Saying 'No' To Others Never Gets Comfortable Or Easy, But It's Always Necessary

A listener recently asked if it ever gets easier - this process of setting boundaries and saying 'no' to others. Unfortunately, it never gets much easier, or comfortable, the guilt is always there in the background, but it definitely gets more and more necessary as I get older.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

The wind chimes that you can hear in the background are these chimes that my mom loves and she's put them everywhere,

All around the house and they always make a beautiful sound whenever the wind blows.

In this one I wanted to speak to you about saying no and how I've noticed and I noticed this for myself as well in the beginning when I first started the practice of saying no.

I noticed a lot of you viewers have actually messaged me saying the same thing that you don't actually know how to say no.

It's kind of fascinating to me that we live in a culture where we're actually not allowed to say no.

Really I think that's the whole issue around this situation is that saying no is taken as a sign of weakness.

Saying no is taken as a sign of you don't know how to be productive or you don't know how to hustle properly or you don't know how to manage your time properly because if you're saying no obviously you have way too much that you're doing and maybe you should have said no earlier and things like that.

I noticed that there's a lot of negativity associated with saying no and I noticed this even now in my life where I'm pretty much used to saying no.

In fact I say no more often than yes.

In fact I say no 99% of time.

I say yes perhaps 1% of the time or less and mostly it's to things that I really care about.

So considering that's coming from a person like me who's pretty used to the idea of saying no in fact I say no all the time.

Sometimes I'll say no just for the sake of it.

No I'm just kidding.

I don't do that.

I'll always think about it before saying no but I do notice that even now even though the people around me are pretty much used to me saying no more than saying yes it's like ah are you going to say no.

I'm like well maybe.

But I noticed that even now as I said when I'll say no to something whatever it might be it might be something very small or it might be something very big and I'll say no I'll still get those looks of derision or looks of disgust or disdain from people around me because they're like really you can't do this one little thing for me.

Am I that unimportant to you or you can't do that one little thing.

You're just sitting around all day long reading books anyways or just sitting around doing your work anyways why can't you just take 15-20 minutes to do this for me.

And so it's fascinating to me because it is the culture that we live in that yes is the paradigm.

You have to say yes to everything.

There's so many books even saying exactly the same thing that say yes.

Say yes to all things.

Say yes to all opportunities.

Say yes to everyone.

And that's how you build your business or that's how you build your life or that's how you get a great relationship.

It's about saying yes.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't say yes.

Basically I don't want us to become automatons or robots that only say no to everything.

Everything has to come consciously.

That's the whole point of it.

You're not just saying no because you just want to say no.

You're saying it because there's an absolute important reason to it.

And for me the reason is very important to me so much so that I know exactly why I'm saying no every single time and the person pipes up and starts talking about how I'm doing it to slight them or I'm doing it because I don't love them.

I have a very good reason for why I'm saying no and the reason is I have work to do.

I have very important work that I'm here to do.

The universe has told me what my work is.

I have to get that work done and whatever I'm doing even if it's just sitting around staring off into space it is conducive to getting that work done.

And I'm not saying no just because I want to say no but because I have other important work to do and yes that is more important than what you're asking me to do.

A lot of times people will message me saying I'd love for you to come on this podcast or I'd love for you to do this and that.

And a lot of it seems very prestigious and at first in the beginning when I was younger I would have been like oh my god I can't believe this person is asking me this is great.

I'm going to say yes to everything and I did say yes to many things at that point in time because I was excited and I can't believe that someone would actually want to interview me or get me on a podcast.

But now every single time someone says would you like to and I'm like no I'm sorry no I don't have time for it because literally I don't have time for it.

I barely have enough time to sleep.

I barely have enough time to do the stuff I really want to do.

So why would I put extra stuff on my plate when it's not useful.

Unless I know there's something that's going to be really conducive to my audience or really conducive to my work or it's going to make an impact in a way that's going to change my work in a significant manner then yes of course I'll say yes but it's very rare that I do say yes.

But that's what the point of all of this is that it's not going to get easy.

A lot of you are saying well you know I'm not used to saying no and I don't know if I can do it and maybe I just need to practice and maybe it will get easier as time goes by.

No it will never get easy actually guys it will never get easy.

I'm sorry to tell you this.

It will get easy on the inside because you'll be like oh thank God I said no.

My God I really don't want to do that.

But on the outside it's always going to be uncomfortable.

It's going to be uncomfortable because we live in a society that tells us that we should say yes to everything.

That is constantly telling us that we should do more.

We should be more.

We should have more.

We should always be hustling.

We should be doing this and that.

We should be buying things,

Making more money,

Buying more things.

All of that stuff right.

I mean this is a society we live in.

It's all about rushing from place to place.

It's always about doing things all the time.

It's always about getting stuff done,

Never sitting down still for a second.

So living in a society like this no wonder saying no to anything seems like a wow who are you?

Why are you doing this?

What's wrong with you kind of thing right.

Again nothing is wrong with you.

You are saying no because you don't want to do it and you have other things you want to do.

And so basically what you need to figure out is why are you saying no to all these things.

What is so important that you are doing and why is it so important to you because if it's really important to you on the inside you will say no.

It might be uncomfortable but you are going to say no matter what.

Even now my parents will be like well maybe you could come.

I'm like no I'm not coming.

And they will look at me like wow you're so cruel and cold.

And I'm like well you know what I might come across as cruel or cold or aloof or disdainful or all of that stuff right.

All those labels that you want to put on me.

But the point is I'm here to do some work.

My work.

And if I keep on going all over the place here and there Costco and then Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and then going here for shopping and there for whatever it might be.

It seems like I'm giving myself the signal or I'm giving my work the signal that it's not important anymore.

And that's not what I want to do.

My work is important to me and I want to keep on doing it despite all of the opposition to it from all over the world like all around the world people are always giving me signs that oh no you should do something else or you should be doing this or why are you so focused on your work.

Constantly I'm getting messages like that.

What do I do to all that.

I say no I'm sorry but my work is more important.

So what is that thing to you.

Why are you saying no.

I mean it could be as simple as that as I don't want to.

I just don't want to I don't want to do that stuff.

It's more important to me to sit at home and be by myself.

That's perfect.

It doesn't have to be a magnanimous reason.

It can just be a simple enough reason that you just want to spend time on your own or you just want to be by yourself or you're an introvert and you just don't like doing all these things or you are more interested in sitting at home and reading your books or you're more interested in sitting in your backyard and doing your gardening or staring off into space or staring at the clouds.

That's where it might be.

The reason it doesn't have to be something magnificent as long as it's your reason and it's strong enough in you that you can be strong enough when you're saying no to all these people because that's where it has to come from.

The strength will come from within you and it will come from the reason that you have for saying no.

It will come from you guys.

It's not going to come from anywhere else.

Also it's not going to get easy.

I've said this already.

I want to say it again because I wish it did.

I wish it became easier.

Maybe at some point it does but for me I've been doing this for a few years now and it hasn't gotten easier.

In fact I actually feel bad for people because I'm always saying no to them and I know they feel like I don't love them or I've gotten many messages from people saying maybe you should learn to live a little bit too.

You're just working all the time.

If you don't get it,

You don't get it.

I'm sorry but I'm not going to sit and explain it to everyone why I'm doing what I'm doing.

That's the point of all this.

It's not going to get easy.

You're just going to have to practice at it.

You're going to have to do it.

Form a strong enough why for why you're saying no and then stick with that strong enough why and then stick with that resolution that you have within you that says no I am not interested.

I'm going to say no to all of the things I'm not interested in.

Goodbye kind of thing.

I mean that's it.

There is no negotiation there.

They can't sit with you and be like well if you say no to this maybe you can say no to this other small thing or maybe you can say yes to that other big thing or whatever.

No there is I've said no and that's it.

Please this is the end of the conversation.

I'm going back to my work.

Goodbye right.

And so it has to come from within you in that manner of strength and it might get easier but it's not going to get extremely comfortable and it will still be difficult no matter how long you've been doing it for because we are social creatures and we care about the people around us and we want harmony and saying yes is always so easy right.

Yeah I'll do it.

Yeah I'll get that done.

Yeah I'm sure that I'll get that done.

People are good emotional blackmail too you know they're like oh my god you don't love me I can't believe it I do all these other things for you you never do anything for me.

It'll all come back to you like that and you're just going to have to stay resolute and stay strong and be like all right I know you did all the things for me.

You don't have to do them anymore but still no.

My answer is still no.

I hope this helps.

I hope that this was useful to you.

I know it's a little bit like just go and do it but unfortunately that's just the way it is.

There's no like magic formula that you can be like all right I'm just going to put a spell on myself abracadabra and I'm brilliant at this.

No it's going to have to take work.

If you have any questions about this please message me by commenting below and I shall do a follow-up video but specific questions only please because this is just really as simple as just do it kind of thing unfortunately.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for being on my channel.

I really appreciate your support and I shall see you the next time around.

Bye for now.