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How to Say No Without Feeling Like a Bad Person

Introduction: The Problem with Saying Yes

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to say no with assertiveness, even if you’re scared of conflict and you’re worried that you’re going to be seen as a bad person. Saying no doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, but it may get what you think of as bad reactions. So if you’re to become more assertive, we need to talk about this.

So if you’re someone who doesn’t like to say no because you’re worried that it’s going to cause tension, it’s going to create conflict, you’re going to be thought of as a bad person or a selfish person, or you’re going to disappoint people, and that kind of thing scares you, then this episode is for you, because people have a problem with saying no end up saying yes to a lot of things that make their life worse.

They end up overworked, they end up burned out, they end up resentful, they even end up doing things that compromise their values and their integrity just to avoid that conflict. And this can create a lot of big problems down the line, problems much worse than just saying no to someone and then getting a bit upset.

You probably feel like a morally good person when you say yes to everyone. But today, I’m going to show you that you’re not being morally good. You’re just being emotionally convenient to other people. And those are not the same thing.

We’re going to see today that over time, behaving this way leads to burnout, leads to being abused and used as a beast of burden, leads to codependent relationships, which are super unhealthy, and a growing sense that other people’s needs are more important than your own and that you don’t respect yourself.

Some of you are so bad with this that you actually tolerate outright abuse. You’d rather somebody treats you very badly objectively than have to go through the discomfort of pushing back on someone’s request.

My Experience as a “Yes Man”

And this problem is something I understand particularly well. I spent most of my life being a yes man. I would dive over anybody’s problem and try to solve it. I would never want to be someone who’s seen as disappointing or unavailable or unreliable.

This controlled my existence. I literally could not say no to people because I hated conflict so much. I thought people being upset with me meant that I was a bad person. It would lead to me getting a bad reaction.

I saw saying yes as this kind of magic cure, this amazing solution to my problem of trying to make everyone like me, and so I just said it as often as possible, as being the kind of easiest way to achieve my goal of being this totally likable person.

It took a couple of decades for me to see the cost of behaving this way, to see that I was building up a lot of resentment, that I was being used and this wasn’t being reciprocated, that there were times where I had to actually breach my own integrity in order to follow through on the yes that I’d committed to, and I wasn’t getting the appreciation and respect that I expected to get being such a great person.

And since becoming a coach, I’ve worked with literally hundreds of men who have the same pattern of using a yes to prevent conflict and to make sure that other people like them. Nearly all of them have the same problem.

They think that saying no hurts other people, not only their own reputation, but the other person is actually rejected, that their life gets worse because you’re not helping them. They actually feel like a bad person for saying no.

What This Episode Will Cover

So in this episode, we’re going to look at a few things.

We’re going to look at why saying no feels so difficult for people pleasers.

We will look at the real cost of never setting this boundary and only saying yes to what matters.

We’re going to look at the difficult trade-off that you must accept if you want to enjoy self-respect and respect from others.

And I’m going to help you with a simple, easy way to start saying no so that you can practice this without causing major catastrophes in your social life.

The Story That Changed Everything

We’ll start by sharing a story where this first came to a head for me, where I was really faced with this dilemma properly, for the first time, in a conscious way.

I’d made a commitment to my dance partner that I would go to some dancing event. It was on Friday night. I can’t remember what it was, but we were training for it. We were committed to it.

And then my brother offered to take me to a comedy show for my birthday. He’d already paid for tickets, and I forgot the dates of the dancing thing, and these dates conflicted.

By the time I realized, I was stuck. There was no way that I could get through the situation without disappointing somebody. I had to disappoint one of these two people.

So either I disappoint my dance partner by letting her down on the commitment I made, or I disappoint my brother.

But for maybe the first time I was consciously aware of in my life, I couldn’t wiggle my way out of it. I couldn’t do both. You know, in the past, if I’d accidentally double booked myself, I’d just find a way to do both, but these things, it was just not possible to do both.

So I had to let one of these people down.

The Reaction I Feared

I really struggled with this, and in the end, I decided, if there’s any hierarchy, family’s at the top and everybody else is below there. So I said yes to my brother and no to my dance partner.

And she was as disappointed as I was hoping she wouldn’t be.

I got the reaction I was worried I was going to get. She literally used the word “disappointed,” which was an arrow in my chest. That word — us nice guys, we really don’t like that word, right?

And she was really upset, and she had a big go at me about it, and I felt a lot of shame, and I felt like I was pathetic and useless, and I was very hard on myself about her reaction, like I’d let everybody down. I was a bad person, all that stuff.

What Actually Happened

Then a couple of days later, she got over it, just like that.

Our next conversation, it’s like it had never happened. We moved on, kept on dancing, doing our thing.

I went to the comedy show. It was funny.

It’s like I disappointed her, and then after a couple of days, the slate was just wiped clean. She was the same with me as she’d ever been.

And it was a huge revelation for me, realizing that I could do this.

I could let people down, I could disappoint people, I could say no to things.

I could even say no to things I’d previously said yes to. I could break commitments if I really wanted to, and the world didn’t come fucking crashing down.

It didn’t even hurt the friendship.

Of course, I’m not saying that’s going to be the case every time, but there was proof that I could say no and the person wasn’t actually harmed in the long term.

They were upset and disappointed. But that’s not the same as being harmed.

The Trade-Off You Must Accept

And I got a clear sense of the kind of trade-off that confident people must make all the time.

Those kind of people I looked up to who can say no with no shame, no guilt, no apology — those people who actually controlled their own lives and decided what happened and what didn’t — I realized that they say no to almost everyone except one person who they highly prioritize.

I’d just done that myself by accident. I’d been forced to do it, but I’d done what they do, where they have people and tasks in a kind of hierarchy, and something doesn’t make it to the top of the list, it gets cut.

And they have no problem doing that. And nothing bad happens when they do that.

In fact, it’s good.

If I’d tried to go to both of those events somehow that night, I would have enjoyed neither of them, and both of the people I went with would have been disappointed, upset with me, because my heart wouldn’t have been in it, or I would have been distracted, would have had to leave early, whatever.

Confident people understand you can only do one thing well, and you’ve got to say no to all the rest.

And I got a little glimpse into that system and a little shake-up on my belief system that letting people down is this terrible, disastrous thing that makes me a bad person.

The Difficult Reality

Because this is the difficult reality — that if you can’t accept and don’t think you’ll ever be able to accept, then you’ve got to stop listening to this episode.

When you start learning to say no, you realize you can’t do this without upsetting people.

There’s no way around other people getting upset.

Some people will think that you’re being selfish. People will be angry with you, disappointed in you.

Sometimes, if you do this really poorly, you’ll ruin their plans, and their dependence on you will mean that this does cost them in some way.

And there’s just no way to respect yourself without taking the risk that this kind of reaction could happen.

It won’t happen every time, but it will happen.

So if you’re willing to learn how to manage this risk and live with it, then I can help you learn how to say no.

But if it’s just intolerable to you that anyone could even be slightly upset because of your decision making, then I can’t help you.

You’re going to have to live without self-respect in order to try and achieve that.

And little secret — you’re not going to be able to achieve it anyway.

People are still going to be upset with you.

When I disappointed my dance partner, I was trying my very best to please everyone, and I was fucking good at pleasing everyone, and I still couldn’t do it perfectly.

So you’re going to upset and disappoint people, regardless of your approach.

Today I’m going to talk about how you can also have self-respect, and just to ease the tension a little bit for you, you can do this in a way that minimizes the amount of conflict and disaster that you cause.

Can’t guarantee it’ll be zero, but it won’t be as bad as you think it’s going to be.

Defining the Real Problem

So let’s dive in, as always, by beginning with defining the problem.

What is the problem of not being able to say no?

Well, one way to look at it is in the positive. It’s not that you’re not saying no, it’s that you’re always saying yes, okay, or you’re silently consenting, so you either actually outwardly say yes or you don’t say no in a way that allows something to continue, like not disagreeing with someone’s idea, and so the idea goes forward without any resistance.

So it’s always some form of yes.

Your default setting is yes. Something comes in — yes. Request — yes. Demand — yes. Interference with your time — no problem, right? There’s just no no available to you when you predict that it will create an emotional response that you do not want to create, something that you’re uncomfortable with.

Some of you, this might be contextual. You might have no problem saying no to your partner or your kids, but you’ve never said no to your boss. For others, it’ll be all the time. With everyone, you just constantly people please, and the closer someone is to you, the more you people please. And so with your partner and your kids, you completely fold. And then the stranger on the bus, you say, yes, you can take my seat.

And there’s just no hierarchy at all. There’s no cutoff line. There’s no exceptions.

Doesn’t matter which one you are. We’re going to address those moments we do struggle to say no.

And I’ll note some of you probably do occasionally say no, but you never do it directly and honestly. You use excuses and lies to try and ease the landing of the no. So, for example, someone invites you to a party, you pretend to be sick rather than just saying, I don’t want to go. If your boss tries to give you more work, you say, “Look, I’m really overloaded at the moment,” when you actually do have space, but you just don’t want to do the task.

Whatever it is, you don’t say no directly.

And so even if you’re good at kind of sneaking your way out of commitments, today’s episode, I want to help you figure out how to actually directly say no and honestly say no, to be able to say, “I don’t want to do it,” and that’s a good enough reason.

One of the most confident things you can do in this world is honor you not wanting to do something and not needing to explain it or justify it or prove that it’s worthwhile to other people as an excuse.

The Hidden Patterns That Reveal the Problem

So how do we know that this is a problem in your life?

Well, there’s going to be patterns, and I describe some of the patterns and the kind of cause-and-effect chain that happens as a result of them.

So for example, you might notice that you snap occasionally — “little puke,” as we call it in nice guy lingo — usually at your loved ones, or when you’re in a safe environment. So suddenly these bursts of rage come out of you.

Now this is because there’s a buildup of resentment. When you build up resentment and you never feel safe to get it out, it just gets bigger and bigger until you’re finally in an environment where there’s no real consequences to letting it out, and then, brother, it comes out, usually right towards somebody who doesn’t deserve it, certainly not the person who caused the resentment.

Or otherwise, you would have said it to them at the start, and there wouldn’t be resentment.

Or in some cases, it does go towards the person you do resent, but it’s after a lot of time of building it up, being too scared to say something, walking on eggshells, as we talked about last time, and then it blows.

The reason you have all this resentment is because you’re saying yes to resolving other people’s problems over your own. You’re deprioritizing yourself all the time.

It makes you feel like a second-rate citizen, makes you feel like things are unfair, that you’re not getting your share of things, that you’re not getting the support you need while you’re giving it to others — this great sense of imbalance that you’ve actually fucking caused yourself by saying yes to all things, but your brain has somehow worked it into a story about how it’s other people’s fault.

Like you might never say no to your partner, and then suddenly that becomes a story about how your partner doesn’t respect you and how she’s always using up all your time and energy.

Fear of Rejection and Social Compliance

Another one is you find yourself doing a lot of social activities that you’re not enthusiastic about, going to events and things that if you really had your say, you wouldn’t go to.

Now, the reason that keeps happening is because you’re worried about being abandoned.

You’re worried that if you say no to social stuff, you won’t get invited, that people won’t want you around, that you maybe even discover that they’re quite happy that you didn’t come along.

Or in some cases, you’re just worried that if you were to say no, people would be so upset and disappointed in you for not coming that there would be some big, harsh rejection or punishment in the long term for you not doing this.

Or you might even be worried that you not coming would severely hurt other people, that your attendance is required.

You know, like going to spend time with your wife’s family — if you weren’t to come, she would be shamed in front of the family, or she would feel like you abandoned her and rejected her.

You don’t go to your friend’s birthday party — it feels like you don’t really love him, and so on.

The reason you feel that way about it is because for your entire life, probably, you’ve been basing your self-worth on yeses.

So you’ve been deciding that you’re a good person because you say yes, and creating this narrative that saying no is harmful to others and it makes you a bad person.

The Cost: Burnout, Escapism, and Self-Neglect

So in the long run, all this has ended up with is that you do a lot of shit you don’t want to do.

Doom scrolling at night, especially at night, spending lots of time on your phone or just doing meaningless stuff, maybe playing video games, stuff where you kind of binge on something that you know is not really healthy for you and not very productive.

You know that you waste hours and hours of your life doing this stuff.

So this comes from an overarching buildup of feeling that you don’t ever get to do anything for yourself, right?

This is you trying to squeeze in your me time to try to counterbalance sacrificing yourself for others all the time and feeling like there’s nothing left for you.

And because it’s the end of the day and there’s nothing left to do, the best you can do is kind of scroll on your phone and go, at least I get to choose where my attention goes.

And you’ll often stay up late, get bad sleep, kind of waste time and energy because you feel like it’s finally your turn now that everybody has had their needs met.

And it’s because you’ve just got a lifetime of defaulting to self-sacrifice.

When you say yes to others, you’re usually saying no to yourself.

You can’t say yes to yourself and others at the same time.

I know you try to spin a tale to yourself about how it is a yes to yourself, about how you like supporting others, and therefore technically this is you doing what you want to do.

I know you’ve tried to spin that tale to yourself to make yourself okay with it, but the simple fact is you’re not as kind as you’re pretending to be, you’re not as generous as you’re pretending to be.

It’s actually fine. Nobody is fucking as generous as you’re pretending to be, but you’ve had to sell yourself on the story that you serving others over yourself is for you, that you’re being a good guy.

The self-sacrifice is noble when all it does is make you feel like you’ve missed out.

Loss of Identity and Passive Living

You probably find yourself following a lot, doing what other people came up with — their ideas — passively being led along by others, kind of just tagging along.

And this is because you fear that they’ll take your no as a kind of rejection of them.

That if you were to say, “Hey, that idea sucks, let’s go do something else instead,” if you were to lead and initiate, you’d either cause them rejection, or you would get rejected.

They would not follow you. The group would move on to the leader’s choice and leave you alone, which of course may happen.

You’re so terrified that this would be some sort of evidence that you’re a bad person that you follow in order to avoid provoking that rejection.

You’re basically living in a way where rejection can’t happen.

You’re never asking for anything. You’re never initiating, never taking a risk, and therefore nobody else can say no to you.

So one of the strategies of you saying yes to everybody is to prevent a no coming from them to you.

The False “Easygoing” Identity

And this is because you’ve created a false easygoing persona.

You’ve actually probably got yourself believing that you really don’t mind that much, that you’re cool with whatever, that you’re just the easiest person to be around.

You probably get complimented on that quite a lot.

Like, “Oh, so easy. You’re just so cooperative. You never make a fuss.”

You’re like, hell stop it — as if that’s a fucking compliment, when actually it should be taken as an insult.

Saying you’ve got no spine, you’ve got no standards. There’s nothing you actually want for yourself. You don’t even know yourself.

That’s what they’re really fucking saying.

But you’re just going, “Yeah, look, I’m just so awesome to be around because I just follow people all the time.”

That’s not a burden on them. That’s not hard for them to always have to make all the decisions. My wife doesn’t resent that. That’s fine. Really.

Pretending, Pleasing, and Fear of Offending

You probably often find that you pretend to like things, like things that deep down you know you don’t like.

You might again tell yourself a bit of a story where you go, “It’s not so bad, and I’m lucky to even have this option available.”

You probably sold it to yourself.

But deep down, your heart of hearts, you wouldn’t have chosen this thing. You wouldn’t eat this food, you wouldn’t watch this movie, you wouldn’t listen to this music, but somebody else wanted to, and you thought, “Yeah, okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. It’s all good. I’m fine with this. Really. Totally fine. Not lying.”

And this is because you have an anxiety about offending other people.

You’ve noticed that people are kind of sensitive about their preferences, that people want to like things, but they also want other people to agree with them liking those things.

When somebody likes a song, it’s not good enough for them to just like the song. They have to have other people agree that it’s a good song, or they actually get offended at the other person.

I remember when I was a kid — well, to this day, I’ve never liked tomatoes — and there’s been so many times when I was younger where I would say no to some food that somebody had cooked.

They hadn’t even cooked it. They just bought it, but offered it to me because it had tomatoes in it, and they’d get mad at me for not liking tomatoes because they like tomatoes.

For the life of me, and to this day, this has never made any sense to me.

Me not liking tomatoes does no harm to other people, but people do actually get upset that I don’t like what they like.

People get upset if you don’t like their favorite movie. They show you that video on YouTube — “See, it’s funny, isn’t it? Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it funny?”

You’ve got that pressure like, God, I also say no — your sense of humor sucks, you’re a terrible person — but you just can’t say it.

You can’t hurt their feelings about not liking what they like.

So you pretend to like shit just because they do.

The Deeper Fear: Rejection and Worth

And this is because you treat feelings like being offended or disgusted or hurt as a threat.

A threat of a two-way rejection — that you’re rejecting them, that you’re causing them to feel rejected — a feeling that you’re very familiar with, and you would feel like such a bad person if you inflicted that on others.

And of course, deep down at a more selfish level, you’re worried that they’ll reject you.

That if you were to offend them by not liking what they like, they would actually stop liking you as a person.

And you’ve probably even seen evidence of this, like how you didn’t fit in with the cool kids because you weren’t into the same shit as them.

Like you actually believe that not liking the same things as other people leads to you being alone.

The Outcome: Burnout, Overwork, and Addiction

Just overall, you’ll be burned out.

You’re going to have so much extra stuff to do, no free time or no sense of free time, feeling like a lot of your day is spent doing other people’s work for them, even though you volunteered or you didn’t resist when they asked.

You might even notice at work that you’re doing tasks outside of your contractual obligation, not getting any extra compensation, and you’ve got work colleagues who don’t do this and they still get paid the same as you.

It’s kind of an unfair arrangement that you’ve allowed to happen.

You’re just spread too thin. You’re doing a lot of things mediocre rather than doing a few things exceptionally well.

You call it being a perfectionist, maybe. But actually, there’s nothing you do that’s perfect because there’s not enough energy to do little things properly.

This is because of a couple of things.

One is you’ve got this constant worry that you’re not providing enough value, that you’ll be rejected if you don’t over-exceed expectations, that you don’t over-deliver.

And also a fear of missing out, like there might be some great opportunity for you to deliver this value if you’re not constantly saying yes to everything.

Somebody else will take the glory, and everyone will realize that that other person’s better than you, and they can ditch you for this other person.

That kind of sense that you constantly have to earn your place.

This deep belief system that nobody loves you just as the way you are — you’ve got to provide value to be loved — and so you’ve got to say yes to every opportunity to provide value.

It’s kind of like you’re mining for gold. If you see even a little bit of yellow in the river, you better go pan that river, because there’s not much gold around.

The Escape: Addictive Behaviors

And finally, you’ll notice addictive behaviors.

These might not seem like they’re related, but you might be addicted to sugar leading to weight gain, porn, gambling, gaming, weed, alcohol — you might notice some problematic use happening there.

And this is because you just feel so hopeless and trapped all the time, so under pressure, that fucking burden of having to do everything for everyone all the fucking time.

You’ve got this great need for release, this need for some sort of good, pleasurable feeling instead of the constant stress you feel all the time.

And you’re attached, you’re trapped because you identify as the guy who says yes and doesn’t say no.

You’re actually kind of proud of it.

You’ve made yourself proud of it because you don’t have the courage to get out of it.

So you’ve tried to sell it to yourself like, “I’m a good person, I’m easygoing, I’m super helpful. You can always rely on me. That’s a good thing.”

And because you’re trapped by your attachment to that identity, you can’t get out of this thing that you’re in.

So you look for a release, and you do quite unhealthy behaviors just to get a glimpse of pleasure amongst all the stress and pressure and worry.

Why People Pleasers Become This Way

So why are we like this and other people aren’t? Why is it there are people out there who can say no, assert themselves all the time, and not only do they not feel guilty and don’t feel like a bad person, other people don’t think of them as bad people. Other people respect them, look up to them, love them, and even though us people pleasers look at them with resentment and envy and say they’re bad people, they’re selfish, other people aren’t saying that about them. They’re saying they’re assertive. They’re confident. What a good dude. So they’re getting more compliments and praise and love than you are, and yet they’re less helpful than you. They say no to people all the time. They hurt people’s feelings sometimes. So why are we like this? And there’s clearly a better way of living.

I think, for anything like this, there’s kind of two whys behind it. There’s the original cause that led us to start doing this, and then there’s the effect of doing this, which creates a kind of loop that we get stuck in, kind of suffering that we try to solve with the original behavior.

Again, in my observations, or, you know, a decade plus coaching, I’ve noticed that this mostly affects people pleasers who had a difficult adult in their life, a difficult adult relationship, for example, strict parents, the kind of people where it was really hard to get approval and validation from them, and so you kind of had to pick up any crumb of opportunity. This was combined with the kind of parenting or teaching or whatever adult relationship where saying no got punished, that you were immediately, you know, given negative consequences and enforcement if you became at all difficult to deal with, if you became at all emotionally inconvenient to the parent or elder person. So you have this combination where the only way you got love is by saying yes, and you got a lot of love withdrawal by saying no.

So it’s kind of a very basic reward-punishment system, like training a dog. You learn very quickly there’s one kind of behavior that does get accepted. There’s another kind of behavior that always gets punished. This isn’t a hard choice to make. I know what to do here, and you’ll find that somebody who’s a bit of a yes man has been doing it for as long as they can remember, that that probably started when they were still toddlers. They very quickly learned you don’t say no to your parents, and that you get rewarded by saying yes, or at least you don’t get punished.

And so that early conditioning system kicked in probably before your best memories actually begin. So that early conditioning system kicked in probably before your memories even started.

Early Memories of Punishment and Love Withdrawal

So you can take a moment to kind of reflect back on how people reacted to you saying no when you were younger, if there was ever any moments that you remember, if it ever even happened, you know, what was it that put you off saying no to other people?

Love withdrawal is a classic one. You know, parents going cold or harsh on you. I remember when I was told to finish my dinner, I said, “No, I don’t want to finish it.” They would make me sit at the table by myself while they went off to watch TV, and I’d be sitting there with this cold, congealed meal that I couldn’t eat because I didn’t like the taste. You know, just these memories of being isolated, alone, having a very unpleasant experience, a lot of guilt, feeling like I’d let everyone down. I have a lot of that associated with the idea of saying no.

I’ve got memories of being in school and going, let’s go do this, guys, and they’re all just like, nah, and they’ll just take off without me. You know, nobody ever followed my idea. I’d even be mocked or laughed at for coming up with ideas, quickly learning, like, let’s wait for the coolest kid to come up with something. We’ll just do what he says.

You know, quite often love withdrawal is used as a motivational tool by parents and teachers, where they know that if they make you feel like you’ve hurt them and that you’re not loved anymore, that you’ll quickly change your behavior. And so you watch a lot of parents do this. It’s heartbreaking to fucking watch. They’ll actually say to their kid, like, well, you hurt me. You know, you’re making me feel bad, as if the kid’s in charge of the adult’s emotions, as if the adult isn’t the one who should be in charge of their own feelings by now, right? And the kid’s left with this burden, like, “Oh no, I hurt daddy,” right? And so the kid’s quickly going to learn to say yes to stop that kind of reaction from happening.

Why “Yes” Becomes a Survival Tool

There’s also a kind of simplicity to yes. Yes becomes a very basic conflict aversion tool. You start to realize that yes just rolls with any resistance, that anytime someone’s getting a bit upset with you or somebody disagrees with you, and it could lead to some sort of conflict, and that big, scary, you know, event of somebody not liking you and getting angry and all that, just yes just pours water on that fire, just throw yeses at it until it goes away. You just agree until the other person’s got nothing to push against anymore.

You can even switch. You can go from no to yes, and people don’t even seem to notice or care. They’re just happy that they’re back to yes. You could be like, “Oh, I hate that music.” They’re like, “Really? That’s my favorite type.” You’re like, “Actually, it’s not that bad once you get used to it.”

It doesn’t matter what’s happening. I just chuck yeses at it until the fucking thing calms down, and we learn that from a very early age, that people are very easily manipulated by yeses, that agreement is a very simple, powerful tool to get what we want, which is emotional safety.

So a child starts learning to throw yeses around.

Emotional Convenience Is Not Morality

And this is where we see my argument against the idea that you saying yes means you’re morally good. You might have said yes to things that were very compromising of your principles. You may have even broken laws to say yes. The reaction you’re getting is just that you’re emotionally convenient.

This old post I wrote ages ago about what I call convenience parenting, which is the parents just cannot handle the kid being emotionally inconvenient, the kid being upsetting or difficult or resistant, confusing. And so they start subconsciously parenting in a way where the kid is reinforced and conditioned to be as convenient as possible, and then they make the kid feel like that is morally good.

Basically the messaging they keep giving to the kid is, if you obey me, you’re a good kid, and if you disobey me, you’re a bad kid. They’re not actually talking about the context. They’re not saying, well, this thing that you did was helpful or harmful. They’re saying, you saying yes is good, you saying no is bad, regardless of what that is about, regardless of the behavior you engage in.

This is why people pleasers can actually become criminals and end up in trouble. They really have no resistance to peer pressure. They just say yes to anything, even bad ideas from dumb ass teenagers, like, “Hey, let’s go break into their house,” and like, “Okay,” right?

So these parents just not wanting an emotional hassle will actually impose a moral code on the kid that simply, yes is good, no is bad.

So you’ve grown up thinking I’m a good person for saying yes, when actually you’re just making yourself emotionally convenient to other people, which has nothing to do with morality at all. In fact, quite often emotionally convenient things are the pathway to evil, like the path of least resistance is usually where we get the most harm.

So the more rational, accurate argument is that your yeses all the time make you a bad person, not a good one. Good people resist, they fight back, they assert themselves, they stand up for what they believe in. If you’re not doing this stuff, then why would you be a good person? How do you justify that? Because other people feel calm around you? You just got told that that was morally good. It doesn’t make it true.

The Rewards That Keep You Stuck

And that’s the problem really. It’s not actually the punishment, it’s the rewards. You got complimented, you got reinforced. You got told that you’re a good person for saying yes. And you develop this good person identity, this reputation. You might have different words for it. You’re a nice guy, you’re reliable, you’re dependable. You know, Dan always follows through on what he says.

You might even tell yourself you have integrity, simply because you follow through on your promises. The fact that your promises were a breach of your integrity doesn’t kind of occur to you, because yes is always good.

And it can get really confusing, because you will have had short-term wins from saying yes all the time, like if you’re a yes man at work, maybe you got a few promotions. If you’re really agreeable with women, maybe they laugh at your jokes and they say that you’re a decent guy, and they wish they could find a guy like you. Maybe you have a solid reputation among your friends. It’s like, “Oh yeah, Dan, he’s good people,” you know, and you’re really proud of that.

So you think, you know, I’m winning. I’m getting a lot of feedback here that says this is going well for me. You’re kind of ignoring the fact that your life is miserable and that you’re plateauing, and that you know these rewards never really lead anywhere, and that people being more assertive are overtaking you and enjoying life more than you are.

You just kind of go, “Look, I’m getting nothing but good reactions to this, as far as I can tell. So I must be on track,” right?

The Trap of Promises

And then really devastatingly, you will have learned about the magic of promises. So promises are saying yes later, so it’s a yes that you don’t even have to follow through on.

“Will you help me with this thing on Monday?” “You betcha.” “Oh, thanks. You’re so good.”

I didn’t even have to do anything. I’m getting rewarded. This is awesome.

You realize that yes is just a word, that it can even be a placeholder for behavior, that you can say yes and not even have to follow through on it, so long as you keep remaining agreeable when they overlook the fact that you broke your promise and couldn’t follow through.

So you start to kick disappointing people down the road. You know, you just go, I’ll disappoint them later by promising them something now. If they’re disappointed I didn’t follow through on the promise, I’ll make an even bigger promise, kind of like getting yourself into debt and thinking you’re never going to have to pay off that loan.

And because you just can’t say no to anyone, inevitably you’re going to have to make promises you can’t keep. You say, “I’ll get that work done,” knowing you don’t have a spare minute and it’s not going to get done.

Now, I know a few people pleasers, and just the workload of the projects they’ve taken on — I’m thinking of one guy in particular — he’s got so many projects on the go because he can’t say no to anyone else or himself, and he’s just constantly saying, like, “This will get done.” It’s like, dude, it’s been years. It’s not getting done. Dude, you’re lying. Who are you lying to? Nobody else believes it’s getting done, but he seems to make promises to himself even that it’s going to be done.

And because you do get bad reactions when you break these promises, and you aren’t able to maintain all these yeses, even if you’re highly competent, you eventually develop that fear, like I am going to let everyone down. And the more you say yes, the more disappointing it is for people when you can’t follow through. You’ve set the bar very high. They expect you to always be reliable, to always say yes, to always take on the extra burden. And when you don’t, they’re like, oh, and they get that crashing feeling. And you worry that once people realize that you can’t deliver on what you promised, that they’re just going to let you go completely.

So we’re stuck in a loop. We’re told that’s morally good to say yes, it’s morally bad to say no. Reinforce this into a good person identity. We discover that we can just constantly make promises, just say yes without even thinking of the consequences of saying yes, and then eventually we create the situation where we can’t maintain all the yeses, we become terrified that people are going to be let down. So we solve this by doing even more yeses, trying to, like, recover from the disappointment.

Again, if this sounds like you and you might want to do a bit more work on this, get in touch: dan@brojo.org, you might be able to qualify for a free coaching session, and we can get into this and help you solve it.

How to Start Fixing It

So if you are that person who says yes to be morally good, can’t say no because you’re scared of disappointment and conflict, and now you realize that that system doesn’t work and it’s not healthy, let’s talk about how to fix it, and let’s talk about how to fix it in a way where you don’t have to jump off a cliff and ruin your whole life.

Your mind probably already has said, like, if I start saying no, it’ll be this huge disaster, trying to make it sound bigger than it’s going to be, when actually we’re going to inch forward on this thing. You don’t have to suddenly switch 180 and throw everyone’s lives into a mess and backtrack on every commitment you’ve ever made. You can just start a little bit at a time being a bit more honest.

So I’m going to share some of the stuff I do in early sessions with my one-to-one clients. You know, I won’t do the more advanced stuff now, because it’s too scary for someone getting started, but in the first session or two, this is the kind of stuff that we might cover to help you ease into standing up for yourself and having a bit more respect.

Respecting Yourself Means Saying No

The thing you really need to accept, more than anything else, is that respecting yourself, which will get respect from others more than you’re getting for saying yes, means saying no, right? You cannot respect yourself and say yes to everyone, everything, okay?

So it means saying no to others when saying yes would be dishonest, like you don’t really want to, or you don’t agree, or it would be harmful. It would hurt you in some way. It would have long-term consequences that aren’t worth it.

So respecting yourself is saying no to everything that isn’t healthy and aligned with your values.

So a good yes, it means it aligns with your core values. It’s a fair commitment, reciprocated, improves your quality of life, not just theirs, and it’s honest. You actually want to do this thing, at least to some degree. You want the arrangement to play out the way it does.

So if you can accept that trade-off, that you can respect yourself, which requires a no, or you can get good reactions, which requires a yes, but you can’t have both — respect comes with some bad reactions — if you’re okay with that, then you can slowly move forward to build your courage and to learn how to handle these reactions.

Who Will Respect Your Boundaries

One thing you gotta realize, and this is going to be a really harsh truth for a lot of you that you’re going to be scared to explore, is that someone who really loves you and respects you will be okay with you saying no. Maybe their initial reaction might be a bit upset, but that’s not a punishment. They’re just upset because they didn’t get what they wanted. But in the long run, they will love you and respect you, and they’ll try to find a way to work with you on your boundaries rather than trying to overcome them or guilt trip you out of using them.

So if somebody really does react really badly to you saying no, when saying no is good for you, and it’s in your best interest and it’s what’s needed, and they try to punish you for it, and they try to force you with a moral argument to say yes, make you feel like a bad person, that’s a fucking huge red flag. Healthy people who love you will not do that.

So if someone’s doing that to you, you might have some really difficult, uncomfortable truth to face about this relationship that you’re in, whether it’s a friend, a parent, a partner, because a lot of you, because you’re yes men, you will have created a social circle that is abundant in users and abusers, people who are codependent and can’t function without you, which is very unhealthy, or people who knowingly manipulate you, knowing that you struggle to assert yourself and make you feel like a bad person when you try to so that they can squeeze as much value out of you with no real compassion for you as a person.

If you do start saying no, you’re going to discover who these people are. Their initial reaction won’t be the main piece of evidence. A lot of people will be a bit shocked that you finally start saying no, but if they really relentlessly go on a campaign to disrespect you, if they try to make it very hard for you to stand up for yourself and do what’s good for you, you’re going to have some tough choices to make.

If you’re okay with accepting that, if you’re willing to be surprisingly disappointed and shocked that certain people aren’t really your friends and don’t really love you, then you can learn to respect yourself, but it’s a hard price to pay. I’ve lost a lot of friends because of this, but I guess they weren’t really friends at all if that’s how they treated me when I tried to take care of myself.

Disappointment Is Not the Same as Punishment

Now, emotional reaction, as I said, is not the same as a punishment. It’s important that you learn to differentiate the two. As you start to explore this, you know, somebody being disappointed versus somebody withdrawing love or privileges, that’s a distinction.

Somebody would be disappointed usually because you’ve set an expectation that they shouldn’t have had in the first place, or they did it themselves because your boundaries weren’t clear, and if they get over it, like my dance partner did, then all they were was disappointed. She didn’t punish me for that. She didn’t go cold shoulder on me, she didn’t threaten to stop dancing with me. She didn’t do anything like that. She said, “I’m really disappointed. See you at training on Sunday,” right? Like she didn’t harm me as a result of me saying no.

But a lot of people think somebody else getting upset is harm. You know, you actually say you punished me by getting angry. You gotta know the difference. Somebody can be angry and somebody can insult you and say bad things. They’re not the same, okay?

Somebody’s just like, “I’m so disappointed that you didn’t do this. I really needed you to do that.” Okay, let’s see how they feel tomorrow. Afterwards they’re like, “Alright, well, I sorted it out anyway.”

If the next day they’re like, “You know what? I can’t talk to you anymore. You’ve really ruined my life. Well, you know, I told everyone that you didn’t do it. Now they think you’re a loser.” Now that’s different, okay? They’re punishing you now.

So if you notice that they behave in a way that tries to harm you and force you back into saying yes, that’s a red flag. But if they’re just upset that they didn’t get their way, and they get over it, it’s not a red flag. It’s nothing you have to do about that.

Expect a Transition Period

You’ve got to expect a bit of a transition period. I mean, you’ve set up everyone to believe that you’re this easygoing guy who doesn’t have any fucking preferences and wants of his own. He never says no. And so you can’t expect everyone to just suddenly switch, like you just suddenly change who you are as a person and they go, “Oh yeah, that’s fine. Not got nothing to say about that. No feelings.”

So there will be a transition. Some people will be confused. They may test it a little bit or be a bit resistant. You get a spectrum of reactions, not perfect acceptance, but you’ve got to be wary of toxic reactions, okay? Harmful behaviors, violence, gossiping about you behind your back, taking away resources, ghosting you or stonewalling you, trying to guilt trip you, anything mean that you know that they know will hurt you, you know, saying certain things that they know you’re sensitive about, or doing things that they know is really detrimental to you.

If you’re not really sure, you might need someone like me to help you talk through it and figure out what the difference is, but basically we’re looking to only keep the people who accept you in the long run and don’t try to make this hard for you.

Pre-Warn the People Closest to You

One key practical step is you want to pre-warn some of the people that you’re going to be doing this with, especially like a partner or children, a boss, anyone you spend a lot of time with who’s going to be significantly impacted by you changing your behavior.

You want to give them a little heads up that you have this intention, but do not make promises that you’re going to do it, because promises are part of the old-school thing. Promises are kind of yes. You’re trying to please people.

Don’t say, “I’m definitely going to change. Are you proud of me? Do you love me now,” right?

Just say, “Look, I’ve noticed that I say yes too much to my own detriment, that I’m not standing up for myself enough and not setting healthy boundaries, and it’s actually in nobody’s best interest that I just say yes to everything and pretend to be easygoing. It’s actually dishonest. So my intention is to slowly work on this. And so you might notice some different behavior from me, and you might not like some of the stuff you notice. You might not be getting as much from me as you used to, or I might not be as easy and unresistant as I used to be. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I just want you to be prepared if you see these changes. It’s got nothing to do with you. I’m working on myself, and that’s why you’re seeing these changes,” right?

So you just let them know, so they don’t have to guess why you’re doing this. Does he suddenly hate me? Is he going to quit the job? Just let them know like, no, no. This is self-developmental work. There’s nothing you need to worry about here.

In that way, they’re much more likely to be accepting of what you’re doing, because they’ll understand that, you know, you get the worst reactions when people don’t understand what you’re doing.

But if you at least fire the kind of warning shot that it’s going to happen, that’ll also give you a hint as to what kind of person you’re dealing with. If they immediately dive on this thing, you haven’t even started yet, and they start trying to discourage you from doing it, and they make a big deal about how you’re a bad person for doing this, that’s a huge red flag.

I mean, you haven’t even started yet. If you’re just saying, “Hey, I intend to make myself a better person so that I enjoy life more,” and they’re not supportive of that, that’s pretty worrying.

But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be super happy about it either, because they’re going to be worried, like, what does this mean? What’s he going to do? Is he going to be a dick now? It’s okay for them to be a bit worried.

The First Exercise: What Would You Actually Choose?

The first thing I’d start with, the easiest transition into saying no, is be honest with yourself. Do a little exercise about what you’d be doing if you never said a false yes.

What would your life look like if you never said yes to things that you weren’t truly on board with, you didn’t really want to do?

Now, you might never end up living this way. This is just for you, this exercise. It’s private, but it’s about breaking down the dishonesty that happens inside your head, so that at least you know what the truth is before you start talking to others.

Now, what kind of music would you listen to if you never had to listen to anybody else’s music? What movies would you watch? What food would you eat? What would you do for work? What would you do for hobbies? What would you do on the weekend? What would you do if it was just you calling the shots, and you didn’t have to please anybody else? And just take notice of how different that list is to what you actually do.

Look at the activities not on the list that you’re doing all the time — spending time with the in-laws, doing the extra filing at work, going for a run with your friend even though you don’t really like running — like, what are all the things you do that’s not on this list of shit you would only do if it was just what you want to do?

A lot of you will struggle to write this list because you don’t even know what you want anymore. You spent so much time falsely agreeing that you’ve lost sight of where you truly stand, okay? And that requires deeper coaching work to figure it out, but you can at least get a hint of like, okay, let’s start with nothing. I’ll do nothing at all if I didn’t have to say a false yes, okay? And then you get a bit bored. Then what will you do? You’re bored, and there’s nothing to do, and no one else is asking for anything, giving you a prompt. Nobody wanted your help. You just sit in bed all day, every day, for weeks. Would you eventually get up? Would you move at all? How would you move? What would you do? Would you read a book? What would you do?

So that’s just an awareness exercise. There’s no obligation to follow through on this. But this is just to give you a sense, a kind of North Star of like, okay, this is where I’m heading. This is what self-respect might look like. Or getting closer to this would be self-respecting.

Stop the False Agreement

Then we move on to working with other people. And I think the first and simplest step that will still be uncomfortable is stop doing false agreement. Like John Peterson says, you know, tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.

So let’s try and remove some of those pointless agreements that you do. They’re not even saying yes, you’re just being agreeable, right?

Laughing at a joke that you don’t find funny is a great example of this. Just don’t laugh.

You know, somebody says, like, “Oh, I love this band,” just don’t respond. If you don’t love them, don’t say, “Me too.”

Don’t volunteer for stuff, alright? A lot of you guys volunteer. You haven’t even been fucking asked. “No, I did the washing, sweetie.” She was like, “Well, I was gonna do the washing.” The fuck? I said I was gonna do it, right?

At least wait to be asked before you say yes. Don’t put your hand up and somebody isn’t even asking. I’m just agreeing.

Somebody’s like, “Oh, I’m glad that this guy won the vote at the election,” and you’re like, fuck that guy. Just stay silent, alright?

Just ease up on the amount of pre-yes that you throw out into the world. Don’t make yes your default all the time, right?

Slow Down Before You Answer

The next one is about slowing down and thinking. For you to actually be able to engage in saying no, you need time to think. You got to stop doing this knee-jerk response, alright?

So this is one of the most simple and yet most challenging techniques. It’s just to pause before you respond. Someone makes a request or seems to need your help or throws out something for your agreement or disagreement, wait a couple of seconds. Just a couple of seconds. It will feel like a lifetime in real life. It feels awkward. But if you can just go like, let’s just think before I answer here, because a lot of the time you’ll be saying yes, and you’re not actually scared of saying no. You’re just compulsively saying yes. It’s with someone that you’re not afraid of, or there’s no negative consequences.

So you’re leaving these easy wins on the table here, like you could be saying no for free, but you don’t even have time to think. The yes comes out of your mouth, and now you can’t say no because you don’t want to look like a liar, right?

So just slow it down.

Use Delayed Responses

And another way to slow it down, and this is my first real practical tip, besides just not being — you know, just staying silent and false agreeing — delayed responses, an extension of slowing down, is you say to people, “I’ll get back to you on that,” alright? You don’t give them an immediate answer.

You know, one of my favorite things is, “I’ll check my availability and I’ll get back to you.”

If somebody pressures you on this, I mean, that’s a good sign that they’re a toxic person.

So someone’s like, “Hey, can you do this thing for me today?” Look, give me a minute to check my availability. I’ll get back to you.

They say, “No, I need an answer right now.” That somebody doesn’t respect you at all, right?

“Can you give me a lift to the airport on Friday?” “Oh, I have to double-check. I’ll get back to you.”

It’s not a no, but it’s also not a yes. It’s giving you some fucking time to think. It’s giving you a bit of breathing room to build up some courage.

It also puts them in a position where, if they really need this urgently, they won’t wait for you and they’ll solve it another way. And so they might be able to take this off your hands without you having to assert yourself.

But sometimes, “Oh, can you give me a lift on Saturday?” It’s Tuesday, right? You’re like, look, I won’t be able to know until Friday. You’ll find out on Wednesday they find someone else to give them a lift. Problem solved.

So like I said, these are easy beginner tactics to help you get into the realm where you’re just not immediately saying yes, then no is possible. Some people will actually take it as a no on your behalf, and you won’t have to

Clarifying What You Actually Want

Look at the activities not on the list that you’re doing all the time, spending time with the in-laws, doing the extra filing at work, going for a run with your friend, even though you don’t really like running, like, what are all the stuff you do that’s not on this list of shit you would only do if it was just what you want to do.

A lot of you will struggle to write this list because you don’t even know what you want anymore. You spent so much time falsely agreeing that you’ve lost sight of where you truly stand, okay? And that requires deeper coaching work to figure it out, but you can at least get a hint of like, okay, let’s start with nothing. I’ll do nothing at all if I didn’t have to say a false yes, okay.

And then you get a bit bored. Then what will you do? You’re bored, and there’s nothing to do, and no one else was asking for anything, giving you a prompt. Nobody wanted your help. You just sit in bed all day, every day, for weeks. Would you eventually get up? Would you move at all? How would you move? What would you do? Would you read a book? What would you do?

So that’s just an awareness exercise. There’s no obligation to follow through on this. But this is just to give you a sense kind of North Star of like, okay, this is where I’m heading. This is what self-respect might look like. Or getting closer to this would be self-respecting.

Stop the False Agreement

Then we move on to working with other people. And I think the first and simplest step that will still be uncomfortable is stop doing false agreement. Like John Peterson says, you know, tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.

So let’s try and remove some of those pointless agreements that you do. They’re not even saying yes, you’re just being agreeable, right? Laughing at a joke that you don’t find funny is a great example of this. Just don’t laugh. You know, somebody says, like, “Oh, I love this band,” just don’t respond. If you don’t love them, don’t say, “Me too.”

Don’t volunteer for stuff, alright? A lot of you guys volunteer. You haven’t even been fucking asked. “No, I did the washing, sweetie.” She was like, “Well, I was gonna do the washing.” The fuck? I said I was gonna do it, right?

At least wait to be asked before you say yes. Don’t put your hand up. And somebody isn’t even asking. I’m just agreeing. Somebody’s like, “Oh, I’m glad that this guy won the vote at the election.” And you’re like, fuck that guy. Just stay silent, alright?

Just ease up on the amount of like, pre-yes that you throw out into the world. Don’t make yes your default all the time, right?

Slow Down Before You Answer

The next one is about slowing down and thinking. For you to actually be able to engage in saying no, you need time to think. You got to stop doing this knee-jerk response, alright?

So this, it’s one of the most simple and yet most challenging techniques. It’s just to pause before you respond. Someone makes a request or seems to need your help or throws out something for your agreement or disagreement, wait a couple of seconds. Just a couple of seconds, it will feel like a lifetime in real life. It feels awkward. But if you can just go like, let’s just think before I answer here, because a lot of the time you’ll be saying yes, and you’re not actually scared of saying a no. You’re just compulsively saying yes. It’s with someone that you’re not afraid of, or there’s no negative consequences.

So you’re leaving these easy wins on the table here, like you could be saying no for free, but you don’t even have time to think. The yes comes out of your mouth, and now you can’t say no because you don’t want to look like a liar, right?

So just slow it down.

Buy Yourself Time

And another way to slow it down, and this is my first real practical tip, besides just not being, you know, just staying silent and false agreeing, delayed responses, an extension of slowing down, is you say to people, “I’ll get back to you on that.” Alright? You don’t give them an immediate answer.

You know, one of my favorite things is, “I’ll check my availability and I’ll get back to you.”

If somebody pressures you on this, I mean, that’s a good sign that they’re a toxic person. So someone’s like, “Hey, can you do this thing for me today?” Look, give me a minute to check my availability. I’ll get back to you. They say, “No, I need an answer right now.” That somebody doesn’t respect you at all, right?

“Can you give me a lift to the airport on Friday?” “Oh, I have to double-check. I’ll get back to you.” It’s not a no, but it’s also not a yes. It’s giving you some fucking time to think. It’s giving you a bit of just breathing room to build up some courage.

It also puts them in a position where, if they really need this urgently, they won’t wait for you and they’ll solve it another way. And so they might be able to take this off your hands without you having to assert yourself. But sometimes, “Oh, can you give me a lift on Saturday?” It’s Tuesday, right? You’re like, look, I won’t be able to know until Friday. You’ll find out on Wednesday they find someone else to give them a lift. Problem solved.

So like I said, these are like easy beginner tactics to help you get into the realm where you’re just not immediately saying yes, then no is possible.

Some people will actually take it as a no on your behalf, and you won’t have to do the work. They’ll be like, “Alright, no, it’s fine. I’ll find another way,” and you can just slowly desensitize yourself to the idea of upsetting people and not being the most reliable, easygoing person all the time without causing major catastrophe.

I mean, if you say to someone, look, I’ll get back to you real soon, that’s very unlikely to cause an absolute disaster. I’m sure you can admit that, that most people, especially if they’re healthy and they give a shit about you, will be okay with that, right? Most people aren’t like bleeding from the aorta. They don’t need you right now. They don’t need this decision made right now.

If they do think that, and you know it’s not true, just say, yeah, no, totally, I’ll get back to you real quick. Okay, can’t answer you right now. I’ll get back to you real quick. Alright, if they get really hectic about it, you know, saying, look, if it really is an emergency, hang up, dial 911, and I’ll come see you at the hospital. But if it’s not that urgent, I’ll get back to you soon. You just don’t say what soon is. You don’t make any promises. Now, you give yourself a time.

Now, if you end up saying yes anyway, because you can’t handle it, that’s okay, at least you started a delay technique that will eventually give you the space and courage to say no.

Offer Swaps Instead of an Immediate No

Okay, once you’ve got that kind of courage, you can start offering swaps instead of directly saying no as well. Okay, so you can present yourself as someone who has a limited range of support available. If they want one thing, they’ll have to sacrifice another thing. So it’s going to be their choice. It’s kind of like they’re going to have to say no to something on your behalf.

So let’s say, for example, your wife asks you to clean up the dishes, and you’ve already said yes to 1000 things for her, you can say, “Okay, well, which one of those do you want to swap?” So, well, okay, I’ll do the dishes if you go pick up the kids from school. They know that’s your job. “Okay. Well, then you got to do the dishes, because I got to go pick up the kids from school. I can’t do both, right? Which one do you want?”

And you just put it on them to choose of the available options.

If your boss comes here, like, “I need this project done ASAP.” Like, okay, so I can either do this project or that project. Which one do you want me to hand over to you? Right? You just go, “Look, I’m happy to do whatever you need me to do. I just can’t do both. So you choose. Which one do you want? Up to you.”

“I want both.” Can’t be done, mate. I could give you neither if I try to do both, or I can do one of them well. So which one do you want to do well?

A little bit of pushing back. You’re not saying a direct no, I don’t want to, which is like the highest level of no, but you’re at least getting to the point like, I’m not going to let you just stack an infinite amount of tasks on my back. Okay, there is a human limit here, and this is my limit.

You might use time things like, well, I can’t get that done by five. So which thing should I push till tomorrow so you can have this done, or are you okay with this being done tomorrow? Right? And just put them in a position where you haven’t actually said no, so there’s nothing really for them to resist against, right? Basically, you want to make sure that they know that it’s not possible for you to say yes to both, that they’re asking something impossible, that that’s silly for them to ask this, but they can have a possible option.

Practice Direct No’s in Low-Stakes Situations

You can build up to saying direct nos in low-stakes environments where you don’t care about the other people, where there isn’t any major opportunity being missed, but where usually you’re just a bit too polite and a bit too agreeable, like when somebody approaches you on the street wanting you to fill out some charity form. You can learn there, like this is a very low-stakes way to say, “No thank you,” and just keep walking.

Okay, to start saying more direct nos, I learned this in Thailand. I was put through a test. I’m so glad this happened.

So I was already, you know, deep in the thickness of my people pleasing when I went on a trip to Thailand with my friends, and I think it was in Phuket or something. And when you walk down the main touristy part streets, you’re just besieged by shopkeepers. They’re just people coming out of the shops trying to sell you shit, and they’re aggressive. I mean, they’ll literally grab you and pull you into the shop. They’ve got no shame, no sense of boundaries.

And at first I was saying yes to everything. I was letting them pull me around. I was agreeing to the first price that they offered. I was a joke to them, right? And I found out they actually give you colored bags, depending on how easy you are to manipulate, because they’re all kind of in cahoots with each other, all these shopkeepers. So they keep giving me these orange bags. And these orange bags are like a magnet, like shopkeepers would come and dive on me.

It wasn’t until later that someone explained that, like, that’s the sucker color. You know, once you’ve got a blue bag, nobody will talk to you. So it became like a challenge. I’m like, I gotta earn that blue bag, whatever the color was, but I also gotta get down the street. My friends are leaving me behind, so I’m just letting every single dude who talks to me steal my attention.

Within two weeks, not only was I carrying a blue bag and no shopkeeper would even fucking talk to me, if someone came up to me, I was like, “No, fuck off. Leave me alone.” I was actually really aggressive because I had learned that that was like the level I had to dial up to, that any politeness would immediately be disrespected and pounced on.

And I had to learn to just give a very fucking hard no. I had to make it very clear to them that this is not worth putting in extra effort, because they really had endurance and stamina. They got through a lot of nos easily.

You Don’t Owe Politeness to Intrusion

So when it’s, you know, telemarketers calling you, somebody on the street trying to solicit something, an email from some stranger trying to hook you with services, try not being polite. Really, I don’t mean be rude, though some people will think you’re rude. I’m just saying like this person has no right to your life. Treat them accordingly.

Imagine this person has barged into your house. You know, it’s not like, “Do you mind leaving, please?” You say, “Get out now,” because they haven’t even earned politeness, because they’ve already begun with disrespect.

And somebody stops you on the street as you’re trying to get to wherever you want to go, they are aware of the game they’re playing here, that they’ve done something that is disrespectful to you, and you don’t have to tolerate that.

So just say no, hard no, full stop.

Again, email: “Hey, I’d like to talk to you about services. Can we jump on a call?” No. Send. Block the email address.

Like this, we can start to be a bit hard with people where you’re not that worried about what’s going to happen.

Okay? So those are all easy wins, right?

Build a Foundation of Courage

This is how you build up a bit of a baseline foundation of courage and assertiveness so that you can eventually get to the advanced levels that I get to with my clients. You know, making no your default response, where you have to be persuaded into a yes, that even if somebody loves you comes to you like, “No. Why would I do that?” That kind of skepticism, where, like, you only say yes to like high-value things that are really aligned with your values.

You only say yes to things that are your responsibility, align with your values, are better than someone else doing it, definitely enhance your quality of life in some significant way, and are reciprocal and enhance other people’s quality of life.

Now I still say yes to a lot of people for a lot of things, I say no a lot, and I have no shame in doing it anymore, because you can be altruistic, you can be kind and generous, but that’s not the same as compulsively saying yes to everything, right?

This is not moral, to just say yes and never be able to say no. It is weak, it is emotionally convenient, it is fear-based. It’s got nothing to do with courage or integrity or any of that. It’s just you trying to avoid conflict. There’s nothing moral about avoiding conflict, okay?

So you can say yes, but say it on your terms. Make sure you put some thought into it. Make sure you’ve assessed that it meets the criteria for a good yes, a genuinely moral yes.

If somebody else has requested it, that means that you didn’t think of doing it yourself. So automatically, you should be suspicious. So why? Why would I do this thing they’ve asked for if I hadn’t already thought of it as a value-based activity? If I’m trying to live with integrity all the time, and I haven’t decided to do that, then did I just not think of that amazing idea? Or is that not actually on the list, right?

Remove Validation from Your Yes

And when you do go to do something, when you do go for yeses, try to remove validation from it. Do it anonymously, or do it in a way where someone else gets the glory. Just do it quietly.

Try to make sure that you don’t have your self-worth attached to the rewards you get for saying yes to everything.

You might, for example, somebody asks for something, you go, “Oh, sweet.” And then you do it anyway, but you don’t get the yes-promise kind of reward in person. You just do the task and you let them enjoy the results.

And if they try to thank you for it, you just say, “No, no. There’s no need to thank me. I did that for my own benefit. I enjoyed doing that. You know, this wasn’t for you. This was for me.”

I find that really helpful, to make it clear this was a selfish act on my part. So like, I did this because I wanted to. You shouldn’t be thanking me. It’s just, I’m glad it also worked out for you, but I wasn’t doing this for you. Like there’s nothing to thank me for. I would have done it even if it didn’t help you, right?

Really push back against that validation, because otherwise you’ll just get hooked back on it like a drug.

One Last Task

One last task I’ll leave you with is try to do something kind and giving that gets disapproval. For example, maybe you don’t give money to homeless people because your friends will give you shit about how it’s a waste and they’re just going to use it for drugs or something.

If you could do that, if you could like slip some money to a homeless person so he doesn’t know you’ve given him money, and the only people who see it disapprove of you doing it, that is a genuine yes. Okay, that’s only you decided to do.

I mean, I don’t mean following my idea, because now you’re just following again. But come up with something like that.

Go choose a yes that actually gets a bad reaction from people, not just to provoke people. It should be a genuine thing that you want to do. Maybe it’s just a yes to yourself, like going to a cooking class or something, but show yourself what a real healthy yes looks like, where the only person who’s happy with it is you, right?

If you can make yourself okay with events like that happening and overcome the guilt and shame that pops up from your childhood conditioning, then you’re on your way to becoming a confident, self-respecting person.

A Serious Invitation to Coaching

If this post resonated with you, there’s a reason.

Most men who end up working with me aren’t looking for motivation, hacks, or surface-level confidence. They’re tired of circling the same problems with information overwhelm but not implementing successful changes.

They know what they should do. They’re just not consistently doing it.

Coaching is not for everyone. It’s not therapy, it’s not cheerleading, and it’s not about “fixing” you. 

It’s a structured, honest working relationship focused on behaviour change, taking responsibility for yourself, and improving the way you make decisions—especially the ones you keep avoiding.

This work is for you if:

• You’re functional and capable, but something fundamental still isn’t working.
• You’re done with intellectualizing your patterns and want them to actually change.
• You’re willing to be challenged, not reassured.
• You’re prepared to take responsibility for your choices instead of waiting to feel ready.

I’ve spent years making these mistakes myself and over a decade helping others stop repeating them. The difference coaching makes is not insight—it’s traction.

What working together looks like

• Clear diagnosis of where you’re self-sabotaging (not just why)
• Practical, uncomfortable actions that build real confidence
• Direct feedback when you drift back into old patterns
• A focus on integrity, not image or performance

If we work together, it will be because it makes sense—not because you were persuaded.

A no-pressure first session

I offer a free initial trial coaching session with no obligation to continue.

You can use it to see how I work, ask hard questions, and decide whether this is something you want to commit to.

If it’s not a fit, that’s fine. If it is, we’ll be clear about what comes next.

👉 Apply for an initial coaching session here

I only work with 8 clients at a time, and only with those prepared to take this seriously. I have 5 intro session spaces available each month – you may need to go onto a waitlist.

Dan Munro

If you’re looking for reassurance of your victim-story, this isn’t it. If you’re ready to change how you actually live, let’s stop messing around.