Chaos • Alignment • Synchronicity • Source

I talk a lot about mindset and mindfulness, about being in the moment and aware of your surroundings.

This particular phone call robbed me of any sense of my surroundings. In fact, I had pulled over to the side of the road to take the call, since it was that important to me, and I didn’t realize that by the end of the call, I was blocking someone in their driveway who was trying to pull their car out. I was so hyper-focused on this phone call, on this person who held power over me, and who was yielding that power in order to force me into a verbal corner.

I divulged personal information that was not their right to know. I was vague at first, and then eventually they questioned me into details. I felt sick when I clicked to end the call. This was technically a stranger and they now knew intimate details about my health that were not their purview.

So now that you know what I DID do, let’s talk about what I wish I had done and what I hope I will do if I ever face a similar situation in my future.

Learning to say a simple no, or no thank-you, takes time, experience, and often courage.

I play a silly card game called Unstable Unicorns, and there are both “No” and, with an expansion, “No Thank-you” cards. You can play them any time you want to stop another player from doing an action. You can play them on their turn, on someone else’s turn, whether they’re against you or everyone or even no one. They are pretty powerful cards in the game. As they should be — NO is a very powerful word.

In fact, they say “No is a complete sentence.” and getting comfortable with that concept can be a whole experience in and of itself.

When this person asked me the things they did, I wish I’d said “No.” Perhaps it would have been more like “No, that’s not something I feel comfortable sharing with you.” or even “No, that’s frankly none of your business.” or “No, no one else in your position has asked me this before, I don’t see the relevance.” Whatever words came afterward, it was the resounding NO that I wish I’d had in my pocket to pull out.

There’s a lot of places where this happens. Where we feel disempowered and we revert to a subservient position. At work, at school, with law enforcement, etc. We believe that the person leading the situation actually has the power to compel us to tell them things they have no business asking in the first place. That their position imbues them with some kind of mythical force, where they wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t their place to know. But the truth is, they are only human, and like the rest of us, completely fallible.

And, just like the rest of us, what happened to me happens often. A figure with power, real or perceived, abuses that position and we aren’t sure of the dance moves that come next — do we stand our ground and come to potential harm from that power, or do we give in and hope everything comes out in the wash?

I suppose it depends what the risks are. I suppose saying one ubiquitous “Be empowered. Say no!” would come from a place of great privilege. There are situations, in any country in the world, where life and death can be on the line when someone in perceived power stops to question someone with less perceived power.