Hello my friends. Today I was thinking about the issue of respect. Respect is something we all want and desire but often times we have such a hard time gathering it from the outside world. It is really simple in theory right? We say yes when we want to say yes and no when we want to say no. So why is when we want to say no that we come across such anxiety about how others will receive that "no." The anxiety that we have often causes us to say way too much to please the person we are saying no to. I have found communication that is short, succinct and unemotional causes us to immediately draw respect. When we get into pleasing or the fear of our no making someone mad...we try and prove ourselves to them in order to make our NO valid. We then become emotional and our boundary gets lost...we lose respect.

One of the best ways to say no is through the use of gratitude. We can thank someone for whatever it is that they are offering and then just say no. When we jump through hoops for people it often has a negative outcome. People see our hoop jumping as us being easy to manipulate emotionally. If we can be manipuated then we can be manipulated out of saying no. Guilt is often used to get us to go against what we are trying to say no to.

Today if you need to say no...give a little gratitude and then without explaining yourself or saying too much...just say no.
good luck!
Dr. Sherrie