The Power Of No

The power of the word no cannot be understated.

No is seen by society's norms as a negative. No meaning the canceling of a commitment or the denial of an opportunity. It is normally the negative we see at the beginning of a movie.

Harry Potter is denied the chance to go to Hogwarts at the beginning of the first film.

No can be seen as creating a challenge, giving an unfair disadvantage to one person.

But why cant no be positive?

Dictionary.com definition is:

(a negative used to express dissent, denial, or refusal, as in response to a question or request) (used to emphasize or introduce a negative statement):

Like with society's norms, the definition of no is negative.

But what if no was actually a positive.

I know this may sound shocking, you may need to lie down for a moment, you may need to take some deep breaths as your mind tries to wrap around this idea.

No (in most cases is a positive!)

So with a big statement like that let me explain.

Each day we have a finite amount of minutes. When you consider we need to sleep for between 7–8 hours, we have 16–17 hours left in the day.

In that time we need to:

Eat

Work

Spend Time With Family

Workout

There is a lot to do. At work, you will have a full list of responsibilities to get through. On top of that, you have clients who are demanding certain actions from you in every God-given day.

So how do you find time to get anything extra done? It is with the power of the word no.

You as yourself have to think about your capacity both physically and mentally. We know how much weight we can lift. We cannot lift more than that weight unless we train. That takes time and dedication.

But yet we do not do the same with our mentality. If someone in the gym asks you to lift a 60kg weight and we cannot lift it, we explain that we can not lift it. They will then find somebody who can.

But, when our plates at work are full and we get asked to take on more work we agree to it, for the fear of losing our employment or our standing in the business. We take on more work and work later to stop clients from leaving us. We feel trapped in our own minds, exhausted from trying to overload our mental capacity.

We eat worse, sleep less, and work less leaving us devoid of passion and emotion. Every day becomes about survival and grinding, rather than enjoyment and fulfillment.

All this because we say yes instead of no.

We continually, add more and more instead of explaining to that client, explaining to your colleague, or your manager, that you simply do not have the capacity to take on any more work.

It is hard in the beginning to say no, it is not natural for you to use this social negative. But doing more work worse, than doing less work great is not a recipe for success.

As you move further on in your business or in your job, your responsibilities change, the amount of work you can handle changes, with experience. That is the way it works. When you are new at something it takes time to learn the process, the systems, the why. Your capacity is less, just like when starting at a gym.

This does not mean your capacity will always stay this low. This does not mean that you will always be at the same stage you are now.

But overloading yourself will not help you progress, it will make your work worse, it will stop you from getting a promotion. It will stop that advancement in your career.

The only way to become better and to grow is to say no to work that will overload your capacity no.

Your computer does the same. When the memory is full when the RAM is full your computer will not allow you to open new tasks or save any more work. That is just the way it is.

So why do we allow ourselves to overwork?

It is simple we do not know how to say no in a positive light.

Until tomorrow this has been your coach Andrew.