Hilary Barry: How I left behind polite little me and learned to say 'no'

As a child I was taught to be polite and agreeable, writes Hilary Barry. It wasn't until I reached my 50s that I finally learned to (politely) say no. No excuses. No apologies. Just no.

I'm sitting in the passenger seat of the car. My husband Mike looks me over. He's as mad as I've seen him in five years of marriage. He reaches for my hand and squeezes it. "This is never happening again."

I'm cold and wet and the skin on my face is tight like it's been smeared in PVA glue or one of those peel-off face masks. Only this mask is stuck. My hair is glued to my scalp in clumps that are setting like resin. I'm reminded of the macaroni art my son brought home from pre-school days earlier. It was a picture of me, smiling, adorned with a wig of macaroni elbows. I actually am that pasta picture.

I'm glad the boys can't see my face now. They're in the back of the car oblivious to Mummy's bottom lip quivering. I'm sitting on the towels Mike had in the boot to put under the boys, expecting they'd be the ones covered in mud after a morning at the school fair. Instead, it's me at risk of soiling the car. The remnants of egg; yolk, white and shell are drying on my clothes as the heat in my body turns everything from the texture of slimy snot into a chewy body omelette.

It's a half-hour drive home. I need a shower. Mike is feeling bad because it was the wife of a colleague of his who asked me to go. And I said yes.

"We're fundraising for the school and I'm on the organising committee," she'd pleaded. "Please come. You'd only need to be there for a couple of hours."

There was a celebrity challenge of some sort. Sir John Key was there. He was a celebrity too, the newly minted MP of Helensville and no doubt keen to make a good show in his electorate. I don't remember how the eggs were part of the challenge but at some point one of the competitors (yes I remember who, and no it wasn't John Key) smashed an egg on someone's head and then another and another until it was a full-on scramble of bodies and broken eggs.

After the initial shock of having an egg smashed on my head I laughed and pretended to be both in on the joke and willing to take the joke, after all there were people watching and you don't want to live up to their preconceptions of being a television diva.

"Told you she was stuck up."

I knew what was expected of me. It's just a bit of fun.

My head hurts. I reach up and touch it. Beneath my crusty macaroni hair is a lump from an egg that was hurled at my head and failed to crack. With the boys nodding off in the back, Mike continued the conversation he'd put on hold because of alert little ears. "That was absolutely appalling. You were invited along to help fundraise for a primary school and this is the way they treat you? I'm so angry. And I'm so sorry."

It wasn't his fault. The fault was mine. I should have said no.

No. Such a simple word but so hard to say. No.

All my life I have said yes at times I ought to have said no. I have suffered from chronic yes-ism.

From the time I was a little girl I was taught to put other people's needs first. Saying no was rude. Pleasing people was good. I never thought no was an option.

I worried about letting people down. I wanted to be liked and when I got a job that put me in the public eye it seemed even harder to say no. Not only were there more demands on my time but the pressure to comply with other people's requests was often overwhelming. Be nice Hilary. Say yes.

I would say yes most of the time and when I really did need time to myself, I'd lie about having something else on. I did not have the courage to simply say no.

Lots of my friends have suffered the same affliction; some still do.

My friend Sue only started saying no about a year ago because she was exhausted by all the extra commitments she'd agreed to.

She was the coach of both of her children's sports teams, parent help for every school outing, she helped with remedial reading at the school and had a stressful part-time job as well. She had spread herself too thin and something had to give so she started saying no out of desperation. She found it incredibly hard because it went against everything she thought she ought to be doing. Sue was the one who everyone else in the community went to because they knew she'd say yes. She'd taught them to keep asking for help because she never said no.

Sometimes ego can make us say yes to things we don't want to do. Another friend of mine got a job offer that was a huge promotion with a sizeable pay rise. The problem was that the job was in a part of the world that wasn't conducive to having his family there so he commuted because he felt obliged to accept the offer. He wanted to show his boss he was capable and reliable and that the job was important to him. He was miserable without his family, quit his job and returned home after a year. He should have said no.

Another of my mates has a group of girlfriends who don't share her values. They were friends at school and that habit of catching up continued even though she's in her 50s and has grown into someone who has nothing in common with them anymore. She hasn't had the courage to shut the door on those relationships so she'll make excuses to get out of the girls' lunches or weekends away.

Why do we find it so hard to say no when every bit of research says we can reduce stress in our lives by doing it?

That episode at the school fair was 20 years ago but it wasn't until I turned 50 that something inside me changed.

There was something about that age that made me reflect.

My Dad died at 57, and though his early death will have no correlation on the day I leave the earth, it still sits with me; a reminder that time is short and that even if you don't die young, at 50 you've probably passed halfway.

I've had more time for reading and self-analysis over the last few years and more time to figure out what I want to spend the rest of my life doing and it's not doing things I don't want to do.

I still spend lots of time supporting causes that I care about but I do so because they align with my values and matter to me. They make me happy.

So how do I deal with the things I don't want to do anymore?

With a a head full of podcasts, psychology bestsellers and the words of American philosopher and writer Ryan Holiday ringing in my ears, I formulated a plan. Ryan says: "Everything you say yes to in this life means saying no to something else."

I thought of our sons in the back of the car on the way home from my egging at the school fair in the early 2000's. I worked every day of the week back then, Monday to Friday on the radio and then Saturday and Sunday reading the news on TV and yet I still put someone else's needs before my own. Why on earth would I agree to give up even a minute of my Saturday morning instead of spending it at home with my family?

Curing my chronic yes-ism started slowly.

I'd reply to one or two email requests with the following. "Thank you for your email. That's not something I'm interested in doing."

Send.

Oh my goodness did I just send that? I sent that.

And then over the following few years I sent those words again and again and again. Never apologising, never making up an excuse, never wavering on a maybe. It felt courageous and it felt good and I can not recommend it highly enough. It's such a powerful thing to take back control of your life and not be beholden to others when you don't want to be.

Were other people offended by receiving a no? Not at all, in fact a CEO who was the recipient of one such email thought it was such a great response she vowed to start sending it herself.

Since those first emails I'm now able to say no very easily face to face, or on the phone. I'm respectful and warm but I'm extremely direct. I do not leave the door open for a future yes. No. No. No.

I am reformed.

I don't worry about whether I'm letting people down. I'm not. I don't worry about whether people will like me or not. I don't much care.

As someone who's past halfway in life I'm going to make sure that the time I have is rich in experiences that excite me, that bring me joy, that make me happy.

I will say yes often, but only in a mindful way. And I will say no, knowing that I've protected some hours to do something else that’s worthwhile, even if it's just sitting on the couch reading a book or reminiscing with Mike about that terrible day at the school fair.