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10% Happier with Dan Harris

Why You Say Yes When You Shouldn’t — And How To Say No When It Matters Most | Dr. Sunita Sah

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.612.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A conversation with a Cornell professor who is attempting to rebrand the concept of defiance.

Dr. Sunita Sah started her career as a physician but then switched over to organizational psychology. At Cornell, she conducts research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. She is the author of Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes.

In this episode we talk about:

  • How Dr. Sah defines defiance 
  • The costs of compliance 
  • The five stages of defiance
  • How to make defiance a practice
  • The upside of tension 
  • The importance of knowing your values — how to articulate them, and how this relates to our biology, specifically our hormones 
  • The gender components of defiance 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:19.9

Hello, party people. How we doing? Here's a question. How often do you say yes to things, only to regret it later? Why do we do that? Social pressure, power dynamics, eagerness to please, guilt, habit.

0:34.8

Today I'm talking to a Cornell professor who is attempting to rebrand the concept of defiance.

0:42.0

Many of us think of that term as negative, but my guest argues that the pressure to comply is a

0:48.6

pervasive, corrosive force in our culture and that we all need to do a better job of learning when and how to say no.

0:57.6

Dr. Sunita Saa started her career as a physician, but then she switched over to organizational

1:03.6

psychology, and at Cornell she conducts research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance.

1:12.9

She's out with a book now called Defy,

1:18.0

the power of know in a world that demands yes. And in this conversation, we talk about how she defines defiance, the costs of compliance, the five stages of defiance, how to make

1:23.4

defiance a practice in your life, the upside of tension, even though many of us want to avoid it, the importance of knowing your values.

1:30.1

This is a theme that keeps coming up here on the show that I find very interesting.

1:33.8

She's going to talk about how to articulate your values and how this relates to your biology,

1:38.7

specifically your hormones.

1:40.7

And we talk about the gender components of defiance and much more.

1:45.7

Just to say, before we dive in here, it can be very tricky to figure out whether you should say yes or no in a given situation.

1:53.0

It often involves tuning into your body, which is an overused and cliched notion, but a powerful one nonetheless.

2:00.1

So if you want to get better at this skill, and it really is a skill, we've got a guided

2:04.2

meditation for you, which is specifically tailored to this episode.

2:08.2

And it comes from our teacher of the month, Kyra Jule Lingo, who will be crafting bespoke

2:13.3

meditations for all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes during the month of August.

2:20.3

We think of this as the kind of lecture lab model.

2:25.2

The pod is the lecture where you're learning interesting stuff, and the lab is where you practice applying it in your own mind.

...

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