Saying No or Saying Yes
Chapter One of May Your No Be A Yes: A Guide to Making Better Decisions
Published June 2021
Chapter One: Saying No or Saying Yes
When a No is a No
Many years ago, I witnessed the end of a friend’s marriage. Let’s call him Jack, though that isn’t his name. Jack wasn’t sure what triggered the change in his wife’s treatment of him. He was certain about when it began. There were accusations by his wife that he had lied to her about a purchase that she saw on a credit card statement. Then, there were accusations of failing to do things or be at a specific place as agreed. She accused him of saying things that he had no remembrance of saying. She finally accused him of failing to be a good husband and father.
Jack listened and tried to sort out where he had been wrong. He tried to accommodate. He tried to be better as a father and husband. During the middle of one of these tense moments of conflict, he realized that she was making it all up. That none of the situations that she described had happened. To her they were true. True as representative of the man she saw him to be.
Jack talked with me about the growing inability of he and his wife to communicate, to be intimate, and to manage their home. At that point, he began to say no. He challenged her accusations. He stood his ground. He didn’t accuse in return. He just said, “No, it isn’t true.” As could be expected, the conflict between Jack and his wife increased. Within a short time, he moved out knowing that she was totally convinced in her own mind that she was right, the events she portrayed were true, and that she could never love such a man.
I have seen enough of these tragic situations to understand how they happen. I see in Jack’s story the importance of knowing one’s mind, of knowing what we believe and value. Before the conflict began, he was an easy-going, go-along-to-get-along kind of guy. This had always served him well socially and occupationally. Yet, the conflict with his wife changed Jack. He had to learn to stand up for himself. He had to learn to say No.
It was not easy for Jack because, like many people, he absorbed the expectations of the people around him. He conformed to them effortlessly. Everyone liked Jack, but no one really knew him. Jack was one of those nice guys who hang around the periphery of every group. Some people would call him a “Yes-man.” It was only the growing intensity of emotional abuse by his wife that finally pushed him to change. He had to change or lose whatever sense of self-worth he had remaining.
I was acquainted with Jack’s wife through various social encounters. Let’s assume that Jack’s perception of her treatment of him is an accurate description of his experience. I’m not interested in taking sides, of who is to blame for the demise of this marriage. They both are contributors. It is important to try and understand her perspective to fully appreciate how this marriage disintegrated in a matter of months. Let’s look into her actions to understand why she changed in her behavior towards her husband. I will treat her as fairly and non-judgmentally as I will Jack. For many people, this is precisely the challenge that they have in relationships where there is a core conflict involved. People take one side or the other never understanding what happened to bring an end to a relationship that people once thought was ideal.
Jack’s wife is Mary. When she met Jack, she thought him a perfect match. A good provider, attentive, and easy-going. As the family grew with two children within four years, Mary’s attention to the family’s needs grew. She found that she could not always depend on Jack to be available to take care of things. His work got in the way of his responsibilities to the family. One evening when Jack was out at a client dinner, she crossed a threshold of perception about him. He was no longer a fit match for her. He wasn’t as attentive or dependable as he once was. She resolved in her mind to change him. In her mind, Mary had begun to say No to how her family was operating. She wanted more from her husband. She wanted him to be a better father to their children. Out of this shift in perception came the accusations that ultimately led to Jack moving out and a divorce settlement signed.
There is a two-sided problem that we can see in this story of Jack and Mary. We have a man who decides that he must begin to say No to emotionally survive a crumbling marriage. We have a woman who decides that she must say No in order for her family to survive what she perceives is a deteriorating situation.
What is missing from this relationship? It is easy to see that communication was missing. Jack and Mary lived together not so much as husband and wife, and father and mother, but as roommates sharing domestic responsibilities of a home and the raising of two children. This is not unlike a person finding the ideal place of employment, and then watching as the social environment of work changes. The responsibilities remain the same or increase, but the enjoyment of working for this company is gone. The same is true for Jack and Mary. Both learned to say No, but their No’s were a response to something that they perceived as negative. Their No’s were never about a specific Yes. Their No’s were about survival in a situation that they each saw as unacceptable.
Communication in a marriage is dependent upon the couple nurturing intimacy in their relationship. This is especially true as the demands of family, children, and work grow. The natural intimacy that Jack and Mary knew as a young married couple could not be sustained except through attention given to their relationship as being as important as their individual desires as husband and wife, and parents of their two children.
“The days are long, the years are short.”
Recently, Jean and I spent a day in an Impact Day planning session. The conversation that follows occurred a couple of hours into our session and represents the transition point in our day.
Me: The idea … is that you want every no that you make to be a yes towards something that is important or valuable to you. … you're saying no to affirm a yes. … Does that make sense?
Jean: Yes.
Me: Why is that important to you?
Jean: Women are yes people, and we say yes to everything, and so we lose our purpose.
Me: Do you lose your identity too?
Jean: Yeah.
This is the story I hear frequently. It is the floor of the house of personal stories. It is especially true for many women with whom I’ve talked and worked.
There is a difference between men and women here. I am open to being corrected. It isn’t a difference in value. It’s really a difference in experience and perception. It seems to me that men’s purpose is driven much more towards task accomplishment. Women, like Jean and Mary, on the other hand, their purpose is much broader, encompassing the whole of their lives. It is much more relational.
It is an over-generalization, but it seems that men focus on the one thing that they need to do at that moment in time. It is hard to distract us when we are so focused. Is this the source of the complaint from women that we are not listening to them? Probably so, because in that moment, we aren’t listening. We are focused on that one thing. Everything else is peripheral.
Women, however, see all the demands, all the responsibilities, all the priorities at the same time. For you, everything is a priority. You are experts at multi-tasking. It is a source of constant wonder for me. Yet, the problem that Jean is pointing towards is that if everything is a priority, then you live with a kind of tyranny of never feeling complete and finished.
My own experience and what I see in other men is that we can segment our attention, which gets translated into behaviors where we are intentionally ignoring people because they are not a priority at that moment. There is an inherent conflict here that requires a married couple establish intimacy and communication as a higher priority in order to meet the other obligations that they have.
Is it any wonder that Jack and Mary’s relationship had such problems? Jack was making decisions that placed him in conflict with his family. His choice of a business meeting instead of some event with his kids was to Mary an intentional decision of choosing work over family. She triangulated the relationship that Jack had with her, to the family, and to his work. All three were priorities for him. Yet, she placed the family as the highest priority. A priority that Jack could never fulfill. The result is that conflict grew as the demands of family and work grew. Even learning to find a better balance between his work and family responsibilities, Jack could never fulfill the expectations that Mary had for him. Her expectations were born in an unfulfilled idealism that the reality of life did not diminish, but only made more urgent.
During the promotion tour for my book, Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative To Ignite Change, people would come up to me and ask about the book. I would say, “… the book is for people in transition.” I frequently heard stories like Jack and Mary’s. Stories about how things were changing in that person’s life. For them the transition was real, yet not at all clear.
To business people, I would say that “The Circle of Impact is a book for businesses in transition who want to elevate the leadership capacities of their people.” In one of those instances, this is the conversation that transpired.
Me: What do you do?
Man: I head a support team for a group of software engineers.
Me: Does your team know WHY they are doing the work that they do?
Man: Yeah, I think so.
Me: Do the software engineers respect the work that your team does for them?
* The guy turns towards me with a shocked look.
Man: NO! They don’t.
Me: Is your company clear about the impact that they are seeking to create?
Man: I’m not sure of that.
In the amount of time it took to read that exchange, this guy’s perception changed. His awareness shifted from a focus on his own role in the company to seeing a larger picture. His lack of awareness is a product of his focus.
If I could spend an Impact Day with him, we would expand his perception of what is happening with him, his work, and his family.
When I tell people that the Circle of Impact “is for people in transition.” There is an immediate recognition. All I have to say is “Tell me about the transition that you are in.” They describe a situation that they are in that “feels” like a transition. For those few minutes we have together, I show them how the Circle of Impact model can help them find clarity of understanding about their situation. That clarity leads to being able to say No which is a Yes.
In this sense, women are more self-aware than men. They are emotionally connected to a broad range of responsibilities that encompass their lives. Their challenge is discerning what priorities take precedent in the moment of awareness. Men are less self-aware because they focus on the essential task that fulfills the specific purpose of the moment. They too need discernment about what priority takes precedence at that moment. In this way, we are all alike.
As I listen to the women that I meet, I hear them talking about the full range of responsibilities that hold their attention. Many of them feel overwhelmed by the demands placed upon them. With men, it is very different. You have to catch them at the right moment for many to really hear you. We generally focus on a single thing at a time. It explains the popularity of books like Gary Keller’s The One Thing and Greg McKeown’s Essentialism. They help us to focus because most of us men are not multi-taskers. Yet, the complexity of life and work force it upon us. So, we too, like Jean are caught in circumstances where we need to say No to affirm a Yes.
Saying No to Say Yes
We each need to see how we can say No to affirm things of value that matter to us. The things that matter are things that we value. We value them because they connect us to values that define what matters to us. Our values are the ground on which we build our lives. Without clarity about our values, how can we say No that is a Yes. We don’t really have Yes’s.
In setting priorities, we need to have a clear understanding of our values and our sense of purpose. From this perspective, there is no distinction between people. We all need to learn to say No in order to affirm a Yes in our life.
Many of us grew up being people pleasers. It is a rather benign attitude where we want people to be happy. However, there is a deeper motivation to avoid conflict. This was Jack’s dilemma as a go-along-to-get-along guy. Increasingly, there was nothing he could do to please Mary. Was Jack responsible for her unhappiness? Or was it because she faced a severe conflict within herself. Her idealism acted as a guard against having to be vulnerable with people, including Jack. She could sit in judgment of people not meeting her standards, labeling them failures. From this perspective, Jack could never be all that she wanted him to be. Her options were limited. Stay true to her impossible expectations for Jack and never find true happiness in marriage. Or admit that she is responsible for her own happiness and must accept this reality as the only alternative to the lonely life of an idealist.
This choice is not as clear as described. There is no simple right or wrong in this relationship. Both Jack and Mary carry the burden of the failure of their marriage. For Mary, her course of action, rightly or wrongly, was never going to change Jack to the degree that she desired. For Jack, though finally pushed into a corner where he had to fight back to emotionally survive, his No was not an affirmation of some value that could be life defining. Without a clear sense of self-worth, he could never be the person his wife desired him to be. It is a sad story that is not unique based on the conversations that I have had with people over the years.
We all say yes to requests. Some of these requests are fair and valid. Others are not. Our problem is that if we say yes to them all, we lose touch with what matters to us. This is what Jean described to me during our work session.
Me: How much time during the course of the day would be saved if this relation between yes and no was healthy? Any idea?
Jean: It’s not how many hours during the day, it's years. I don't think you can equate it in a day because, over time, days to moms and women don't exist. It's like, the days are long, the years are short. Right? That's what you always hear. …
So every day you're thinking, what have I done today? You've said yes to lunch. You said yes to that person ... yes to PTA. …
I don't think hours in the day exist for women because unless you are someone who has every minute planned and is okay with the control that you lose when your child gets sick or whatever, then those days run into each other. So, our sense of purpose over time is affected for sure. … I talk to people all the time who say, I volunteered for this, I'm on the committee for my child's fundraiser. All these fundraisers that everyone's doing... Do we need to do the fundraiser? Just write a check or don't... And it's all about the auctions and this stuff, and it gets ... the pressures … the social pressures. … as a mother, as a working mom, it's hard to manage. … They've had it with their husband, or they're exhausted by their children. They've had it with their husband because he hasn't played a role in these daily decisions of saying yes and no. Right? Men have their purpose. Women have a purpose too, but it’s different.”
“The days are long, the years are short”. A simple statement by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, said that “of everything that I've ever written … seems to resonate most deeply with people.” It is a saying that has gone viral because it explains what people experience.
You can see in Jean’s description of her experience how Mary may also feel the same way.
Why do we say Yes, when we really want to say No? Why do we do this?
Somewhere in the subtle recesses of our mind, we may believe that we must say yes in order to preserve a relationship or ensure the success of a project. Many people have told me this. Like Jack, we go along to get along. We go over and above what is asked because we feel an obligation to contribute at a level no one else shares. Do we really believe that the success or survivability of a relationship or project is all on our shoulders? Why do we think this?
This doesn’t just happen on a person-to-person level. It also happens on a grand social one. Magnify the obligation to say Yes from one person to ten or fifty, and it isn’t about preserving a relationship, but our social standing. Magnify this perspective to how we fit into a social media world, and we get a global society captured by social fear of not fitting in.
Do you go along to get along? Do you try not to make a fuss or cause a disturbance? Or do you think about what is asked of you? Is there a line you will not cross? If we always say yes, then we may have lost touch with ourselves. We have become subjects of other people’s opinions and the social pressures that follow. We are much more easily manipulated to always say Yes when we have lost perspective on what we value most.
What then does it take to say No? Is Jack standing up for himself a courageous beginning point? I don’t believe it is. It is an act of desperation. It is essentially a defensive action. I’m going to resist so that I don’t totally lose my identity. Is the answer to Mary’s determination to change Jack to simply isolate yourself emotionally from her by saying No to everything now?
Is Mary’s standing up for her family a courageous act of a loving wife and mother? Or is it also an act of desperation, a defensive action to avoid having to change herself? Is Jack’s half-measures of change only making her more determined to fix him?
What is missing that Jack and Mary need if they were to have any hope of resolving the differences that were driving them apart?
They need self-awareness. Now, it does take courage to become aware of who we are in real terms. In some sense, it feels easy to just be like everyone else. To go along to get along. It feels right to stand your ground as the lone defender of my family against a world of compromise. Yet, what is the aim here? Is it to win? To beat your antagonist? Where is the Yes that gives reason for hope and reconciliation?
Every decision we make, large or small, affects us. Ever said Yes to something that clearly went against your principles? We feel grief and regret from it. We pledge to not do that again. We feel torn. We may say to ourselves, “Why didn’t I see that coming?” As a result, we beat ourselves up over saying Yes to something when we clearly should have said No.
Maybe you invested some money in a friend’s company or a vacation property that in retrospect doesn’t make sense. In retrospect, we see how we compromised our life or our family’s welfare so that now we suffer the consequences. We’ve all found ourselves in similar situations.
We may say Yes because we want to believe other people’s intentions are always good and noble. We make these decisions because we are not clear about what is important. Our self-awareness of what we truly value is lacking. We are unable to think clearly because we are captivated by what other people think.
The only way to truly know how to say Yes or No is to test the assumption. In other words, you need to make your own decision. Do your own homework. Make up your own mind. Don’t let yourself excuse it because you don’t have time. You have all the time in the world for what is important.
Self-awareness is the first step towards self-understanding. Without self-understanding, we lose the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. It has been said that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. It can also be said that all it takes for evil to succeed is for people to say yes because they have no real reason not to do so.
Self-understanding isn’t first understanding myself in relation to others. Rather, it is understanding what my values are. Then I have a basis for understanding what my relationships with people and the whole of my life should be. Values are the bedrock of our lives, the foundation upon every other part of our lives is built.
The core problem in Jack and Mary’s marriage is that they have no core values that they shared mutually. They each saw marriage as a kind of utility that provides a context for the fulfillment of what they individually want in life. The problem was that both had learned how to be married from watching their parents and grandparents. Once the way of being married no longer satisfied them, the marriage was over. They never understood why they should be married. It was a social expectation that they had learned and never given much thought to its value and purpose.
What then do you believe about your life? To know this begins to define who you are. I am saying you need to know who you are that is not simply a reason acquired from your family and friends. For they are in the same situation. They seek to make you and others over into their own image because they are also looking for some affirmation.
If we peel back another layer of Jack and Mary’s marriage, we’d find that they were looking for someone to marry who would fulfill some perceived lack in their life. Maybe that lack was their own insecurity or lack of a clear sense of identity. Or maybe, they married the person who they perceived as a replacement for the kind of father or mother that they wanted or needed growing up but did not have. The psychological dimensions of their choices are complex. As a result, they needed an external reference point that could provide them a place to go to be able to talk about these deep conflicts that each had within themselves.
One external reference point is our values. Our values are not only foundational. Once identified they need to be non-negotiable in order for these values to be allowed to fulfill their potential. We must be clear about what we value. When we say No, we are doing so because our values have pointed us towards the life that we choose, rather than the one we end up with.
Another external reference point for them could have been a trusted counselor. If the family exists solely as a social utility for each of the partners, then intimacy based upon a shared purpose is probably missing. Without a mutual commitment to shared values, it is difficult to create an environment where children may be loved and nurtured. The first step is the willingness to change.
Why We Don’t Say No
The idea of making every No decision a Yes resonates deeply with people. You can see it in Jean’s response. You can say No because you are really saying Yes to something else. This is not just a need that women have, but every man does also. We both need to be able to distinguish between what is important and essential in our lives and what is not.
Look behind the words of my conversation with Jean above, there is a truth that many of us do not want to face. It is the reality that many of our decisions are made to be amenable to others. Social conformity has a powerful hold on us. It means that much of our lives are lived complying with the expectations of others. While this is true for both men and women, I believe that women live with a greater burden because of their focus on relationships. This is why saying “Let every No be a Yes’” resonates so deeply with them.
We live every day in relationships with our children, spouse, co-workers, friends, and neighbors. The real impact of our lives happens in our interaction with people. I am convinced that we will be remembered after we die by our relationships with people. It will be our legacy. We must understand the kind of person we want to be in our relationships. If we are always conforming to other people’s expectations, we easily could be seen as weak or unworthy of respect.
Our problem is not simply “Who am I?” It is the deeper question of how I can function as an individual in a world that makes demands upon me. Social conformity is a challenge that we must manage each day. I’ve been told by many women that they feel their lives are pulled in every direction because of their sense of responsibility. Do they have a greater sense of responsibility than men? I don’t believe so. The difference is in understanding I am responsible for what and to whom?
Social conformity becomes tyrannical when we don’t know how to say No. We don’t know how because we don’t know ourselves well enough. If we are unsure about who we are, how can we ever be in a relationship where respect, trust, and mutual accountability are the outcomes. Because in those relationships, we can say No and be understood and affirmed.
On the other side of the question, if the pressure to socially conform did not bring some real benefits then I doubt we’d be talking about it right now. Social conformity is not a bad thing. It is a mixture of good and bad. What we need to learn is how to distinguish the good from the bad so that our No’s can be a Yes. In other words, we are making choices about the people and places where we freely decide to conform to their expectations, and where we choose not to by saying No.
I’ve known many women who have resisted, shall we call it, domestic social conformity. They wanted something different. They wanted a career. They chose not to marry or to have children. Many women chose this path intentionally, and others find themselves there after a lifetime of choices. For those of us who did marry and have children, we need to see that their choice is not second best compared to ours, but rather their choice. We should recognize that whether a woman embraces a domestic life or a professional career, both paths come with social expectations. Many choose both and face the demands of meeting the social obligations of both worlds. It was my conversation with Jean, who is a businesswoman, wife, and mother that instigated the purpose of writing this book.
I am not sitting in judgment because a person chooses one path and not another. Rather, I aim to understand as objectively as possible the realities that our personal and social choices demand of us. To do so I hope to provide insight, or rather, a way to approach these questions so that we may find our lives to be better.
In this context, I see how confusing these demands upon us can be. It makes it difficult to say No when we must weigh the relative merits of a decision against the competing demands of all the social settings we live and work in.
Thanks Ed. I look forward to reading it for more insight. Best to you in your travels. Please message me re: the "tavern" talk group in your town you mentioned in case I'm around there.
Ed, This is one I immediately clicked to Amazon and bought. I need to re-read and "get out my red pencil" to underline as my favorite Elkin HS teacher would say. An insight that I heard many years ago by a renowned author was " Women are like computers, and men are like adding machines," Both are essential at one time or another. As a working mom of 4 and 2 divorces, I attest to the "overwhelmingness" of being a multi-tasking, multi- attention giving woman. It's exhausting, emotionally depleting, and just devastating when I've lost myself. So many days and years, I said Yes continuously, when a No should've been a Yes to myself. After nearly a lifetime of thinking I was supposed to always say Yes, any healing from this malady is sought, but hard won in the extreme. I'm still pursuing how to be more gentle with myself- as a wonderful counselor told me, don't translate everything into "work" as is my pushing drive. At 66, it's certainly time to learn how to kick back more and not feel guilty:). And to focus on aligning with my North Star values. Thanks for a lot of insight. You men with your clear gifts are truly amazing. Godspeed!