Teachers: Be sure to preview the article to ensure it is appropriate for use with your students.
Your friends want to hang out but you had planned to work on a project for school. Someone wants to borrow your favorite shirt but you’re afraid you won’t get it back. You were saving the last doughnut as a treat for later but your brother asked if he could have it. In each of these situations, you want to say “no.” But do you?
How often do you agree to doing things that you would rather not? Does saying “no” stress you out, or is it not that big of a deal for you?
In “The Mind-Boggling Simplicity of Learning to Say ‘No,’” the writer Leslie Jamison reflects on her struggle to turn people down:
When I was 25, I took a job at a bakery in a small college town in the Midwest. I worked front and back of house, pulling espresso shots at the bar and running into the kitchen to grab my (often burned) sugar cookies from the oven.
My boss and I had agreed on a weekly schedule — I wanted desperately to be a writer and was trying to carve out time to work on my novel — but it seemed like she was always asking me to take on another shift, or stay late, or come in early, and I found it difficult to refuse. If I said no, I worried that I would be leaving her in a jam, or that she might decide I wasn’t worth keeping on the staff at all. (My skills in the kitchen hardly justified my presence.)
One afternoon I was venting about it to my stepfather, expecting his sympathy, and he just shook his head, vaguely amused. Then he offered one of the best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever received: “She has the right to ask the question, and you have the right to say no.”
This was mind-boggling in both its simplicity and its radical reframing. The requests that I’d experienced as acts of violation were really nothing of the sort; it was not only my right but also my responsibility to draw my own boundaries, rather than expect another person to draw them for me.
Ms. Jamison goes on to describe how keeping a “Notebook of Noes” helped her think about her refusals differently:
On every page, I wrote down an opportunity I had decided to decline: a speaking gig, a magazine commission, an invitation from a friend. Then I drew a line across the page. Underneath, I wrote what saying no had made room for: more time with my partner. More time at home. More time to write. More time to call my mother and ask about her day, and tell her about mine.
Because I was a writer, it helped me to list my own refusals in a notebook. It was as if, in their accumulation, they could create a meaningful text: the story of learning to live a different way.
As I gathered more of these noes, I learned that, even after I’d uttered the word, the world continued just as it always had. The people I’d been anxious about disappointing? They were OK. The fear of losing something for good? It often came back, or something else did.
More than anything, however, the Notebook of Noes helped me see absence as a form of presence — instead of lamenting the ghost limb of what I wasn’t doing, I could acknowledge that every refusal was making it more possible to do something else.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
Do you see yourself in any of Ms. Jamison’s anecdotes about saying “no”? Do you have a hard time with turning down people, plans or opportunities? If not, have you seen others struggle with those situations?
Ms. Jamison reflects on why, when she was younger, she found it so hard to decline an offer. “Often it was the fear of disappointing someone, not being able or willing to meet some need,” she writes. “But it was also often the fear of permanently losing something — a chance, an opportunity, a connection.” What is your reaction to that statement? If you have a difficult time saying “no,” why do you think that is?
Ms. Jamison also says that most of the women she knows have told her that they have difficulty with saying “no.” Do you think that this challenge affects women and girls disproportionately? If so, why? If not, why not?
Suppose you had your own “Notebook of Noes.” What is one “no” you might record in it — a time when you declined an offer, didn’t act on a suggestion or turned down an opportunity? What did this “no” create space for instead?
Ms. Jamison writes about her stepfather, who gave her advice that helped her realize she has a right to say “no.” Has anyone helped you with this situation? If so, what advice did you receive? If a friend who gets stressed out at the prospect of saying “no” approached you for advice, what would you say?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
