Ask Jack #9: Learn to Say "No" and Take Control of Your Life! | Jack Canfield

Hi, everybody. I'm here today with Patty Aubrey, who many of you know, she's the president of the Campfield Training Group and the business genius who's been with me for more than 30 years, growing my business and helping me reach millions of people around the world with our books, our workshops, and our trainings. She's also a New York Times bestselling author, as well as an incredible coach who coaches many of our top students.

Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here again with Jack, again sharing our advice on how to achieve your goals and create the life you want. This week, we're going to answer a question from one of our students who's having a hard time saying no. Can you relate to that? Here's what she wrote to us. I'm recently widowed at 63, and I've lost who I am. I'm struggling to find my purpose in my life and know that my biggest obstacle is myself. I grew up worrying I would disappoint people if I wasn't perfect if I ever said no. Now I find myself constantly overwhelmed with obligations and responsibilities and no time to focus on what I need. How do I learn how to say no to others so I can finally say yes to myself? Well, that's a big one. We were talking about that today.

No, we can all relate to that. And that's really a big issue for most people because we think when we say no, we're disappointing someone. And we all grew up with our parents where they told us to do stuff and it wasn't safe to say no. And then, you know, they felt let down if we didn't do what they wanted to do. So we grew up. And especially if you're a woman, you're conditioned in our culture, I think, all around the world really, to make your children, your parents, your husband's, you know, your boss's needs more important than your own needs. So one of the things I always tell people, a little phrase you might want to put on a post it or a 3 by 5 card, stick it on your refrigerator, on your mirrors. My needs are just as important as your needs. And. And it's okay to say no. I have on my phone, me first, and then I have the words no next to that, because I'm constantly, up until recently, saying yes to everything. And I would find myself overwhelmed with all these commitments I'd made, not realizing how long they would take to actually fulfill them.

Well, also when you say yes, when you want to say no, you get resentful, you get pissed off. You get, you start to look older, you know, you hold onto it. And so it just, it affects us internally and externally. So as much as. And I feel like a lot of times when I should say no, if I say yes, maybe I'm not going to follow through, and then I'm going to lose confidence that way too, and I'm going to lose trust in others. So there's a lot of reasons why honesty is your best policy when it is about stepping up for yourself and saying no to you, no to them. So you, you're saying yes to you, basically.

And I think what you're saying is that we think we're being nice when we say yes, but if we don't follow through because we're overwhelmed, then we lose that trust both from them and our trust in ourself to be able to keep our commitments. One of the things that you talked about, you just said being, you know, saying no to them is saying yes to yourself. One of the great phrases I learned that's really valuable to use when you're saying no to people is to say, look, I really think your project's a great thing. I know you have a big need right now that you're looking for support or whatever, and I'm not. I want you to realize that I'm saying it's not so much I'm saying no to you, I'm saying yes to me, you know, because right now I'm focusing on finishing my book, or I'm focusing on spending more time with my children, or I'm focusing on getting my body back in shape, or I'm focusing on getting the rest I need after a really difficult, challenging period of life through Covid or whatever it might be. So that you're really saying, you know, my no is not against you, it's for me. And when you say that, people usually get it. I found that they actually respect you more when you, when you say that phrase.

Absolutely. The other thing too is if you over commit to other people, you're never gonna get your goals accomplished. And I think a lot of people that are out there that watch a lot of the work that we do and that follow us and do come to our workshops and trainings, they're sort of in that second stage of their life, you know, they're looking for what's next. And so if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to have the energy to do what's next. And if you're busy being busy, because you didn't say no, you might miss that big opportunity. You might miss that one thing that was really there for you. So that's another.

Well, we have a chapter in our book called say no to the Good, so you can say yes to the great. And quite often we're saying yes to people, which are things that, you know, we have this fear of missing out sometimes. That FOMO thing where, oh, if I don't say yes.

You have more FOMO than I do. I'm so glad. Call me lazy, but.

But one of the, one of the things is that literally you, you have to take time for your thing. I can think of my own life. When I wrote the book, the Success Principles, it was really clear to me I had to say no to everything. Everything else. In fact, Veronica, my assistant, started answering all my emails. I said, only give me things you can't figure out how to answer. I was working six or seven hours a day. I even told my wife, it's going to be a period to finish this book where I'm not going to be here as much. You'll often see authors saying thank you to my wife for allowing me to work on my book. You know, and so there are times when you really need to be. Have boundaries. And those boundaries include saying no. One thing you might want to do is just practice in the mirror saying no. I mean, imagine someone asking you for something and saying no. You could do it imaginal. You can close your eyes and think of doing it and whenever they respond, it's okay. It's not about you, it's your taking care of yourself. I think too, you have to give up the feeling of guilt because if people can guilt you, make you feel guilty like, well, you're being a bad kid because you're not doing this or you're not. I remember I've worked with a lot of people as a coach where there was an ailing parent that they'd been taking care of for a while because they lived in that town and the brothers and sisters all lived that town. And finally after my coaching, she said, I want to tell you I'm not going to do this anymore. You're going to have to move here or move mom there. But I'm saying no to this because I have a life to lead. My kids aren't getting the time I need. My business is suffering, whatever. And did her brothers and sisters love that? No. They tried to guilt her in doing it, but she did it anyway. And they showed up, you know, so you have to be willing to give up that Experience of guilt because you can totally be manipulated if you're willing to feel guilty.

Well, and also it's hard at first, you know, when you've been saying yes and being a people pleaser your whole life, it's really difficult to say no. I just finished a four and a half day workshop and my team said, can we go out to Nashville and let's go do this? And I had to say, you have a great time. I'm staying in, so I'll be my best version of me tomorrow. Because I had to say yes to me because I needed to sleep to have the energy I needed for the next day. In the old days, I probably would have said okay, not really wanting to go, not been happy that I was out and tired the next day. So it's really about noticing these little tiny habits, like the power of habit. It's just creating those new habits. And so one day you'll wake up and know will be really easy and you can do it with a smile on your face.

A couple of things I learned from Oprah. She did a talk about this once. One of the things she said is no is a complete sentence, meaning you don't have to explain your no if you don't want to. It's no. The other thing she said is that she's a multi billionaire. I think he's worth $3 billion. And so every family member friend comes to her and says, can you lend me money? Can you invest in my business? And she says, I have a policy. I don't lend money to people. And that's it. You know, I have a policy. I don't lend my van. I have a policy. I never work on Sundays. You know, whatever it might be. If you have a policy, it ends it, it's over, you're done. And you don't have to explain it. It's just that's you. And so if you. Those are two valuable things to remember. I learned from listening to her talk about that I was only driving to the airport in Maui from our house that we used to own together to the airport. And so it's, it's really important to remember that those are valuable things to say. And I want to just say one more thing. If you can come up with criteria for what it is you want to say yes to. Like, for me, when I get asked to do a gig, I have a number of criteria. How much travel is it going to take? If it's more than I want to do, if it's going to like fly to South Africa these days, that's just too far. I don't want to do that because it's like three different stops, and it takes a day and a half to get. Do I like the person? Are they going to pay me adequately? Do I care about the cause that their group is working on? Like, I'm not interested particularly in helping people build more bombs. So I'm not going to work with a company that does that. I know I'm not fun, but if it's a group that's working on global warming or empowering people or building schools, you know, whatever, I'm more likely to say yes. So you have this set of criteria, and if the request doesn't meet your criteria, you can say no. But get clear what your values are. Get clear what your criteria are. Get clear what your focus is, your priorities for this period of time. So you know what to say yes to, and you know what to say no to.

I have to tell you, we learned this the hard way, honestly. So what you were saying earlier, how Oprah said, I don't loan money to anybody when we started Chicken Soup, all of a sudden everybody's saying, I want to do a book, I want to do a book. I want to do a book. And you, Mark Rockwell. Okay, okay. And then suddenly I'm like, oh, my gosh, these yeses are not all good yeses. Right. And so we had to define what is a good co author. Do they have a platform? Are they a good speaker? Can they deliver the content? Again, like you were saying, really define who you want to be around you and who you want to say yes to. Our friend Stuart Emery says, who's in your room? And it was painful because there were some books that we had to put on hold forever. They didn't get done.

And.

And it just really was a waste of time. So once we got that ideal client sort of author, our life became so much easier. We produced so many more books, and we got out to so many more people and made a bigger difference in the world. And that's kind of the other side of that. No, just think about, okay, if I do have the guts to say this, what's the good piece that can come out of this? For not just for me, for my family, for my friends, for everyone else around me. So reframe it if you have to, to give yourself a little life hack.

If no is really hard, I'll just end with this. One of the phrases that I love that really is valuable. We talked about not feeling guilty. The guilt comes from wanting to be appreciated, wanting to be approved of, wanting people to like you, et cetera. And Byron. Katie, who wrote a book called Loving what Is and We Teach part of her work, her four Questions and a turnaround in order to have inner peace. She says when she was asked, do you have a prayer you say every day? She said, if I had, it would be this. God, spare me from the desire for love, approval and appreciation. Amen. The idea is, as long as you're living life for other people's approval, other people's appreciation, as opposed to your own inner joy, your own experience of what's good for you, you're going to be screwed, basically. And so it's really important to take this. I'm going to read it one more time. Spare me from the desire for love, approval and appreciation. I think that's so powerful. So it's okay to say no. Your job is not to be taking care of everyone else in the world. Your first job is to take care of yourself. And most of us don't do that.

So practice. I like what you said about the mirror. Exercise, practice it. Not like, no, but, you know, more like, I'm really sorry, but no. You know, it comes energetically, too. So that vibration says more than sometimes what we, what even the word is. So I always say, I'm just going to pray for grace.

That's beautiful.

A graceful no.

I will share one more quote that someone sent us a long time ago about this. It says, the people who matter won't mind and the people who mind won't matter. So when you say no, if they get upset about it, they're probably not someone you want in your life anyway. You referred to Stuart's book who's in your Room? When you let people into your life, they're there forever. Like they're in your room. It's hard to get rid of. So be real aware of who you say yes to. Let in. And when you do have those friends, you'll know that they're your friends. Because when you do say no, they'll understand it. And if they're people who don't and get angry, then they're probably not really your friends.

Unless they're three years old and you're raising them. Then they're not going to like, no.

That's true. That's true.

All right.

Well, thank you. That's it for today. Thanks for watching. And what we'd like you to do now is leave a comment below sharing something that you're going to say no to so that you can free up your time and energy to focus on what really matters to you, and we'd love to see what you have to share. And if you found this video helpful, take a minute right now to like it. Share it with a friend who might need it, and make sure to subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one. And for some additional videos on how to liberate yourself from things like no are holding you back, be sure to check out the resource page on our website@jackcamp.com so again, thanks so much for watching and have a great rest of your day.