Learning to Say 'No'

My sister's anxious message interrupted my thesis writing to inform me that a mutual friend of ours who is getting married was on her neck to purchase the attire (aka aso ebi) for the wedding day. Problem was, my sister couldn't afford the aso ebi and wouldn't take on a debt, y'know, collect the material and pay for it later, and she didn't know how to break the news to this friend of ours.

The solution I offered was this: tell her you have other financial obligations and would rather not take on a debt.

Simple, right? Apparently not, because I have been in the same spot before, and due to my inability to say no and stick by my no, I did assume the debt and was so close to being humiliated by the lady to whom I was indebted. And this was just a year ago, I ended up missing the wedding because I had to leave town for a few days, which was really okay because the tailor screwed up my dress and I didn't want to wear it out in public.

Anyway. In the past year I have learned so much about being my authentic self at all times, trusting my feelings, and setting boundaries. What these three things have in common is that they often require me to say 'no' more often than I usually would. So in being authentic, I'd have to say no to my ego when it to start to take over control of my thoughts, words, and actions. In trusting my feelings, I'd have to say no when I am not comfortable with a person, an arrangement or a situation. And finally, in setting boundaries (which is a point of weakness for me), especially when dealing one-on-one with a person, I have learned that it is important to be clear about my expectations from my interaction with whoever it is, and not to allow the boundaries I've drawn be violated. For me, in the past this meant saying no to many people and situations which I didn't always have the courage to.

Even having learnt a lot about being true to myself and saying no, it is still somewhat of struggle. Often because I want to be 'nice' and not hurt anyone's feelings, which begs the question, 'who is taking care of my feelings if I am busy violating them so that others can be happy with me?'

Perhaps there are other root causes, but I have found that the inability to say no, or the desire to please everyone but ourselves, is rooted in our self-worth or the lack thereof. So it's a situation where you are only able to value yourself when your words/actions are validated by others. In which case you'd do anything- even things dishonoring to yourself- to get that outside validation because that is the only way you can feel good about yourself. This often translates into our fear of how others will react when we say no to them.

Or maybe it's not that deep. Maybe we were just never taught to say no. Which begs the question, 'are't we then as adults supposed to be able to say no without feeling some type of way about it?'

I advise taking the time to be introspective and consider where our difficulties saying no stem from. Once we are able to figure that out we can proceed by taking the necessary steps we need to in order to be able to honor ourselves and say no when that's what really needs to be said.

From personal experience I can say that the 'necessary steps' moving forward have included being truthful- first to myself, and to whoever I'm dealing with, and not letting the other person's [expected] reaction deter me from doing/saying what I believe is most honoring to myself.