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#Microblog Monday 398: How To Say No

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I often struggle with how to say “no” when I know that I need to say, “no.” And when I get it right (or I feel like I’ve nailed a good “no”), I drop the text into a document that I can look back on in the future. The email is rarely helpful a second time, but you never know.

Someone passed along this canned response gallery of “how to say no,” and now I pass it along to you in case it is helpful. A lot of these situations are not ones I struggle with, but I still bookmarked it for inspiration. Maybe they’ll pad it out with more situations in the future.

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5 comments

1 Working mom of 2 { 07.04.22 at 11:33 am }

Ha, I tried something along the lines of the first one years ago at work. A coworker (not boss) had volunteered for a manual writing project with outside groups and then sent an email to our whole team asking us to pick a section to write. I was like “sorry, I’m unable to volunteer at this time blah workload blah.” I *was* busy but I was more offended that I was basically getting assigned something I didn’t sign up for. I did not get a response so who knows how it went over. 🤷🏻‍♀️

2 Sharon { 07.04.22 at 2:17 pm }

I know that saying “no” is something that a lot of folks struggle with, but I have always been pretty good with boundaries. Any residual challenge I had was cured by becoming a mother to twins: when you work full-time in a demanding job and also have two infants/toddlers at home, you genuinely don’t have time to do much else, so I had to say no to LOTS of things for the first 3-4 years of my sons’ lives.

3 Jess { 07.04.22 at 7:18 pm }

Oh wow, that is awesome. I am getting better at saying no, but it still takes significant effort. I pretty much have to hermit myself away in order to say no. I love these ideas. I do think that sometimes when you say no too often you stop getting asked, but maybe sometimes that’s for the best. 🙂 If you didn’t want to go, chances are it wasn’t good for you anyway. I do sometimes enjoy things that I dreaded but then forced myself to go to though. But argh, always the guilt for saying “no,” which probably warrants a little introspection!

4 Counting Pink Lines { 07.04.22 at 9:15 pm }

Omg I love this! Thank you!
I have to say, I’ve gotten good at saying no to social stuff (pandemic helps) but starting to run into that again.

5 Mali { 07.12.22 at 1:45 am }

Ooh, I like that. As a woman, I grew up not feeling I was allowed to say no to anyone (except boys who wanted “only one thing” according to my mother! lol), because I had to put everyone else before me. So learning to say no in the last 20 or so years hasn’t been easy. I love this.

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