Walk With Reid Facebook Live: Receiving No and Why It’s a Gift
Reid: Good morning! Good morning everybody! It is Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and we are here we’re back in my office on the treadmill and I am opening up my Facebook. Facebook page so I can see comments as they come in behind my camera. So if you’re joining us just leave a comment. Hello Janet! Hi! Leave a comment let me know you can you can hear me. Okay? And let’s just dive in because it’s a busy day today. It’s ahh I’m in Oakland California right now and it’s raining so it’s one of those cloudy days where you can get a lot of work done and I’ve got some phone calls and things to make today.
So, Hi! Good morning everyone! Let’s, let’s go on our on our morning walk. Hello Mark! How are you? Hi Debbie! Can you can people hear me? Yes? Let me know sound no sound. Okay. Hang on. Hang on there’s no sound. That’s weird. Everything looks like it’s hooked up. We try one thing I might have to restart the broadcast if people can’t hear us. Can you hear me? I can hear you fine. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. Whooh! Yes. I got a little nervous if they’re.. for more. Okay. So, let’s just dive in with the look all these people showing up this is exciting. So, let’s just talk about receiving no and why no is a gift? And for those of you who’ve as we go for a little our little walk here today.
For those of you who’ve never been to a cuddle party, I invite you to go check out http://www.cuddleparty.com/ that was a communication workshop that Marcia Baczynski and I co-founded in 2004 and that became a huge news story back then. And the and just kind of blew up in media and it was a big conversation about touch and non-sexual affection but the big piece that we cover in the welcome circle of cuddle parties is being able to say no because a lot of us grew up in families where we weren’t we had to learn how to tolerate.
Betty Martin who’s a really great educator also cuddle party .. On the cuddle party board of advisers who teaches a great workshop called touch like a pro. So if you ever get a chance to do any work with Betty Martin, I highly, highly recommend it but Betty is really great about talking about like you know we learned as, as young babies to tolerate things like all of us who have learned to tolerate when we were little. Getting our diapers change and we didn’t want to get our diapers change. Being picked up and put in you know the baby car seat when we didn’t want to get put in the baby car seat.
So, a lot of people just you know really deep in their subconscious learned how to not speak up or how to tolerate in order to make mommy and daddy happy. And those skill sets that we learned which aren’t really helpful but maybe kept your parents saying in the moment. As adults there is this tendency to in order to please people not to speak up and what I want to reframe and what we talked about cuddle party what I talked about a lot in my sex geek education work is this idea of looking at people saying no to you completely differently because now, now we’re adults. And we can take the time to shift our perspective and re-anchor it.
And the, the reframe, is to take something that a lot of us I think have experienced which is the example of imagining or remembering when you’ve ever invited people to do something with you. Go to movies; go for picnic, road trip or whatever. You invite their family member or friend to do something with you and they said yes and then when you were doing the thing and they did not want to be there and to remember and kind of represents for yourself what that feels like or felt like when you had somebody doing something with you who didn’t want to be doing it and all the grief and the, the BS you had to put up with because that person didn’t want to be there.
If you ever had that experience and you can really remember it and the bullshit you had to go through, remember that whenever you invite somebody or make a request for somebody to do something and they say no, they just saved you that grief. They alleviated the situation in the future if you have to put up with that. That is humungous. That is huge and it is why we say in cuddle party that when somebody says no to you, to thank them for taking care of themselves, to thank them for saying no whatever phrase you want to use. In cuddle party we say thank you for taking care of yourself and some people think that that sounds weird that sounds you know like you’re kind of putting that person down or its snarky.
So whatever phrase you want to, to replace that with when people tell you no even if they do it roughly and, and clumsily and comes out you know harsh, remember the bullshit they just saved you and thank them somehow. Reinforce for them that you appreciate them saying no even when you’re disappointed so that you can encourage them and count on them in the future to continue to say no. And again we’re not going to be perfect. I don’t always speak up and say no when I’m no and sometimes we think we’re yes and then you know we realize we get clarity later you know or you invite you know somebody to do something a week from now and then you know a week from now they feel like they have to do it because they said yes but they’re really clear that they that they don’t want to be there which in cuddle party is you know the next rule after, after that is you’re encouraged to change your mind.
So you know maybe we’ll do another will go on another walk and talk about changing your mind tomorrow or something like that but the big piece I want to I just want to reinforce is that when people tell you no, that is really a gift. I’m not saying that it’s not going to sting or that rejection doesn’t hurt but you might be able to jujitsu the, the rejection piece by reframing it as they just saved you from a bunch of grief. And encouraging people to say no, having people feel safe that they can say no around you, that you can take no well and you handle a good no. That can be a huge gift for you to be that person for your communities.
I’m not saying it’s easy. Some of the advice that I give is just simple very powerful simple advice I’m not saying it’s easy advice to implement but as you get to hang of it on a good day you can remember to thank that person because them being able to say no is really important than being able to change their mind. We’ll do another video for that is really important and if you haven’t if you can’t see like just in relationships business relationships, co-worker relationships, family relationships, relationships with your kids this is really big in the bedroom being able to speak up and not have to tolerate things. Encouraging people to say no and change their mind in the bedroom is huge too. Especially if it’s in the bedroom and you’re in a long term relationship and you’re going to be in the bedroom with this person for decades.
So again what are your thoughts? What do you think? Hi Leeann! Hey Catherine! I’m gonna go look for the.. your comments. I’ll, I’ll try to like and, and reply to everything that I can. Share these, these comments today. Some of you had asked about social media stuff obviously we’re on Facebook but if you’re on Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest or anything like that it’s almost always https://reidaboutsex.com/ on social media so come find me there.
Thank you so much for joining us for the morning walk. I have a surprise that I think I might be able to implement for tomorrow or certainly this week. So pay attention. Watch out for these videos and I have a surprise coming and, and I’d I wanna give you a hint but it’s, it’s about taking our walks in the office and and I’ll change the scenery a little bit. So I leave it that. What else? What are your thoughts on saying no? Thank you so much for doing all these. This walking talking things with me and now it’s almost 11 a.m. and I’ve got a jump on a column and it’s.. So, bye everyone! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!
Thanks for going on a walk with me. Bye!