“No” Protects Your Integrity

I wrote about how yes can expand your life. Now, here is the flip side to that… How no protects your integrity.

We are inundated with opportunities and choices. Stores are packed with products. Restaurants are ubiquitous in every town and on almost every street corner. We have online shopping available to us 24/7.

There are also the requests that are asked of us. The family members who ask for us to help with something. A local charity that could use a volunteer. Our boss at work that asks us to tackle a new assignment (with or without extra pay).

All these things come to us regularly. It can be easy to say yes to requests that sound good. That shiny new item in the store? It can be tempting. How do we determine what we should say yes to, and what we should say no to?

The Default No

Some people have their default answer set to no. Take a look at Carl (played by Jim Carrey) in the movie Yes Man. At the beginning of the movie, he said no to almost everything.

There is a balance here. I wrote about How Yes Expands Your Life previously. In this post, I want to cover saying no, and how it protects your integrity.

Alignment with Values

The most important filter to use in determining when to say no is when that request does not align with our values. Are we being asked to do something that we don’t believe in? Is it something that would de-value us? Does it conflict with a previous commitment?

We strengthen our integrity when we keep our commitments. Saying no helps keep us true to ourselves. By knowing our values, it becomes easier to know whether or not we should say no to that request.

What Are The Consequences?

Everything has consequences. Some are good, some are neutral, and some are disastrous. Trying a new food can be fun – you might just find your new favorite food. An extramarital affair, that can end a relationship!

Saying no to potentially negative requests protects you from adding problems to your life. I encourage you to not be like Homer Simpson in the TV show The Simpsons, “That’s a problem for Future Homer! Man, I don’t envy that guy!” Do what you can to make life easier for your future self.

Can You Safely Do It?

Are you being asked or invited to do something that will put your money, relationships, or life in jeopardy? You know what the smart answer is, don’t you?

This is not to say that the new thing won’t be scary. Jumping off a high dive for the first time can be quite scary… but not dangerous for someone who knows how to swim. Rock climbing can be scary, but with the right safety equipment, the risk is lowered substantially.

Do You Have the Skills or Aptitude?

I have worked as a handyman. Fixing things is not that hard for me. There are some people, though, that don’t have this aptitude. I knew a guy named Jerry who told his family, “If you ever see me walking through the house with a hammer, stop me!” He had a knack of turning a minor repair into a bigger repair.

I’m not suggesting you to learn every skill possible. By all means, learn and add skills to your capabilities. Know your limits. Don’t flood your house or burn it down just because you want to be “manly”. By the way, that is not being manly, that is being ego-driven.

Good Is The Enemy of Great

When I was a young man, I assumed the opposite of great was bad. It turns out that good is actually the enemy of great. When we accept the good things, we are often closing ourselves off from the great things.

Let me explain this with a story about monkeys. Monkeys like treats the same way that people like treats. A way that monkeys are captured is by placing a treat that the monkey likes inside a bottle with a narrow neck. The monkey will reach its arm into the bottle, but cannot remove its hand while it is holding onto the treat that was placed inside the bottle. By not wanting to let go of the good treat, the monkey is captured and loses its freedom.

No Keeps You Focused

Just as the monkey focused on the treat, if we focus on the good thing (the treat), we can lose our great thing (freedom). I’m not saying that treats are bad. In the case of a trap, it is that one particular treat that is detrimental to us.

People can find themselves in a job they don’t like, but they are afraid to leave because they would lose their seniority or their current rate of pay. There is the abusive relationship that while toxic, yet predictable, so they stay.

There are more mundane things that can come along and distract us if we let them. When we are asked (or begged) to join a committee or an organization that we are not interested in being a part of. This could be a time crunch, a priority conflict, or just a distraction from what we are wanting to do.

No Protects Your Boundaries

When I first started reading about boundaries, I thought of them like a fence around our property. That fence clearly defines the grass I am responsible for mowing, and the grass that my neighbor is responsible for mowing.

We can still help out our neighbor, if needed, but it keeps us aware of where our responsibility ends. The same applies to boundaries in our life. We can help others out, but it is healthy for us to know where our responsibility ends.

Love It or Leave It

In the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, he wrote about how to decide if we should add something to our life or not. Only add things into your life that you really love. If something is just okay, forget it! Most likely you’ll only use it a couple of times, then it will be a drag.

Now, you could take a job that is not your dream job, yet is a stepping stone to something better. I have taken a job just for the money, and as you can imagine, I did not enjoy the job all that much.

We don’t have to love everything we allow into our life, but using that filter will definitely help us enjoy our life more. Isn’t that what we are here for?

Decisions Can Be Changed

As I mentioned earlier, an okay thing or situation can be a stepping stone. It can be a temporary solution while you work on a long term solution that you love.

Situations change, and so do we change. We can love something at one time in our life, and then we find that we don’t love it as much. That is fine! Decisions can be changed. Just ask yourself why you don’t like it anymore.

No Protects Freedom

When we find the courage to say no to people and things, we will find that we increase our freedom and our joy. Part of being the architect of our life is learning what to say yes to and what to say no to.

Every time you say no, you’re not losing something – you’re protecting who you’re becoming. By establishing and enforcing boundaries in our life, we lighten our mental load and our physical load. Having the right things in our life helps us to become unstoppable!

This week, find one thing in your life that you would like to say no to, and then say “No”.