by Agnes a Paris
Fri Mar 17th, 2006 at 09:35:31 AM EST
A quickly put together thread to develop the agony project.
I had a nice chat with a friend yesterday evening. We had to scale down the dinner we had planned to spend together to a phone call as she was too tired to get out again having returned back home after work.
She was feeling frustrated and I also sensed a feeling of guilt as she had to cancel me even if I genuinely could not blame her for choosing to have, for once, some time for herself for a change instead of spending 24/7 non quality time trying to please everyone by saying yes.
Well, the first answer is : never get back home if you are headed for an evening out : go directly from the office to the dinner/party/concert.<s>
Let's be serious here and try and investigate why it may be so hard to say NO that our agenda gets overbooked without our knowledge until we find out we cannot cope.
The underlying problem we all need to tackle at some point in our life is the aversion to say NO. This aversion varies according to our life (and most of all, childhood) experience of the reactions to our saying NO.
If the feed back we got eraly on in life from our NOs was predominantly negative, NO ends up being construed as rejection in our mental scheme. NO and "I do not care about you" are a perfect match.
When reproached with something at work, we may find it difficult to focus on the issue and how we can improve our competence, because we tend to think the blame is an evidence of us being disliked, victimised. We question ourselves, and not the way we acted. We cannot put the situation into perspective because what is wrong is basically our inner self, not the report or the client meeting.
In the private sphere, we fear that the relationship cannot sustain a NO, so we often say a reluctant YES, then have second thoughts.
The more often we respond with a half-hearted YES, the less tolerant we get to professional or private solicitations.
Very social people end up not answering the phone at all and eventually shrieking "let go of me !!".
Those less demonstrative or lacking self-confidence will bear (and blame) it on themselves until their unsatisfaction with the situation turns into a feeling of inadequacy and ultimately,depression.
So let's learn to say NO ! To be able to respond YES with full appreciation of the situation and enjoy the good moments or not find ourselves overburdened with the work our colleagues managed to turn down, we have to practise saying NO, from time to time; this is the way to true consent.
This is only theory. Practically speaking, once again, sharing the experience of how we learnt to say NO can be very helpful for each of us to find our own personal way to handle fear of disappointing those who matter in our life. The thread is yours.
