A little Japanese trick for saying ‘no’

People in a small, well-lit Japanese restaurant or bar, with a menu on the wall and beverages on the counter.

Photo by John Steele/Alamy

As I’ve got older, I’ve got better at saying ‘no’ to requests I don’t fancy, but I regularly fail. Usually, I feel the urge to give a socially acceptable reason – busyness, or a clash. But, without an excuse, sometimes I lie (which feels wrong), or I people-please and agree (which also feels bad… for me).

So, during a recent trip to Japan, I was intrigued to learn a new word for ‘no’. In Japanese, saying chotto is a way of declining without offence. According to the newsletter Japan or Die, chotto translates directly as ‘a little’, but its meaning is more subtle: ‘If someone asks you if you want to go to a party tomorrow and that’s not something you want to do … all you have to say is Ashita wa chotto (‘Tomorrow is a little…’) and the meaning is conveyed.’

Chotto is an example of a conversational tactic called an ‘implicature’. As the philosopher of language Nikhil Mahant explained in a recent Aeon essay, it allows us to ‘convey meaning without breaking social norms’.

All languages have implicatures, but it turns out that cultures disagree on how to use them. One 2011 study, for example, explored the contrasting refusal strategies of American and Japanese participants. The Americans were more likely to give a direct ‘no’, or cite alternative plans (‘I’m busy that weekend’), whereas Japanese speakers would use chotto, or postpone an answer (‘Right now, I don’t know my schedule’). Interestingly, Japanese participants found the American strategies rude; the Americans found the Japanese tactics frustrating.

The language of implied refusal, it seems, is delicate, and sometimes you might offend without realising. Has learning this made it easier for me to say no? Well, a little…

by Richard Fisher

FIND OUT MORE

If you’re an occasional people-pleaser (like me), learn the techniques of healthy, confident refusal in the Psyche Guide ‘How to Say No’ (2023) by Shayla Love.

The British philosopher Paul Grice argued that implicatures arise due to the desire to maintain cooperation and helpfulness during conversation. Learn more in his Aeon Idea ‘What We Say vs What We Mean: What Is Conversational Implicature?’ (2018).

NOTE TO SELFFEAR AND PHOBIA

How scary is it really?

A silhouette pressing hands on a frosted glass door in an abandoned room with peeling paint on walls and door.

Photo by Nathan Smith/Unsplash

Many situations in life that are supposed to be fun also involve a high degree of uncertainty: dates with strangers, rollercoasters with unpredictable twists and turns, unrehearsed karaoke. For those of us who like to be able to see what’s coming, many of these potentially enjoyable opportunities may as well have warning signs hanging over them. Sometimes it’s tempting not to take the risk. But I recently came across a study that made me wonder if I should challenge myself more often.

The researchers, including members of the Recreational Fear Lab at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, surveyed visitors to Dystopia Haunted House – one of those immersive attractions where you wander past menacing costumed actors, not knowing what will pop out next. Before they went in, the participants completed some questionnaires, including one tapping their intolerance of uncertainty. (They rated how much they agreed with statements like ‘I can’t stand being taken by surprise’ and ‘Uncertainty keeps me from living a full life’.) As you might expect, visitors who were less tolerant of uncertainty had dimmer expectations about how the haunted house would hit them. They anticipated less positive emotion and more anxious and generally negative emotions than the uncertainty-tolerant did. And yet, afterwards, visitors across the board (including the uncertainty-averse ones) reported feeling more positive emotions and less unpleasant emotions in the haunted house than they predicted they would.

In other words: despite the frightening surprises they’d encountered, it wasn’t so bad after all. It seems that for me and other certainty-craving people, the real problem might not be the ghoul hiding around the corner or the possibility of singing off-key at the karaoke bar, but our pessimism about how it’ll make us feel.

by Matt Huston

FIND OUT MORE

If uncertainty causes you discomfort, too, you might benefit from reading the Psyche Guide ‘How to Embrace Uncertainty’ (2023) by Arie Kruglanski.

To learn more about research on haunted attractions and the benefits of horror, check out the Aeon Essay ‘Fear Not’ (2021) by Mathias Clasen.

NOTE TO SELFFOOD AND DRINK

The dissonance of meeting what you eat

A curious brown chicken looking at the camera with several other chickens blurred in the background.

Photo by Christin Hume/Unsplash

There were about seven birds of different colours that I used to see wobble around my neighbour’s urban chicken run. I frequently passed it on the sidewalk. Peering through the fence, I’d feel a bit of unease. I was a not-quite-vegetarian then: I’d given up some meat due to concerns about animal welfare, but still ate chicken. Yet here I was, charmed by these same feathered creatures.

What I felt was cognitive dissonance, a concept first described by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s. It’s the psychological discomfort someone experiences when what they know or believe is inconsistent with what they do. For instance, you might believe it’s wrong to lie but do it anyway, or know that a major corporation is harming people but still buy its stuff – and that might cause you some internal disharmony. Sometimes, people deal with that by rationalising their behaviour (eg, ‘everyone else does it’). Other times, they change.

A new paper by the researchers David Fechner and Sebastian Isbanner suggests that my increasing cognitive dissonance may have put me over the fence (so to speak) into vegetarianism. They compared several groups of people: those who ate meat and had no plans to change; those who were considering no longer eating meat; and those who had actually made the change. They found that cognitive dissonance (gauged by how uneasy, uncomfortable, etc one felt thinking about eating meat) was higher in the potential-vegetarian group than among the meat-eaters, and higher still among vegetarians.

Other factors differed too, such as how feasible a vegetarian diet seemed to them. But according to the researchers, the results suggest that cognitive dissonance helped to explain why some people who believed in vegetarianism’s benefits actually adopted it. When it comes to morally loaded behaviours, believing might not be enough. Our conflicts might have to stare us in the face.

by Matt Huston

FIND OUT MORE

If you’re contemplating going meat-free yourself, the Psyche Guide ‘How to Go Vegetarian or Vegan’ (2022) by Reed Mangels explains how to do it in a planned and satisfying way.

The initial spark for my eventual dietary shift was the book Eating Animals (2009) by Jonathan Safran Foer.

NOTE TO SELFFOCUS AND ATTENTION

Embrace the monotony

Photo by Thomas Hoepker/Magnum

For most of my 20s, I couldn’t brush my teeth, ride public transit, or take a walk without listening to a podcast or audiobook. Silence, I thought, was a waste of time.

But since reading All the Beauty in the World (2023), I’ve been reconsidering my relationship to dull, seemingly empty moments. In the book, Patrick Bringley recounts his decade among the watchful guards of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Standing in the Met’s echoic halls for hours on end, day after predictable day, he found that, over time, his relationship to the work slowly changed. Initial enchantment with the art gave way to boredom – and then, enlightenment. He surrendered to the ‘turtleish movement of a watchman’s time’, stopped thinking about how much of his shift was left, and let the hours drift.

I think about Bringley’s experience when I have to engage in any long, monotonous task. It might be waiting in line or on hold, vacuuming, folding laundry, or chopping vegetables for dinner. I resist the urge to fill the time with music or podcasts and strive instead for what Bringley calls a ‘princely detachment’ from time, finding the luxury and nuance in the moment.

Bringley noticed patterns in the different kinds of Met visitors. Hanging up my laundry, I notice patterns in how different articles of clothing tend to wrinkle in the wash. Bringley developed an appreciation for artworks that he initially ignored. I pay finer attention to the unique composition of facial features on the faces of people I stand in line with. I am learning, I think, to appreciate the little things.

Of course, it requires constant practice to find the peace and richness in these stretches of time. But your reward comes, Bringley says, when an hour no longer feels an hour long, and you ‘hardly remember how to be bored’.

by Hannah Seo

FIND OUT MORE

For a thoughtful conversation on how to embrace silence, and the meaning that can be found in intimate moments of quiet, listen to the episode ‘How to Sink Into Silence’ from the podcast The Gray Area with Sean Illing.

The Psyche Guide ‘Solitude Can Be Profoundly Restorative. Here’s How to Savour It’ (2025), by the psychologist Thuy-vy Nguyen, offers expert guidance on treating alone time as an opportunity, rather than a boring interlude.

NOTE TO SELFGOALS AND MOTIVATION

Motivation is good, but discipline is better

Photo of a boxing match with a standing boxer in the ring and an opponent kneeling behind, lit by overhead lights.

Oleksandr Usyk walks away from defeated Daniel Dubois, 19 July 2025 Photo by Andrew Couldridge/Action Images/Reuters

In July this year, the Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk, aged 38, became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world – for the second time! Combined with his 2018 undisputed cruiserweight title, this collection of accolades across weight classes is unprecedented in boxing history. His latest success led some commentators to compare him with legends such as Mohammed Ali, and prompted one journalist to ask him how on earth he stays motivated given all that he has achieved.

‘I don’t have motivation,’ Usyk said, ‘I have discipline.’ He went on to explain that motivation is temporary – you have it one day, but not the next. In fact, when he wakes up for training, he never has motivation, only discipline. ‘Motivation is good,’ he said, ‘but discipline is better.’

Usyk was stating succinctly something for which psychologists have long been gathering evidence. Whether it’s training for a sport, pursuing excellence at work, or seeking a healthier lifestyle, desire takes you only so far. That’s why we need to use devices grounded in discipline to support us, so that we don’t think about it, we just do it. What is discipline? It’s ‘related to high conscientiousness’, the sports psychologist Noel Brick tells me, ‘including being organised in our daily activities, an ability to control impulses … or completing activities out of a sense of duty.’ Approaches based on habit formation or implementation intentions ensure that we persist, almost as if on autopilot, regardless of our unreliable motivation levels.

Usyk’s comments reminded me of our Psyche Idea on another important distinction – between goals and commitments. Motivation might help you set your goals. But to get there will take discipline-based commitments. As Justin Kompf explained, ‘a goal is something that you want to do. A commitment supports that goal and is something you have to do.’

by Christian Jarrett

FIND OUT MORE

For more insights into how to achieve your goals, read the Psyche Idea ‘To Meet Your Goals, Forget Willpower and Fill Your Toolbox’ (2022) by Marina Milyavskaya.

For a counterpoint to the idea that discipline is everything, check out this 2012 article I wrote about the psychology of drive and determination for One Life magazine.