How To Learn To Say 'no' When Dealing With Stress

How do I learn to say 'No'?

The people who are life's pleasers, in other words, all they ever want to do is have people think well of them and always say yes to something, are prime candidates for stress. It is a very simple thing, and if you imagine yourself wearing a doormat, what you've got on it is "Welcome", and if you do that people will take advantage of it. They don't mean to do that, but if you are smiling all the time, "Yes, that's no problem", etcetera, please don't be surprised if people take advantage. So the first thing you have to do is to learn to say "No", a simple word, but with which lots of people have problems. So really it's assertiveness training. One of the things you have to do when you want to say no is realise first of all, if you've trained yourself always to say yes it will be out of your mouth before you know what to do. So the first thing you do is develop the ability to say, "Just let me think about that and I'll ring you back in five minutes", or even, "I've just got to go to the loo, I'll be back in a minute," anything to get you out of that situation so you can stop. When you stop you then think, "Do I really want to do this and can I do this?" And if the answer is yes, great, say yes. But if the answer is, "Well no, I don't really want to do it," or, "I haven't got the time to do it," the next step is to formulate the response. One of the ways you can do that is always acknowledge something the other person said, for example, "I know you'd really like me to help you on Friday", so that's the first thing - you have said it in a sentence. You then use a link word like "however", "alternatively", or "on the other hand". Say "I know you'd really like me to help you on Friday, however...", and then you say what you think or feel. So that would be something like, "However I am afraid I am running around on Friday and I'm not going to get back until really late." So that's where you put the reason that you like for this. Now, if you want to, because it is something that you would like to help with but you can't, you can use an "and", and say "and, I tell you what, if we did it on Saturday I'd be more than happy to help". If the answer is no because you really don't want to do it, you just stop there, so it's like, "Oh, I really appreciate it that you would like me to help you on Friday however unfortunately I'm running around all day and I just won't be able to help you this time." And then you stop, you do not justify it, you stop at that point. You equally remember the breathing exercises, so it is a deep breath in and calm down. The other thing is you have to remember you have a right to say no, so if you don't want to be a doormat you have to help yourself, and that means you have to believe you have the right, and then you simply say no and you use the three stages that I've mentioned.