The Explanation Inside Your No
Why your no keeps turning into yes.
There’s a move we make when learning to set boundaries.
We start saying no, which is progress. But we say it like this: No, because I have a lot going on right now. No, because that doesn’t work for my schedule. No, because of what happened last time.
And then the other person argues with the reason. Or they ask a follow-up question.
Or the person who said no ends up explaining further, and further, and by the end of the conversation they’ve said yes.
That’s not a communication failure. That’s your identity structure asserting itself in real time.
When you give reasons for your no, you’re asking the other person to accept it. You’re putting the no up for debate.
The implicit message is: I want to say no, but I need you to grant me permission.
That’s still people-pleasing. It’s just people-pleasing with better vocabulary.
The clean version is what I told one of my clients this week. No is a complete sentence. Thank you, no.
Nothing follows.
Not because you’re being cold, but because the moment you give reasons, you’ve handed your power over to them.
This is a body thing as much as a words thing. The rehearsal isn’t just, what do I say? It’s: what does relaxed feel like when you say it? Shoulders down. Long exhale. Thank you, no. And then the silence that follows.
That silence is the hardest part.
We’re so trained to fill it. The discomfort of an unanswered no feels like a problem to solve. So we over-explain. We soften that no. We add one more sentence that unravels the whole thing.
I went to Newport Beach California for Jack Canfield’s Train the Trainer live in November of 2023. The exercise we did in real-time gave me an opportunity to practice no is a complete sentence.
We were learning to ask, ask, ask and practice “No means next” and I noticed that everyone was adding their because. So I decided to just say no. And the discomfort was electric.
It was also a pattern interrupt, because I could see the confusion on the faces of my partners. I deviated from the norm. It was practice for me.
Here’s the reframe I keep coming back to: the discomfort isn’t a signal that something’s gone wrong. It’s a signal that you’ve gotten on the foreign road. Your brain expected the familiar pattern, explain, defer, make it okay for them, and you did something different.
The discomfort is the update happening in real time.
The brain rewires through prediction errors. Not through insight. Not through knowing better.
Through doing differently, and discovering that the world doesn’t end.
This is why we can’t just decide to have better boundaries. The decision is the easy part. It’s the moment in the room, with the discomfort rising, and the silence stretching out, and the need to fill it, that’s where the change gets made or doesn’t.
You have to rehearse. Not the words. The being relaxed while you say them.
And when the discomfort comes, and I promise you it will, that’s not proof you’re doing it wrong.
That’s proof you’re doing it.
The next Collateral Changes is Saturday, May 23 at 9:30 am Mountain. Collateral Changes is a two-hour workshop experience in rewriting and rewiring your M.U.D. - Misguided Unconscious Decisions. Click here to join: May 23 Collateral Changes
Sometimes the over-explaining is not even really for them. It is for the frightened child still living somewhere inside us who learned that love could be withdrawn if we became inconvenient. So we become fluent in justification. We soften ourselves.
Start making our “no” sound apologetic enough to remain lovable. But eventually exhaustion catches up.
Because a life built entirely around keeping everyone comfortable slowly makes a stranger out of yourself.
This is a good point. I like the silence factor. It took me awhile to figure it out. I repected people's no's so why couldn't they respect mine? I learned not to give them the reasons. Like you said it was the same as giving them the power. I also learned this when people give me compliments. It is the same principal. They say thank you and I come back with reasons I did this. I realized it and now just say 'You are welcome.' Now I try and not explain my reasoning unless asked. That is another hard one. I over explain a lot of things.