Burnout Prevention: How to say NO

In this episode we’re exploring a much requested topic in regards to Burnout Prevention and Recovery: how to say NO.

People who struggle with Burnout often identify as people pleasers and overachievers who can’t say no - hence why they end up overloaded, overwhelmed and overcooked.

Burning Out and need help right now? You can book in for a free 30 minute call with me whenever I have availability, with no obligation to sign up for any of my coaching offerings. Head to my website and book a free consultation call slot today.

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Follow me on Instagram: @maggiesupernovacoach
Find me on Facebook: @maggiesupernova
Join my FREE Facebook Community: Stressed Out to Supernova

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Your Supernova Moment.

I had a little break last week - no new episode last week. This little break was part of my commitment to ‘Minimal May’, and also because, on a very practical note, my dad had his first hip replacement surgery last week and so it was ALL HANDS ON DECK with hospital journeys, covering shifts at my parents B&B, generally being around and present and useful. AND it’s been a long time coming, so I also took advantage of this little window of time with no grumpy invalid dad around to take mum out for a steak dinner and her first ever pedicure. The cool kids might like to tell you that such things are superficial and that self-care doesn’t cure stress and Burnout, but I’m here to tell you that it bloody well helps. And my parents know a little bit about chronic stress at the moment! So a bit of pampering was much appreciated. Anyway, the surgery went well, Dad’s back home - still being waited on hand and foot of course, but he’s actually able to enjoy it a bit now instead of being in constant crippling pain, and things are coming a little bit closer into balance. He’s still on his crutches but he’s back to his old self again, and that’s certainly worth it.

So anyway, what are we talking about this week? Well it’s a much requested topic; we’re talking about HOW TO SAY NO.

I get asked about this a lot. And what I want to talk about today isn’t so much about the words, it isn’t about the phrasing. It’s about the stuff behind that. We can all google ‘how to say no’ and what comes up  are a tonne of articles and blogs about ways to say no, politely. Examples come up like; ‘I’m sorry but I have something else on,’ ‘I don’t have the bandwidth to take this on right now’ ‘now isn’t a good time for me’, that sort of thing. And sure, this kind of stuff is helpful. If you really struggle to say no to things, if you can’t simply say ‘NO’, or perhaps ‘NO THANK YOU’, then an excuse is your next best option.

But let’s look underneath tha, because I don’t think the problem that the people who ask me this question are struggling with is the wording. I think it’s the inclination. The motivation.

 In all these examples, and most of the time, you’re looking for a reason to say no. You’re looking for something else that’s keeping your busy, you’re looking for another person, commitment, responsibility or project that is valid enough to justify you turning something down.

How about just the fact that you want to rest? How about the fact that you want to take your time over making your dinner this evening and you don’t want to be rushing or grabbing take out on the way to something else? How about the fact that you want to take a bath, or watch TV, or read a book? How about the fact that you want to be able to take a coffee break, or a walk in the park, during your work day and not be flat out from 9 until 5? These are ALL perfectly justified reasons to say no. But a lot of the time, our own downtime, rest time, self-care time - this is something we don’t deem important enough to be the reason we’re saying no.

Of course, you might be using these excuses because the person you want to say no to is difficult, and they actually DON’T deem your downtime important. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t, that just means they’re an arsehole.

In this episode, I want to give you permission to be unavailable.

You don’t NEED an excuse, or a reason. You can just say no. 

You get asked to join a meeting, when you’ve already got three meetings in your day and you’re trying to set that boundary with yourself and your calendar? ‘I’m afraid I’m not available to meet today, perhaps we could schedule a meeting for tomorrow. I’m available between 2 and 4.’

Get asked to pick something up on your day off? ‘I’m not available today, I’ll pick this up when I’m back in the office on Monday’

Here’s the thing. Everyone comes to me and says that they are terrible at saying no. But they aren’t at all, they ARE saying no. They’re saying no all the time. So are you!

Every time you say yes to another project, another person’s workload, another late night in the office - you’re saying no. Your body is begging you for rest and you’re saying NO. Your heart and soul are asking for peace and you’re saying NO. Your mind is asking for quiet and you’re saying NO.

You are saying no all the damn time, you’re just saying it to the wrong person.

The first thing I need you to do if you’re a person who struggles to say no to the outside world is recognise that you’re absolutely okay with saying no to yourself.

What is that about?

It’s going to feel unnatural as hell, but this is what you need to practice. You need to flip the script and practice saying YES to yourself, and no to everything else. 

I had a free consultation call recently with a person who I could tell had been working really hard for a really long time. They were burning out, moving job contracts, starting again with good intentions but without having addressed any underlying issues, and then burning out again, and then moving again. The cycle - it’s so easy to get stuck in it.

They reached out to me because they wanted to break the cycle, and we had a really great session about the work that could be done in this time of pause. They had a few weeks until they were planning to start looking for the next contract and so they had time to do some work. To get some proper rest, to slow down, to reset, and most importantly, to consider the things that really needed to change about their approach to work, their relationship with rest, and the boundaries they needed to put in place before they went back into that work world again.

It’s important to note that this person was not deep in the centre of the boiling pot of burnout. If you’re deep in it, a few weeks between jobs might not be enough but in this case, it felt doable. Everyone is different - so don’t judge your experience against this one. There are so many factors.

So as we chatted about all this, we looked really closely at Boundaries. This is a person who has historically taken on too much, stayed working too late, taken their work home with them. Importantly, while a happily married dog parent, they don’t have actual human children, and one of the things they got caught up in was an office culture thing - the people with kids have an accepted excuse to leave on time. The people without kids don’t.

This is something I’ve experienced for sure - and I’ll preface this with the fact that I know there is a heck of a lot of other stresses and factors involved when you do have kids. I spent my Friday visiting friends with a baby and a 2 year old and my GOD. It was a full on day. I’m still exhausted and I left before bathtime! When you’re the parents who are leaving work on time to collect their kids, go home and make dinner for their kids, clean up after their kids - you have a LOT of shit to handle and you’re burning out too. I’m not dismissing that and neither was this person. But it’s an office culture thing that I’ve experienced too, that when you don’t have that sacred parental responsibility to be there for the tiny human you made, you can feel like - and sometimes be made to feel like - you don’t have a valid enough reason to deserve to step away from your desk. The non-parents are expected to pick up the slack, which isn’t actually slack at all, it’s just more work than is reasonable to expect a person or group of people to actually achieve in contracted working hours.

Our conversation went on like this. They got all empowered, determined to own the fact that they don’t have kids but their downtime is just as valuable. They have other stuff in their life, they made their choice and shouldn’t suffer for it. They were coming up with all sorts of ways to have a good enough explanation for being BUSY in evenings, on weekends - commitments to family, end of day doctors appointments, hobbies, dog related responsibilities - 

And then I said something that seemed to blow their mind a little bit.

You don’t have to be BUSY, to be unavailable. You can just BE unavailable. Your downtime doesn’t need an excuse, it’s your time and you don’t need to pretend you don’t need it. Instead of coming up with all these excuses, go in with boundaries clear from the beginning. When someone asks you to do something outside of your hours, to stay late, to take something home with you - don’t ask yourself if you’re busy. Not being busy isn’t a reason to say yes to overworking. You’re allowed to say no, and you don’t have to give a reason.

Honestly, I want us to keep this as SIMPLE as possible. When we’re dealing with the kind of stressors that put us on this path toward Burnout, we need to keep things simple.

How do you say no?

You say NO.

I’m not available.

You can soften it a bit if you like, ‘I’m afraid I’m not available.’ We all fall into that trap of saying ’sorry’, I do it all the time, but really we don’t need to apologise for ourselves. This is such an intrinsically British thing that is basically in our DNA, I don’t think I could stop doing it if you paid me, but I’ll try my best if you do the same!

You can add an alternative suggestion. ‘I’m not available at this time, but I’m available at this other time.’

You don’t owe your work, colleagues, bosses, an actual explanation of WHY you’re not available. If they ask, well depending on the context that might be a sign of a pretty toxic work environment if they’re demanding to know what you’re doing with your time. But let’s give the benefit of the doubt and they’re just innocently interested and want to make conversation, you can say you have personal commitments. This is the ultimate truth, because you do. You have a commitment to yourself. And you do not have to apologise for it!

If it’s friends or family that you’re saying no to, this is perhaps a bit harder, and you can decide how much additional context you want to include, but again you can do it.

I’m not available. It’s just a fact!

Let’s start training the people around us to respect our boundaries. If you say you’re not available, you’re not available. And practice doing WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO with that time, without guilt that you said no to something else. Your time is valuable and you’re allowed to use it for you.

This is a tough cookie to crack in reality.

There’s a whole lot going on here. We’re almost programmed to believe that we’re not worthy or valid or whatever, if we’re not busy. If we’re not working, or travelling, or cleaning, or organising. We want our social media feeds to be constantly fantastic, our diary to be full, our weekends exciting, our LinkedIn profile just SO engaging and when we actually ever do take a moment to just sit and take a breath, we feel so guilty that we’re not producing.

I’ve done a lot of saying no this month, for Minimal May. There have been a few times that calls have tried to slot into my diary outside of my working hours, that sort of thing. I have no issue saying no to those things any more, I just say no. I’m not available then, but I’m available then instead. Simple.

I’ve been more conscious of saying no to things that the little voices in my head are saying. That thought that says ‘you have to share this’. I’ve been off social media all this month and I’ve done so much stuff and every time I get this urge that I have to SHARE it. Or a thought that goes ‘oh man, I can’t believe I’m not on social media right now - what a wasted moment’. As if the moment is somehow diminished because I can’t share it with 1000 odd people? 

I’ve also said no to the voice in my head that is all the marketing and online business ‘gurus’ that I follow, or that I’ve been coached by, that’s telling me that I need to be creating lots of video content, and going live regularly, and making social media plans and scheduling things. BLEH. This month I’ve said no to all that, and YES to doing things that I WANT to do. 

This doesn’t mean I’m just sitting on my arse watching Derry Girls all day - I’m doing a lot. I’m pretty busy! But in a good way, in a productive way, and importantly in a way that aligns with what actually matters to me like 90% of the time.

So here’s the big challenge for this week. Take a minute to stop and thing about the things you’re saying yes to, and in turn, the things you’re saying no to.

Take some time to think about what’s on your list that you feel like you should be saying no to, that you WANT to say no to, but you feel like you can’t.

Recognise if saying YES to those things is actually saying NO to yourself. Most likely it is. And see if you can try just one little switcheroo this week. If you’re saying no to rest and yes to overworking and staying late, switch that around. Just once! When that ask comes in to work late, you are not available. A lot of the time it’s not actually an ask, is it? It’s an assumption, an unspoken understanding that you will work late. So don’t. Try it just the once. If you’re questioned on it? You aren’t available to work late this evening. You’ve got a personal commitment. And take that time to do the thing that you WANT. See how it feels. And if it feels weird and pointless and a waste of time that you could have spent working - or doing whatever the thing that you’re burning out from is - then realise that this is a sign that something is seriously out of balance. If you feel guilty for resting - for ‘doing nothing’ - remind yourself that RESTING is doing something.

And if you don’t want rest and you actually want to go and see friends or go to the cinema or go for a walk or spend the evening in your garden, GO FOR IT. This is your time. Your personal commitment to you.

I would love to hear how you get on. I know it’s easier said than done. Come join my Facebook group if you aren’t in there already - search for stressed out to supernova, or Facebook/groups/stressedout2supernova (the link is in the show notes).

And if you are still struggling to crack this whole ‘saying no’ lark, this whole ‘prioritising yourself and your needs’ thing, then remember you can come and chat to me any time I have availability. I don’t have any 1:1 coaching slots available at the moment but I’m still here for consults, for chats, for whatever I can do to support you in that free 30 minute zoom call.

Come join my online Yin Yoga classes on Wednesday evenings, and new monthly weekend classes on Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings. And FREE guided meditation every Monday at 7.30pm. All of this stuff is designed with Burnout in mind and it’s here to help you take that time to rest and reset.

And finally, remember you can get on my mailing list - just head to my website and it’ll pop up - and get yourself some freebies. A recorded meditation, planner pages for tracking balance, a free yoga class, and lots more. 

I’ll be back next week for another episode of your supernova moment, a podcast about Burnout. Have a great week, getting out there and saying NO to Burnout - by saying YES to yourself.