Monday again. Time really flies!
Today I wanted to share with you this quote, which I find very powerful:
One must master “No!” before one can say “Yes!”.
As we progress in life, it is important to understand that it is as important to learn to say “no” as it is to say “yes”. The same decision process should be used before saying any of these two words.
To explain myself, I will start by telling you more about the word “yes”. This word has always had a positive connotation – as we grow up we learn to assimilate acceptance to the use of “yes” and rejection to the use of “no”. The situation is more complex and in order to change our ideas around those two words, we actually need to change our way of thinking.
1) If you always say “yes”, people will take you for granted.
As we grow up, we learn about boundaries.
Our family and friends have boundaries which we learn to respect through the use of simple words such as “no” and “yes”. But, as we grow older start to appear situation in which we might notice that saying “yes” does not serve us:
- By saying always “yes”, we open the door to people judging us unfairly if for whatever reason we have one day to say “no”.
- As we get into the habit of saying “yes”, we might feel guilty if we have to say “no” one day.
- As we always say “yes”, people will not value the favours we give them as they were too easy to obtain. They might even take advantage of us – that can be a particularly difficult situation to handle if you are in the habit of always saying “yes” in a professional environment.
2) If you always say “yes”, you take yourself for granted.
It is important to remember that we are conscious beings with emotions and thoughts. Sometimes we try to push those back as we believe acceptance in a particular group comes with the price of us doing something we do not want to do. But as we progress on our journey, the only thing we really learn is to deceive ourselves. We push back our feelings and thoughts, trying to replace them with something else, and end up doing things which are not in integrity with ourselves. That is when problems can arise.
When we are not in integrity with ourselves, we forget that we are not machines that can be reprogrammed easily. We forget that our subconscious will stop at nothing to make us get what we really want to have. And when we are not in integrity with ourselves, the ‘what we want’ is different than the ‘what we think we want’.
If you are in a place right now where you believe you are not getting what you want, start by questioning yourself:
* Are you in integrity with yourself?
* Are you happy with what you have? How do you feel? How do you want to feel?
* What are you missing in your life right now? Are you working on providing yourself with what you are missing?
For example, if you would like to lose weight, think about the emotional side of the weight loss before considering nutrition or exercise. Understand why you want to lose weight (which feeling are you looking to improve?), what is holding you back (any stress in your professional or personal life?), and what you are willing to do to start changing the things in your life that are not working. Nutrition and exercise are only part of the solution, on the physical side, but emotions are also a big component to consider,
3) If you say “no”, people will value your “yes” better.
Just think about a time when you asked someone a favour. If you went to see someone who could say “yes” as well as “now”, remember your thoughts before asking the favour. Depending on what you were going to ask, you knew that this favour might take a lot of time from the person you requested it to. If that person said “no”, didn’t you feel sad but understanding? But if the same person said “yes”, didn’t you feel more grateful than you would from a person who you knew was going to say “yes”? Didn’t you value that “yes” more?
4) If you say “no”, you will value yourself better.
Simply by learning to say “no” to the things that are not in integrity with yourself, you will learn to acknowledge your emotions and your thoughts. You will feel better with yourself and have more energy to put onto the things that are in integrity with yourself. You will also get more time to do the things which are more important to you, rather than just the ones which are important for people around you.
How do you feel about saying “no” to someone? Is this something that comes easy to you? Please comment in the box below.
Thanks for a great post on a super important topic! I love this quote from Danielle LaPorte: "No makes way for yes." Every time we say yes to something we don't actually want to do, we are also saying no to something we do want to do!
I agree very much with you Hiba, and thank you for sharing this great quote by Danielle LaPorte! 🙂
By saying no, we learn to trust our intuitions more, we are more in adequation with ourselves hence have more time to do things we like. When we are not happy with the way our life is, it is us only who can change our behaviors and improve our situation. "No" brings a new beginning, and a way out to something that no longer serves us!