How to Get Past NO

Of the many books walking around in my head, the one that I know I should get down to writing is “Getting Past NO”. But why write a book on getting past NO? I can bet that you can remembers all the people that told you NO today and that you are still seething with anger, rejection, dejection and despair from the NO that you were told last week, last month or last year. NO, it turns out is a very powerful word. It stops you in your tracks and brings you face to face with reality. If NO can stop you from doing what you are doing, then all the more reason it is important to get past NO and move on with life. If you do not get past NO you might as well be dead in your tracks. Unless you turn NO into a signpost it becomes your gravestone. Here lies a man who never moved on. I do not mean to be insensitive to the feelings of those who have had to face huge, real or imagined terrible NO experiences in life, but I do want you to consider the following five points before you give up on life.

1. NO HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU

The NO you face is not a personal attribute or quality of your person. It is an English word that means just that NO. It is you who attributes and attaches your feelings of personal rejection to the NO you are facing. I know because I have been through that painful journey any number of times. The feeling is really bad, sad and overwhelming, but the NO does not define you in any way. A beautiful woman who feels spurned by the man she thought would marry her is STILL a beautiful woman AFTER the NO. The high school graduate who was denied access to the Engineering school is still a high school graduate! A person whose business has failed is STILL a person after the event! What I am trying to say is that NO will affect you as much as you allow the event to affect you in the way that you allow it to affect you, but that is a choice you make. I am not saying you are a stone and have no feelings. I did not say you should not cry for a while. What I am saying is that NO is merely a point of information to which you are entitled to respond. The first step of getting past NO is to realize that NO is a point of information. How you respond to it is a choice you make. You can allow that information to crush you or to help create you.

2. IS IT AN ETHICAL OR TECHNICAL NO?

Once you get passed yourself in dealing with the NO, you can consider whether that NO is an ethical NO or a technical NO. An ethical no is one that carries moral issues of conscious that you must decide between you and God. Your culture, religion, customs, laws of the land, traditions come in here too. In these matters I urge you to tread with caution because an ethical NO has substantive consequences as a matter of principle. So even if you don’t agree with the law that says 'NO person under 18 is allowed to drive a public service vehicle', there are substantive reasons for it and substantive consequences for going against it.  In most cases an ethical NO is something that is best for you and protects others. You can abide by it and move on with life without much harm to your person.

A technical NO on the other hand is a NO that sounds like, “NO, you did not make the grade for college” or “NO, you can’t have that because you can’t afford it”. Examining this NO will tell you that the person saying the NO, like them or not, does not have authority to say otherwise. If you were in the same position, you would say the same thing. But it also tells you that you have the power to get passed this NO if you meet certain conditions. For example, you may have to retake the college entrance exam or you may have to work for two years to save enough money to come back and buy what you want. Understanding that a technical NO does not take away your power to get past the NO helps you to address the situation with the sobriety it deserves. This seems like a good point to stop reading this book, but many people fail to take full advantage of the NO because they do not follow through with the following three empowering points to help them get past the NO victoriously. 

3. VALIDATE THE NO

Is the NO justifiable, reasonable, did I contribute to it, what part did I play in it? What am I responsible for, what are they responsible for, would I say the same to someone else in my situation? Validating the NO helps you deal with your feelings even if you don’t agree with the validation itself. Resolving the issues around the NO will help you see that there are other important perspectives to the issue that you must consider before you take action. It helps you appreciate that there is possible reason, cause or justification for the NO that can empower you to get passed the NO with the substantive personal growth and learning rather than harbour the miserable joy of your hurt feelings.

4. DEAL WITH YOUR FEELINGS

Dealing with your feelings is a matter quite apart from the NO and is a matter that is individual, personal and perhaps private to the extent that you will allow it to be so. Usually, you may find a close friend to help you process your feelings in this regard. A good friend will not always agree with you, but they will help you to get past the feelings you have attached to the NO.

Feelings are very powerful and they formulate motives and conspire irrational action and so they need to be checked before one does something foolish. In this regard, the NO receiver is advised to provide for substantive time between stimulus and response to the NO to provide for recovery from feelings of anger, spite, envy, hatred and jealousy. Actions taken out of these kinds of feelings cause myopic responses like an eye an eye, hitting back and seeking revenge. Dealing with your feelings frees from bitterness, allows you to forgive, move on, turn a new page and more importantly opens your heart and your thinking to global possibility. If you don’t move on from your feelings, your actions will focus on righting the wrongs that have been done to you. In this prejudiced, tearful, blinkered state you will make ridiculous decisions you may later regret. However, if you determine to get past your feelings and brave yourself to look at possibilities instead of personalities, you will get past the NO to take what I call super-ordinate action!

5. TAKE SUPERORDINATE ACTION

Superordinate action takes into account the bigger picture rather than focusing on the NO. In taking superordinate action the NO becomes a sign post and not the reason for the action. The NO becomes a prompt and a point of reflection of your total circumstances and not the locus of your existence. Superordinate action for the high school graduate denied College entrance may mean investigating other career options available in the environment such as boating, taking a year off to pursue a hobby, taking a holiday or rethinking his life goals. The NO becomes an incident of evaluation that prompts enlightened action and not an inhibiting condition. The man who was told NO by a publisher discovers that self-publishing is an option. The lady spurned by her would be fiance discovers that her gift of charm helps the people around her see value in themselves and resolves to use her gifts in the service of others instead of pinning away in a cause of love that cannot be. When you get past NO, you discover a world of opportunity that was hidden from your blinkered view.

Getting past NO helps you invest in your future and not stagnate in your past. Getting past NO will bring out the best reserves you may never know you had. Getting past NO releases, the stops and becomes a step towards success. Getting past NO will allow you to look back and thank your enemies and the proponents of the NO for redirecting your steps to a greater personal vision and victory. So now that I have got past my NO and written the book, I have no doubt that you too can – Get past your NO!


Also see

The Road to Destiny; The Psychology of Growing up

When a Teacher does not teach

Potential is more than profit

How to Get Past “No”!

Do you have a passion statement?

Go Against the Tide

Taking Action

Get your first 100 days to work for you

One employee can make a difference

The Seven laws of creation

Determined to fail

Strive to know the purpose of a thing

Realize Your Full Potential

Politics and leadership are bed fellows

You may have heard it said that there are no permanent enemies in politics. What is not so obvious is that there are no permanent positions in leadership either. Politics is an advantage of influence, while leadership is the exercise of authority. Both of these compete for power and prominence.

Whats the Greatest Job in the World?

THE GREATEST JOB IN THE WORLD

What criteria can we use to identify the worlds greatest job. Is it fame, fortune or is it in glamour, prowess, power, impact, authority, responsibility or seniority? There are many jobs that would meet these criteria; President, CEO, Bishop, Singer… the list is endless.  Then there is the professional; the Engineer, Lawyer, Doctor, Journalist, the Judge all of whom humanity places great faith and holds in high esteem. But then there is another set of criteria away from the limelight.  The humble jobs that keep things moving. The roles that prop up others, the jobs that are self-effacing and sacrifice on behalf of others. These jobs keep humanity going from generation to generation. They are the back-office jobs; the mother, the father, the brother, the nurse, the sister, the servant, husbandman, farmer, the teacher, yes, the teacher the one whose work of a lifetime influence generations to come. These jobs are among the greatest in the World!   

Why you do, what you do, the way you do

Your perspective changes throughout life. At first it is about outlook. In the middle it becomes context. In the end it is all about relationships. It is amazing how these perspectives influence your decision making and your approach to achievement and challenge in life. Appreciating these perspectives helps you understand why other people hold to specific arguments and why you do what you do the way you do.

Ideas have power - don't waste them!

Ideas are not to be taken lightly, trivialized, toyed around or fooled around with. Ideas have power! They are to be meditated upon, imagined, dreamed, written down, defended, interrogated, argued, wrestled with, travailed upon, prayed over, persisted, endured and developed until they are created! He who has an idea has a future. He who has no idea has no future.

Also see

The Road to Destiny; The Psychology of Growing up

When a Teacher does not teach

Potential is more than profit

How to Get Past “No”!

Do you have a passion statement?

Go Against the Tide

Taking Action

Get your first 100 days to work for you

One employee can make a difference

The Seven laws of creation

Determined to fail

Strive to know the purpose of a thing

Realize Your Full Potential

When was the last time you were humiliated?

The Ultimate Humiliation

What would you consider to be the ultimate humiliation? Is it when your team losses a game to your rivals or is it when the person you trusted most turns against you? Is it when you are unable to deliver what you promised? When I think of humiliation, I think of Nelson Mandela who tells numerous stories of twenty-seven years of humiliation without any sense of anger or pride. Humiliation is an intensely emotional experience and I doubt anyone can go through it without the pain of being misunderstood.  

A friend tells me of how he was sacked and dismissed in front of his colleagues at an office function. He left the room discouraged and distraught. His friends dissociated themselves with him in case they came to face the same fate. Humiliation is a humbling and isolating experience that calls on all your mortal reserves and spiritual core to withstand. It is a wound that feel like will never heal.

Unlike Mandela, some people may not outlive their humiliation, but all of us must overcome and not allow it to stop us from moving forward. There are mothers and fathers, men and women, boys and girls in all stages of life who will never get to tell their stories of humiliation and how they overcame. But today I want you to know, though I do not know your name, you are heroes in my hall of fame. With tears in your heart, give up the pain and in the name of all that is good, get up and stand again.

Don' t get stuck in half-time!

The first half of a rugby game is a good indicator of which way the game is likely to end, but it is hardly the determinant of the final score. Any number of incidences and opportunities may arise in the second half that can change the course of a game from an obvious result. The fact is the first half has to be played before the second. This means that half time is only a marker of progress towards an outcome. Some people go into the changing room with a sense of destiny, while others come out of the mid-term with an attitude that the game has just begun! How do you use your talk time at half-time. Do you call it quits, recommit or just take a rest? Your discussion will either prepare you for defeat or condition you to come out a winner. Kofi Annan was set to leave the UN on retirement just before he was appointed Secretary General of the world body.

What we are talking about here is not a game. It is about life. When you move from one job to the next, when you retire at the end of the day, when you are fired or when you are hired. Halftime can come around when you are retired or take time to consider your future. I have looked around me and noticed that half time is a mode of existence. It is a neither here nor there for many people considering their future after the first half of a life struggle of one kind or other. My challenge to all half-timers is that it is limited. Lick your wounds quickly, but don’t dwell on the past because the future awaits and the game can actually restart without you. If you are stuck in halftime recognize that that was just the first half. The second half is do or die - so give it your best!