No.

That’s an easy word to say, isn’t it? And we learn it pretty early. After Mama, Dada, and wee-wee, it’s one of the first word babies say. That’s because it’s the one they hear the most often. 

“NO! Don’t throw your Ninja Turtle pillow down the toilet. Noooooooo! Don’t flush!” “NO. You can’t do that on the living room rug!” “NO! How many times have I told you not to throw spaghetti down the cold air return!”

So what happens? Try asking a two-year-old to eat his peas or pick up her blocks. What do you hear? “NO!”

Think about it. How often has a kid that age heard the word, “yes?”

But something happens to us between potty chairs and potbellies. We lose the ability to say “no.” It worked perfectly well while we were still sucking Arrow Root cookies, but somewhere along the line our mouths forgot how to form this simple one-syllable word.

The result? We grow up, we take on responsibilities, we work at proving how capable we are—and then the phone starts ringing. At the other end is often somebody with a line that goes something like this.

Hi. We’re putting on a:

1. Bake sale
2. Auction
3. Political campaign
4. Protest march
5. World revolution.

And with your:

1. Abilities
2. Intelligence
3. Experience
4. Contacts
5. Congenital weakness regarding requests for help;

we know you’d be the perfect person to:

1. Serve on the board
2. Make the phone calls
3. Handle the publicity
4. Bake the cookies
5. All of the above.

“So,” your caller says, “will you help us?”

Now here’s where you should put the phone down, walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror, throw your shoulders back, and watch yourself say it: “No. No. NO!”

Then you should walk back to the phone, purse your lips, and say in your best Miss Manners voice, “No.”

Then hang up.

The worst thing you can do is stay on the line and explain. If you do, the caller will shoot down every rationale you have.

In the end you’ll give in, you’ll say the dreaded “Y” word, and then you’ll spend a lot of time hitting yourself on the forehead and moaning over and over, “Why did I say yes? I don’t have TIME to do this. What am I, crazy?”

But you gave your word, didn’t you? And everyone knows what a responsible person you are. And capable. Don’t forget capable.

So what now?

Well, first it helps to understand why you do these things to yourself. At a recent meeting, a friend of ours spotted it right away. “It’s because right after we say ‘yes,’ we get a rush. We love feeling good about ourselves. And we love being told we’re the best one—the only one—to do the job. There’s this little rush we get right up until we hang up the phone. Saying ‘yes’ is addictive.”

“What we need to do,” she says, “is form a group, invite all the people who can’t say ‘no,’ and have us all practice saying it to each other. Then when any of us gets tempted to say ‘yes’ to a plea for help between meetings, we could just call someone in the group and they could talk us out of it.”

She turned to me. “How about it, Donna? You’re good at organizing things. Would you set up the group for us?”

“Yes,” I said. And then I felt this wonderful rush.