The power of saying "No"

In this episode, I talk about the power of saying "No"... Why this word is so important yet so difficult to use, and how it changed my life.

Also,  I talk about the book the Dip (by Seth Godin) and how winners use strategic quitting as a tool to realign with the things that matter.

The podcast finishes with the story of Mozart and how quitting/saying "No" became fundamental for him to become the Mozart we know.

Enjoy!

Music: Through the woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Picture: By Daniel Eledut found in Unsplash

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Mona Lisa Soul Podcast.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for being here.

My name is Carolina, and I will be your host in this space created for you and me to discover the principles of greatness together.

This podcast will be full of stories about mastery, determination, and resilience. Stories of people like you and me, which prove that we all have the power to unlock our full potential and go from ordinary to Masterpieces.

In today's episode, we will talk about the power of saying NO.

"No" is a short but powerful word, which can sometimes be a noun, a determiner, an adverb, but also a tool for freedom, a symbol of empowerment, an instrument of integrity, and a testimony of self-love.

But Before we dive deep, I must confess that I decided to pick this topic today because I've been thinking a lot since the last episode on the exact moment that made me go from that dark place in 2017 to the point where I am today, a place of inner peace and alignment.

I call this point my inflection point. 

The inflection point, punto de infleccion or wendepunkt, is a word I've always loved and even overused in different languages. 

I discovered this concept in university while taking calculus, and I remember being fascinated by how this mathematical concept could be a representation of life itself. 

To refresh your memory, from a technical point of view, the inflection point is the point on a curve at which the curvature changes from convex to concave and vice versa.

But from a universal point of view, this concept is used to refer to critical points. Or, in other words, to signal the point at which a major change occurs.

So, after having the question about my inflection point in my head for several days, I decided to turn to my first journal for answers.

And in this exploration, I realized that my inflection point was when I dared to say "no" to a relationship that was destroying me. 

A relationship where I just couldn't be who I really was, where I couldn't say the things that I really wanted to say, where I made myself completely invisible.

And after I was able to come out of it, everything started to change in my life. 

So, knowing how important this moment was me, I decided to bring up the topic in the podcast and invite you to join me on this exploration of the power of NO, which, when properly used, becomes a tool of empowerment and liberation.

And to start this conversation, I want to talk about something that I find fascinating, and it is the idea that we, humans, tend to believe that we are infinite and we will live forever. Well, sorry to burst the bubble, but our time on this planet is very, very short and irrelevant to the vast universe. 

Just to put things in perspective, I read somewhere that if our planet was 24 hours old, humankind would have existed only for 77 seconds.

And please note that I am talking about humankind and not about the 83.3 years that you'll potentially live if you are a woman and are in the European Union, which is already the best-case scenario for life expectancy.

Anyway, all of this is to say that life is just too short to waste it, to have regrets, and to be stuck in those things you don't want to be stuck in. 

Or in other words, life is too short not to say no. 

And I know it is easier said than done. Things get complicated as we live in a world that is constantly putting pressure on us to do more, have more, and be more. 

But we cannot do everything at the same time. We cannot be everything to everyone. 

It is a simple equation: for something to happen, something else cannot happen.

In your own life, I want to invite you to think how often you have heard yourself saying yes to the wrong things: to jobs you don't enjoy, to time-consuming obligations, to overwhelming requests, to bad relationships, to people that bring you down, to habits and addictions that are holding you back, or to things that don't align with your values or goals.

And you would agree that saying yes when it feels like a no is like betraying oneself. We lose a bit of respect for ourselves when we are not coherent. 

And it causes stress, resentment, and frustration.

 It also prevents us from having the time or energy needed for the things that matter most.

And I get it. It's confusing and uncomfortable to say no when all our society tells us that we must always, or at least mos of the time, say yes. We are constantly told to be good, kind, and patient, and soft. 

This is especially true for women.

Society trains us to be too nice and not to offend anyone. It trains us to be too accommodating, polite and to say yes when we really aren't feeling up to it.

And I think this discussion goes beyond genders. Because it doesn't matter if you are a woman or man. 

We are humans, and humans come with a little voice in the head that is afraid. 

A voice that emerges from the lizard brain and wants to protect us, to keep us safe.

A voice that feeds on all the other voices we have internalized from well-intended people, perhaps friends and family, who give us advice with the best of their intentions, thinking they are protecting us, but instead end up passing on their fears and limiting beliefs to us. 

Sometimes this voice also feeds from our own ego, which tries to insulate us from our unflattering truths.

And perhaps, saying no is difficult because it requires us to have the courage to acknowledge that we might be in the wrong place, that we might be choosing the path of least resistance or settling down for something that, despite feeling safe, is slowly killing our souls.

And today I can connect the dots on this topic, but you should know it wasn't easy. Before I finally said no to that relationship, I had many failed attempts. In fact, my first no was bland, and it took almost one year for everything to finally be over. 

But you need to start somewhere, and this moment already marked that point in which I started to internalize a revolution that emerged from the discrepancy between what I wanted and what I was settling for.

And that makes this moment in my life so remarkable because this is the moment when I started to trust my instincts. When I began to acknowledge that something wasn't right. When I dared to think that, maybe I wasn't the problem. And when I finally started to see all the red flags that I had ignored for several years.

Looking back, I think the final "no" took all the courage available in my soul. Because parallel to feeling all these signals, I was also terrified of making a mistake. 

Honestly, nobody ever taught me to rely on my instinct or even to create space for it to talk to me.

It was more the opposite. I have been conditioned to be submissive, quiet down my voice, and let others speak because they always knew better. 

But how could it have been different ? I mean on the one hand, I have naturally an introverted personality; on the other, my family (especially my mom and grandma) they didn't know better, and this makes me think that this submissive attitude is a heritage we have been carrying for many generations.

Which makes that "No" so special. Yes, it was weird and hesitant. But it was also revolutionary and liberating and from today´s perspective, I even think it helped me to heal many wounds from my ancestors. 

And although I am not a master at saying no, I am really glad to see that we live in a period of history when saying no is becoming part of the public conversation. As we have witnessed, many contemporary social movements like metoo or blacklivesmatter have emerged recently to challenge the status quo. And we may agree or disagree with what these movements stand for. But we need to recognize that beyond the social impact, these actors are normalizing the right to be empowered and to say No when it feels like no. And the topic has gained so much popularity that people are writing books about it, as we speak.

Talking about books, I would like to share some insights from a book I recently read. It doesn't talk 100% about the topic of this podcast, but it summarizes better than I ever could the message I want to convey.

The name of the book is the Dip. It was written by Seth Godin, who a celebrated marketing expert and a very successful author. And The book has an interesting subheadline that goes this is "A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)."

I really liked this book because Seth Godin beautifully demystifies the power of quitting. He removes all the taboos around it and highlights how quitting is not only helpful but sometimes even necessary to get where we really want to go.

He starts by stating that we, humans, have been conditioned to see quitting as moral failing. In fact, we have romanticized not quitting as a sign of endurance and success.

And in this respect, there is a very famous quote by the sports coach Vicente Lombardi which says: "quitters never win, and winners never quit."

But according to Godin, this is a great bad piece of advice. Because the truth is that winners quit all the time. They quit the wrong stuff in order to refocus on the right thing, on the thing that matters, on the thing they wouldn't quit.

And therefore, winners see quitting as a strategy. 

And I know it sounds confusing, but this is why it's so important to understand the architecture of quitting because strategic quitting is quite different from reactive quitting.

To make things clear...

Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices that are available to you. It is a decision you make way before you need to make a decision.

Reactive quitting, on the other hand, means giving up. It means being unable to go through the dip that every journey entails. When we start something new, everything at is exciting. 

We are all full of dopamine and energy, but as everyday life hits, we start losing enthusiasm. So, producing dopamine then becomes harder, and this is when most people give up.

But this is an important distinction because giving up is not the same as quitting.

So, coming back to the main message of the book, quitting is a strategy that winners use in order to refocus their energy and attention on what they really want to do. 

It is a process of making a conscious decision based on available options and taking advantage of an opportunity to do something else. 

It means saying no to what doesn't matter and yes to what does.

And since I promised stories in this podcast, I would like you tell you about a guy called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, best known as Mozart, and how quitting became fundamental for him to become the Mozart we know.

The story I am about to tell you starts in Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born on a cold winter day in 1756. 

Music was part of Mozart's life since he was born, as his father, Leopold Mozart, was a talented composer, violinist, and teacher, who used to work at the court of Salzburg.

Inspired by his sister, who was already playing the piano at the age of 7, Mozart one day asked his father to give him piano lessons. His father agreed, and after a few months, he started to see that Mozart was exceptional. 

So, Leopold (the father of Mozart), decides to take Mozart and his sister to perform in all the capitals of Europe. 

And this turned out to be a very profitable decision for Leopold, because the word about Mozart started to circulate among the main cultural capitals of Europe, which resulted in more people wanting to see this genius.

So, Leopold had found a goldmine with his children that not only represented a solid income for the family but also gave them access to the highest circles of society.

And luckily for him, Mozart was always a very obedient child. He felt deeply grateful to his father, as he thought that he owed everything to him.

But as Mozart entered adolescence, something started to bother him. 

After many years of composing music, Mozart could see that he had finally developed his own style. But his father insisted on him writing conventional pieces that would please the royal audiences and ensure that safe income for the family. 

So, Mozart agreed, despite hating this conventional music. But with each passing year, the discomfort started to grow, as well as the friction between the two.

So, at the age of 21, Leopold allowed Mozart to go to Paris under the condition that he should look for a position that would enable him to keep on supporting the family. 

But Mozart didn't like Paris, and the position he found seemed to be beneath his talents. So, he returns to Salzburg and, following his father's will, he accepted a job at the court where he was hired to play the organ.

As you can imagine, this was giving him really mixed feelings. Yes, he was pleasing his father, but it also felt that he was settling for a mediocre life.

So, one day he has this big epiphany where he discovers that what he loved was never the piano, the music, or the adrenaline of the performance.

What he loved was composing. 

And in an act that took all his courage, Mozart sent a letter to his father saying, "I am a composer…. I neither can nor ought to bury the talent for composition with which God in his goodness has so richly endowed me."

And afterwards, Mozart decided to take a painful but brave step, and goes to Vienna, where he decided to stay.

And the rest is history.

Now, imagine if Mozart had followed this false path that his father envisioned for him. A path that was unfulfilling and felt empty... Perhaps he would have never become the Mozart we know, and the world would have missed one of the greatest composers of all time.

And I would like to close the podcast today by inviting you to reflect on the fact that sometimes we must be rebellious and stand for what is important to us.

Nobody better than ourselves can know what we really want. All the answers live inside of us and this is why it is so important to reduce the external noise and to take care of that channel that connects us with our inner wisdom. Trusting your wisdom is a big testimony of your self-love.

And next time you are hesitating to say no, when it feels like no, remember that No says: this is who I am; this is who I want to be; this is what I value; this is what matters to me.

Maybe this will mark the beginning of your very own inflection point.

And if it feels very intimidating to say no, well you can start with a conditional yes. 

Like for example, I will do that thing I don't want to do, but only after I take care of myself.

And this is not being selfish is setting the standards for the life you want to live.

So, don't settle... The life of your dreams exists, and you deserve to say yes to that life you want and be unapologetic about it.

Once again, thank you so much for listening. 

I hope you liked this episode. 

And I hope you found one thing that I said useful. 

If you have any comments, suggestions, ideas feedback, don't hesitate to let me know. 

Don't forget to subscribe for more content.

Until next time.