15
Aug

The Power of ‘No’

‘You need to become harder in business and learn to say NO’ my friend said.

I was dealing with yet another bad business associate, who I had accepted to cooperate with out of my good spirit and in spite of the bad vibes and signs of very negative behavior that I had gotten early on in the cooperation.

This person did not match my values, my ethics or standard of professional behavior in business and yet I still lowered my standards, because the same person asked for my help and cooperation and I wanted to be ‘nice’.

‘Honey, you need to Unleash the Bitch Within, otherwise people will keep getting advantage of your good spirit!’ Tell yourself that ‘Saying No is not bad or unfair to others, it is as good and fair as saying Yes to the right things’ my friend continued.

And of course she was absolutely right. How many times have you seen a big successful entrepreneur lower their standards when it comes to people they are cooperating with? The biggest corporations in the world would fall down into ruins if people based their choices of business associates on good spirit and good heart.

People will come and go and many of them will be totally wrong for your growth and will be there only to drag you down with them and move you backwards. Learn to recognize who these people are and give them a big, straightforward, confident NO.

8 Responses

  1. 99% of the time when I read content, I do not reply. However, this information is so content rich that I thought that at least I show my appreciation. Please keep more coming and I’ll be glad to tell more friends about your site.

  2. Thank you ‘Crystals’, I am very happy to be providing great content and value to people who read my blog, it will be evolving in the next few months as I am also working on content for my first book 🙂

  3. i truly appreciate what you’ve written here, though i think your friend was nudging you in the right direction in the wrong way by urging you to “unleash the bitch within.” you can just ask “is this agreement fair to both of us?” if the answer is no, say no.

    there are many women “out there” who “celebrate” being nasty, mean, abusive, raging, bitches. it’s “celebrated” in our culture. women hit men, women shove and kick men, and throw them out of cars. it’s considered funny, and it’s what bitches do. bitches relentlessly tell other people what to do with no concern for their well being. bitches rake in cash the same way that unethical planet-robbing multinational corporations do: by being predators.

    that is not the direction i feel you wish to take.

  4. Dainis, I agree with you about the way ‘women being nasty bitches’ is celebrated and portrayed in the media as ‘the way to win in today’s environment’ and I would definitely never turn into that kind of personality, as it doesn’t match my ethics and values.

    My friend was trying to push me to become harder as a business person, as she has experienced me taken advantage of because of being too soft, kind and understanding with my associates way too many times.

    Sometimes being nice and trying to talk things through just doesn’t work with certain personalities and the only way out of a bad cooperation (after explaining your case) to just cut them off with a straightforward ‘No’. You always try to explain in a nice way first of course…. However, I truly believe that the only way to get rid of very draining, abusive and negative personalities, who make a living on sucking up others people blood and energy, is to just cut them off bluntly, the more you try to explain and work it out, the more they drain you and drag you down.

  5. Hello Pavlina,

    It is indeed important to say no to people who don’t respect your values and try to drag you down.

    Behind every No, there is ‘Big’ Yes.

    And your values, ethics, standard and professional behavior in business certainly are worth a big Yes 🙂

    Thanks for sharing!

  6. sounds like you’ve been taken advantage of. i know where you are coming from.

    i am working on applying something called “orchestrated kindness” to resolve issues like being stuck with life-sucking clients. they offer: “i give you 1 now and 9 later, you give me 9 now.” basically, you do your part then they don’t do theirs. you explain, the process repeats. also, if you lead with kindness, for some reason, their “reciprocity instinct” just doesn’t kick in.

    do you find it happens on an interpersonal level too? i do.

    for many many years, i have “sought the solution within” with regard to adjusting how i relate to “such people,” thinking i’d achieve a synergistic cooperation (without really needing to label them as parasitic or predatory). however, i am starting to “own” my experience with predators: financial, energetic, emotional, etc., and am learning to either stay away, say “no” as you say, or simply: create distance, conditions, and consequences.

    1. Yes that’s exactly the people you are referring to in the blog post Dainis and I have tried different ‘kind and good – hearted’ approaches too over the years – doesn’t work. If you don’t learn to distance yourself and cut these people off, you will just get taken advantage of over and over again..

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