Most of us tend to think that ‘saying no’ is a communication skill.
One word.
A ‘boundary’.
Lines drawn in the sand.
But my personal experiences have revealed a pattern that point to something far more interesting, and I daresay, helpful over the years.
Language....words, the most common medium of communication, can be a bit of a clumsy affair to have to rely upon sometimes.
Especially in a hyperglobalized world not doing a particularly impressive job of coping with the cultural collisions that come at us with the speed they do.
But I'd contend that language was never really the primary problem.
That's not to underestimate the role it plays either.
I’m a songwriter.
Words are incredibly important to me.
I'm also a Yoga practitioner- the agnostic, critical thinking kind sans lycra.
And a neuroscience and psychology nerd.
That leaves me with no doubts about the actual science of how words not just impact, but actually shape our minds.
Nevertheless, the challenge I usually see most us dealing with is not the actual act of using a word like ‘no’ (which in some languages, doesn't even exist!), but something else entirely.
Making peace with the identity that dies during the act.
Most of us tend to think that ‘saying no’ is a communication skill.
One word.
A ‘boundary’.
Lines drawn in the sand.
But my personal experiences have revealed a pattern that point to something far more interesting, and I daresay, helpful over the years.
Language....words, the most common medium of communication, can be a bit of a clumsy affair to have to rely upon sometimes.
Especially in a hyperglobalized world not doing a particularly impressive job of coping with the cultural collisions that come at us with the speed they do.
But I'd contend that language was never really the primary problem.
That's not to underestimate the role it plays either.
I’m a songwriter.
Words are incredibly important to me.
I'm also a Yoga practitioner- the agnostic, critical thinking kind sans lycra.
And a neuroscience and psychology nerd.
That leaves me with no doubts about the actual science of how words not just impact, but actually shape our minds.
Nevertheless, the challenge I usually see most us dealing with is not the actual act of using a word like ‘no’ (which in some languages, doesn't even exist!), but something else entirely.
Making peace with the identity that dies during the act.
In the beginning
At the earliest part of our lives, most of us learned that belonging, a primoridal need, came with conditions.
- Being useful. (‘Needed’)
- Being exceptional. (‘Worthy.’)
- Being easy. (‘Agreeable’.)
No matter what the actual rules in our environment happened to be, these tender and impressionable years were spent investing high quantities of time and energy into garnering fluency in them.
The trap we thereby step into unwittingly unfolds when the fluency that helped us cope at first, mutates into the very prisons we spend our adult life trying escape; usually by trying to master the fluency even more.
Meanwhile, life keeps happening.
Family pressures, cultural rhetoric, education systems, job markets, careers, relationships, dating, finance....
And as we keep trying to 'solve' adult problems with what was essentially a child's tool-kit, the problem-solving becomes the biggest problem.
- The people pleasers realize they can’t keep everyone happy.
- The leaders attempting uninvited dominance are left alone in the room.
- The caretakers become resentful.
- The artist becomes a brand.
- The teacher becomes a performer.
- The over-giver becomes resentful.
—
This is usually the crossroad where life finally begins pushing the real question underneath the entire dynamic into our faces with a force where avoiding it is simply not an option anymore.
That question is:
Who am I when the role I've been playing is no longer required?
That's when ‘saying no’ becomes interesting.
- 'No, I won't take that gig.'
- 'No, I won't answer that message immediately.'
- 'No, I won’t attend that family gathering. '
- 'No, I won't discount my work.'
- 'No, I won't continue this relationship.'
- 'No, I won't keep pretending this version of success still interests me.'
If your experiences have been anything like mine, the feelings that follow might resemble the list below:
- Guilt.
- Anxiety.
- Self doubt.
- The need to explain.
- The temptation to reframe the ‘no’ as a ‘maybe’.
(And so on….)
Boundaries.
Boundaries as a concept has been overused by the underqualified for a while now.
But for what it's worth, I don’t think boundaries are what people really struggle with in the first place.
A little training and it's a moderately light-weight skill to get a feel for.
'Setting boundaries', isn't really that difficult.
Coming to terms with the emotional consequences of having them, is.
Social Conditioning
Much of social conditioning has trained us to say ‘yes’ as a default response.
Depending on our upbringing, the extent or severity of this will vary.
But that gap between a ‘yes’ we've simply been programmed to offer, and how that truly makes us feel about ourselves, is a universal one.
The training aims to equip to comply to external demands.
- Managing someone else's disappointment.
- Avoiding disapproval .
- Tethering our worth to usefulness.
- Defining success with external metrics.
- Building a persona that makes it easier to 'look good' in society.
The physics of all of this keep coming up constantly both in my coaching and active artistic practice.
And what I have observed in both, looks very different to what most people seeking surface-level strategy think it does.
A war.
Between two inner identities.
Flashback
I grew up speaking 6 languages (2 of which I have lost), thinking they were one-amidst 4 countries, 3 continents, and eventually, 8 cities I lived in later on, as an adult.
I was roughly 4 years old when I realized these languages were not 'allowed' to merge the way I was doing it.
A part of me has always wondered how life might have been if I had just continued speaking my own 'invented' language.
(That's a thought experiment probably outside the scope of this post.)
But what I eventually started doing instead, is familiar territory to most of us today.
Switching between them.
No-brainer on the surface.
But here's the thing:
Unbeknownst to me at the the time, it wasn't just languages I was switching- it was the cultural nuance involved in each as well.
And the person that came with it.
It wasn't until my early 30's that I realized that it always me adapting to the environment I happenned to be in.
The reciprocation, was little to non-existent.
And blending in the way I did, while an ode to my shape-shifting skills, got so advanced, that it started making that (the shape-shifter) my core identity.
Realising this took and continues to take a lot of work-and didn't come without some resentment.
But the point I’m trying to make here is a different one.
It doesn't really matter how many 'languages' we have learnt to speak during our upbringing-most of us carry multiple identities.
Psychology modalities like Internal Family Systems call it 'parts', older eastern philosophies call it 'avatars'-Jungian psychology has delineations for it too.
We could get all micro about it, but for the sake of scope, I am going divide the sense of identity most of us are carrying into two broad categories I feel confident about.
1. Our authentic self.
2. Our performative self.
The former, fearless and child-like in its curiosity.
The latter, programmed to make what it considers 'safety' its highest priority.
Where does this lead to?
The question at the crossroads I'd referred to.
And that question isn't really "How do I say no?"
It's "who will I have to stop being, if I do?"
And it can feel like a complicated maze to navigate.
We are often rewarded for availability. Being 'collaborative'.
Accommodating.
For saying 'yes' to opportunities.
And in the beginning, that can be wise.
Experimentation is a good thing.
Exploration, exposure to different worlds.
But down the line, it's discernment that becomes more valuable.
As we mature we discover that every 'yes' is also a 'no'.
Every project accepted means another cannot be pursued.
Every commitment occupies time and energy.
And it's when we learn the hard way how these resources are the most precious ones we have, that the whole game changes.
Subtraction vs addition.
My 3rd EP 'Removement' was a double-entendre pointing to not just the dynamics of life in the 21st century, but also how art is a revelation, and not a discovery.
Sculptures emerge because material is removed.
A photograph gains power because something remains outside the frame.
Music becomes coherent because certain notes are not played.
The same appears to be true of a life.
One of the stranger discoveries of adulthood is that freedom does not arrive through endless options, but through committing to the ones in alignment to who we want to be.
- Clarity.
- Decisions.
- Closing some doors.
- Becoming unavailable to what no longer resonates.
The 'no' creates the shape of our 'yes'.
And that is why saying it out loud can feel so confronting.
Because every 'no' is an act of authorship, a declaration that human life is finite.
Your time here is finite.
The older I get, the less interested I become in boundaries as a technique.
What interests me is congruence-the alignment that appears when a my words, values, actions, and commitments point in the same direction.
Saying no in that state, becomes surprisingly simple.
Not easy.
Simple.
Because the decision was already made when we stopped being the person willing to abandon ourself.
The 'no' is merely the reminder that it was already there.
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