Celebrating Your Very Shiny “No’s”

This reflection was originally posted in the December 2025 Clear Water RoundUp, our monthly newsletter rounding up insights, events, and resources. If you'd like to receive the RoundUp in your inbox, subscribe here.

What energetic demands are you feeling as a year closes?

Whether it's closing loops at work, making holiday-specific plans and travel, realizing the right gifts, celebrating with others, or choosing to be different from the crowd, year-ends present all kinds of demands on our time and energy.

Let's look at three questions:

1) What are some victories, successes, and accomplishments, however large or small, you can celebrate?
Any moment of growth is fair game. Like celebrating roots expanding in the soil underground, growth can mean setting a foundation with a meaningful consequence to you that no one else can see right now.

That can mean changing a mindset around a topic or a relationship, choosing a new way of communicating in a relationship, or revising your priorities. These are the foundations that sustain the growths and eventually the blooms.

2) What are some moments where you said "no" that we should celebrate now?
Here are mine:

• Walking away from a long-term leadership collaboration that was no longer the right fit.
• Refusing to get into a pricing war when selling an intensive summer program I designed. I let it go instead of bringing uninterested participants to my guest speakers.
• Choosing not to be involved in someone's project that went against my values and best scientific practices
• Going silent in an online battle where unconstructive labels were applied to me
• Walking out of rehearsal for a time-out when someone went too far with unconstructive criticism
• Moving out of a home that required 30 minutes of walking up three hills each way with all of my work bags. Despite the beauty of the home and low rent, the poor insulation and old devices generated massive utility bills.

Caption: Sometimes strength looks like lifting a foot and choosing where to place it next.

Saying "No" can mean displeasing others, letting go of opportunities, and committing to big changes. That can feel scary, especially if, like me, you're sensitive to others' needs and emotions.

Moments of "No" like those named above arise because something core to our needs and values is at stake. Those needs can include health, appreciation, respect, personal integrity, and inner peace.

For me, these decisions freed up massive amounts of time and energy - mentally, emotional, and physically. The energy and time conserved from my commute home gave us more flexibility in schedule and social opportunities, as it's not as long of an expedition to visit us. The increase in rent was easily compensated by the decrease in utility bills thanks to better infrastructure.

Turning down collaborations that might have compromised my integrity or sense of worth meant saving myself from restless nights and hours of frustration and regret. It also meant respecting my guest speakers, who seemed more interested in the project than the participants themselves.

Time-outs from unconstructive conversations saved me the effort of regulating my emotions when already feeling hurt or misunderstood, allowing me time to recover my clarity and participate constructively later.

Despite all the benefits of saying no, we might fear being perceived as selfish, hurting a relationship, or FOMO.

This brings me to my third and final question of this reflection.

3) How is my "no" a benefit to others? To the people I'm “no”-ing?

• Leaving a group led them to figure it out. They didn't need my buy-in or help to move forward with their vision. Members took on new responsibilities and new volunteers filled the gaps.
• Leaving the home was hopefully a further signal to the property owner with <50% occupancy of their apartments, to improve their energy infrastructure rather than have tenants shoulder massive electric bills and inadequate indoor climate control.
• Disappearing from a conversation or rehearsal may not be the most effective way towards resolution, but it signals to the counterpart that something isn't working for me and I don't have to absorb their emotions. It pauses the conflict when elevating it seems harmful.
• Choosing against a project messier than the prospective client acknowledges means setting an example to uphold a standard of integrity and not enabling to compromise their values.

Despite all these benefits to holding our own boundaries, difficult choices can leave what team coach Charlie Gilkey calls "residue". "Residue is the lingering effects and responsibilities that remain after making a difficult choice," he writes in his blog, Productive Flourishing. Those choices include the countless everyday choices on top of life's big decisions.

Caption: Saying no can mean stepping out of the shadows to shine again.

For my "No's", the residue is that sticky feeling of knowing that my choice didn't please everyone, and perhaps didn't please all parts of myself.

It’s essential to remember that I made the best decision I could with the information and context available at the time, and making the decision was better than lingering in indecision or tolerating something far stickier than residue.

Do it now. Put on some music. Dance around. Shake a box of paperclips like maracas.

Feel great about it, because very soon, you'll need your power of "No" again.

Addendum - The irony in all this is that I spent the last week in December recovering from a stomach flu, partly precipitated by my insufficient “No’s” in recent weeks. That being said, it was my first illness since May, a marked improvement from 2024, when illness came every 2-3 months.

Work in progress still must be celebrated!