Last night I was talking to a friend about a project I was debating taking on. She told me to just do it, but it was tough for me.
This week I’ve been trying to simplify things in my life and I thought taking on this additional work might complicate things a bit. The truth is it wouldn’t be a huge time commitment and it’s in line with the work I like to do. You know, work that sparks joy in me.
It was 7:00 p.m. and the window was closing on my Just Say No challenge, so there was a part of me that thought I should just say no so I could check it off the box and have something to write about this morning. That felt unfair to the person working on the project and completely against the purpose of this challenge, so I decided to do it and responded, “Yes.”
In the meantime, my friend who’s always supportive asked, “Do you want me to give you something to say no to?”
I laughed and said, “That kind of goes against this whole exercise, but you can try.”
As her son ran around in the background, she asked, “Do you want to play hide and seek with a kid who’s squeaky clean after a bath?”
“I actually would,” I said. “You know how much I love that shit.”
She laughed, we hung up and I hoped that something else that I could say no to would appear in the next few hours.
It didn’t.
Even this morning as I walked hurriedly to the gym in the 20˚ cold, I went over my day trying to think of something that I may have said no to.
Nada.
When I got home, I looked at emails and texts I sent and went over my schedule.
Still nothing.
I thought about the calls I had to place to Citi about my credit card and to my health insurance company about another matter. They surprisingly never gave me anything I had to say no to. What I really wanted to say was, “GFY (Go F*ck Yourself)," but luckily, those customer service people never gave me reason to do so.
Finally, after I responded to a completely unrelated text this morning, it came to me.
I said no to saying no to that project. I know, very meta, but it’s actually a good one.
I’m usually afraid to say no to people or projects because I’m a people pleaser. That was absolutely not the case here. I wasn’t afraid to say no to this person. I wanted to help out, but a conversation with someone else earlier in the day was pointing me towards saying no, so I guess in a way, I was saying no to her advice and saying no to saying no.
Are you still with me? ;)
No way! ;)
What would you have done in this situation? Do you have a hard time saying no? Why? Are you a people pleaser or is there a different underlying reason? Tell me below and if you like what you’ve, share it and subscribe below. Thanks!
P.S. I told a funny true personal story about something completely unrelated to this exercise, but related to Marie Kondo that I also titled “What Would Marie Kondo Do?” Have a listen!