Learning to Hear “No” the First Time

I've never been very good at accepting no.

Actually, that's probably too generous.

For most of my life, I've treated no as information.

Not now.

Not sure.

Not this way.

Those aren't answers to me. They're problems to solve.

Tell me something can't be done and my brain immediately starts working.

Why not?

Who else can I call?

What's another way in?

What haven't I tried?

As a founder, that's been a pretty useful way to be wired.

I've built companies that way.

I've gotten through doors I probably had no business getting through.

I've survived some pretty shitty periods that way too.

I even have a tattoo that translates to persistence.

That's how much I believed in it.

I had the philosophy permanently written on my body.

Apparently it needed an asterisk.

Because lately I've been looking back at some of my relationships.

And I'm starting to understand something I probably should have understood a long time ago.

I've been bringing a founder's response to no into my personal life.

When I've really wanted something, or someone, no has kicked the same machinery into gear.

Think.

Solve.

Find another approach.

Try again.

In my head, that was persistence.

Maybe sometimes it was.

But another person isn't a company I'm trying to build.

She gets to want something different from what I want.

Understanding that intellectually is one thing.

Actually changing forty-plus years of wiring is another.

I was having a drink with my son recently.

He's an avid rock climber, and we got talking about some of this.

At some point he said something that stuck with me.

"If you want to hear no from a wall and think you can push through it, you're crazy."

Naturally, I took up rock climbing to prove him wrong.

He was right.

Rock climbing is fucking hard.

Your fingers hurt.

Your forearms burn.

Your legs shake.

You're hanging twenty feet in the air from a piece of plastic while muscles you didn't know existed are informing you that this particular experiment is over.

And my instinct on the wall is exactly what my son knew it would be.

Push.

If the move doesn't work, try it again.

Harder.

More strength.

More effort.

More fucking persistence.

And if I've tried the same move ten times and fallen ten times, why the hell would the eleventh be any different?

My entire wiring has always had an answer to that: Because this time I'll try harder.

The wall has a different answer.

No.

And here's what I'm learning.

The wall's no doesn't necessarily mean I can't get to the top.

It means I can't get there the way I'm trying to get there.

That's different.

So instead of attacking the same move again, I have to come down.

All the way down.

Stand on the ground.

Look up at the wall.

And think.

Where did I go wrong?

Was my foot in the wrong place?

Did I shift my weight too early?

Was I trying to muscle through a move instead of using my legs?

Or did I choose the wrong route entirely?

Then I start again.

Not harder.

Smarter.

That's what climbing is beginning to rewire in me.

For most of my life, no has meant push.

On the wall, I'm learning that no can mean stop.

Listen.

Come down.

Think.

And decide what the answer is actually telling you.

Then something occurred to me. A wall and a person can both tell me no. But they're not telling me the same thing.

The wall's no can be mine to solve.

Another person's no isn't.

If someone I care about tells me she doesn't want what I want, there isn't another route for me to discover.

There's no better approach.

No different grip.

No smarter presentation.

No eleventh attempt.

Because the answer isn't mine to change.

It's hers.

Maybe someday she changes her mind.

Maybe she doesn't.

But that's hers too.

For someone who has spent his life believing almost anything can be changed with enough persistence, that's a pretty fucking uncomfortable realization.

It's also becoming a strangely peaceful one.

I can want something badly and accept that someone else doesn't.

I can wish her answer were different without trying to make it different.

I don't have to convince myself I didn't want it.

I don't have to decide she was wrong.

And I don't have to find another route.

I can just hear her.

No.

And let that be enough.

Unless she decides her answer has changed, there's nothing for me to solve.

That's new for me.

I'm not giving up on persistence.

I'm just starting to understand that it doesn't always mean pushing harder.

In business, no still makes me want to find another way.

On the wall, no is teaching me to come down, look at what I was doing wrong, and start again differently.

But with someone I care about, I'm learning something harder.

Sometimes there is no next move.

I can know I tried.

I can know I cared.

I can know I did everything I knew how to do.

And still accept the answer.

My son thought climbing would teach me to hear no from a wall.

Turns out, the wall is teaching me how to hear it everywhere else.