Diane Darling, Professional Networking Strategist; Speaker, Instructor & Coach

In this episode of The One Problem, Diane Darling talks about the importance of saying “No.” Many times when you say “Yes” to someone, you’re saying “No” to yourself.

Hi there. My name is Avil Beckford, and I started the One Problem podcast interview. And it's a way for us to learn from each other. Now it's called The One Problem. We know that there are tons of problems in the world, but we're going to tackle them one problem at a time. Most of my guests, so far, I have had some sort of relationship with them. And that's the case with Diane Darling, our guest today. She's a member of another group I'm involved in. Diane is a professional networking strategist. I've never heard of that before, but we're learning something new. She's an instructor and also a coach. Over to you Diane.

Diane Darling

Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be here. So, my problem that I am tackling most these days is learning to say ‘no'. And I admire little kids that just say “no, no”. They don't mind. They'll say it once, and they are very persistent with their ‘no'. But as we grow up, it's not nice. And so my challenge has been, I always want to help people. I always want to give to them. I want to see their success. But I'm realizing as I'm saying ‘yes' to them, I'm actually saying ‘no' to me because I'm devaluing what I need to do for my own time and take care of myself.

So my solution for this is being willing to say ‘no' in a thoughtful way. In a kind way, in a specific way, so they understand why I'm doing this. So for example, today, I got a call from somebody who said, ‘I hear you're good at networking' and I wanted to see if you could share contacts with me because I'm trying to advance my career, et cetera, et cetera.” And I said, “sure, here's what I can do”, and she explained that she already had a coach.

And I said, “well, then your coach should be helping you with this”. And then, “Well, I'm just looking for contacts”. And I said, “I don't give my contacts away unless I have vetted the person. I hope you can understand that these are relationships I've had for many years”. And then I realized I don't need to explain. I just simply need to say ‘no'. So, I think one thing that we find ourselves doing is that we want to help other people. But we need to be sure.

Diane Darling

It’s like that saying they have on airplanes. Put on your own oxygen mask first before you try helping somebody else.  And Southwest has a couple of flight attendants I see. Before you're helping somebody who is acting like a child. So I think it's important for us to adult up ourselves. And when we see this situation, and I like saying ‘yes', and I want to say ‘yes' to lots of things. And I also have to challenge myself to say ‘no' to things that are fun or something because I don't want to do what I have to do as a grownup, which is the dishes, which right now it looks like there's five teenagers.

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I would not dare turn my camera around. I live alone, but it looks like I live with five teenagers. There's stuff everywhere. So what I have to say ‘no' to is the thing that would be a distraction from what I really need to do, which is to declutter and take care of myself. So that's my one minute problem and my one minute solution. Or a six minutes solution. I forget the numbers now. So thank you so much. And anything else you have to ask me about this or questions, it's just such a treat to have connected with you.

Avil Beckford

So could you present one other incident that has to do with learning to say no? Just one other example?

Diane Darling

Sure. Here's an example. It's learning to say ‘no' to my email. I wake up in the morning and there's all these emails, and they're fun ones, here's some interesting things I can read. Here's something else. These are the distraction things that are really more interesting. I have to say ‘no' and unsubscribe or I now have a folder where all of those start automatically going. And then at 02:00 I give myself the treat of going to my junk email box and seeing what's candy. What's the distraction? What's a fun thing to do?

But to say ‘no' to that candy because I need to send a bill to that person. I don't want to send a bill to that person because I don't like to bill people because it feels mean. Why is that mean? You provided a service to them. So part of it is saying ‘no' to head trash and saying ‘no' to the things that make us doubt who we are. So what I've learned to do in the morning is when I wake up, my morning mantra has been I have a cat. And so the second I start stirring, she's like, her mantra is, boy, it's ready for breakfast time.

The One Problem Podcast: Diane Darling Talks About Saying “No”

And then that's my little tiny habit to say, what can you do with your gifts today? We all have gifts. What can I do with my gifts today? One of the things I'm doing with my gift today is spending time with you. So part of it is, but that also means I'm going to say ‘no' to going back to bed. I'm going to say ‘no' to being lazy or whatever it might be. So we have these battles in our heads and I think it's important for us to stand up for ourselves in our heads.

Diane Darling

The other day I was saying to somebody, we were talking about how I just don't like water. It's boring to drink water, but you're supposed to be drinking six glasses of water. And someone said, well, do you know that what you're actually doing is you're nourishing your brain when you drink water. Your brain gets dehydrated. I don't want my brain to get shriveled up. Iit has not been a problem for me to drink water ever since that person said to me, you need to nourish your brain.

Avil Beckford

Thank you so much, Diane.

Diane Darling

It is my pleasure.

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