That is Not Good News At All!

When my son was about three years old, he was begging to go to the park. His younger sister was napping and I told him that we couldn't go right now. He immediately burst into tears.

“But I want to go now. I want to go right now!”

And, as mothers all over the world have responded countless times, I told him that we don’t always get everything we want right when we want it.

He looked up at me in complete horror. “That is not good news at all!”

We still laugh about his reaction, largely because we can complete identify with the sentiment. We want what we want, when we want it. We don’t like being told no and we hate having to wait. Most of us have learned how to avoid bursting into tears and yelling, but the truth is we still don’t like being told no.

And while I feel like most of us learn to navigate this when we have to, we still aren’t very graceful in the way we react to being told “no.” There have been several very good books written recently about the importance of saying no. The books talk about how saying no empowers our ability to say yes and frees us up to live according to our priorities. We may read these books and agree with every word. We may even work on our own ability to say no. But when someone actually tells us no, we hate it. We get angry and defensive, we try and coerce and manipulate. When we hear no, our inner reaction is often to throw a grown-up temper tantrum and exclaim “that is not good news at all!”

So how do we get better at hearing and responding to no? I think the first step is to identify what is going on inside of us. When we ask someone for help, when we communicate a need, or when someone disagrees with us, we need to take a pause and recognize that we are being told no. It is so helpful to pay attention to our inner dialogue around that moment. Are we blaming or accusing the other person? Are we villainizing them for refusing our request? Are we turning one no into thousands of nos, for example, saying that he can’t come to this event therefore he never comes to any events? Are we throwing an internal temper tantrum or trying to figure out how we can convince them to change their mind?

Once we take a moment, realize that we are being told no, and process our reaction, we can take a deep breath and choose how we really want to respond. We can remind ourselves that people have the right to tell us no or to have a differing opinion. We can remember that it is our job to respond both honestly and with compassion. We do not need to feel guilty for asking, or inferior because we have a different perspective. We can put ourselves in the other person’s situation and think about how we would like someone to respond to us if we were saying no. Sometimes, we can ask questions to try and understand at a deeper level, and sometimes we can have a discussion to try and problem-solve together. And sometimes we can graciously accept the no and move on.

It is totally normal to dislike being told no or being asked to wait. Whether it’s a simple issue like where to go for dinner or something more substantial, like a request for support, we just do not like being told no. And yet, it is important to grow in the ability to tolerate the discomfort that comes with being told no and to respectfully allow those in our lives to freely and comfortably say yes when they mean yes and no when they mean no.

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