Creative Guidance-IASbaba, Inspirational & Educative Articles
Saying No:
Somehow we don’t like the idea of saying no. The first emotion that swells up within us when we have to say no is guilt. Why is it? If you actually think about it, it is natural to say no most of the time if you are focused on what you are doing and don’t want to be disturbed by unnecessary interruptions and distractions. And yet, it doesn’t come naturally to tell now. Why is it?
This is a part of our upbringing. As children we are told to obey our parents and elders all the time and hence naturally we grow up saying yes to pretty much everything. But as adults, saying yes to everything is one of the worst habits we can develop. This is one of the biggest reasons why you are distracted most of the time.
In a way, each individual is living in his or her own reality, trying to move towards a life that they are aspiring for. And in almost everybody’s life you are simply one small part of their journey of life. You are never the most important person in anybody’s life. This is one of the harsh realities we have to come to accept as adults. Life is all about knowing what you are doing and how to move towards it.
When you develop the habit of saying yes to everything, you simply become a part of somebody else’s life. You will be left with very little time for your own dreams and aspirations. This is where being too good is almost always detrimental to one’s progress. Of course as social beings we want to be useful to others and also want others to be useful to us, but trying to be too good all the time is never the right approach.
Developing the ability to say ‘No’ without feeling any guilt and regret is one of the best habits one can develop. It frees us from the burden of having to constantly think about and worry about all the no’s we have said. Once we accept that saying ‘No’ is natural, it helps us to keep our human interacts simple and effective. Of course, just because we can say ‘No’, it doesn’t mean that we say it just for sake of saying it. But in most situations it is better to say ‘No’ than ‘Yes’.
We go through different phases of our lives. Some phases require us to be very firm on our individual decisions and say ‘No’ to most others. It is extremely important to understand the phase of life you are in now and accordingly decide on your level of human interactions. In a phase that requires you to be focused, if you keep saying ‘Yes’ to anything and everything, then you will end up nowhere.
We have to let go of this childhood conditioning of saying yes to everything to be able to keep our human interactions honest and beneficial. It is perfectly alright to say ‘No’ to anybody. As long as we don’t use the habit of saying ‘No’ just for the sake of being rude, it is perfectly alright to say ‘No’, even if required, most of the time.
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