Even though I might disguise, suppress, and repress it, I often feel resentful, obliged, overwhelmed, guilty, anxious, overloaded, drained, exhausted, low, helpless, powerless, or victimized. Putting off speaking to a coworker about an issue with their work and then staying late or delaying your own work because you worry about hurting their feelings, being bad-mouthed to other team members, or looking incompetent.

The Joy of Saying No by Natalie Lue Order your copy of The Joy of Saying No by Natalie Lue

What brings you joy? It is a question that is hard to avoid these days, as joy seems to be the new buzzword. It is on the cover of two new books, The Joy of No (#Jono) by Debbie Chapman, published at the end of last year, and The Joy of Missing Out, by the philosopher and psychologist Svend Brinkmann, published earlier this month. It is also on Netflix, in the show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, in which the decluttering guru and author tells us to discard any possessions that do not “spark joy”. Truly, a surfeit of joy!To make matters worse, much of the work I was struggling to do was unpaid. I was getting into debt because my to-do list was so full that I was turning down paid work.

The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing

By emphasizing compliance, society instilled a sense of fear and guilt but peddled it as respect. This resulted in a fear of not just the potential or actual negative consequences of not complying but the fear of authorities themselves. Authority figures were treated as if they were automatically right and safe, so the presumption was that if we felt otherwise, we were disrespectful. It’s also safe to say that thanks to the Age of Obedience, some Gooders learned the habit because it’s what was modeled or expressly emphasized regardless of what the adults were up to. So if they came from a home where everyone signaled their goodness or kept talking about “good values,” they felt obliged to fit in so as not to damage the reputation of the adults. This may be due to religion (“This is a good X household, and we don’t do Y”) or the adults priding themselves on being a certain type of people or family (“You’re a Lue, and that means something. Don’t you forget it.”). If this continues, the body adjusts to a “new normal,” so we’ll feel “okay” even though we’re not, and we’re in this fight-flight-freeze state. If, after this period, we experience an extended stretch of not being chronically stressed and we learn to feel safe and secure again, the threshold will lower. For instance, in relationships involving emotional unavailability, the more passive partner plays roles to make the emotionally unavailable person eventually spontaneously combust into being emotionally available, willing to commit, or willing to stop mistreating them. Yep, that would be people pleasing. It’s impossible to avoid saying no or to be fearful of the consequences of boundaries and not be a people pleaser. You’ll keep experiencing variations of the same frustrations, hurts, and problems and mistakenly attribute these to failing to please enough.

As I became a freelance writer, then a company director, some of the offers became career opportunities. Again, saying yes by default worked like a dream. It put me in rooms I could never have imagined being in and won me contracts I had no right to win. Even having no money was kind of liberating – it meant I couldn’t lose anything. If you answered yes to even one of these statements, you are a people pleaser. These are clues from your body, mind, and life that you do what for all intents and purposes might be “good things” but for the wrong reasons—and that’s what makes it people pleasing. Knowing how and when to say no is about understanding your boundaries, the visible and invisible lines between you and others that show your awareness of where you end and they begin. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Joy_of_Saying_No_-_Natalie_Lue.pdf, The_Joy_of_Saying_No_-_Natalie_Lue.epub You might identify with multiple styles, but one or two will dominate. Though I share examples of experiences that can precipitate adopting each style and characteristics of the roles, these can apply in the other styles, so I encourage you to read each one because they’re all people pleasing. You’ll also recognize loved (and not-so-loved) ones and the roles they play.

35 Inspirational Quotes On Saying No - AwakenTheGreatnessWithin 35 Inspirational Quotes On Saying No - AwakenTheGreatnessWithin

I worry that my success, happiness, or personal growth will outshine others or cause them to feel unhappy, left out, or abandoned. The Joy of Saying No will help you identify your people-pleasing style and habits. A six-step framework then teaches you how to discover the healing and transformative power of no to Here’s the truth: What I thought was being “good” and “helping out” was people pleasing—using “pleasing” to influence and control other people’s feelings and behavior to gain attention, affection, approval, love, and validation or to avoid conflict, criticism, stress, disappointment, loss, rejection, and abandonment. There isn’t a tipping point of people pleasing where you finally start reaping the rewards and you’re set free to be yourself. Now is the perfect time to be more you. So there’s the baseline and what we’re supposed to be able to naturally and fairly comfortably tolerate, and then a threshold that indicates when we’re in high stress. Up until that threshold, we’re okay, but after that, our bodies are at an above-average or even dangerous level of stress.I cut ties with exes and opted out of shady and unworkable dating situations at much earlier points without second-guessing myself, opening me up to meeting my now husband and being able to grow in the relationship because I endeavored to be myself. My intention has and always will be to help people overcome the emotional baggage that creates these patterns so that we enjoy more love, care, trust and respect and break these generational patterns.

The Joy of Saying No by Natalie Lue | Waterstones The Joy of Saying No by Natalie Lue | Waterstones

The Age of Obedience didn’t teach nuance; it taught unconditional compliance. Specifically, it taught the criticalness of obeying anybody with authority over you, which in childhood, is anyone whom you perceived to have power over you. This meant that we learned about “stranger danger” in the form of a kidnapper or creepy figure with a bag of candy, but no one explained that thanks to all our obedience training, not only could strangers invoke the same fear, guilt, and compliance as loved ones, but also that often the people we needed danger awareness about were people whom we automatically trusted and revered because of their status and profession, such as priests, teachers, police officers, family friends, and extended family. I worry about not being liked, getting into trouble, hurting feelings, looking like a “bad” or “selfish” person, or being rejected, abandoned, or alienated if I say no, express needs, have limits, or am honest. Our coping and survival mechanisms of avoiding no with the people pleasing of playing roles helped us get through childhood, but they won’t help us thrive, because they’re maladaptive. The old programming becomes increasingly inefficient, hence why our people pleasing isn’t generating the results or the rewards it used to and taking a toll on our well-being. Many people pleasers beat themselves up for procrastination, seeing it as yet another flawed thing about themselves. Procrastination, though, is like a release valve providing temporary relief from the exhausting habits. Whether we’re aware of it or not, and whether we’re conscious of how and when it specifically manifests in our lives, it’s a form of self-protection. Yes, sometimes we do it because we’re delaying and putting something off, but we unconsciously do it as a way of distancing ourselves from all of our yeses.Much of what we do, especially when unconscious, painful, and repetitive, is about pleasing whomever we depended on in childhood, trying to right the wrongs of the past to meet unmet needs, and protecting ourselves from the rejection and abandonment we feared or experienced as a child. Patterns occur when we’re living unconsciously, and people pleasing is us being on autopilot mode. We’ve been operating from programming instead of preferences. Title: The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People-Pleasing, Reclaim Your Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want A Gooder typically grew up in an environment where the adults modeled goodness even if they didn’t necessarily emphasize it, or where keeping up appearances of being good was the priority, or where being good was self-protection against mistreatment from others.