How saying 'No' can make your life better

For many of us, saying 'No' can be really hard. Maybe we want to be helpful, or have a boss who's depending on our work. Family, social obligations and volunteer work can also be overwhelming. But learning to assert control over our lives is a key building block for a fulfilling life. Listen to learn why it's important. And more importantly, how to do it. Read story here.

Transcript:
Roland 0:07

Welcome to the Novant Health Healthy Headlines podcast. This is Roland Wilkerson, and today we're talking with Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh, a leader at Novant Health, and a psychiatrist who's worked with countless patients over the years. Today's topic, how to say no. In May, the World Health Organization elevated definition of burnout from a state of exhaustion to a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress. Burnout doesn't just happen at work, of course, almost anyone with a set of responsibilities in their life is at risk of becoming overwhelmed. And at the same time, many of us have learned that saying, yes is an easy way to keep our job and keep those around us happy. So we consulted Ikwechegh, who said there are many ways to navigate the mine field of No, you could find this story and many others online, just search for Novant Health and Healthy Headlines. Thanks for listening.

So before we get to the how, let's talk about the why. Dr. equation, why is it so important? To be able to say no,

Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh 1:11

The word no by itself connotes negativity. It connotes disagreeable illness. So the default of the human psyche is to come across as helpful, dependable, reliable, you know, in the workspace, the thing that thinking that you're a team player. So every time we're faced with a decision whether to say yes or no, the society has primed us to say yes, because we want to come across as helpful. If you went through life, without any sense of control, I think it creates a lot of powerlessness and ultimately a lot of resentment. So being able to say no, I think it allows you to take back some control, and prevents all this negative emotions that might result from lacking that ability.

Roland 2:07

And so let's talk about that just a little more. What happens when you have a lack of control in your life? How does that color how you go through things day to day in your life,

Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh 2:22

I think most most significantly gives you the sense of irrelevance. Because if you feel that you have no control over your life, you feel dumped on and you feel my views don't count. And that gets you back to the sense of powerlessness resentment, and really an inability to make any progress. I'll explain it better this way. If one felt that had no control over what happened in the daily at it is, it might give you the sense that I don't even need to show up because it wouldn't matter one way or the other. Or if I show up, I'm not contributing to anything because you know, Roland is just going to tell me what to do and power things on my plate. And I have no control over what I do. And I think that will really hamper anybody, even the strongest of us.

Roland 3:27

Why can it be so hard for so many of us to say no? So what's your advice to somebody who says yes, way too often? What's a good way to start learning to say no.

Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh 3:46

I've always said I'm a psychiatrist, I look at everything from the concept of therapeutic intervention. If I had someone before me treatment, who said I've lived my whole life pleasing other people and saying yes to everything, my recommendation will be enough for the next several months. Say no to everything. More practically, what you might start off with will be never say yes, but say me think about it. And I'll get back to you. That allows you room to actually look at all the things in your life to make sure that you're saying no to something that you can actually fulfill, as opposed to reinforcing the feeling that people are making me two things. which reinforces your sense of powerlessness.

Roland 4:36

In what if it's extra hard for, for you to say no? Like, what's what's a baby step that somebody can take, if you if you've built up this lifetime habit of saying yes, pushing back on people is going to be really difficult. So what's a, what's a baby steps someone can take.

Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh 4:55

And as a lead in to that, if I may, recognizing that saying no, to a thing that you truly don't want to do? Is reinforcing your sense of integrity, might help you go to this next step of the baby steps like we're talking about. Being able to recognize internally that my know is a yes to something else would help you take those steps. So one thing to do may be offer somehow, without committing to do that thing. So if I said to you, Roland, you come to me, I say, hey, I'd like for you to do XYZ thing. And I said, Roland, I'm going to be going to my daughter's recital, I cannot do it. But here is Johnson down the cubicle, who has done this work already, I think he might be helpful, or here is a website that you can look at that will give you all the answers that I would have given you. I'm offering you some help. I'm reinforcing that what you're asking me to do is important. But I'm honoring my own integrity that says I can't do this, without taking away from this other thing that that I had already committed to. I think that's a quick way to strengthen yourself for the art of saying no, which is recognizing that you want to do it from a place of integrity.

Roland 6:27

And why is integrity important in in the in the context of saying no?

Dr. Obinna Ikwechegh 6:36

Really, that saying no is a tool of integrity, because for me, I know this might not be a literal definition. But integrity simply means that I do what I've said I'm going to do. So if I had said to someone else, I'm going to do this than that. And I want to live up to that promise, they're admitted, I want to stay in that place of integrity in that interaction, then saying no, to you, allows me to uphold this integrity of something that I had already committed to. So in the end, saying no, is really a place of respect for you. And respect for my own integrity. Because I'm living up to something that I've already said I was going to do. I think in the workplace. We've talked a lot about work, life balance, it's easy to become so compartmentalize, well think All right, this is what I have to do everything without recognizing that there are these other things about our lives, from good example that I have young children, that's important to me. So if I really said to my daughter, I'm going to be at that recital, if I don't show up. That's a debt to my integrity, the next time I talk, I'm going to do that something. So that's important to put that in the wider context of how my life intersects with the work that I do. In that whole understanding, like I'm explaining, it makes it easy for such a woman to be able to say, I'm going to live up to this integrity to my daughter or to whatever else that saying yes to would have taken from

Roland ...