Photo by Andy Tootell on Unsplash
The topic is 30 Days of Boundaries about the word no. More specifically, "No" as a complete sentence. Often times when you have boundaries issues, you say yes a lot more often than you should.
Sometimes through other party's attempt to make you feel guilty or make you feel like you're not making a contribution, they try a variety of techniques to make you feel guilty so you will say yes and agree to something, when in fact. This may not be in your best interest or the interest of the parties involved to say yes. "No" is a complete sentence.
Sometimes you don't want to hurt people's feelings. Sometimes you may think you're not being who you're supposed to be when you say "No" and deny a request or disagree with something or not want to do something that the other parties want you to do. It takes a long time to get past that. Especially if you were someone like me that often would say yes, just to make things easier on everybody, but by saying yes, you're saying "No" to yourself. I did that for a long time and I have two stents in my left anterior descending artery to prove it.
What are you saying "Yes" to that you should be saying "No" to? It's important for you to understand boundaries in your life and to stand ground when things come up that deep in your heart and in your gut, you know you should say "No" to, but then you end up saying yes. Maybe you're anti-confrontational. I get that. I'm trained in conflict resolution and you want to try to avoid conflict when at all possible, but sometimes that's it's not possible. Saying "No" is sometimes a necessity. When you do, you have to understand that the other parties involved may not receive that in the way that you would hope, but how they receive it is not your concern.
Your concern is to do the things that are beneficial to you, to respect yourself, your self care, your boundaries, in order to do the things that you need to do. This can be at work. This can be in home life. This can be opportunities that come up. It can be a variety of things, but you have to start looking at the things that you are saying "Yes" to and make sure that they are in alignment with your purpose and your mission. If it's not, then you have to say "No". Do it with grace. Do it politely, but have "No" be a complete sentence.
Until tomorrow. Cheers.