 Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Kwame and I'm a voice actor, a documentary filmmaker and here on YouTube, I make lifestyle videos like this one. But this particular one is a bit special because it was inspired by a tweet I saw and I thought, you know, let me just share my thoughts on it. So a couple of days ago, I stumbled on this tweet that read, who noticed that men are no longer persuasive once they ask you out and you say no. Case closed, laughing my head off. So mind you, the no here was in capital letters like it's final. First of all, let me just say that no means no and it doesn't need an explanation from the person who's refusing your advances. As a human being, you just need to respect that until the person willingly decides to give it a thought and perhaps a chance to explore something with you. You do not have to try and persuade or coerce anyone in whatever shape or form to give into your request or advances. Now let's move on. This is where it gets interesting. Right under the tweet, the reply that was most prominent was, because I don't love you anyway. It's just body thereafter and they know they can find it if they walk one minute out of their door. If it's actually love, they will try harder. If it was something even real interesting you, they will try harder. This is why I lost it. I just lost it. I was just thinking like, why? Why are you reinforcing some of the things that get people in trouble, especially men? These are some of the things that have led people to do things to people and traumatized many women because you make men think that this is a sport, a conquest. Like no means playing hard to get and if they finally get you, they will cherish you more. That's just crap. Let me just say again, no means no and it doesn't need an explanation from the person who's refusing your advances. But let me break it down a little further and make it easier for you to understand. Rejection sucks and it doesn't apply to men. It just applies to everybody because one of our prime instincts as humans is that we need to belong, to feel wanted, to want and to have that which we want. So naturally, rejection is counted as a loss that evokes certain emotions that are very unpleasant. Nobody likes it because in your wanting you exhibit certain emotions that make you vulnerable, certain emotions that bear your intentions to the other person and it comes with expectations of hoping to succeed and if that doesn't happen, you feel naked or you're going to feel like you're naked in the wrong room. You're going to feel rejected and unwanted and that hurts. Take this example, you apply for a job at a place that wasn't really hiring and there was no ad but you want to work there so you apply it anyway. You get a response and the company says no, we're not hiring. Straight forward, what do you do? Well, you're going to be disappointed, obviously, but you're going to try your luck somewhere else. That for me is similar to code calling in sales. You have no relationship with the prospective clients but they fit your demographic of someone who might be interested in your services so you try to convince them to buy into their product or services. You know, that's like meeting someone or random attractive person on the street today and immediately profess love to them. Unless by some divine mutual love for first sight intervention, the person accepts your proposal to start a relationship which barely happens. The most you will get is yeah, maybe we can start a friendship leading to courtship and get to know each other a little bit better. If you're not lucky, they probably flee from you like you're some walking plague and you deserve that for professing love to a random person, somebody you just met. So let me just share this personal story with you. In senior high school, if anybody watching here who was in my class is, I mean, yeah, there were tests to it. I had a crush on one of my classmates and I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I was so scared to ask her out bro. Like your heart racing, your mouth getting dry, even thinking about it, kind of scared. Essentially, yeah, both lazy and you know how it happens with, you know, high school, you get teased. I was in the mixed school, you get teased, like, you know, you like this girl, you're having a crush on her. So for a whole semester I hadn't been able to master the courage to ask her out. Like, what if she says no? All the science said otherwise that she might actually like me too. So one day, you know, I decided, you know, after my friend pushing me a lot of times, it was the beginning of a new school term anyway. So I was like, you know, let me just either get my loss or win and live with whatever the consequences. So I actually talked to her after class, after lectures, and I couldn't even mouth like say the things I was I wanted to say. I was sweating. The fear of rejection was just way heavy than my wanting her to be my girlfriend. Eventually she pulled me out of my misery because I was really suffering to make it clear what I wanted. And she said no. No, she wasn't ready to be in a relationship at the time. And even if she had reconsidered, she'd rather at least try a friendship leading to that. I went from having a crush on someone and not necessarily having a great friendship with her straight to I like you, I want you to be my girl. And she said no, and she had every right to do that. Did I try to convince her? No. Was my ego bruised? Yes, it was at this point in like, emergency. Was was a guarantee that I would end up in a relationship with her down the line? No. It took me a while to get over it, but eventually I had to come to terms with it. Now the second example of asking someone out and getting a different reply that made it easy to pursue a possibility was with my wife. When I met her, we began talking and getting to know each other. I liked her. And for me, I usually am very sure of who I want to be with. And I let her know my feelings and intentions of starting a relationship with her. And she said she felt the same way about me. However, she wasn't going to say I'll try to yes. She told me she needed time. And in that time, she'd like to explore the possibility of where this can go by building a foundation on a good friendship first. So she made her stance clear. And what she wanted from me was, if this was going to work, we needed to take it easy. And there's a huge difference between saying no versus saying not yet. But with both of these instances, you should not harass the person in the name of persuasion and try to get them to change their minds. No. When the person says no, it's no. Now if there's someone who is going to say no when you actually wanted to say not yet, you know, I like to explore some kind of friendship to see where it goes. And the person takes your no as a no and leaves. Why should that be a problem? And I also sense here in the tweets that the persuasive here means that somebody may be chasing you and they are sharing you with gifts and doing all the nice things for you in order to have a better chance of getting you to be in a relationship with them. If that level of work goes into persuasion and there's rejection at outright, no. Naturally, you would back off and invest your energy somewhere else. That's how it really works. At this point, if there wasn't a general relationship, some kind of friendship, don't expect the person to still be there. Take this analogy again, for example, similar to the first one I use. You want to work for an organization in a certain capacity. Let's just say that. And they tell you they're not hiring currently because they can't afford the commitments of paying you as one of your staff. However, based on persuasion and trying to make them see what kind of value you can give, you tell them, you know what, I'll work for you for free and internship of sorts. After some time, if you find me worthy enough to hire me, then you can decide. So you give much of your services for free and after a few months, you ask them for feedback and they tell you that, well, you were good, but we kind of went with somebody else for the same job you were asking for. Somebody would like better. And to top it off, when the other person is not doing their job well, can we kind of like call you to seek advice and emotional support? Like how do you as a person feel saying that or doing that to somebody else in the name of persuasion? And for me, it's quite a delicate and sensitive topic because some of these lines are blurred in our relating to other people. And mostly it comes from relating, men relating to women and not being able to take a no as a no and feeling like men have some kind of authority or power or they can exercise some kind of authority over women or somebody, they are beyond rejection. And this leads to a lot of people abusing women just because they can't take no just because their egos are bruised when they are rejected and everything. So stop making people think that no is a possible maybe. When somebody doesn't want something and they say no, it's a no. Let's just be clear here as adults, as sane human beings that it's a no. Spend your energy somewhere else. Don't do boyfriend stuff with somebody who has not committed to you and then later thing that they led you on or they played you. And you as a person as well, if somebody is doing all these things for you and it's a no, no, just find a way to, I mean, let them know that you don't want to return the gifts. Do all those things. Don't take people's stuff and then later on when they are hurt and they do something negative or bad to you, you say you put all men in one box. That's not fair. That's just what I wanted to talk about. It's quite important. No is no. Let's be clear. No is no. So guys, if you like this video, I know most of you or some of you may disagree. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you already haven't done that. My name is Kwame and I'll catch you in the next one. Peace.