Say No Series

Post I: What Happens When You Can’t Say No

Over the past few years, I’ve been working on saying no. No. No. No. … Nope. …. Nuh-uh. … No-can-do. Sounds like it should be easy, but it wasn’t for me. I was addicted to yes. In this three post mini-series, I’ve outlined my journey to ‘no.’ I’m hoping that this will help at least one other person stop saying ‘yes’ to what she doesn’t want and start saying ‘yes’ to what she does.

Yes. OK. Sure. No Problem. All Right. Why Not?
Yes, I was a “yes-er.” Time and time again I would do most anything someone asked me to – providing it was safe, legal and all. I’d take on extra projects, do favours, go out of my way, stay late, clean up, inconvenience myself – the list went on. The only times I said ‘no’ were when I really couldn’t do something…and then I felt guilty.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that the more I said ‘yes,’ the more I was asked. The more I was asked, the more stressed I was. The more stressed I was, the more unhappy I was. The more unhappy I was, the more unhappy I made those who cared about me.

I knew that it wasn’t the best way to lead my life but, at the time, I didn’t realize that I wasn’t leading, but following.

It all started to come to me one Friday evening as I sat at home dreading the next day when I was to help out on yet another project for someone and I wished I hadn’t agreed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help out a friend, I did, but I also had many other things that I wanted to do for myself that I wasn’t doing because I was spending my time doing things for other people.

I began to understand that there’s a personal cost when saying ‘yes,’ when what you really want to say is ‘no.’ For me, although I liked helping out others (and still do), the cost to me was having no time to do the things that I really wanted to do. Things that I enjoyed, that inspired me, that challenged me, that made me learn, or that I just simply liked to do. I didn’t have the time to do both – say ‘yes’ to others and say ‘yes’ to myself.

We all have a finite amount of time and when we’ve filled it up, there’s no more. We can’t add on an extra wing of time, extend an hour to 85 minutes or tack on an additional day here and there. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Because of this, for every ‘yes’ we say, we’re simultaneously saying ‘no’ to something else.

I started to realize a few things.

1. I was keeping myself from doing many of the things that I wanted to do because I was too busy doing the things that I didn’t want to do.
2. I was putting everyone else first and myself last.
3. I was becoming more of a martyr and less of a giver.
4. I was spending the time that I wasn’t doing something for someone else dreading the next commitment I made.
5. I was saying ‘yes’ to activities and projects that didn’t interest me, didn’t test my abilities, didn’t contribute to my knowledge base, didn’t make me feel satisfied, fulfilled or gave me a sense of accomplishment. And sometimes, they were plain boring.

Then something else hit me…and it was big…

I kept saying ‘yes’ because it made me feel needed.

It was as if I thought they couldn’t do their project without me. That I had to be involved because no one else would do it or possibly could do it as well as I could. It was up to me to help out because then it would get done. I would be the best friend ever, the best employee in the department, the best whatever.

Sheesh. It was nonsense.

What was worse though, was that I was also making some people dependant on me. I was doing so much that they couldn’t do it – or didn’t want to do it - on their own. Who was I to encourage someone to depend on me? In my defense, nothing I was doing was seriously life changing stuff, but when I thought about it, it was like a mini control thing – and that just isn’t cool.

What I had to learn was to say ‘no’ to myself saying ‘yes.’

“No, you can’t say ‘yes’ to everything anymore.”

Next post
Part II: The Making of No