Say No, Even without a voice or a gesture.

Well, it seems a little bit weird, If no no one is going to hear me saying NO, to whom should I say NO??? or, why should I say it in the first place???

We need to answer Two (2) questions: Why we say No? Why we won't explicitly say it in some situations? 

Why we say NO?

We say No as a reply or as a reaction. As a reply we say it in return of Can you..? Would you...? Do you....? Are you....? The last two questions are interrogative i.e. trying to pull some information from you or imposing some answers. When you are aware of the question and have some feeling toward its intention, then you take a deep breath, create a gap and then, try to figure out the best answer. 

The other time we say NO is when we express our astonishment that is coming from our disbelieve. Some quickly NO shots are part of our defense mechanism.

A Yes, is not an easy answer even. It implies a commitment or a declaration. However, You can make it conditional to create an escape as when you say: Yes, but, when the weather is better. Or, Yes, but it might not be approved by my dad , my boss, the board or the government office. Still, you need to be aware of the initial commitment of Yes. On the other hand, some people say Yes for any sort of request or for all requests from a certain person. Examples, A mother who can't say No to her little child might set him to a less than optimum health conditions along his life in the future. Other example is when someone says Yes to everyone asking for help whether financial or physical. At the end of the day some of them don't actually need  that help. Moreover, he is in need of his own, money, time and effort but he sacrificed his need for the other person'e satisfaction. Those need to practice No for their own benefit and to save the other persons the Bad consequences of pampering.

A NO is received as a NO regardless of any exceptions or clarifications added to it. That's why although saying No is important and might need some training, when you master it, don't use it as an auto reply. Further more in some cases as we shall investigate later we intend to say it in an implicit way. 

The more important is to be clear to ourselves of why we say Yes and most importantly , why we say NO. No expresses our refusal to an idea or a situation. It is recommended to set your values first and then practice correlating your acceptance and rejection to your values matrix. So the explicit Yes or No are firm when the question is aligned or contradicting with the top 2 or 3 values. It would be easier to clarify things with examples. In case your family time is your first priority, then any friend's request to occupy this time will get an easy but polite NO. On the other hand, when your exercise time is the tenth important thing to you, a friends' request to help him in this time will receive an easy YES.

Why we won't explicitly say No in some situations? 

In some situations we should say NO but, we don't do it. During these situations we need to be aware of why NO is hard to say. As we said before we need to revert to our values. If the situation contradicts with our values but we are afraid to say NO, just we need to think beyond the situation an hour or a day after. Shall we be able to tolerate the consequence of not saying NO. An easy example would make it easy to comprehend the idea more. You have an exam and a close friend asks you to go out. Your boss asks you about your opinion in an issue where you are against his wiling. 

In these situations, you need to reply to yourself first "Am I in or out?, With or against?, Accepting or Rejecting?" Then Then avoid saying NO in a heroic scene as it may not be a good choice. It sometimes needs some civility twisting of the words. 

Trying to convince someone with an opinion that is opposing to his would be a failure if you chose to speak about  right and wrong. Try to start by highlighting how  an alternate choice might be beneficiary for him. 

That's not an advocation of not expressing our point of view clearly but, in some situations as the below ones it is more appealing to us to express our point of view without hurting someone, hurting ourselves or creating a conflict.

1.  Sometimes we can't reply with a NO to a loved one, an elder person, someone asking for help or a person with authority
   Why did we bundle those 4 categories together? Because they all include some sort of fear. Not that fear that makes your teeth chatter  or cause you to shiver. We shall explain each one in its context.:
• For a loved one we are afraid to say No:
• Causing pain for him/her
• leading to his/her Disappointment
• Losing his/her love
• destroy our hero image
• disrupt the absolute confidence
• You being Scolded
• To an elderly person, we might be afraid from feeling guilty if we said NO
• that we deepened his inability feelings
• We don't show  enough respect
• Not returning back his previous deeds while we were young
• Not fulfilling his last requests in life
• Rejecting A person in need, the following might frighten us:
• The karma 
• Being heartless
• Missing our social responsibilities
• The consequences of letting him down
• Think twice before saying NO or opposing a person with authority, we might
• be afraid of punishment
• lose benefits
• be offended by his tribe

We had been on a long trip between Yes and No, let we introduce more ideas and sum up in a coming chat. Stay Safe.