June 14 - The wisdom of a positive NO | Start saying YES! to life

“When you say ‘Yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘No’ to yourself.” — Paulo Coelho

ISSN 2277 – 5153 VOL VIII ISSUE 08 JUNE 2014 ` 100

The wisdom of a

positive

Start saying YES! to life p22

DON’T MISS » Ram Dass on The Yoga of a Relationship p80

Editor’s insights

Care to say No

Manoj Khatri manoj.khatri@completewellbeing.com

infinitemanoj ManojKhatri

The problem arises when wanting to be liked becomes more important than being happy

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O

prah once asked her audience to choose between being liked and being respected and guess what? Almost everyone preferred ‘being liked’. Now, there’s no problem with wanting to be liked—we all want it. The problem arises when wanting to be liked becomes more important than being happy. When you want to be liked and accepted at any cost, you say Yes, when you really want to say No, and thus strike a poor bargain. You please another while devaluing yourself.

Warren Buffett once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

I’d say this distinction also applies between happy and very happy people. Very happy people are those who have mastered the art of saying No without creating ri s, hurting sentiments and feeling guilty. These are people who have realised that saying Yes when you really want to say No is a losing proposition for everyone involved. Such a Yes keeps you trapped in an unhappy situation, giving rise to all kinds of negative emotions.

Perhaps you say Yes because you want to avoid disagreement and confrontation —but what’s the use of an ‘agreement’ that leaves you feeling resentful and unhappy? Such a Yes is a No to yourself—a negative Yes. Fortunately, there’s a way to say No without putting your relationship at stake, says William Ury in this month’s cover story. It’s called positive No. Once you understand how to say it, you will be able start saying No without feeling guilty or hurting others.

“A positive No requires you to challenge the common assumption that either you can use power to get what you want [at the cost of relationship] or you can use relationship [at the cost of power]. It calls on you to use both at the same time, engaging the other in a constructive and respectful confrontation,” says Ury. He explains that while the ordinary No begins and ends with No, a positive No begins with Yes and ends with Yes. Once you’re done reading the cover story, you can start using the positive No in your life, and enjoy the freedom it brings along—the freedom to say Yes to those things that matter the most to you. Now you know why Australian actress Claudia Black believes, “Saying no can be the ultimate self-care.”

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER | Manoj Khatri EDITORIAL ADVISOR | Dr Grazilia Khatri SR COPY EDITOR & FEATURES WRITER | Wynrica Gonsalves ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR | Amit Amdekar SR GRAPHIC DESIGNER | Mukesh Patel EDITORIAL OFFICE 502, A wing, Sagar Tech Plaza, Saki Naka Junction, Andheri-Kurla Road, Mumbai 400072.

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SUMMARY OF CONTENTS TRENDING THIS MONTH >>

The power of a Positive No

By William Ury

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DISCLAIMER | Complete Wellbeing is dedicated to providing useful, well-researched information on holistic health/wellbeing, but its contents are not intended to provide medical advice/diagnosis for individual problems or circumstances, or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Readers are advised to always consult their physician/healthcare professional/therapist, prior to starting any new remedy, therapy or treatment, or practice, or with any questions they may have regarding a medical/health condition.

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22 In the spotlight

63 Queen of Kundalini: Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

By Grazilia Khatri

DECIDE >>

EXPLORE >>

36 Considered art as an investment?

40 Let your emotions flow like nature

Money matters

By Sia Mitra

Parenting

48 Watch yourself in front of your kids

By Robert Taibbi

Pet care

84 Before you bring home the pup

By Pallavi Choudhury Tripathi

Mind & emotions

By Lea Tran

Travel

72 Trailing to Milford Sounds

By Mitali Parekh

Perspective

92 In conversation with seniors

By Sakshi Nanda

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56

DISCOVER >> Health & vitality

56 Why Indians don’t move

By Ronesh Sinha

Complementary therapies

68 The magic of Shiatsu

By Samantha Haywood & Andrew Parfitt

RESOLVE >> Common ailments

54 The price of poor oral hygiene

By Simita Madan

Sleep

66 Sleeping too much is not always a good thing

By Genevieve Martins

Career & workplace

32 Lessons from Mr Squirrel

By Cheryl Richardson

MANAGE >> Self-help

50 Create your own rituals

By Barbara Biziou

Common ailments

58 Urinary infections in women

By Rakhee Sahu

Self-help

90 Quitting bad habits

UNLEARN >>

50

By Samuel Gentoku McCree

INDULGE >> Food & nutrition

60 Avocado has arrived

By Sweta Uchil-Purohit

TRANSFORM >> Consciousness

78 The power of silence

By JP Vaswani

Relationships

REGULARS >> 08 10 14 20 44 53 70 83 96 98

CW Talkback Events Happy happenings Write Notes Confession booth Look who’s talking CW Select Month Freshener New kits on the block Reflections

80 The yoga of relationships

By Ram Dass

78

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Pic for representational purpose only

Happy happenings

A ‘Reckless’ discovery CHUCK JAMES and his wife Elicia were victims of the destruction that was caused by hurricane Sandy. They lost their dog ‘Reckless’ in the storm, which also destroyed their fence. A year and half had passed after their dog had run off during the hurricane, and they gave up hope of ever finding their terrier-pit bull mix again. As a birthday gift for their daughter, they decided to adopt another dog. That’s when they visited the Monmouth Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Eatontown, New Jersey.

“Literally when we opened the doors, the

first cage we walked up to, and I thought ‘that looks like Reckless’” James said recounting his astonishment.

“He was a little heavier and it’s been a little while, but then my wife saw the scar on his head. Immediately we started tearing up, we found our dog.” The family is currently staying in a hotel, because they were displaced in the aftermath of the super storm and were very happy when the hotel allowed their pet to come and live with them. Who said happy endings were only in the movies?

Homeless Kansas City man returns $4000 ring A HOMELESS MAN, Billy Ray Harris, earned a place in many hearts by his thoughtful deed.

A woman who put all her spare change into his cup accidentally dumped her engagement ring along with it. She noticed her missing ring long after she had walked away and ended up giving the pricey item to the Kansas City man.

Billy considered selling the ring and even had it appraised—it was valued at $4000. However, he held onto it in the hope of finding out who lost it, and sure enough a few days later a very frustrated Sarah returned and asked him

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if he had it. He said that he had kept it for her.

As a way to thank Harris for his honesty, Sarah started a fund in the hope of collecting $1000, but after the story spread, they managed to raise $190,000 in just three months. What’s more, his family had finally been able to find him after 16 long years.

“I feel human now, I still see some of the same people,” Harris says, “but only now, instead of coming up and giving me change, they’re coming up shaking my hand and saying ‘hey, good job’.”

VOL VIII ISSUE 08 JUNE 2014 05

Explore

mind & emotions

Let your emotions flow naturally Nature conveys her feelings through the seasons as she vents her anger, shows her joys and displays her sorrow.

Why then do we suppress our emotions?

By Lea Tran

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Lea Tran is a horticultural therapist and integrative natural healer. She helps people benefit from the healing power of plants. Her articles on how to connect with nature for wellbeing can be found here: www.gardentherapynotes.com

MOTHER NATURE EXPRESSES emotion in exactly the right ways to be the healthiest she can be. She expresses it with non-judgement and non-a achment. By following nature’s example, we too can create more balance in our lives.

Though not easy to grasp at first, nature is, in fact, very emotional. Traditional systems of medicine, such as Classical Five Element Chinese Medicine, describe everything in nature as having chi or life force energy. This energy is in constant transformation, cycling through different emotions or feelings that are most obvious in the seasons.

Each season has an emotional quality about it that distinguishes it from another.

Wouldn’t you agree that summer and winter have distinct feelings about them? When you go outside today, how do you know what season it is? You know because the environment communicates its emotional tone to you.

Here in Ontario, Canada, where I live, summer days are often hot and sunny. Playful, easy-going, joyful, friendly, full of energy and passion are ways to describe summer. It’s the time when the growth of plants are in full swing, inviting the birds and the bees to enjoy the sweet nectar of their fragrant, colourful flowers. The animals are out sunbathing, hunting for food and making sure that their young ones learn the ropes of living a successful life. Summers are productive and humming with activity.

Winter days, on the other hand, are often crisp and cold here. The feelings could be described as more introverted and withdrawn. The trees are bare and the landscape is sleeping, covered with a blanket of brilliant white snow. The plants and animals are in hibernation. It’s important to slow down in this season so that energy reserves don’t run out when food is less abundant. Winter provides a good opportunity for seeds to get the time and rest they need to germinate when winter is over and the spring rains fall.

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Emotional expression sustains life The expression of summer, winter, and all of the seasons in between are an important way in which the environment sustains itself.

Without the energy of the summer, there would not be enough food produced to last throughout the winter. And without the rest in the winter, burn-out would occur and we’d soon be too tired to do anything at all.

There is neither beginning nor end, neither good nor bad—just a cycle of necessary emotions realised through the seasons that bring our environment into healthy balance and expression.

In this way, nature teaches us how to bring forth our emotions appropriately.

Emotions occur unapologetically because it would be unhealthy to hide or hold back an expression of the season. When there is excess moisture in the air, it calls for rain.

There’s no holding back. If it didn’t rain when it needed to, the landscape would suffer. The ground would not receive enough water to nourish the plants and rivers.

Because nature knows what she needs to express and then expresses it, we benefit since we rely on her for our needs.

People are less willing to express emotion And yet people suppress their emotions.

Have you ever felt angry but held back its expression because you thought it was wrong? Have you ever felt like crying but stopped yourself because you didn’t want to be seen as weak? We do this all the time.

We judge our emotions and then hide them.

It’s not our fault though. We were brought up to believe that uncomfortable emotions such as anger and sadness are bad. But these labels don’t serve us well. After all, expressed appropriately, anger is an important way to draw boundaries; and sadness helps us to feel compassion and empathy.

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Repressed emotion can build and show up inappropriately later as an over-the-top blow up or a mental or physical illness. The person becomes unbalanced because the necessary energy that is required to feed an authentic part of him or her is not being carried forth.

Ultimately, their authentic self is not being expressed and their relationship with themselves and others suffer.

People are afraid that an ‘undesirable’ emotion makes them less loveable, so they force themselves to stop feeling it, to stop acknowledging that it’s there. But perhaps people would act differently if they remember that the essence of any landscape remains its same beautiful self no ma er what emotion it’s expressing. Winter, summer, spring or autumn – each has its own unique beauty and purpose of giving the environment what’s necessary. Just like all seasons are useful, so are all emotions. There’s no need to be judgemental about what comes up. The emotion is just signalling what’s happening at the moment, what season it is. It’s all for the sake of re-balancing the system which is in constant flux.

Sometimes people suppress their emotion because it’s too painful. They might need to grieve the loss of a loved one but can’t bear to feel the sadness. Though I am not an expert at expressing this myself, it once helped me to understand that I was not the sadness itself.

I could detach myself from it even though I was feeling it. Though I felt overwhelmed by it, I imagined that it was a wind that would keep knocking at my door until I opened it so the feeling could pass through and eventually die down.

Eventually it did.

How to let your emotions flow naturally Spending time in nature is a safe way to let ourselves acknowledge and feel emotion without judgement. Maybe it’s because Complete Wellbeing

Mother Nature is so expressive herself, we can’t help but feel and be moved by her.

Journaling in the midst of nature is a good way to get your emotions flowing.

Try writing in your journal non-stop for 10 minutes. Write down whatever comes up for you in that moment with no judgement. After 10 minutes of writing, take a walk in nature for another 10 minutes. Repeat this process three times, taking turns to write and walk for a total of one hour.

Mother Nature is sympathetic and gives us nurturance as we express our emotions.

When we are feeling down, our spirits are uplifted when we see a lovely flower. This is nature telling us “It’s okay, you’re still loved”.

Our feelings are validated in nature and we feel safe to be honest with ourselves.

Expressing emotion is natural and healthy. Especially if we express it with nonjudgement and then let it go when it’s done.

There’s no feeling shame or regret when a tree needs to drop its leaves. The falling leaves are an expression of needed release, and the earth beneath it graciously receives it. And from the nourished earth a beautiful flower is able to grow, expressing its authentic self and beauty in the world for all to see with no apologies.

Mother Nature is sympathetic and gives us nurturance as we express our emotions

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VOL VIII ISSUE 08 JUNE 2014 09

CONFESSION BOOTH

How I cured my

shopping addiction Recovering shopaholic Debbie Roes confesses about what it is like to have a full closet and an empty life HOW DO YOU LIKE to spend your free time? Chances are, most of you could rattle off quite a few answers to this question. That was not the case for me for many years. I had just one primary hobby… shopping! I spent most of my free time and virtually all of my disposable income [and sometimes more!] buying clothing, shoes and accessories. I prided myself on being a ’champion shopper’ and could scope out the best deals in both the brick-and-mortar shops and online.

I shopped when I was happy, I shopped when I was sad, I shopped when I was anxious, and I shopped when I was mad. I shopped regardless of my mood and irrespective of whether or not I actually needed anything.

Shopping was my default activity and I had the requisite packed closet and empty bank account to show for it. For many years, I also had the excessive credit card debt that often follows from compulsive shopping behaviour. In addition, I frequently engaged in secretive and duplicitous behaviour to cover my tracks with my husband and other loved ones. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of in order to continue my shopaholic ways.

While I knew I had a problem for many years, I wasn’t ready to change. In truth, my shopping served as a distraction for other problems in my life that I just didn’t want to address. I shopped as a way to make myself feel better and to cover up the deep insecurity that’s plagued me since my childhood. I mistakenly thought that if I could just get the right clothes and look good enough, I would be loved and accepted by others and by myself.

Something needed to change Fast forward to the end of 2012… Since I’d been tracking both what I bought and what I wore for the previous two 10 JUNE 2014 VOL VIII ISSUE 08

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VOL VIII ISSUE 08 JUNE 2014 11

Debbie Roes is a personal development writer, coach, and speaker. She blogs at RecoveringShopaholic. com and is the author of “UnShopping: Recovery Solutions from an ExShopaholic.”

years, I took some time to tally up my closet statistics. The results were not pre y. Not only did I have close to 300 garments in my closet, half of them were only worn once or not at all during 2012! I had also exceeded my clothing budget twice over and didn’t feel that I had much to show for it. Clearly, something needed to change.

Thus, in January 2013, I started down the road toward shopping less, buying more mindfully and trading my full closet for a full life. I created a series of goals and rules to guide my journey, including a strict budget, purchase limits and an ambitious wardrobe pare-down goal.

In order to keep myself accountable and connect with fellow shopaholics also looking to mend their overshopping ways, I started my blog, ’Recovering Shopaholic.’

I had no idea how many people would read my words, but I commi ed to share my process—the good, the bad and the ugly.

On my blog, in addition to exploring a variety of issues related to compulsive shopping behaviour and psychology, wardrobe management and personal style, I also shared monthly accountability updates. In these posts, I recounted what I bought during a given month, which items left my closet, and how I did with my clothing budget and other shopping rules. Knowing I would have to ‘spill the beans’ to my readers stopped me from overshopping on many occasions, but I still struggled to adhere to my rules, especially in the beginning.

Project 333 What helped me the most with my recovery was taking on a few wardrobe challenges, including the minimalist fashion challenge, Project 333, which I embarked upon in April 2013. Project 333 specifies that one get dressed using only 33 items for a 3-month period. ‘Purists’ of this challenge include shoes and accessories in their count, but I opted to only include clothing items my first time around. All of my other clothes were stored away in boxes or in other closets in my home. My formerly packed closet was replaced by one that was quite stark and empty by comparison, and the change was a bit of a shock for me at first.

Despite a lot of discomfort and anxiety, I successfully completed Project 333 at the end of June 2013 [I also did an abbreviated version of the challenge at the beginning of this year]. What I learned from dressing with less was nothing short of extraordinary. I discovered that I needed far fewer clothes than I previously believed and that I actually dressed beĴer when I had a smaller 12 JUNE 2014 VOL VIII ISSUE 08

number of garments to choose from! I also began to appreciate what I had a lot more and raised my standards for clothing quality. Taking a step back from the status quo of my packed closet and constant shopping trips led me both to question and evolve my personal style.

After Project 333 was over, I allowed myself access to the rest of my wardrobe again, but I only added items back to my closet after I wore them. If I wore something and wasn’t happy with it, I added it to my ever-increasing donate pile. By the end of 2013, I had reduced the size of my wardrobe by half! I also purchased less than half as many new items last year as I had in previous years.

Not only that, the time that I spent shopping, browsing online and managing my wardrobe dramatically reduced.

Towards a full life I still like to shop, but it’s no longer my sole hobby. I’m gradually working to discover other interests and cultivate new passions. I still make buying mistakes, but far fewer than I made before embarking on my journey to overcome my compulsive shopping habit. What’s more, I’m much happier with my wardrobe these days, as well as the way I dress. I’m also a more well-rounded person rather than the one-dimensional shopaholic I used to be. My journey continues, but it’s safe to say that I am well on the way to trading my full closet for a full life!

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Transform

relationships

How can we maintain our own identity in a relationship, especially a close one, without compromising the integrity of the other? Ram Dass answers

The yoga of a

relationship

14 „ JUNE 2014 „ VOL VIII ISSUE 08

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WHICH DO you want to preserve? Your own identity or that of the other? Let me play with the idea a little bit.

When I look at relationships—my own and others—I see a wide range of reasons why people want to be together and the ways in which they are together. I see the ways in which a relationship means that something exists between two or more people. Unfortunately for the most part, society or culture or whatever, reinforces people’s separateness as individual entities. It doesn’t just honour individual identity, it treats it as the reality of the relationship.

A marriage consists of three The image I always have when I am performing a wedding is the image of a triangle, where there are two partners and then there is this third force. This third being emerges out of the interaction of the two individuals. The third one is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them. The two people in the yoga of the relationship come together to find that shared awareness that exists behind them in order to let them dance as two. So that the ‘twoness’ brings them into one and the oneness dances as two, and that’s a kind of a vibrating relationship between the one and the two.

So the people are both separate and yet they are not separate. And they are experiencing the relationship that is feeding both their uniqueness as individuals and their unit of consciousness.

An awareness of needs Now this is extremely delicate, because it is so easy to get entrenched in your own “I need this,” “I want this,” “You are not fulfilling this for me” and seeing the other as an object. But the delight is of being with somebody where you share an awareness of the predicament you are both in. And you are sharing an awareness of the predicament, even when you argue with each other—there is an awareness that you are both almost delighting in the horrible beauty of it. We hate it and enjoy it—both, because there are different levels we are playing at, all the time. We o en come into a relationship with our needs very much identified. “I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship, I need this, I need that.”

And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfil each others’ needs at some level or other.

The problem is that when you identify with those needs, you always stay at the level where the other person is, because she or he is satisfying that need. It really only gets extraordinarily beautiful when it becomes ‘us’, and when it goes beyond ‘us’, it becomes ‘I’. So when I ask you which person are you saving or protecting, or Complete Wellbeing

whose integrity you are protecting, I understand that entering into the yoga of a relationship is an extremely difficult thing to do. It’s the hardest yoga that I know of, actually, because your ego is so vulnerable when you start to open up to another human being.

You feel so tender and so vulnerable.

Before you get strong enough, you get frightened, you pull back, you get entrenched; and that happens all the time in relationships. People come together with the greatest meaning of feeling love and then they get caught in their needs and their frustrations and they separate.

Individuals in a relationship One of the problems is that we tend to place relationships a little bit on the back burner in life. We get a relationship and then we go out to a job and out to other things. Now that we have a relationship, we go ‘do life’. And for a relationship to be ‘a yoga of a relationship’, it is a fulltime operation for years. One example is the relationship of Nitin and Pooja Kumar. Nitin and Pooja used to be really nice, friendly, sociable people before they met. And then they met and started to be together. But the amount of energy that had to go into staying with a clear mind with each other around was profound. Because what happens is so much goes down so fast in relationships, it’s really hard to process it quickly enough to remain clear-headed. So you keep getting this residual old stuff that isn’t quite digested enough and you end up separate from the person because you didn’t have time to stop and work it through, clear it and so on.

As a couple in a relationship So what they did was they moved to a place with no telephone and put up a big sign that said ‘No Trespassing’.

And they just started to work with VOL VIII ISSUE 08 JUNE 2014 15

Ram Dass is one of America’s most beloved spiritual figures.

Known for his book “Be Here Now”, He has been helping millions, freeing them from their bonds as he works his way through his own. For more of his teachings visit www.ramdass.org

one another. During this time you felt like you were cut off as a friend, and it was hard for me, because I counted on Nitin a lot for sharing consciousness. Then, a er a while, they began to open up to me and allow me in.

Then I began to see what happens when people learn how to really open, trust, meditate together, keep emptying, keep clearing and work until they are a shared awareness. If you watch them when they are teaching together, when they are on the platform, or just when they are together, they have done some really extraordinary work.

They still have a lot of work to do but they have done some really good stuff together. And that’s hard and it’s rare.

Ending relationships I, on the other hand, have gone into relationships and realised that I can’t hear my own truth in the relationship.

I’ve had to stop it; because I wasn’t willing to surrender the life games that I was in, for that relationship. It just wasn’t worth the effort. I treasured what I was doing in my life too much, to invest in that relationship that deeply. So I’ve heard it both ways.

You hear that?

It’s not fair to say that any relationship that isn’t involved in the yoga of relationship is not useful and fulfilling to people. A lot of people come together because it is just really comfortable to live with another person and there is a wonderful kind of sweet intimacy.

And it’s fun to cook with each other and to sleep together and it’s fun to just live life together without trying to get too deep in as a spiritual practice.

And many of those people have other spiritual practices. They go off and meditate, and one does something else—T’ai Chi or something else. That is fine to me. I don’t think you should make believe that a relationship is really ‘yoga’ unless you are willing to really put the effort into making it such. And if you are, it really fills all the space for a long time.

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Why we don’t differentiate between trees but do between people When I am in a relationship with somebody else and what they do upsets me, that’s my problem. Because I understand that my life experiences are the gi of my Guru in order to bring me to God, if somebody upsets me, that’s my problem. This is a hard lesson, because we don’t usually think like this in our culture. I see other people as trees in the forest. You go to the woods and you see gnarled trees, live oaks, pines, hemlocks, elms and things like that. You are not inclined to say, “I don’t like you because you are a pine and not an elm”; you appreciate trees the way they are. But when you get near humans, notice how quickly your mindset changes, in a way in which you don’t allow humans to manifest the way they are. You keep taking other people personally.

They are just mechanical run-offs of old Karma. That’s all they really are. They look real and they think they are real, but really what they are is mechanical run-off. So they say, “Grrrh!” and you karmically reply “Grrrh!”.

Then one of you says, “We’ve got to work this out” and the other says, “Yes, we must.” And then you start to work it out, it’s all mechanical. It’s all conditioned stuff.

So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me; wow, am I delighted! They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behaviour doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself.

Getting me getting you My attempting to change you—that is a whole other ballgame. What I am saying is: if I will only be happy if you are different than you are then I am really asking for it. Think of how many relationships you have, where you can say, “I really don’t like that person’s this or that.

If they would only be this. If I could manipulate them to be this, then I can be happy.” Isn’t that weird? Why can’t I be happy with them the way they are? You are a liar, a cheat and a scoundrel and I love you. I won’t play any games with you, but I love you. It’s interesting to move to the level where you can appreciate, love, and allow in the same way you would in the woods, instead of constantly bringing in that judging component, which is really rooted out of your own feelings of lack of power.

Judging comes out of your own fear. Even I fall trap to it all the time. But every time I do, I catch myself.

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MONTH FRESHENER Infuse life into your days Have a phonefree day, go people savvy!

MON

Go hiking with your buddies.

1

2

MON

TUE

10

17

Help a stranger in need.

WED

THU

11

WED

4

THU

5

World Environment Day Segregate your garbage and resolve to recycle to the max.

FRI

6

SAT

7

Spend some time in a holy place. Rejuvenate your spirituality.

FRI

Visit Brazil when the World Cup kicks off!

SAT

World Blood Donor’s Day Save a life, donate blood!

13

14

Dig out an old story book and let it take you back in time.

19

THU

12

Happy Father’s Day Go fishing and relive memories of your childhood.

TUE

9

SUN

Spend some time with your kids, teach them about new cuisines.

FRI

SAT

20

28

29

SUN

22

Put on your dancing shoes and boogie the evening away.

TUE

8

24 Splurge on a flattering outfit.

MON

30

Send a letter of appreciation to a junior.

MY NOTE

23

SUN

Catch up with a school friend.

SUN

MON

15

FRI

27

Repair something that’s broken.

MY NOTE

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SUN

June 2014

Trending this month

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THE GREAT GIFT OF A

POSITIVE

NO “A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

By William Ury

NO. The most powerful and needed word in the language today is also potentially the most destructive and for many people, the hardest to say. Yet when we know how to use it correctly, this one word has the power to profoundly transform our lives for the better.

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A universal problem

Why no, why now

Every day we find ourselves in situations in which we need to say No to people on whom we depend.

Imagine all the occasions for No that might plausibly arise in the course of an average day:

Saying No has always been important, but perhaps never as essential a skill as it is today.

In the course of my work wherever I go, I see people under increasing levels of stress and pressure.

I meet managers and professionals who are being burned out by overwork. I see people struggling to juggle work and family, with a particularly heavy burden on women who work outside the home. I encounter parents who find little quality time to spend with their children, and I find children overloaded with homework and lessons, with less playtime. Everywhere people are overloaded and overwhelmed, I among them.

Over breakfast, your young daughter begs you to buy her a new toy. “No,” you respond, trying to toe the line, “You have enough toys.” She pleads, “Please, pre y please, all my friends have one.”

How can you say No without feeling like a bad parent?

When you arrive at work, your boss asks you to work through the weekend to complete an important project.

It is the very weekend you and your spouse have been

THERE IS A SAYING THAT HALF OUR PROBLEMS TODAY COME FROM SAYING YES WHEN WE SHOULD BE SAYING NO looking forward to for some getaway time. How can you say No without jeopardising your promotion review which is coming up soon?

A key customer calls up and asks that you deliver the product three weeks ahead of schedule. You know just how much stress this will create internally and that, in the end, the customer may not be happy with the quality of the product. But it is your key customer and they will not take No for an answer. How can you say No without spoiling the relationship with the customer?

Your spouse raises the problem of your elderly mother, who cannot live alone and wants to come live with you. Your spouse is adamantly opposed and urges you to call your mother and tell her No. But how can you say No to your own mother?

The evening news is filled with stories of violence and injustice. Genocide is taking place in a far-off country.

Children are dying of hunger while food is ro ing away in warehouses. Dangerous dictators are developing weapons of mass destruction. ‘How are we as a society going to say No to these threats?’ You wonder.

Sound at all familiar?

All these situations have one thing in common: in order to stand up for what counts, satisfy your needs or those of others, you have to say No to a demand or request that is unwelcome, a behaviour that is inappropriate or abusive, or a situation or system that is not working or not fair.

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Thanks to the knowledge revolution, we have more information and more choices than ever before.

But we also have more decisions to make and less time to make them as the pace of life picks up greater speed with each so-called labour-saving technological advance. Saying No is today’s biggest challenge.

The Three-A Trap When I ask people why they find it challenging to say No, the most common answers I receive are: “I don’t want to lose the deal.”

“I don’t want to spoil the relationship.”

“I’m afraid of what they might do to me in retaliation.”

“I’ll lose my job.”

“I feel guilty—I don’t want to hurt them.”

At the heart of the difficulty in saying No is the tension between exercising your power and tending to your relationship.

Exercising your power, while central to the act of saying No, may strain your relationship, whereas tending to your relationship may weaken your power.

There are three common approaches to this power-versus-relationship dilemma:

Accommodate: we say yes when we want to say no The first approach is to prioritise the relationship Complete Wellbeing

William Ury is co-author with even if it means sacrificing our key interests. This is the approach of accommodation. We say Yes when we want to say No. Accommodation usually means an unhealthy Yes that buys temporary peace. I give in to my young daughter’s demand for a new toy to avoid feeling guilty that I am denying her something she wants, only to find that it just leads to more and more demands and both of us being trapped in an endless unhappy loop. When the boss asks you to work over the very weekend that you and your spouse have been planning to get away, you grind your teeth and give in, fearing you will lose that promotion you want, even if your family life suffers. All too o en, we go along to get along, even if we know it is not the right decision for us. Our Yes is actually a destructive Yes, for it undermines our deeper interests.

Accommodation can also hurt our organisations.

Take an example from Chris, a participant in one of my seminars, “I was working on a huge $150 million deal; we had worked very hard on it and thought we had done a good job. Just before the deal was finalised I decided to double-check the numbers one last time and as I did, it became clear that the deal was

Roger Fisher of Getting to Yes, a ten-million-copy bestseller translated into over 35 languages, and the author of the award winning Getting Past No, The Power of a Positive No, and The Third Side.

not going to be profitable for us over the longer term.

Because everyone was so excited about it, I couldn’t bring myself to throw a wrench into the works. So I went along, knowing that the project was bad for us and that I should speak up. Well, the deal happened and as I had feared, a year later we were cleaning up a huge mess. If that situation had to recur, I have no doubt I would speak up. It was a costly but valuable lesson.”

We all want to be liked and accepted. No one wants to look like the bad guy. That is what Chris was afraid would happen if he brought up the uncomfortable facts. Everyone’s excitement would turn into anger against him, or so he feared. So he proceeded to OK a deal that he and others later came to greatly regret.

There is a saying that half our problems today come from saying Yes when we should be saying No.

Accommodation usually means an unhealthy Yes that buys temporary peace.

Complete Wellbeing

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