Discover more from Thrive by Sean Kernan
Dan Wallace was riding a train in london and feeling down on his luck.
Despite a successful career as a producer for the BBC, he felt unfilled with his life and where he was headed. He felt completely lost. By chance, Dan struck up a conversation with a stranger, a wannabe holy figure, who had a beard, but not a Jesus beard, and a belly, but not a Buddha belly.
During their talk, this stranger said something that unintentionally revolutionized Dan’s approach to life. He said, “Just say yes more.”
And from there, a torrent of change was unleashed. Dan was engulfed in golden light, with a realization that this might actually help him.
He said yes to credit card offers. He answered pleas from Nigerian Princes and considered their generous offers for $5000 per day employment. He agreed to binge drink and pull an all nighter. He attended meetings with people who believe aliens built the pyramids. He said yes every minor social invitation. It led to a bizarre and hilarious chain of events, which later inspired the Jim Carey movie, Yes Man.
Eventually saying yes turned on him. Unsurprisingly, he was taken advantage of. His time was wasted and he was burdened by indiscriminate admittance of every random stranger into his life. He realized too much of anything is counterproductive.
Many of us live the Yes Man life without even realizing it. You say yes to terrible ideas and commitments.
You let your time and energy get vacuumed into another person’s agenda. But there’s power in saying no. There’s freedom in letting go of your urge to appease every stranger.
The problem at hand
Society manufactures people pleasers. As children, we’re encouraged to smile and be pleasant at boring dinners, church services, and myriad events. This is well and good. I certainly needed some discipline in my own upbringing.
But this creates a hangover into adulthood, all in the name of being polite.
We fear letting people down. We worry we’ll lose friends. Yet, we lose ourselves in the process.
For example, I still struggle to leave parties, especially if people were drunk.
Recently, I attempted to leave one party and someone grabbed me and said, “No, no, just another 20 minutes, bro! One more drink!”
“I can’t. I’m tired, Kevin,” I said, exhausted.
“No you aren’t. You want a redbull? How about two!”
“Kevin. We are 40 years old, not 22. We should both call it a night.”
It felt like I was at a frat house.
It’s so bad that sometimes, I resort to ninja vanishing (also called the Irish Exit — leaving without saying goodbye). I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t feel like arguing with people.
Years ago, I had an epiphany after seeing an egregious people pleaser.
We were talking and I noticed something peculiar about the man. He was contradicting himself in a big way. He mentioned his preferred music, movies, and hobbies, all which were very different than what he’d said among a different crowd only a few weeks prior. He was a Republican at the last party. Now he was a progressive liberal.
He was power laughing and slapping his knee at everything, and saying, “Oh man that’s so awesome! I love that too!”
And while I appreciated his positive tone — I was caught off guard a harsh realization. I looked at the man and thought, “What a coward?”
He was bullshitting about so many things, all to make a good impression. Was he that afraid of sharing who he really was with people?
Admittedly, a bit of my malice also stemmed from my seeing a bit of myself in him. I hated what I saw.
With major people pleasers, you don’t even realize where a person stands on anything. Because their opinions and preferences change with the coming and goings of each new crowd, they become an unwitting chameleon, whose character is vacuous. Their identity becomes blurred and diluted by the need for external validation
You would think some people are trying to win an award for being most agreeable, for living up to everyone’s expectations but their own.
Eventually, I asked myself, “When did I lose the right to say no? When did other people’s desires trump my own by default? When did it become so bad to share who I really was, all the dorkiness and all.”
Saying no is an act of prioritization. You are saying yes to something more important. You are telling the truth about your preferences. You’re reinforcing your values, time, and energy. It is an act of reclamation.
There’s a glowing red line between being pleasant — and holding yourself responsible for everyone else’s feelings.
But perhaps the most massive perk of saying no when you want to, and being candid about who you are, is that you begin filtering in real friends.
Yes, making this switch, removed a few people from my life. But it was overdue. I was exhausted.
When you stop giving in to everything and faking it, you’ll realize who is in your life for the right reasons.
People may vanish when your faucet of acquiescence turns off. You may realize your friendship was parked on a one way street.
When we say yes to things we don’t like, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to do something we enjoy. Instead, we waste our day at a stupid baby shower.
Even worse, when we say yes to things — only to flake out or cancel later on, we risk burning bridges and damaging our reputation.
I try to pause before agreeing to any commitment. I like to weigh what is being asked of me free of the other person’s pressure. When we’re careful of what we commit to, we become more honorable. We show that we care about what we say and what we’re going to do.
If I know someone is going to make proposal that requires a large commitment, I always preface the meeting by saying I don’t generally give answers to these requests on the spot. I’ll need time to consider it.
If you’re introverted like me, you’ve likely faced stigma for not wanting to go to crowded events, or be surrounded by loud people. We live in an extroverts world, and extroverts, just don’t get us.
An incredible thing happened when I made this shift. I said no to going to the crowded party. I said no to the concert with a band I didn’t even like. I kept saying no.
Then, eventually, they stopped inviting me to stupid stuff. It was perfect.
They know I say no.
My movie is No Man
And yet, we can’t even say no to ourselves. Our inner voice asks if we want a snack and we dive into the fridge. We get tired and guzzle our 7th cup of coffee without a second thought.
In rehab, this inner dialogue is often called your addiction voice. You’re supposed to give it a different sound in your mind. Give it a mean and unpleasant personality, ideally. When you do, you’ll notice how painfully good you are at saying yes to bad things and things you don’t want to do.
Impulse eating is no different than committing to stupid stuff. Deep down, you want to say no, but you don’t know how. You become your own drug dealer, an inner peddler of dopamine.
One quick tip: researchers found that when faced with food temptation, saying “some other time” made people far less likely to give in within that moment and later on. By making the postponement non-specific, it signaled to the brain that the vice was less important.
How to say no without burning bridges
Saying no is tough sometimes but only at first.
People who are accustomed to getting their way may tantrum or give you a hard time but, usually, they chill out over time. If saying no seems daunting, you can practice by saying no to smaller commitments.
I don’t have an ego about declining things so I’ll just blame myself and say I’m boring. The trick is to say it confidently (and in a warm way).
Just tell them the concert/party/whatever is not your thing, or you have too much to do in the upcoming week.
You can also use the “Crystal Ball Method”. You forecast the future and say something like, “I can already see myself being exhausted after 30 minutes and wanting to go home.”
Each of us has a base human drive for autonomy and independence. Research shows that the more free and in control of our time we are, the more motivated and content we will feel.
When you do things you don’t want to do, it doesn’t just eat up your time, it demoralizes and drains you from doing more important activities later on.
Reclaim your time and energy. Say no. If someone can’t handle you saying no, they aren’t real friends.
It’s as the adage goes, “Don’t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”
Very good points. I think I’m going to be using some of these tricks. I mean techniques.
Thanks for sharing this. I feel like I needed to read this, and it was helpful. 🫶🏻