a friend today. Actually said no. My friend,
Gail, had emailed me and asked if I would do a favor for a friend of hers. I thought about it for a moment, about how busy I am right now and weighed that against how good it feels to help someone out. And in the end, I stood up for myself and said no.
That may seem like a normal, daily activity for you, but for me, it has become a lost art in my life. I was born a people pleaser, and with people-pleasing comes the inability to say no to things. Anything, really.
I struggle with saying no for many, many reasons, but mostly because I don’t want to let anyone down. I want to be the one who helps, bails someone out or pitches in to make something happen. It makes me feel good to help, to say yes.
But I have said yes in my life so many times that I sometimes find myself bailing myself out, staying up well past midnight to complete a task, or running myself ragged in the process. That doesn’t really feel that good in the end.
I have grown to realize that saying yes to everyone and everything can really be more about making me feel good, in control, than about truly helping someone out. It can be a rather selfish kind of thing, to say yes all the time. As if my self-worth is wrapped up in saying yes to everything.
For those of you who are not people-pleasers, those of you who do not struggle with saying no, reading this column may feel like reading a foreign language. But for those of you, like me, who are the yes-sayers of the world- let me tell you that I don’t have all the answers.
What I do have is encouragement.
I am still a work in progress. But I am learning to say no more often, to protect my time and energy, save myself for my family. I learned that lesson from, of all people, my mom. Moms are the wellspring of wisdom, and if we would only listen to them more often, life would probably be easier.
My mom told me that, too.
She shared with me that saying yes to “the world” is like saying no to my family, because most of what I say yes to pulls me away from my family. That saying no to others is like saying yes to my family. Yep, a wellspring of wisdom.
I still struggle with saying yes too often, but I did say no today, and that is a start. Each day, I can begin to say no more often and then someday, I won’t even realize that I am saying no more than I am saying yes.
It is always good to be prepared. So for all of you yes-sayers out there, here are some creative ways you, too, can say no.
I would love to teach Sunday school, but I am going to have to say no for this semester as I have a pet giraffe to feed and walk every Sunday morning, so my time is very tight for now.
Can I join your volunteer committee at work? Well, it is so sweet of you to ask, but unfortunately, I am already on the dandelion-picking committee and the watching paint dry committee, so I can’t squeeze one more.
I said no to a friend today. And though I am feeling rather guilty about it at the moment, I know I did the right thing.
And, no, I do not have any more time to write this column.
It’s time to go feed my pet giraffe.
Catch up with Trish at http://www.trishberg.com/, where you can order your copy of her latest book A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts-Stories to Warm Your Heart at Tips to Simplify Your Holiday.
a friend today. Actually said no. My friend,
You also have to remember that sometimes saying no to someone may be eating you up more than the person you said no to. It may not bother them at all. So stop beating yourself up! Great job saying no.
Denise