My husband is telling me about a sales approach he and his employees are working with where the whole point of what you are doing with a prospective client is to get to the truth as quickly as you can. Part of what expedites that process is recognizing that a “no” from someone is just as good as a “yes.” I absolutely love it when I come across honest and authentic teachings in the day to day, and sometimes, even from the most unlikely of sources. In this case, a sales method.

Can you imagine getting to the truth, whatever it was in your life, alone or with others, as quickly as possible? No hemming and hawing. No hedging. No blaming. No avoiding. And could you also imagine that responding with a “no” was just as valuable as a “yes” in getting to that very same truth? No need to pretend. No need to fear what it would mean about or for you. No need to defend your position, or form committees as a way to garner back-up on why you get to refuse what it is that you do not want. Or need. Or feel comfortable with.

I have to tell you that as a women, this one concept alone is so revolutionary that had I known it earlier, I would have saved myself a world of suffering in my interactions with others. Especially with men. For most of my life I did not even know that “No” was an option. Not even when it would have protected me, or been in my best interest. Or how about this one? That I had a right to it; without explanation or apology. Just because.

How often do we say yes when we really need to say no? We do it all the time. We do it because we do not think others will like our response. We do it because we do not believe we are worth more, or have a choice. We do it out of fear. We do it out of habit. And we do it because that is what we have been conditioned to do.

Think about it. Every time we take into ourselves, or our lives, something which does not belong, we violate ourselves. We override the truth of our existence. The refusal of what we really need or want diminishes the power and the vitality of what it feels like to be alive. It makes a choice, instead, to live smaller, unsupported, and bogged down by the wrong things.

Like the toddler learning how to use the word “No,” we might be a little clumsy in our early attempts to draw a line. And sometimes that is why we can’t get ourselves there. We are afraid of how it might come out. Maybe that is in part due to how many “No’s” we have squelched over a lifetime; creating a backlog that feels like it has the power to destroy if ever unleashed. It makes me wonder if this is why we have such difficulties as adults with young children when they first start to realize that “No” is a choice. They can be absolutely drunk with the power of it all; completely unconcerned that we are put off by their refusal of something that we want them to do.

Do we struggle with them around this because we have become confused over our own right to assert ourselves? Do we resent the idea that someone else gets to do what we have not been able to do for ourselves?

If getting to the truth as quickly as possible makes sense to you, the truth is, we have just as much right to say no as to say yes. A commitment to getting to the truth will always be facilitated by our ability to respond as authentically as we need to. And, our ability to authentically respond will always bring us to the truth in a far more direct and satisfying way.

Do you ever have the experience of imagining yourself through someone else’s eyes, and coming up really, really short?

One of the things I regularly do is watch my mind to see what it is up to. What it is talking about, imagining, or fretting over. Other people typically come up for me whenever I am in the midst of diminishing myself somehow. Recently, I have been saying to myself; “I actually don’t know what is in that person’s mind regarding me, but I sure do know that what I am thinking about right now is in my mind, does not feel good, and is something only I can change.” 

I see this as being one of the most critical things we can do for ourselves, one another, and our relationships together. That being, finding ways to get to the truth about our experience ASAP. Otherwise, we see ourselves through the wrong lens while believing that our misery is caused by how someone else feels about us, felt about us, or might feel about us; a kind of fear-based conditioning that we as people live under and use as a way to keep ourselves in line according to someone else’s standards. Very problematic unto itself.

But it goes even further than that. As mammals, we do have the capacity to sense and to know not only how it feels to be around another, but how they are truly feeling about us; beyond words. This is an essential capacity for all of our interactions with others whether they be ones we welcome or dread. This is the part of us that cannot be deceived or misled with words. Kids are really good at this. So are animals. It is only the adult human who struggles to make sense around how they are being received by a member of their own species.

In order to get better at receiving accurate information during an encounter with another person requires that we clean up our own act first. That we get a handle on where we make up things in our minds out of fear or past conditioning. It requires that we start to listen a little more deeply when we are in the presence of others. More like an animal or a kid would; not through words but through the tone and the feel of it all. Not through our thinking minds, but in an overall body listening kind of way. Easy examples are noticing a turn of the gut, a tension that suddenly comes up, hair rising on the back of your neck, or a general feeling of dis-ease when you are around someone.

This is not easy to do because most of us have gotten out of the habit of listening and responding to this kind of information. Most of us discount those sensations because we cannot prove them, articulate them necessarily, or because it would be ever so socially awkward and inconvenient to act on that knowing. Many of us have even had this innate capacity actively conditioned out of us when we were young by the adults who found that level of truth too threatening and far too inconvenient.

It puts me in mind of something I once read by Anodea Judith where she spoke of when we are told that we have no right to feel what we are feeling or know what we are knowing, a lie about our basic existence gets created and instilled in us. Really take that in. When you refuse, or feel unable, to live and respond from what you instinctively know, you obliterate the truth of not only what is happening, but who you are.

That is what we are really talking about here. How is it that we will live with the truth of who we are, and what it is that we are experiencing, while being in authentic and satisfying relationship with others? This will always be a moment by moment, in the presence of others, kind of experience that cannot be ultimately figured out except in relationship. And except by giving yourself permission, and by taking chances around how it is that you get to respond.

I am up in the middle of the night and feeling so desperately uncomfortable. The bedroom has gone unbearably hot and humid since the electricity went out. It is this awful combination of a stifling and suffocating physical experience smashing right up against an oppressive inner dialogue that just won’t quit.

At one point, “I’m so uncomfortable!!!” bursts out of me. Tears come. And like a good thunderstorm clearing out the heavy, muggy, “oppressive” weather, something breaks. Something clears. Just that simple. And in that moment, beyond the physical and emotional suffering, I recognize that my biggest pain stems from the belief that I do not think this should be happening. I do not want to feel the way I am feeling. I cannot stand the fact that I cannot get it to be otherwise. And I cannot stop my mind from anticipating how my nighttime struggle is going to ruin the next day for me.

One of the things that we can absolutely be guaranteed of as human beings is that discomfort is part of the experience of being alive. Regularly. Daily. Sometimes even moment by moment there is a good chance that something just won’t feel right. Maybe it will be sensations of hunger or thirst. The need to eliminate. Temperature changes. Emotional ups and downs. Fatigue. Physical or mental pain. Tension. On and on it goes. All throughout the day. Every day.

It seems only natural to want to get away from what doesn’t feel good. To push hard either into effort or denial to try and make what is bothering us, stop. Likely for as long as we have been around and conscious, we have tried to come up with ways to alleviate the experiences too uncomfortable for us to be with. And while there has absolutely been an upside to this in our attempts to bring more ease to the experience of being alive (think indoor plumbing, heated homes, transportation, grocery stores, etc), it is not without its costs to try and re-make whatever it is that is bothering us.

Why not just try and get out of it somehow? What would be wrong with that? What’s the problem with trying to get away from what brings us misery? In a nutshell, the problem is, we often do not have the slightest idea of what it is that is actually causing us to suffer. No sense of the very root of our struggle. Instead, we focus on wherever our tendency to blame goes. It is the equivalent of shaking an angry fist at the weather as opposed to pumping out your basement. It is energy, focus, and attention misplaced, and misused.

If the weather would just be cooler. If the power would come back on. If my husband would stop snoring. If my mind would settle down. If I’d stop being such a baby and just get over it. If I could just rise above it. If those utility people would make us a priority instead of last in line.

I am not suggesting here a kind of martyrdom or masochism. Instead, what I am suggesting is that being with life, all of life, including the things we do not want, is a skill set best developed. More to the point, it is an absolute reality best accepted and honored. For no matter how crafty, skilled, rich, resourceful, or creative we might be, there is no getting rid of everything that makes us upset, uneasy, or uncomfortable.

The best instructions I ever heard on this one are: “Make all of the adjustments you know to make. Do all of the things you can do.  And then, surrender.” 

This is so very easy to say and often so very seemingly impossible to do. We think doing what we can do means being in control; having it our way. And we think that surrender means defeat, weakness, or giving up. It is none of this. Doing what you can do requires making an accurate assessment of both the reality that stands before you, and your skill set. But because so many of us deny what the existing reality is, and either underestimate or overestimate our sense of agency in the world, we are left unprepared to be with life as it shows up in the ways that do not validate the versions we have created.

As for surrender, that would require not only admitting our limits, but appealing to, and leaning into, something more than just our own individual wants.

What if instead of trying to create the world as we need it to be, we made the commitment to develop a skill set that included a clear sense of what was happening, coupled with our actual ability to meet it, and an understanding that there are larger forces at play than our own individual will?

The best way that I know how to do this is when in the midst of the discomfort, learn to notice your agitation. Then, practice asking yourself; What is really bothering me about this moment? What is it that I really cannot tolerate? Finally, ask for help. Open to a larger version than your own personal story of how the world should turn.

The only way to be with Life, including discomfort, is to actually be with it. This cannot just be thought about. It must be experienced. It must become a commitment, a kind of daily practice, to notice yourself when things are not going the way you want them to. It is about opening to a larger perspective that includes seeing that without discomfort, there would be no incentive to grow. And that if reality went the way we wanted it to go, we would not only shortchange ourselves, we would create a perfect storm for the exact wrong things to come our way.