Welcome to the man talk show, training for men, answers for women.

I am Connor Beaten.

And on this week's midweek mini episode, we are going to talk about the art of no, the art of saying no.

And I'm going to invite you into a challenge in this episode.

And that challenge is for the next 14 days.

I want you to consciously find something to say no to directly without making any excuse without justifying your no with just a

simple no or no thank you or no that's not going to work for me.

I'm going to tell you just a little bit of backstory as to why this is important.

So growing up, I was the byproduct of, you know, the oldest of five.

I had four parents because my parents got divorced when I was,

you know, a little kid when I was three. And they both remarried and they both had a daughter

and then they both had a son. And so I have four siblings. And because of that, I spent a lot of time

having to take care of my brothers and sisters. I spent a lot of time babysitting,

a lot of time changing diapers when I was, you know, like 12 and 13 years old, 14 years old,

cutting the lawn, like doing a lot of the chores and maintaining a lot of the aspects of the

house. And so there was a lot of times where I just didn't have

choice as a kid. You know, my life was sort of beholden to the family systems that I was in. I had to

tend, you know, I had to babysit my my siblings when my parents would go out. I had to really take

care of a lot of things. I was sort

of like this third parent, or at least I felt like this third parent who really didn't have a lot

of choice in my capacity to say no. And even when I did say no, it wasn't really listened to, right?

There was certain sports that I didn't want to play that I would say no to and I was still and I was still forced into playing them. So I learned over the years that my no didn't really

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