When all of your friends want to go somewhere you don't. When your boss asks you to work over the weekend. When a guy asks you for your number or to go out with him. When a family member asks you for a favor.We encounter all of those scenarios (plus a million more) all of the time and desperately want to say no, but say yes anyway.
You go to the place you don't want to go. You work over the weekend even though you already had plans. You give out your number to a guy you're not interested in. And you drop everything for someone that asks you for a favor when you don't have the time or resources to do so.
Why? Because we just couldn't say no.
How many times did you do something you didn't want to do because you felt like you couldn't say no? I know I have many, many times.
We feel bad to say no. We don't want to hurt that person's feelings. We feel obligated. We feel like it's something we should do.
But instead of possibly hurting that person's feelings, we end up upset, annoyed or miserable ourselves. Obviously, there are some scenarios where saying no may just not be an option. But when that is not the case, we are more concerned with the other person's feelings than our own.
When a guy asks you out or for your number and you don't want to oblige, do you say yes anyway because you don't want to hurt his feelings? Sometimes I'm guilty of this. Except a few weekends ago a guy asked for my number and I said no. He then argued with me for 10 minutes on why it would be completely harmless for me to give him my number and go out with him.
But the alternative would have been me giving him my number and ignoring his calls or texts. Either way his ego may have gotten a little bruised, but I was honest and didn't put myself through something I didn't want to do.
I know I typically have a hard time saying no. I don't want to hurt someone's feelings or seem like a bad friend, so I go along with whatever it is I don't want to do. But more and more I think about how short life is to be doing something you don't want to do.
I think more of us need to start saying no when we want to say no. Be honest if an explanation is requested, but you also aren't obligated to give a reason.
We need to stop feeling like we should be doing things and start doing exactly what we want to do when we want to do it. Isn't that what so many other people are doing anyway?
xoxo Nickie
