How To Say No!

Have you ever been asked to do something you don't want to, and yet you have accepted? Saying "No" to situations where you don't want to participate or don't want to do is not a crime, sometimes it's even a must for your health to refuse to certain situations like helping and serving everyone but yourself. Dr. Carmen Roman shares with us how this simple word can help you to maintain the control of your life and give you the opportunity to live a more relaxed life.

Transcript

Hello,

Amigos en Harmony.

This is Carmen Roman,

Your clinical psychologist,

And I am here to help you to achieve stable happiness,

To manage your stress,

Your anxiety,

Trauma-related symptoms,

Anything.

Remember,

This is not therapy,

But certainly very therapeutic.

Stay with me,

Because today we are going to learn about how to say no.

This is a very important ability that may come handy when you need to deal with your loved ones,

With your supervisors,

With people in the street,

Whatever,

With your friends and those who are not so friendly.

Stay with me.

Living in harmony is possible if you know your emotions and how to handle them.

Dr.

Carmen Roman will share with you in an engaging way the current psychology by sharing herself or interviewing experts who will inspire you.

Learn how to live a life of fullness and how to recover your emotion and harmony with Dr.

Roman.

Welcome to Emotions in Harmony.

Okay,

Let's start the topic.

This is a beautiful day from San Jose,

California.

I am so glad you are listening.

And if you are listening,

Maybe you already know how to say no.

At least,

Let's say something,

Let's say something.

Maybe you are an expert in saying no to yourself in order to say yes to others.

How about that?

Yes,

Sometimes we say yes to everybody and we say no to our resting time,

To our exercise,

To our healthy eating,

Whatever it is that is important for us.

So let's transfer that ability for your best interest.

Let's first explore what are the characteristics of people with confusing limits.

Who they are,

How they behave,

How we can recognize them.

Maybe you are one of them.

Maybe not.

Let's see.

A person with confusing limits is somebody who overcommit him or herself in their work with their friends,

With their family.

They say yes to everything.

They schedule many things at the same time.

They don't have time to even fulfill their promises.

They don't have this priority for themselves,

For self-care.

They don't even notice the signs of stress until the stress is so high that their body is just calling,

Yelling for attention.

They are afraid to be called selfish or unloving or they are afraid to feel guilty.

They want to help.

Of course,

We all want to help.

But this particular person,

They feel guilty when they don't help or they have the need to feel needed.

Sometimes we have that need.

I want to be needed.

I want to be seen.

Yeah.

And this is the price that I am willing to pay for it.

Let's say that they may feel insecure and they do everything possible to gain their attention.

And sometimes not.

Sometimes they are very assertive in other areas of their life,

But there is that particular person who they cannot say no to.

It's the little daughter or the girlfriend or the wife or the husband or the boss or some particular person that you want to learn that skill for.

But you already know that skill in other areas of your life.

I will put you some examples.

When you are supporting causes that are not yours,

Let's say somebody comes and tell me,

Let's talk about prevention for cancer.

Yeah.

And I was like,

Okay,

That's extremely important in humanity.

We really need to prevent something or we need to promote the cure for cancer or whatever.

But I don't have time right now.

I am focused on other things.

So let's do the experts.

Let's give the space to the experts to do that.

Sometimes we just want to do everything.

Or we do the shorts for the children or our partner when they clearly can do it.

And we do it because one,

We don't know how to delegate or two,

We are too afraid that they don't do it exactly as we want.

Or we just don't want to keep begging them until they do it.

Whatever is the reason,

The result is that you do stuff for others when clearly they can do it for themselves.

That's an example.

Or we have a busy schedule and we keep making more and more appointments.

Definitely we can say we have problems saying no.

Or we are leaders in one aspect and we want to be leaders in others.

For example,

The chef.

The chef is a leader in the restaurant because clearly knows his or his or her stuff.

They know how to cook.

They do the best cooking.

Does that mean that they can come home and they need to cook for everybody at home just because they are the chef?

Or the grandma who cooks delicious recipes?

Or the mole,

Enchiladas,

Tamales.

But this doesn't mean that she needs to cook every time there is a party.

Yes,

She does.

Yeah,

She cooks the best.

Everybody wants to taste their food.

Yeah.

Well,

Let's think about it.

We tend to make rules in the family that sometimes are unspoken rules.

And then we by default know that this grandma who is going to do the food for the party or this grandma who is going to cook because visitors are coming.

Not necessarily.

What about if grandma wants to rest a day?

What about if grandma doesn't feel like cooking?

And then we get angry and we can give her a guilty trip until she says yes.

And that applies for everything in the family.

So those are for examples.

Let's talk about the solutions.

There are very simple solutions.

You will be surprised how simple it is sometimes to say no.

Actually,

Sometimes learning to say no will give you that space that you need,

Will give you the strength.

And the more you do it,

The easier it will be.

Probably the first couple of times will be more difficult.

But learning to say no is a skill that you will love it once you have it.

First of all,

It's important that you know what is the best thing that you know how to do.

What are your talents?

And focus on that.

What are your talents?

And focus on that.

It's important.

If I know that I really know how to do that dish,

I can focus on doing that dish and the others can do the salad,

Everything else.

If I know really that I know how to do that skill,

I can focus on that and the others can do the rest.

Then you give the space to others to do what they know how to do best.

Yeah.

So making a list of your talents,

It will be very helpful and very handy for you when you are wondering whether you wanted to say yes or no.

And sometimes being the expert or being the more knowledgeable gives you the skills to actually say no and help others to achieve the same goal.

Let's put the example of the chef again.

If the chef comes home and somebody says,

Come on,

You really know how to cook,

You do it,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And you say,

Well,

What about if I kind of supervise while you do it,

The next time you do it?

Well,

It may empower somebody else.

So make a list of talents and then decide if you want to share that talent at that particular moment.

Take fewer things will give you 100% of performance because you have less in your schedule.

So you will do it in a more relaxed way.

Therefore,

You will have more impact.

Very easy,

Very simple,

Not very simple to do in the practice in the real life.

I know,

I know.

Reviews

Very helpful with useful examples of ways to say no.

So helpful, thank you!
This really resounded with me, particularly the part about being a leader in just one thing. I'll definitely come back to this recording for those helpful phrases on how to say no!

Wow Really good

I enjoyed this talk so much. Although she speaks pretty fast for this southern gal, I caught every word. She gave me some concrete examples of how to say no. Here is one: No. 😁
Muchas gracias
Cheryl

Very practical and useful tips! Thank you!

Very insightful. Thank you 🙏

I love this, thank you Carmen! Such useful ideas, I shall definitely put some of them into practice! 💜x

Very helpful. Thank you

Yes, indeed. No is my favorite word because it relieves me of any stress to commitments and I have the choice to change my mind if I fam commit later on. Namaste.

Very helpful! I put this to use today, and will certainly benefit from this advice. Thank you! 🙏

Great advice. Very helpful and appreciate the examples.