of know. Then you could be even more gentle with it but still not apologize and say thank you for asking me. You're a really nice person but I don't want to go out with you or thank you for asking me. You're a really nice person but I don't want to do that on Saturday or I had a sales rep call today and I said, and I've been avoiding the call because I don't. 

I had to evaluate a solution. And then when I found the solution, I said, um, I don't need that. Thanks for calling again in the followup, but I don't need that. I'm not interested. And he was really relieved to hear that because he'd been following up a lot with me. He was really happy. Right? So all right. The last piece is if you struggle with self critical or self doubt thoughts. And sometimes when you say no, you can have a lot of these thoughts after it's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. So let me give you some self talk that's good here. Just a few. And then we're going to be done. I really want you to practice these. Tell yourself, well, I explained to them why I couldn't do it or it's not my responsibility or it would only end up upsetting me if I agreed to do it. 

This is best for me. I feel less tired and not resentful. I might be in a better position to help them out next time, but not this time right now. Here's a couple other ones. If they're acting upset about it, right, they're going to get over it or you can look at past evidence. If you have a relationship where it's a strong relationship and they're really mad because you said no, like your child or your spouse or your parent, you don't have to worry about losing the relationship. You can just tell yourself they'll get over it. This is what's best for me. I'm getting better at this all the time and they're going, going to adjust. Right? So there's our little lesson for today. I told you it's a lot of information. You want the notes go to control their future dot forward slash say, Dash. No. If you want to join my class where I teach you all this stuff and more, you're going to go to control the future.tech forward slash retrain the brain. That's all for today. I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining me and bearing with me through potential technical difficulties without Christian here. Oh Gosh. I can only hear frogs. Dan, I just saw your comment. I hope you guys could hear everything. Okay. All right. I'll talk to you guys soon. See you later. Okay, bye.