How to Say No to Just About Anybody

And why you should

I’m going to admit something: I’ve come to find the word “boundaries” incredibly grating. It has joined “gaslighting” and “narcissist” to become not just overused but inaccurately used, rendering its impact minimized. 

I prefer using the word limits. Having boundaries can sometimes be distorted as punishing someone else or keeping them out. But they’re about recognizing your own limits, beyond which you’re an angry ogre, or having a mental breakdown, or catatonic with fatigue. 

I know I’m at my limit by tuning in to that internal cue when I’m about to say yes to something while gritting through my teeth–that feeling of dread, the tightening in my stomach, the urge to sigh, or slump my shoulders, or bark at the person asking (usually my husband) that I really don’t have time for this–and I pause. I just listen to it. That there–that’s the internal blueprint for my limit. 

And instead of saying yes, I think about it some more. What will it look like to say yes? I’ll do it, disgruntled, resentful? It doesn’t benefit me, nor the person asking of me. 

So I instead reframe: saying yes in that moment is actually going to be detrimental to our relationship, and I instead may say something like, “I can’t get to X today,” or, “I need a break for Y minutes/hours today.” 

When you first start to practice saying no, there can be guilt, and that’s probably why you may instinctively say yes–because the resentment of a “yes” is easier to tolerate than the guilt of a “no.”

Guilt, though, is a reaction in you. Resentment becomes a we problem. Resentment impacts the relationship without the other party’s participation, whereas the guilt is yours to own and work through, and often stems from core beliefs about yourself: perhaps beliefs like that your value is in your doing more (Read: The Art of Doing Less), that you’ll disappoint someone if you say no (maybe, and that’s now their reaction to work through), that you should be able to do more.

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I’ll talk more about releasing yourself of the guilt of vocalizing your limits; in the meantime, here are some practical ways I’ve said no in the last week:

• When my daughter asked me to read a book while I was finishing my food: “No, mama, I can’t read it now, but we can read it together before bed.”

• When my husband asked me where the apple cider is before even opening the fridge: “Look for a minute and then if you really don’t find it, ask me again.”

• When my boss asked me to work on something: “I can do Y, but I haven’t finished X; do you want me to hand that off or delay getting it done?”

I still struggle here and there with saying no myself, but what’s helped me is recognizing that oftentimes a “no” is simply a “not right now” or a “yes, but later”—and sometimes it really is just “no”, and that is okay, too. As we practice recognizing our limits more often (and earlier), we can see that saying no doesn’t have to be so emotionally fraught—even if we have been conditioned to think it is.