Why Does A No Suck So Much?
No is a complete sentence and more.
Sorry, it’s a no.
The sorry doesn’t help. I had prepared myself for the no, but honestly, I had prepared myself for the yes. I was already living the perfect life I would have after the yes.
Well, it wasn’t a direct no. It was more like not now, maybe sometime later. So your brain develops this fallacy that there’s still some chance, deep down, you know the truth. There’s no later. And then it hits. You know the answer now. You can’t hide behind the hypothetical situations. That stings, no?
But why?
Because it’s personal, your no don’t impact me. Only my noes do. It’s a more selfish equation than Trump running for president in 2024. There’s another equation at play here, one of efforts and rewards. We are taught linearity growing up: if you put in x amount of effort, you will get y amount of reward. We memorize this function and try to apply it to every situation. And that’s where we fail. And that’s why the no sucks.
It’s entitlement. We believe that since we’ve put in the effort, we are entitled to the reward. Since we made the ask, we are entitled to the yes. In this process, we identify the effort with our identity. The no is an attack on your identity - which we aren’t trained to take well to. Because it makes us think, it makes us question our beliefs. These things take effort, and you are making my life hard, and that’s not good.
I disagree.
Noes make you free. And as we’ve learned from history, freedom is a good thing (mostly). There’s a relief of getting the answer. You can move on to seeking your next no from here. Momentarily, It also humbles you. You are more careful about hurting others. You try to be extra nice to others, hoping you will get the nicety back. The other person is clueless about it. You are more likely to empathize with someone’s hair loss situation when you are experiencing hair loss yourself. It’s a thing, and it has a name - Empathic Accuracy. So we know it’s important because we only name important things.
We aren’t conditioned for this. We are conditioned for something different. To replay the situation in our heads, try to think of how we could have changed the inputs and how it would impact the output. I find it funny how we try to humanize machine stuff and machinize human stuff.
Points Of Views
You also start justifying things from the other party’s point of view in an attempt to try to make yourself feel better. Or worse - telling yourself how you deserved the no in the first place. It’s all lies because deep down, we know that if something is supposed to work, people will make it work. Otherwise, it just isn’t meant to be.
There’s this moment between you making the ask and then getting the reply. In my case, it was half a second, but I’ll never forget the half a second - it’s like a scar mark, but only I know where it exists and how I got it. And you need some scar marks in life. It’s a sign that you lived, you existed - the pain was worth it.
Some amount of no should be mandated in our daily lives, just like sunlight exposure. Yeses give you a nice Swedish massage, while noes give you a deep tissue massage. The pain again is worth it. Because that’s when you know you’re genuinely pushing your boundaries. It makes you aware. It makes you receptive to feedback.
Borrowing from Derek Sivers, if it isn’t a hell yeah, it’s a no!
And you should be glad you got a no.