Maintaining your boundaries: 4 surprising, fun, and remarkable tactics
Stay your fantastic self, still say no, and love it
You want to say no more often.
Maybe you’ve already started. A bit tentatively, slowly gaining some skill and the first minutes (hours?) of your time back. Good. Keep going.
Setting boundaries is one thing. Sticking with them despite pushback, quite another.
But that’s exactly what’s needed to limit the attention, time, and effort you spend on others - on their requests (demands even perhaps?). Stuff that is theirs to do, not yours. (Unless you really, really want to do what they’re asking.)
So, I’ve put together 4 surprising tactics that can also bring a lot of fun and a sense of mischief to what may still daunt you.
1) Bore them out of it
You know how it goes. You say no. They push back. You stick to your no. They leave. A couple of hours/days/... later they’re back. Same request. Slightly different phrasing. Rinse and repeat until you cave. As you’ve done most times up until now.
Chances are you’ve given them the ammunition to make their push back more effective.
By explaining. By justifying.
Every word you utter beyond your no is material they can use against your no.
Not out of malice. Out of habit. And because it has worked.
The answer is simple (not easy): bore them out of pushing back and reiterating their request every other day.
A boring, flat toned “No”, “I can’t”, or “That doesn’t work for me.” is matter of fact. Doesn’t invite negotiation.
What if they ask “Are you sure?” or “But why not?”?
Remain boring. “Yes, I’m sure.” And “Because”, “Because I can’t”, “Because it doesn’t work for me.”
My father used to say “Om toch niet” (Dutch phrase I can’t translate that boils down to “because”) when I asked why I couldn’t do something. Shut me right up.
Boring works because pushback, negotiation, needs something to grip onto. When you don’t provide anything they can latch onto, they’ll have to think of reasons why you should agree all by themselves. And that’s often harder work than doing the thing they requested.
What this week’s LinkedIn post on boring answers didn’t cover: the harder problem is doing this in writing.
In person is much easier because “all you have to do” is repeat the delivery of a boring, flat-toned no. But when you’re sitting at a keyboard, staring at a blinking cursor, you can’t help but think of the arguments they could throw at you. And the urge to counter them before they happen can be ridiculously strong. Combined with the conditioned urge to apologize, explain, and justify, you’re on the verge of caving every second you don’t send your flat no.
A flat no isn’t cold. It isn’t rejecting or denying the person making a request. It’s rejecting what’s on the table. That’s all it is.
What’s more, it’s not open to misinterpretation and doesn’t require follow-up. No one can read between lines you didn’t write.
And anyone who thinks you unkind, even calls you that, usually is someone who relied on your long-winded answers to inspire their negotiation tactics.
2) Kiss your guilt goodbye
As long as you’re not fully okay with delivering a no to anything you don’t want to do, one thing is sure to happen.
Guilt.
When you wanted to feel good about saying no.
No matter how often you hear and tell yourself: “don’t feel guilty, there’s nothing to feel guilty about”, it still does. Every single time.
Bummer.
Don’t guilt (sorry!) yourself about it. You can’t override decades of conditioning with affirmations and journaling (if that’s your thing). It’s gonna take time and practice.
In the mean time, you’ll have to deal with the emotions your conditioning evokes.
How?
Well, the one thing you don’t want to do is to suppress it. That’s like trying to keep a balloon under water. It’s going to pop right out of it the second you let your guard down.
What I do is give it space. Let it breathe and dissipate. That only takes 60-90 seconds unless you re-activate the emotion with thoughts. (Which happens quite a bit to me as my autist likes to repeat and rehearse conversations.)
But I don’t let it breathe forever. I limit the time it gets on stage.
Used to be 24 hours. Now, it’s a night’s sleep.
Then it’s “done”. No second chances regardless of what my autist has to say about it. When she pipes up (and she does for weeks) I tell her “no longer relevant” and rope in my ADHD’er to distract myself.
Oh, and remember that the guilt you feel is not telling you that saying no was wrong. It’s your subconscious running an old tape. The one about the perils of not meeting expectations.
You may want to thank it for keeping you safe. It’s a bit stuck in the past. Hasn’t registered yet that you no longer need that protection. So thank it. Reassure it that you can handle it now, that you’ve learned to have your own back.
One thing worth sitting with: if the guilt is still loud after 24 hours, ask what it’s protecting.
Most often it’s the old wiring. Sometimes there’s something worth revisiting. Something you did or didn’t do that you felt guilty about and haven’t fully processed (or accepted that you too can fluke). You’ll know which it is.
Do note that the time limit on the “I said no” guilt still starts from when you said it.
3) Short circuit their expectations (and enjoy the view)
Have you ever looked at someone when you delivered an unexpected response?
Their expression is quite funny. Like they have been short-circuited. And it becomes more pronounced and confused as you repeat a no.
Want to enjoy saying no a bit more? See some truly remarkable expressions?
When they come back around for a third time, don’t just repeat your no, also call out what they’re doing: repeating their request (until you cave, but don’t mention that).
You can’t blame them for doing it, really. They’re not even doing it consciously. It’s what you taught them works. And what works gets repeated.
No wonder they’re confused and their wiring is short-circuited when it no longer does.
Apart from the fun of looking at their expressions, naming the pattern also serves to interrupt it.
“I’ve noticed that when I say no, you come back a little while later and ask again. And again.”
Most people have never had a pattern named back at them before. They don’t have a script for it.
Patterns are habits running on autopilot. When you call them out, maybe even give them a name, you introduce a witness, you bring them into the light and that usually stops it as then they can’t unsee it anymore.
Nor can you.
Naming your own patterns works just as well. “When someone asks me something and I feel put on the spot, I say yes — and then resent it by the time I’m actually doing it.”
Seeing it, naming it, often is enough to widen and use the gap between impulse and response enough to consciously take another path than the habitual, conditioned behavior.
If, when you call it out on someone else, they deny doing it, don’t argue. That would only spiral into a useless debate. You only have to remember it’s not your problem to solve and your challenge is yours: sticking to your no.
The face they make in the half-second before they respond, by the way — briefly short-circuited, almost rebooting — is one of the more privately satisfying things I’ve experienced when I started honing my “no” skills.
4) Ask the right questions
The questions that women tend to ask themselves when they’re asked to do something they don’t want to:
Should(n’t) I do this?
Am I (not) obliged to agree to this?
I’ve said yes before, how can I say no now?
I’m telling you they’re the wrong questions.
The first puts you in territory where your conditioning, through the guilt and shame it induces, always wins. The second implies you should say yes and are looking for an excuse. The third says you’re not allowed to change your mind.
None of them are helpful. None of them are true.
The first question to answer is always: “Do I want to do this?”
The second: “Do I have the bandwidth and energy to take it on?” (After you’ve taken care of your non-negotiables!)
The first honors your own wants, needs, and desires.
The second honors your limited resources of attention, time, and effort.
Neither puts your character in question.
In fact, they both help you to stay within your integrity and remain reliable. Both essential ingredients of (self-)trust.
Overriding an empty tank because you couldn’t come up with a “good enough” excuse (trust me, I’ve been there too many times), is saying that “I don’t want to” isn’t a good enough reason not to do something.
When it actually is the ultimate best reason! I didn’t learn that until well into my 40s. Hope you’re getting the message a little sooner.
Get the reps in
None of these tactics require you to become a different person, or to become callous, inconsiderate, and uncaring.
They work because they’re practical rather than principled — about timing, framing, and small deliberate mechanics rather than willpower or character overhauls.
Keep in mind that denying requests is essential for proper self-prioritization and -care.
And also, perhaps surprisingly, the best thing you do for someone else. It gets (forces) them to build their confidence and resilience through practice when you doing it makes them dependent.
Maintaining boundaries is a skill. You don’t need confidence to start. In fact, that’s backwards. Confidence follows action.
So take action because practice, getting the reps in, is how you build any skill and grow the confidence in it you’re longing for.
