The hustle and bustle of daily life are a given in the 21st century. It seems that with each week that passes, all of us take on an ever-increasing list of tasks and responsibilities to complete. We’re continuously focused on adding something to our to-do lists, working as hard as we possibly can to meet not only the expectations of others but also our own individual expectations.
Sure, it can be awesome to feel productive and take things off your to-do list. However, on a daily basis, it seems like our to-do lists are getting longer and longer, with more unanticipated events and projects being added to them faster than we can check them off.
The truth is, as human beings, most of us are hardwired to want to please people. This can include our friends, significant others, supervisors, and even ourselves. Saying yes even when we want to say no is a sign of how passionate we are about a situation or how desperately we want to please the person that is requesting something of us in the first place. The fear that so many of us harbor regarding saying no is based on the fact that we fear disappointing someone, making them angry, hurting their feelings, or appearing unkind or rude. We believe that saying no will change a person’s entire perception of us and make them look down on us as people because we did not sign on to add another thing to our plate.
Be that as it may, I’m going to let you in on a little secret that took me a long time to learn. Saying no does not mean that you’re a bad person. Saying no does not mean that you are not capable of the task, or that you’re lazy, or even that you’re trying to insult the person who asked you to do it. Saying no just means that, at this moment, you have enough on your plate that takes priority and you’re trying to keep some of your mental stability intact without stretching yourself too thin.
We were taught as kids that saying no makes us seem rude or impolite. Often, saying no to people that we respected, like parents or grandparents, would lead to us getting some sort of punishment for our actions. When we said yes, it was often perceived to be that we were a more respectable child or young adult, hence, we have adopted most of these habits and continue to carry them with us as adults.
Now that we are adults and capable of making our own sound decisions, saying no doesn’t have to be something that we are afraid to do. Though you should never back down from projects that thoroughly interest you, or that you feel you can effectively manage on your current to-do list, saying no is not only a sign of self-respect and understanding but also of maturity and sound reasoning. Whether we like to believe it or not, those of us who have far too many things on our plate might complete all of the tasks, but the quality of each of these projects is often significantly diminished. If we instead turned our attention toward working on fewer projects and dedicating more time and effort to these few things, we would not let responsibilities or other important aspects of our lives fall to the wayside.
If you continue to live your daily life relying on the opinions of the people around you, rather than the positive opinions that you could have toward yourself, you will find that you’re often more unsatisfied and will never actually be happy. Saying no and understanding what your personal limits are shows you and others that how you feel about yourself, including your stress levels, social elements, and the things in your life that you do in pursuit of joy, are just as important as the tasks you might sign on to do at work, school or otherwise.
In the end, what is going to make you most satisfied in your life is understanding what makes you feel happy. Though work and school are both very important aspects of our lives, they do not really define who we are and what makes us happy. If saying no to that project gives you just enough time to go out and get that cup of coffee with a good friend, take a walk or bike ride, or spend an hour unwinding with a book, you have to do it. Life is too short to put caring about yourself on the backburner.
