Saying No

It’s hard to say no.  If you’re like me… you were raised to be “nice” to most everyone.  It was the polite thing to do… people would like you better if you were easy to get along with… you wouldn’t “rock the boat”… and above all saying “yes” put a smile on every-one’s face. We liked that. It meant people approved of us.   No one told us… people may take advantage of us… they often wouldn’t return the favor… we’d be “yes men/women”… we’d feel burnt out!

It’s hard to say no ‘cuz friends might get mad @ us.  Family members may turn their backs on us. In some cases, we may lose those people we like/love.

It can feel scary to consider doing it differently. It would mean we’d have to risk those benefits we believe we gain from “pleasing” or “being nice”.  Those benefits often give us the false sense that we aren’t alone; we have friends.

If we take a closer look though… people get mad @ us or feel hurt all the time anyway… even when we think we’ve done all we can to make them happy! Our well intentioned pleasing can end up making us feel bad or as if we can’t do anything right. We may end up feeling resentful.

It can feel challenging to change our habits.  It can feel frightening or uncomfortable.  We ‘re all afraid to face the possibility we may end up alone.

If we accept the challenge and stop @ least some of our “yes man/woman” behavior, we often see that those we try to please are not really good friends anyway. Good friends will try to work things out with us. They may get mad or upset with us but, in the long run, a good friend will meet us half way, ask us what’s going on. We’ll get the opportunity to negotiate the relationship so that it’s equal, @ least most of the time, for both parties.

Are you up to the challenge?