The Gift of No

NO! If you want to get a Boo-boo face from a young child, that’s the word you use – NO. To the child it means they are not getting what they want, they’ve done something wrong, and they might even be in trouble. NO – whether we like it or not, we are conditioned from infancy to feel that the word NO like it’s a club smacking us over the head. Nobody ever wants to hear the word NO, nyet, uhn ah, nope, or anything like it. We associate it with mistakes, failure, anger, lost hopes, and crushed dreams. Even more than curse words and other colorful language, NO is the worst word in the world. And the only thing worse than one no, is hearing a string of no’s – Like – No, No, No, No, NO. This is the kind of thing we might hear, or say, when the world is coming to a literal end. However, I have recently begun to have a bit of an attitude change when it comes to no.