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 mechanics of how words not just impact, but actually shape our minds.
Nevertheless, the bigger challenge I see 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 mechanics of how words not just impact, but actually shape our minds.
Nevertheless, the bigger challenge I see 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, we 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 garnering fluency in them.
The trap we thereby stepped into unwittingly, unfolded when the same fluency warped into the very prisons we spend our adult lives trying to escape.
By trying to master the fluency even more.
Meanwhile, life kept happening.
Family pressures, cultural rhetoric, education systems, job markets, careers, relationships, dating, finance....
And as we tried to 'solve' adult problems with what was essentially a child's tool-kit, the problem-solving became the biggest problem.
- The people-pleasers noticed they can’t keep everyone happy.
- The bullies found themselves left alone in the room.
- The caretakers became resentful.
- The over-giver, depleted.
This is the crossroad where the real question underneath the entire dynamic comes at us with a force that makes avoiding it simply not the option it once was anymore.
Who am I when the role I've been playing is not necessary?
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 continue this relationship.'
- 'No, I won't keep pretending this version of success still interests me.'
If you're anything like me, 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.
'Setting boundaries', isn't really that difficult.
Coming to terms with the emotional consequences of having them, is.
Social Conditioning
I have worked with colleagues and clients who have grown up in war-zones and spent the first few years of my own life living in what was later called a dictatorship which my family fled when my mum saw a man get hanged live on national TV.
I went from there to spending the rest of my formative years in environments that normalised rituals considered abusive by today's standards, and then going on to become a citizen of a country considered one of the 'safest' in the world.
Here's what I noticed:
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 the gap between that ‘yes’ we've been programmed to react with--and how that truly makes us feel about ourselves, is universal.
All the social training was aimed to equip us to comply to what were essentially external demands.
And they tend to look like this:
- 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.
This keeps cropping up constantly both in my artistic practice, and clients I coach.
And what I witness is 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 common.
Switching between them.
No-brainer on the surface.
Insidious below.
Because unbeknownst to me at the time, it wasn't just languages I was switching.
It was the person that came with it.
It wasn't until my early 30's that I realized that it was always me adapting to the environment I happened 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, 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 regret.
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.
All of us carry multiple versions of ourselves.
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', for that same 'child', its highest priority.
Where does this lead to?
The question at the crossroads I'd referred to earlier.
And that question isn't really "How do I say no?"
It's "who will I have to stop being, if I do?"
We are rewarded for availability.
Being 'collaborative'.
Accommodating.
For saying 'yes' to opportunities.
And sometimes, especially at earlier phases of our life, 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 that these resources are the most precious ones we have, that everything 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 deeper I dig, the less interested I become in boundaries as a technique.
What interests me is congruence.
The alignment that appears when my words, values, actions, and commitments point in the same direction.
Saying 'no' in that state, becomes surprisingly simple.
Because the decision was already made when I stopped being the person willing to abandon himself.
And the 'no', merely a reminder that he was always there.
Join my free training.
Artist Mindmap 2.0 is a reimagined 6-day email mini-course designed for serious, sensitive, and soulful artists who want more than
surface-level hacks.
0 Comments