People Pleasing #2: How to Say No Gracefully

Last week we talked about one of the biggest mindset shifts around boundaries: "I don't want to" is a perfectly good reason to say no. 

But that leaves a very practical question...

How do you actually say no without feeling like a jerk?

In this episode, I'm sharing the surprisingly simple formula for saying no with confidence, without apologizing, overexplaining, making excuses, or accidentally inviting people to argue with you. 

We'll talk about:

• Why a short, direct no is often the kindest response
• What to do when someone won't accept your answer
• Why letting other people have their feelings is one of the greatest gifts you can give them. 

If saying no makes your stomach flip, this episode will help you protect your time and energy without carrying around a suitcase full of guilt.

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Sarah offers a 6-month nervous system coaching program for humans who are neurodivergent, sensitive, and highly creative. Learn to rewire your brain for calm, load up your stress toolkit, and address the root causes of overwhelm . To learn more and get started, schedule your free consult or email sarah@sarahmaurercoaching.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to Climb Your Mountain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness to overcome life's challenges. I'm Sarah Mauer, a certified life and performance coach, front work facilitator, and transkey. Each week, I show you how to change your brain fast for good and without struggle. Whether you're training to climb an actual mountain, building a business, dating, or claiming a fucking rebellion, these tools will help. Listen and learn so you can enjoy more of what you want. Happiness, fun, convection, creativity, courage, and the occasional mountaintop moment. Ready? Let's do this. Hello, my friends. How are you doing? I am recording this episode early because I'm heading off to Mount Whitney. I'm gonna start driving from Colorado to California in the morning. And by the time this drops, I will have either summited Whitney or not summited Whitney. Hopefully, it's the former. Hopefully, I am somewhere being really happy as you're listening to this. You can follow along on Instagram. I'll be putting things in my story if you would like to do that. So let's get back to the people pleasing series. This month, or at least for these few episodes on the pod, we're talking about people pleasing, which is one of the most common things I coach on as a person who is working primarily with stress and the nervous system. Um, so last week we talked a little bit about the idea that you don't need a reason to say no to someone. That I don't wanna is a good enough reason. And after listening to that episode, you may have come to a place where now you're wondering, how do I actually say the no? How do I do the deed? How do I do it without causing drama? Should I sugarcoat it? Should I tell the person my reason? What if they don't take no for an answer? What if other people judge me? Let's talk about exactly what to say and answer all of these questions. So, just to back it up a bit, let's go back to our example from the last episode. And in case you didn't hear it, this example was about Becky, who is someone you know from book club, and she asks for a ride to book club every month. She asks for a ride to the meeting. And she's nice, but she's not a close friend. She's just someone you kind of know from the from the book club, but she can't drive for whatever reason. And she asks you for a ride every month. She always gives you a few bucks of gas money, but she does live 10 minutes out of the way, and you're tired of being her go-to ride every single month. You'd rather use that time to catch up on cleaning your house or just relaxing. So if that doesn't feel like a good enough reason to say no to Becky when she asks for a ride, go ahead, back it up, tune into last week's episode, and kind of get yourself to the place where you feel like you could say no without guilt, no matter what the reason, without needing a good reason. And if you feel like you're at the place where you're ready to say no to this request, or maybe some other request that's coming up in your life, keep listening. And especially keep listening if when you think about saying no, you are tempted to fall into any of the following pitfalls. And the first one is to apologize. Anytime you start your no with sorry, it seems innocent and harmless. It seems like you're protecting the other person's feelings. However, your words matter. They matter to other people, and they also matter to your unconscious mind. One thing you're gonna hear over and over again in this episode, you're gonna hear me say it a lot. You teach other people how to treat you. One way you do that is with your language, how you talk about yourself, how you express yourself. And you really want to get out of the habit of apologizing when you didn't do anything wrong. Because it very subtly sometimes reinforces to other people and to you yourself that you that you actually did do something wrong. So it's almost like when you apologize, if you didn't do something wrong, you're telling a lie to the world and to yourself. Second thing to watch out for don't kick the can down the road. You may be very tempted to say to Becky, maybe I'll be able to take you next month. You're trying to soften the blow a little bit there. But don't do that if you don't want her to keep asking every month. What you're really doing there is creating false hope. And you're creating a situation where you're gonna have to keep saying no over and over again till you toughen up and actually just give a powerful no, which we'll talk about how to do that in just a minute. And in fact, you wanna avoid any form of sugarcoating when you're giving your no. So, for example, with Becky, you might try to soften the blow of the no by saying something like, Man, I wish I could take you because you're so fun, you're so nice to talk to. And again, that seems like a nice, harmless thing to say, but notice first that it's kind of condescending. It implies that Becky can't hear no and be okay. Also notice the intent. You're trying to make her happy with you here, which is actually kind of low-key manipulative, especially when what you're saying isn't completely true. If you don't actually love writing with her and enjoy her company, please don't say that. And if you're tempted to sugarcoat, one of the greatest gifts that you can give other people is to let them have their own thoughts and feelings without trying to change or influence them. And it's a real sign of maturity when you can let other people do this about you and let them have thoughts and feelings about you. And when you're able to do that, that's actually amazing. There's so much freedom in that for you. You're not going to be worrying all the time about what other people think. Other things to watch out for when you're saying no. The temptation to fix. This might look something like saying, I can't take you, but if you want, I can see if Jennifer's available to drive you. And answering in this way, it actually implies that Becky's lack of a ride is your problem, not Becky's problem. So if you tend to do this, ask yourself, how would I act in this situation? If I believe that Becky was a smart and resourceful person, you'd just assume she'd figure it out, right? Either she'd find another ride or take the bus or call lift, or maybe she'd decide that's all too much trouble and she'd rather stay home. And that's perfectly fine too. It's honestly none of your business. Notice also the temptation to overexplain. If you are giving lots of reasons, lots of excuses, that is a signal that you're still not 100% comfortable with the idea that you get to say no without a lot of excuses and reasons. So if you notice that, definitely go back, re-listen to the last episode, and really let it sink in a bit more. Because giving a reason implies that you need a reason. And as we learned in the last episode, I don't want to. That's a good enough reason. Finally, I feel like this one kind of goes without saying, but I also feel like so many people do this, including myself. I am not completely innocent. Don't lie. We talked in the last episode about a lie you could tell, which would be I can't drive anyone now because my dog puked in the car, and now the car smells awful inside. So I can't drive anyone until I get it cleaned. And if you're tempted to ever do anything like this, know that lies are easy to spot. Other people have to know you're lying on some level, even if it's unconscious. Also remember, lies beget more lies. It gets complicated to keep up with your own lies. Because what are you gonna say next month? Now you'll have to come up with a reason if Becky asks for a ride, why either the dog puke smell is still there, or you'll have to come up with some other excuse. And you can become a prisoner of your own lies. Because while after you've said this to Becky, now you can't drive anyone else to Book Club, because your car is supposed to smell like dog puke. And if you get caught driving anyone else around in your car, you'll either have to come clean or think of another lie. So this is no way to live. It's no fun. So, how do you bypass all of these and just say no? Here's my saying no rules. They're very simple, and there are basically two, three. Let's start with number one here. The first one is you're gonna learn the art of the simple no. You keep your no simple and direct as possible. Usually that means using as few words as possible. Maybe as few as no. But it could also look like, hi Becky, I can't pick you up. I originally wrote, by the way, when I was writing my show notes, I can't pick you up this time, and then I deleted this time because that presupposes I'll pick you up next time. So you want to keep it very simple. Hey Becky, I won't be picking you up, I won't be able to pick you up. And now, if that simple no with no window dressing or explanation, if that feels weird, if that feels impossible to you, ask yourself, have you actually ever tried to do this? Have you tried the simple no? And be really honest. Because chances are you've never tried it. Most people haven't. Most people do one of the other options that we discussed, like apologizing or sugarcoating or even lying. So you may have no idea how effective a simple no could be. And you could stop just at simply stating your no. And here's an optional step. Some people like to do this. If you like, you can add a positive true statement afterwards. So, assuming it's true, you could say something to Becky like, I hope to see you there. This is optional. If you do it, keep it short and sweet. Why is the simple short no so effective? It's because adding lots of info to your no tends to weaken it. And it also tends to present loopholes. So to illustrate, here's a story from my own life. This happened last weekend. I was going to a charity pub run, and I invited a friend to come with me. And she said no. And if she'd used the simple no, she might have texted back something like, Hey, thanks for inviting me. I can't make it Saturday, have fun. But instead, she wrote back this. She said, Thanks for inviting me. I'd love to come, but I don't think I can run six miles. So what do I do? I immediately write back. I said, Oh, you don't have to run the whole time. I did my long run yesterday, so I'm gonna walk. So you can walk with me. And also, usually on these things they do a turkey eagle split, so there's a shortcut that's much faster than the six miles. Now notice how that happened because she gave me too much information there. So instead of just accepting her no, I found the loophole. So now she's just been invited again, and now she has to find a way to say no again, which to her credit, she did. And then I laughed at myself because I was like, oh yeah, she's not really worried about the distance. She's just trying to say no gracefully. And then I stopped asking her. So the simple no is especially effective when you have a friend like me who's maybe not super socially aware, their social awareness isn't top-notch. Or it can also be helpful if you get someone with a strong personality who doesn't take no for an answer easily. That person's always gonna be looking for loopholes. And same with someone who really, really, really wants you to say yes and is prepared to really sell you on it. The less information they have, the harder it is for them to get around your no. Which brings us to rule number two, and that is let your no be no. People should not be trying to talk you out of it. And here's I'm gonna talk a little bit like straight to you here. If you want other people to respect you and you want them to respect your no, you have to respect your your own no. You have to behave like no is a complete sentence. If you use a simple no, it is gonna be harder for them to argue. Some people still will. So let's say you have another friend, Betty, who has a hard time taking no for an answer. Betty asks you if you want to get together Thursday, and you give her a simple no. No, I can't. And Betty being Betty, she comes back with, well, how about Friday? What about Saturday? What's the next day you can get together? And you might be tempted to give in, but consider what's happening here. It's actually a form of subtle disrespect. It's a boundary violation. She is not letting your no be a no. And sometimes people will do this kind of innocently, kind of like I did in the story above. So if you like, you can give her maybe one more graceful no. But if she's truly being a pest about it, you want to be careful. Because you teach other people how to treat you, and you want to teach her to respect your no, and you want to teach her not to pester you. So if she keeps pressing, think about how you're going to respect your own no, even if she's not going to. Kind of the rule I have is this if you're not talking to me in a respectful way or in a socially appropriate way, I disengage or redirect the conversation. So, what might that look like? If she's texting you, that might mean you stop responding to her texts, at least to the ones where she's pestering you. Now, do not go overboard with this. This does not mean she's dead to you. It does not mean you never text her again. But you don't respond again until she engages in an appropriate and respectful way. Or you could just completely change the subject, text her about something else, and see if she gets the message and follows along. You can also do a version of this if you're talking face to face. You could not respond to pestering. You could change the subject and see if she follows. If she just won't get the hints, you could say something very direct like, please hear my no, please respect my no. And if all else fails, it's fair to leave the conversation. You don't have to present yourself for other people to pester and badger. Now, is leaving the conversation rude? No! Pestering people and browbeating people is rude. There's no social code on earth, none on earth, that obligates you to tolerate rude behavior and violations of your boundaries. And I'm gonna give you a little side note here that might be an interesting way to think of it that you've never thought of it before. And that's this if Betty does this to you, if she pesters you and badgers you and browbeats you and won't take no for an answer, think about all the other people she does this to. Her partner, her kids, the teacher at conference time, the guy hanging her drapes. It's possible. No one else in her life cares enough to set boundaries with her. And because of it, she's really frustrated and wondering why people don't want to be around her. And maybe you could be the first person ever to push back and not give in and to send the message that other people don't like this behavior and that this is not socially acceptable. And while she might not get it the first time, it's also possible a light bulb might go off in her head. Oh yeah, wow, when when I'm like that, when I'm pushy, people shut down. So your boundary, your setting of that boundary, might be the best thing that ever happened to Betty. You might be the first person who cared enough to hold her to a higher standard. You might change her life. You never know, right? So, one last question that some sometimes comes up around the no. Let's go back to the book club example for this one. Let's say that after driving Becky a few months in a row, this time you say no to giving her a ride, and you show up at book club alone, and then Becky doesn't show up at all. And then Karen at Book Club says, Where's Becky? Isn't she coming tonight? And you immediately feel judged and caught in the act. Now, thinking about this scenario can be really scary. You might worry that if you say no to Becky, other people are gonna judge you. But I want you to notice that call is coming from inside the house. Karen says, Where's Becky this month? And because you feel a little guilty, your brain immediately goes to, Becky's not here, and it's all my fault because I'm a meanie. So then you start defending yourself to Karen and you say, But I gave her a ride three times in a row. Am I supposed to be driving Miss Becky all the time now? I didn't have time. My dog pukes puked in the car and it smells, so I can't drive anyone, and so on. But when you defend yourself, what you do is subtly communicate to everyone else there that you've done something wrong and that it's actually your job to drive Becky. So let's pause the scene. And I want you to ask yourself, how would you react if you didn't believe it was your job to drive Becky? If you let getting to book club be Becky's job. You can even go a step further and ask, how would I react if I believe Becky was resourceful and a capable adult with lots of options to get to book club? And if you really believe that, probably you'd say to Karen, oh, I'm not sure where she is. Because that's the truth. For all you know, Becky decided to skip book club and go on a hot date. And if Karen really wants to find out, she can text Becky and ask her. End of story. Now, it's true that Karen might find out that you said no to Becky's ride request, and it's possible Karen might have thoughts and feelings about that. But again, that's none of your business. Just like you, people have thoughts and feelings about all kinds of things, including about you. And as an adult, one of the best things you can do is to let them have their thoughts and feelings without trying to change their minds. And maybe if you struggle with this chronically, repeat after me, other people's thoughts and feelings are not an emergency. They're just thoughts and feelings. And while you can't control other people's thoughts and feelings, you probably hear that a lot in coaching and personal development. Did you also know that you can subtly influence other people's thoughts and feelings? And it all goes back to that old maxim: you treat, you teach people how to treat you. If you act really guilty and defensive, people will wonder if maybe you did something wrong, even though you totally didn't. But if you respect your own no, most people will probably follow your lead and they won't make a big deal out of it. And I can guarantee you, if they do make a big deal out of it, you can bet they are someone that has their own issues with boundaries. But healthy people with good social skills will not judge you much for it. And even better, when you set appropriate boundaries, this is really cool. You give other people permission to do the same. I think one reason we struggle to set boundaries is that we have so few good role models on how to do this. We have a lot of people, especially a lot of women, modeling martyrdom, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. But we don't see that many people and that many women taking their time and energy really fucking seriously and being good stewards of it. So even seeing you set tiny little boundaries can be very empowering for other people. So there you go. How to say no gracefully. I just did a 30-minute podcast to help you say one little word, no, or maybe it might be like five little words, no, I can't, no, I'm not available, no, I'm not gonna make it. Have fun. It really is that simple in a lot of cases. So, thanks so much for tuning in. We're gonna continue this series next week. I'm not super sure what I'm gonna do for number three in this series, but I think it's gonna be something around the dark side of helping. We all think helping is good and more helping is better than less helping, but is this really always true? Can there be too much of a good thing? Tune in next week on the pod, and we'll talk more about it. See ya then.