There is no doubt that one of the most difficult things for us to do is say NO to people. For instance we want to say NO to being part of that project our manager has volunteered us for, but we sheepishly say yes. Or we don’t want to follow our spouse to that party because we would rather rest at home, but we still say yes. What about saying No to yet another request for another toy from your daughter. You know she’s only going to use it for three days before something else catches her attention. What do you say to that? Yes. The “want to say NO but end up saying yes” goes on and on and on for us. We all have areas in our lives where we would rather say NO but still say yes.

One of the best things we can do in such cases is prepare ourselves to say NO. William Ury has a great framework for how to do this. He wrote about it in his book called, The Power of a Positive NO. You can read my review of the book here. The steps in Ury’s framework are:

1. Uncover your YES.
2. Empower your NO.
3. Respect your way to YES.

In coming posts I will briefly introduce each step.