The Power Of No

The Power Of No is an encompassing instruction manual for you to harness the power of this little word to get healthy, rid yourself of bad relationships, embrace abundance and ultimately say yes to yourself.

We all know ’em.

The people that every time we talk to, we walk away from and feel a little worse than before.

In an ideal world, we’d just get rid of them entirely, but often that’s not possible.

However, you can reduce the time you spend with them.

Here’s a good exercise for that.

Make a list of all the people you see at least 5 times a week. Rate how the encounters with these people make you feel, 1 is the worst, 10 is the best.

With the results you instantly know who makes you feel good and who’s rather poisonous.

Start spending more time with all people rated 8 and above, and less with everyone else, especially those lower than 5.

You are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. And while you can’t CHANGE the people around you, you can change THE PEOPLE around you.

Step by step.

Eventually, you’ll only be left with an inner circle that helps you thrive.

This year started out rough for me. At 52 years old, my uncle died in his sleep.

Stopping to do things we don’t like was one of the biggest lessons his death taught me (read more about it in that day’s summary).

James says the no you have to use to decline the things other people ask you to do, just because they expect you to, is your assertive no.

The problem with saying yes to work you don’t want to do is that you’ll not only start disliking the work, but also the person who asked you to do it in the first place.

Even worse, the people who give you the work will feel bad too, because they’ll see that you don’t really want to do it and feel like they’ve given you a burden.

Have you ever had a friend help you move while they actually had to study for exams?

You probably felt bad for “making them help you”, so it was a lose-lose situation.

So instead of conforming to other people’s expectations, form your own and follow your own path.

Our ancestors kept chasing food, better shelter, and human contact. The reason was that all of these things used to be scarce resources. But none of them are any more. So trying one more new fast food restaurant, moving to a new house with one more room or finally getting that 1,000th Facebook friend today are useless achievements – they won’t help…