I said no!
Last week, I went into Ulta for the first time ever. As I was checking out, the cashier asked for my phone number. When I declined politely, she asked if I’d like to sign up for a rewards account. I declined again. She sighed, made a face and proceeded to ring up my items. With the total, she again asked if I wanted to sign up for an account based on how many points the purchase would get me.
With a stronger no, I declined. At this point, she became almost hostile and demanded a phone number for a friend or family member so they would get my purchase points credited to their account instead of wasting them.
At this point, three minutes into our transaction, I had said no four different times in four different ways. With each no, the cashier became less and less friendly and more and more frustrated while I became increasingly agitated and less and less polite.
Her resistance and hostility to accept my no locked us into a weird power struggle. In the past, I would have caved, rattled off my phone number while staring at the ground and feeling like a chump. Instead, I held my ground, accepting that my weird obsession with privacy and data mining was more important to me than this cashier’s feelings.
No wasn’t always easy for me and it’s a skill I’ve had to develop.
Whether it’s saying no or accepting a no, there is a complex internal struggle built into no.
When we say no to someone, it can trigger guilt, shame, and fear.
Am I a bad person for declining the $1 donation to a charity? Will the cashier treat us differently if we say no to their rewards program? Will our friends still like us if we say no to the midnight showing? Are we letting down our friends/family/selves if we say no to the expensive holiday activity? Will our kids be scarred for life when we say no to the extracurricular activity that requires getting up at 5am? Will my no to overtime cause the boss to skip over me at promotion time?
Saying no can also trigger FOMO (the fear of missing out). With the rise of social media, FOMO has run rampant and can cause a whole list of terrible things like depression, anxiety, feelings of loneliness and low self worth.
On a more serious note, no can also be a dangerous word. Many folks, particularly young women, have learned to dance around no as a means of self preservation. A passive or flakey answer can diffuse a situation in which a strong no would only escalate.
It’s not only our personal relationships that struggle with no. Entire industries, particularly sales and marketing, are built around manipulating us to say “YES!”.
With each no we want to give but override, we’re telling ourselves that what we need doesn’t matter.
With each yes we give, when we really want to say no, we’re accepting less sleep, more doubt, more weight, less health, more debt, less free time. We’re also telling ourselves over and over, that what we need doesn’t matter.
What does this have to do with Pilates?
With 30+ years experience as an athlete and 12+ teaching fitness, I’ve learned that most of us have been conditioned from a very young age to override our own “check engine lights”.
Instead of turning internally to guide our training, we have been taught and encouraged to depend on external sources like coaches, teachers, doctors, training plans and our sports dogmas to tell us when we take a break, when we get water, when we rest, when we eat, how much we sleep, what we eat and how we treat our bodies.
We’ve also been taught to override any feelings (mental/emotional/physical) that go against what our training plan says.
Feeling tired? Too bad. It’s tempo day.
Mentally burned out? Too bad. Lace up and get on the field.
Knee pain? Suck it up and run through it.
Jump too scary or too dangerous? It’s going to be effing awesome if you land it, so do it anyway!
The worst part, is that most of the time, it’s not even our coaches or trainers. We do this to ourselves.
Two things happen in this environment.
1) We’ve never been taught how and when to say no, so we don’t know how to do it. Often, we don’t even know that saying no is an option.
2) We lose the ability to listen to our own intuition and take care of our bodies.
As a runner, coming from a culture of “no pain, no gain” and “just run through it”, this is where 100% of my injuries came from. While a few days off could have easily helped manage Achilles tendonitis or shin splints, “running through it” meant severe pain that lasted for months and in a few cases, major issues that changed my life.
On a broader scale, the inability to say no can cause burnout, frustration, resentment, depression and fatigue. It also robs us of our ability to direct our time and energy into things we enjoy and frequently leaves us out of alignment with our priorities.
Luckily, saying no is a skill. And like all skills, we can start small, we can practice and we can strengthen the skill until we master it.
As a Pilates instructor, a mom, and an aunt, I pride myself on being a safe-no.
In fact, I am completely honored and internally cheer when one of my clients tells me no.
That no means:
- they are listening to their body
- they are advocating and communicating for what feels safe and what doesn’t
- they are taking charge of their own Pilates practice and not just performing a “monkey see, monkey do” routine.
- they are strengthening their “no muscle” along with the rest of their core muscles
- they trust me and know that I’ll accept their no
As a safe-no, my job is to ensure that clients feel safe, empowered and confident that their no will be respected.
By offering a safe no, clients have a chance to check in with themselves and decide whether or not they are ready to take on the next challenge.
The true power of a safe-no is taking back our autonomy and intuition, in having the confidence to know when we need to back down and when we’re ready to scale up.
Injury prevention is rooted in scaling up appropriately.
If you’re up to it, allow yourself to say no to one thing today. Guilt free. Enjoy it!
-R