Within the premiere episode of her podcast Wiser than Me, Emmy award successful actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss interviewed 85-year-old actress-fitness expert-activist Jane Fonda. The podcast relies on the premise that we will be taught a factor or two from the experiences of older girls to not make the identical errors that they did. In a dialog which lined subjects from like to train to parenting, Julia asks Jane a remaining query: What piece of recommendation would you give your 21-year-old self? And Jane Fonda replied, “No is an entire sentence.”
Jane Fonda is amongst many well-known individuals from Oprah to Maria Shriver who advocate the significance of claiming no, particularly for girls. However how do you talk an efficient no? How do you say no in a manner that maintains your relationship with the asker and retains your popularity intact? How do you refuse somebody in a fashion that isn’t fraught with nervousness and riddled with battle?
In my new guide The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts You in Charge of Your Life, I introduce the idea of Empowered Refusal – a manner of claiming no that’s persuasive and doesn’t invite pushback from others. An empowered no stems out of your identification and offers voice to your values, priorities, preferences and beliefs. It’s a manner of claiming no that offers voice to what issues to you, not a rejection of the asker.
![](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/like-a-boss-cup-woman-free-via-unsplash-1024x683.jpg)
Be taught the facility of claiming no to take cost of your life.
Contemplate the next state of affairs: You’ve simply accomplished your annual assessment together with your supervisor by which you described an concept you could have been serious about. She responds favorably to your concept and agrees that it might be actually good for enterprise and implies that if it really works it might make your upcoming promotion a no brainer. You’re motivated by this and determine to put aside a few hours after work each Friday to develop this concept as your individual private ardour venture.
Now, think about that it’s a Friday night and an entire bunch of individuals at work are headed to an area restaurant for drinks and dinner and invite you to go. You’re dedicated to working in your venture, however how do you say no to your work colleagues? Maybe you attempt to provide you with an excuse “I’ve to work late” or tentatively provide an apology “I’m sorry, however I can’t as a result of I actually must work on this venture”. What my analysis exhibits is that whenever you provide you with excuses or say a wishy-washy no as in case you are working towards your individual will, you usually tend to be persuaded by your pals (“C’mon, will probably be enjoyable! why don’t you’re employed tomorrow”) and succumb to the social strain.
Intention, Consciousness, and Readability
As an alternative, if you happen to substitute saying “I can’t” with “I don’t” you come throughout as taking a agency stance and don’t invite pushback or negotiation. In my analysis I discover that “I don’t” conveys empowerment and places you within the driver’s seat of your individual life. In saying no to your office colleagues, you would possibly say “I don’t exit on Friday’s, it’s ardour venture day.” By merely switching “I can’t” to “I don’t” you might be extra possible to have the ability to stick with your plan and likewise achieve the respect of your friends.
The Artwork of Refusal
In my guide I describe a set of three competencies that you could develop and follow to grasp the A.R.T. of empowered refusal. The acronym A.R.T. stands for
A. – Consciousness
R. – Guidelines, not Selections
T. – Totality of Self
Consciousness:
Due to the you-centeredness of empowered refusal, a key ingredient you want to develop is self-awareness. To say “no” to one thing successfully, you want to look inwards and be clear about your objective and what you see as significant to you. It’s essential to develop an understanding of your individual values and beliefs and a imaginative and prescient of what success and happiness seems prefer to you. It’s essential to spend money on understanding solutions to questions like: What sparks pleasure in you? What’s your rockstar high quality? What holds you again? Do you could have chatter in your head that you want to silence? This deepened self-awareness will allow you to sift between the “good for me” actions and the “not good for me” actions and show you how to determine what to say sure to and what to say no to.
Guidelines, not Selections:
Armed with self-awareness, you then want to determine easy guidelines to information your choices and actions. I name these easy guidelines private insurance policies. Private insurance policies assist strengthen your refusal and empower you to say no with conviction and willpower. After we look inwards and arrange a system of non-public insurance policies, we’ll discover it simpler to say an empowered no. For example, your work colleagues usually tend to arrange an outing on Thursday and invite you for that, in the event that they know you might be unavailable on Fridays.
Totality of Self:
A refusal is an act of communication and whenever you use empowered language like “I don’t” or “I all the time” “I by no means” you want to accompany these phrases with empowered physique language and non-verbal gestures like a heat smile, by leaning ahead and with pleasant gestures to strengthen that your refusal is about you and never a rejection of the asker. Keep in mind that empowered refusal is a whole-body exercise that entails each verbal and non-verbal communication cues to be efficient.
So that’s the A.R.T. of Empowered Refusal in a nutshell. Now let’s have a look at why it’s a vital superskill for profession girls.
![saying no](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/no-unsplash.jpg)
Ladies Are More and more Harassed and Burnt Out
A current study by Deloitte finds that 54% of Gen Z girls report being careworn all or more often than not (solely barely greater than 45% of millennial girls) in comparison with 39% of Gen Z males (37% millennial males). Equally, a McKinsey study finds that ladies are experiencing unprecedented ranges burnout within the office. Why are girls so careworn and more and more burnt out at work?
One clear motive is that ladies are considerably extra prone to say sure to office requests, really feel pressured to deliver results on time and tackle unpromotable tasks (duties which are time-consuming however not associated to efficiency on the job, like cleansing the breakroom fridge, planning an workplace lunch or organizing a retirement get together).
Studying – DECIDING – to Say NO
Prior to now decade or so, I’ve taught the A.R.T. of empowered refusal to lots of of ladies executives and have seen that after we be taught to say no to the issues that don’t matter, we permit ourselves the chance to stay an even bigger, higher and extra purpose-driven lives. The A.R.T. of empowered refusal makes salient the inherent trade-off in any resolution that we make: whenever you say sure to one thing, you must say no to one thing else.
One of many strongest advocates for the facility of claiming no through the years has been Oprah Winfrey. On April 10, 1994, Oprah wrote the phrases that she retains on her desk as a every day reminder: “By no means once more will I do something for anybody that I don’t really feel straight from my coronary heart. I cannot attend a gathering, make a cellphone name, write a letter, sponsor or take part in any exercise by which each fiber of my being doesn’t resound sure. I’ll act with the intent to be true to myself.”
We have to ask ourselves this Oprah-inspired query: Am I saying a convincing sure to the issues that matter and an empowered no to every little thing else?
This visitor submit was authored by Vanessa Patrick, PhD
![](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Vanessa-Patrick_photo-by-Nicki-Evans.jpg)
Vanessa Patrick is the Affiliate Dean for Analysis, Government Director of Doctoral Packages (PhD and DBA), a Bauer Professor of Advertising and lead school of the Government Ladies in Management Program on the Bauer College of Enterprise on the College of Houston.
Ms. Patrick is a distinguished scholar in her discipline and serves on editorial and coverage boards of main tutorial journals, and he or she is at present an Affiliate Editor for the Journal of Advertising Analysis and the Journal of Advertising. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Shopper Analysis, Journal of Shopper Psychology and the Journal of Retailing and on the coverage board of the Journal of the Affiliation of Shopper Analysis. She has co-edited particular points on client aesthetics for the Journal of Shopper Psychology (2010) and the Journal of the Affiliation of Shopper Analysis (2019).
*******
Ms. Career Girl strives to supply invaluable insights you should utilize. To see extra from our columnists and visitor authors, check these out! Or subscribe to our weekly electronic mail that includes our newest articles. We’re additionally current on Medium!
Within the premiere episode of her podcast Wiser than Me, Emmy award successful actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss interviewed 85-year-old actress-fitness expert-activist Jane Fonda. The podcast relies on the premise that we will be taught a factor or two from the experiences of older girls to not make the identical errors that they did. In a dialog which lined subjects from like to train to parenting, Julia asks Jane a remaining query: What piece of recommendation would you give your 21-year-old self? And Jane Fonda replied, “No is an entire sentence.”
Jane Fonda is amongst many well-known individuals from Oprah to Maria Shriver who advocate the significance of claiming no, particularly for girls. However how do you talk an efficient no? How do you say no in a manner that maintains your relationship with the asker and retains your popularity intact? How do you refuse somebody in a fashion that isn’t fraught with nervousness and riddled with battle?
In my new guide The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts You in Charge of Your Life, I introduce the idea of Empowered Refusal – a manner of claiming no that’s persuasive and doesn’t invite pushback from others. An empowered no stems out of your identification and offers voice to your values, priorities, preferences and beliefs. It’s a manner of claiming no that offers voice to what issues to you, not a rejection of the asker.
![](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/like-a-boss-cup-woman-free-via-unsplash-1024x683.jpg)
Be taught the facility of claiming no to take cost of your life.
Contemplate the next state of affairs: You’ve simply accomplished your annual assessment together with your supervisor by which you described an concept you could have been serious about. She responds favorably to your concept and agrees that it might be actually good for enterprise and implies that if it really works it might make your upcoming promotion a no brainer. You’re motivated by this and determine to put aside a few hours after work each Friday to develop this concept as your individual private ardour venture.
Now, think about that it’s a Friday night and an entire bunch of individuals at work are headed to an area restaurant for drinks and dinner and invite you to go. You’re dedicated to working in your venture, however how do you say no to your work colleagues? Maybe you attempt to provide you with an excuse “I’ve to work late” or tentatively provide an apology “I’m sorry, however I can’t as a result of I actually must work on this venture”. What my analysis exhibits is that whenever you provide you with excuses or say a wishy-washy no as in case you are working towards your individual will, you usually tend to be persuaded by your pals (“C’mon, will probably be enjoyable! why don’t you’re employed tomorrow”) and succumb to the social strain.
Intention, Consciousness, and Readability
As an alternative, if you happen to substitute saying “I can’t” with “I don’t” you come throughout as taking a agency stance and don’t invite pushback or negotiation. In my analysis I discover that “I don’t” conveys empowerment and places you within the driver’s seat of your individual life. In saying no to your office colleagues, you would possibly say “I don’t exit on Friday’s, it’s ardour venture day.” By merely switching “I can’t” to “I don’t” you might be extra possible to have the ability to stick with your plan and likewise achieve the respect of your friends.
The Artwork of Refusal
In my guide I describe a set of three competencies that you could develop and follow to grasp the A.R.T. of empowered refusal. The acronym A.R.T. stands for
A. – Consciousness
R. – Guidelines, not Selections
T. – Totality of Self
Consciousness:
Due to the you-centeredness of empowered refusal, a key ingredient you want to develop is self-awareness. To say “no” to one thing successfully, you want to look inwards and be clear about your objective and what you see as significant to you. It’s essential to develop an understanding of your individual values and beliefs and a imaginative and prescient of what success and happiness seems prefer to you. It’s essential to spend money on understanding solutions to questions like: What sparks pleasure in you? What’s your rockstar high quality? What holds you again? Do you could have chatter in your head that you want to silence? This deepened self-awareness will allow you to sift between the “good for me” actions and the “not good for me” actions and show you how to determine what to say sure to and what to say no to.
Guidelines, not Selections:
Armed with self-awareness, you then want to determine easy guidelines to information your choices and actions. I name these easy guidelines private insurance policies. Private insurance policies assist strengthen your refusal and empower you to say no with conviction and willpower. After we look inwards and arrange a system of non-public insurance policies, we’ll discover it simpler to say an empowered no. For example, your work colleagues usually tend to arrange an outing on Thursday and invite you for that, in the event that they know you might be unavailable on Fridays.
Totality of Self:
A refusal is an act of communication and whenever you use empowered language like “I don’t” or “I all the time” “I by no means” you want to accompany these phrases with empowered physique language and non-verbal gestures like a heat smile, by leaning ahead and with pleasant gestures to strengthen that your refusal is about you and never a rejection of the asker. Keep in mind that empowered refusal is a whole-body exercise that entails each verbal and non-verbal communication cues to be efficient.
So that’s the A.R.T. of Empowered Refusal in a nutshell. Now let’s have a look at why it’s a vital superskill for profession girls.
![saying no](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/no-unsplash.jpg)
Ladies Are More and more Harassed and Burnt Out
A current study by Deloitte finds that 54% of Gen Z girls report being careworn all or more often than not (solely barely greater than 45% of millennial girls) in comparison with 39% of Gen Z males (37% millennial males). Equally, a McKinsey study finds that ladies are experiencing unprecedented ranges burnout within the office. Why are girls so careworn and more and more burnt out at work?
One clear motive is that ladies are considerably extra prone to say sure to office requests, really feel pressured to deliver results on time and tackle unpromotable tasks (duties which are time-consuming however not associated to efficiency on the job, like cleansing the breakroom fridge, planning an workplace lunch or organizing a retirement get together).
Studying – DECIDING – to Say NO
Prior to now decade or so, I’ve taught the A.R.T. of empowered refusal to lots of of ladies executives and have seen that after we be taught to say no to the issues that don’t matter, we permit ourselves the chance to stay an even bigger, higher and extra purpose-driven lives. The A.R.T. of empowered refusal makes salient the inherent trade-off in any resolution that we make: whenever you say sure to one thing, you must say no to one thing else.
One of many strongest advocates for the facility of claiming no through the years has been Oprah Winfrey. On April 10, 1994, Oprah wrote the phrases that she retains on her desk as a every day reminder: “By no means once more will I do something for anybody that I don’t really feel straight from my coronary heart. I cannot attend a gathering, make a cellphone name, write a letter, sponsor or take part in any exercise by which each fiber of my being doesn’t resound sure. I’ll act with the intent to be true to myself.”
We have to ask ourselves this Oprah-inspired query: Am I saying a convincing sure to the issues that matter and an empowered no to every little thing else?
This visitor submit was authored by Vanessa Patrick, PhD
![](https://www.mscareergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Vanessa-Patrick_photo-by-Nicki-Evans.jpg)
Vanessa Patrick is the Affiliate Dean for Analysis, Government Director of Doctoral Packages (PhD and DBA), a Bauer Professor of Advertising and lead school of the Government Ladies in Management Program on the Bauer College of Enterprise on the College of Houston.
Ms. Patrick is a distinguished scholar in her discipline and serves on editorial and coverage boards of main tutorial journals, and he or she is at present an Affiliate Editor for the Journal of Advertising Analysis and the Journal of Advertising. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Shopper Analysis, Journal of Shopper Psychology and the Journal of Retailing and on the coverage board of the Journal of the Affiliation of Shopper Analysis. She has co-edited particular points on client aesthetics for the Journal of Shopper Psychology (2010) and the Journal of the Affiliation of Shopper Analysis (2019).
*******
Ms. Career Girl strives to supply invaluable insights you should utilize. To see extra from our columnists and visitor authors, check these out! Or subscribe to our weekly electronic mail that includes our newest articles. We’re additionally current on Medium!