For many of us, the most difficult word to say is one of the shortest and easiest in the vocabulary:  No.  Go ahead, say it aloud:  No.  “No”… simple to pronounce, hard to say.  We’re afraid people won’t like us or we feel guilty. We may believe that a good employee, parent, spouse, child, parent, good friend religious person never says “no.”  The problem is, if we don’t learn to say “no,” we stop liking ourselves and the people we always try to please. We may even punish others out of resentment.  When do we say “no?” When “no” is what we really believe. When we learn to say “no” we learn to stop lying. People can trust us and we can trust ourselves. All sorts of good things start to happen when we say what we mean. If we’re scared to say no we can buy some time. We can take a break, rehearse the word, and go back and say “no.”  We don’t have to offer long explanations for our decisions.  When we can say no, we can start to say “yes” to the good. Our “no’s” and our “yes’s” begin to be taken seriously. We can control of ourselves. And we learn a secret:  “No” isn’t that hard to say. ( The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie)