Saying No

No is the flip side of yes. This is easy to forget. Saying yes to something also entails saying no to something else. For example. “Yes, I will get out of bed and go to work.” contains within it “No, I will not sleep in and stay home from work.”

In this awareness, I think it might be an interesting exercise to take note of what you are actually saying “No” to when you say “Yes.” to someone or something. And alternatively, what you might be saying “Yes.” to when you say “No” either to yourself or others.

It might even be informative to have an opposite day where you just say no to everything. Is that even possible? I wonder what that would look like in real life…. Is that an idea? Maybe? Probably not… but maybe…

All this talk about saying “No” reminds me of my years teaching puppy classes, training dogs, and teaching people how to train their own dogs.  There’s definitely something useful here.

When training dogs, it’s important to follow your “No” with a “Yes.” Because you don’t want to leave your dog in a vacuum of having to guess what to do next. Here are some examples:

• “No” get your feet off the counter, should be followed by a “Sit” right here in front of the counter. For which you will get praise and pets.
• “Drop it” could be followed up with a “Here’s your toy.”
• “NO!” don’t chase that squirrel across the street would be followed with “Come” over here to me right now and plant your butt down.

I would also like to point out that when training dogs it’s also important to have the means to enforce your commands, both the positives and the negatives.

So, how does this relate to your life? Are you working to train your “inner dog”? What are you saying no to that could be followed up with a yes? What are your rewards? Do you have deterrents?  Are they effective? Could they use a bit of a tweak?

Here’s how it looks at my house. Apparently my inner dog is a wino. LOL.

I have a developed a deep fondness for Mead. There’s a particular brand that is sold at my local grocery store that I absolutely love! I love it so much that I have a really hard time stopping myself from just literally sitting down and drinking the whole bottle right away.

So, My “No.” put the Mead away has to be followed up with a “Yes.” heat up a cup of tea. My deterrent is that I never buy more than one bottle a week. And my caveat is that if I sit down and drink that whole bottle in one evening I have to wait two weeks before I can buy another one. My reward for this good behavior is that I feel better when I don’t drink too much, I save money, and if I am good, I can buy another bottle next week.

Now it’s your turn. What will you say “No.” to and how does that translate into a “Yes”? And when you do say no to yourself what is your follow up? and do you have a good deterrent/reward system in place?