“I read it and it really resonated,” Knight says. “It allowed me to explore this concept of mental decluttering, which is the core that runs through all of my books so far.”
And so it became the inspiration for Knight’s “No F*cks Given Guides,” which includes F*ck No!, Calm the F*ck Down, and Knight’s first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck.
“What I think has guided the writing of my books and the way they’ve resonated with people is just authenticity …” she says. “The books that I write are coming straight from my brain and straight from my heart. And they are filled with a conflicted attitude about whether or not you should listen to somebody else tell you how to live your life.”
Knight describes her mental decluttering as a two-step process: discarding, and organizing.
The first thing you have to do is discard those things that don’t serve you, the things that annoy you, that do not bring you joy. … After that, you organize your life around whatever’s left.
Knight found that she — and her readers — were not taking the time to think before saying “yes.”
F*ck No! offers plenty of tips on how exactly to say no. For example, instead of saying “no, period” you could say “no, but …”
Imagine the child who asks to go to the zoo every morning. Knight suggests you say: “No, but I’ll get you a subscription to National Geographic and you can read it whenever you want.”
‘Most people will take no for an answer’
Meeting Sarah Knight, you get the sense that she is someone who practices what she preaches. She says no all the time: To working for less money than she feels her time is worth, to letting friends with kids stay at her house (she points them in the direction of a nearby hotel), to going to pub trivia.
“I kept making excuses for years. And then finally I said, ‘I just don’t like pub trivia,’ ” Knight says. And the funny thing was: No one cared as much as she thought they would. Her friends were cool with it, Knight didn’t have to spend six hours doing something she didn’t want to do.
“Most people will take no for an answer much more easily than you think they will,” she says.
There’s a difference, of course, between saying no to pub trivia, or dinner, and being a bridesmaid in someone’s wedding, or helping a friend move. Knight stresses that her advice isn’t about saying a blanket “no” to everything you don’t feel like doing forever and ever.
- Jazz on the Water Cruises
- Life Luxe Experience
- The Florida Smooth Jazz Weekend
- Christian McBride’s New Jawn
- Mallorca Smooth Jazz Festival
“The idea … is not to be super negative,” she says. “It’s not to become a raging jerk.”
It’s about not losing sight of your own needs.
“If you are saying all of these yeses, then you’re stretching yourself too thin and … you’re not having fun,” she says. “You’re not enjoying yourself and you’re not being the best version of yourself.”
Maybe it’s the perspective she’s gained as she’s gotten older, but Knight says she’s really starting to value the time she has left.
“I really would like to make sure that people understand this is not about just saying ‘F*** off, I don’t care. I’m opting out of life.’ It’s really about opting in.”
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