Say No in 2020

Say No in 2020

Say No in 2020

Can we? No. Our culture doesn’t teach us to say no, so we find ourselves frustrated after saying yes to too many people. I am struggling right now to complete writing three papers before the stroke of midnight. And semi cursing through it all. Whose fault? Entirely mine, and my cultural upbringing. Thanks very much, Naga culture. 


Don’t you just inwardly hate those people who you have told you can only spare an hour, and they say yes and they take four hours? And yet, who can you blame for that infringement?  Yourself, face it. In the first place, you could have said no, am too busy, really have no time. But instead you revert to your cultural identity and think, But they will say I’m so proud, Surely they will be sensitive to the fact that I am very busy, and so on come all the comforting thoughts that prompt you to say, Sure come over, I can spare a half hour. Total disaster. People are like camels. Give them a bit of your tent space and they don’t stop until they have pushed you out of it completely.


How to say No effectively so that people understand it’s a no, not a maybe. It’s not an art. It is as vital as a heart resuscitation course. First of all, Say it. Say No. Mean it. Arrange your features into Teacher face. Or Librarian face. Both should work quite well. Next, assume the posture. Feet placed wide apart, arms enfolding body in defensive position. Don’t make the mistake of placing one foot in front of the other and hem and haw with it. No footronomics, please. It sends out the absolutely wrong signal that if the person who came with the request for some of your time persists in his/her persuasive requesting, you are likely to yield and say Alright then, just for a few hours. No! Stay firm! This is your life. You don’t owe anyone anything, certainly not your precious time. You live once, don’t go to your grave crying once is not enough.


Say No. Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise. We are not good at prioritizing at all. You start on a job, get interrupted, and find yourself working on a second thing, having pushed your first priority-job to the background. That is because you haven’t learned to say No or even the next level word, Wait. 


Schools, please teach children to learn to say No. And parents, stop telling them it is not polite to say No. Our culture of Ketheraness is killing us. It’s the reason why we take on too much. We are always feeling obligated to. Comes a time when you step out of that Kethera culture and feel very surprised when people say No to you. You have never grown up to the sound of that word, have you? In the past, many public leaders used to be selected by groups of their clanspeople visiting them, and spending hours and days persuading them that they would be doing their community a great service by standing in the elections or taking on the role of some other public service. In the end, unable to withstand all the arguments that these groups bring, the men stop saying No and render their services to the community. 


But when you are forced to do something that you have no heart for, you can never be expected to bring your best to it. This must be one of the reasons why we are good at producing the quantity, but lacking behind qualitatively in many of our public areas. 


Allow people to say No to you. Take their Nos to mean no. Look for some other person. Respect it when a person says they are too busy to help. Its such basic human courtesy to accept a No. Recognise that your program is not the most important program. There are others that are just as pressing.  And if you yourself are still struggling to say No, just know it is not rude at all. It is sending out the message that you are not free, if you are not free, or that you are not interested in their project, which is entirely legit to convey. Those who cannot respect your no, have no right to your time. It’s just as plain as that.