My previous post helped to create a vision for your life called “your “Meaningful Life Map”. It’s your first step to figuring out what you want or “don’t want” in your life. If you skipped that post, do yourself a favor and start here.
That exercise will help you get back into alignment, and what that means is that every day you consciously make sure your actions are aligned with your hopes, dreams and goals.
You don’t have to make big steps every day. Sometimes it’s a matter of not going backwards. It helps you make sure that you are spending your time and efforts on what is most important to you.
Why Saying “No” Is Important
1. When you are happy it creates a ripple of kindness to every person that you come into contact with. Those people can also have a positive impact on others…and so on.
We will never truly know the positive impact that we make on people with our kind words and actions. If you have ever had someone say or do something “unkind” to you – you know that it hurts and it affect you. It affect all of us in different ways and in different levels of pain.
If you go to or have gone to a chiropractor it is amazing how just a couple taps can put your back into alignment and you feel like a different person.
Or, if you have had braces, small corrections every now and then lead to a perfect smile.
2. Saying “No” Is Not Being Mean
I’m going home for a few days and a couple friends want to get together and I have most of my weekend revolving around my family. But…I want to see my friends too – so I offer up when I might be able to get together. That way – I’ve offered an olive branch – an option and it puts it back in their court and I don’t have to feel guilty for not having enough time.
You can also practice counter offering because some people just get into the habit of asking. So, depending on what’s being asked you can say that you can’t but what about this?
My mom lives close to me and might ask me to pick up something for her and I’ll align that with times that work for me. She’s happy. I’m happy. I think some people think that just because someone asks for A that they would not be happy with AB and that just isn’t true.
Here are some things that came up for me recently that I said “no” to.
- Not answering the phone and calling them back when it was more convenient for me.
- Turning down going on a trip with someone (I would have loved to go but it was outside of my budget.)
- Taking the time to unsubscribe from unwanted emails.
- Blocking unwanted callers
- Seeing a wasted expense in my budget and changing a behavior.
It’s important to say no so that you have more time, money and energy for the things that you are super excited and passionate about.
3. Three Ways To Say “No” Without Saying “No”
- Make you goals/plans transparent- Whether it’s work or home, make sure you have your goals, to do list or a calendar of things you are working on visible so that others know and see what your priorities are. That way, when someone asks you to do something, you already have plans for something else or.because they’ve seen your goals, they may avoid asking you at all.
2. Practice (proactively) being assertive by practicing saying no nicely. How do you do that?
3. practice delegating
You will do yourself a big service if you start practicing delegating now. I ask my children to do things to help me out. They ask me for a lot as well. It isn’t a big deal but some people don’t like to ask for things. I get it; it’s awkward to ask someone for something that they might say no but the more practice you get the easier it is and the better you will get at it and you will stop defaulting to doing everything yourself.
Take a minute and hop onto our facebook page at “Meaningful Life Questand tell us about a time you had to say no. Was it hard? How did the person react? How did feel?
What are other ideas you have on how to say no, nicely?
Thanks so much!
Jen
