For a long part of my life I wanted to be a people pleaser. I wanted to be liked by everyone and loved by all. I never wanted to be the lone ranger. I always needed the group opinion. It did something for me. It strangely still does. I mean....for crying out loud my personality type is the campaigner. It's how I'm wired. A straight up social butterfly?...Yea, that's me. I needed people near. Having a lot of people around just meant having an abundance of crutches and fall backs to blame. Dealing with just me meant I'd have to own up to whatever decisions I made alone. It meant receiving direct blame if someone didn't like something, or if they just hated whatever I did. It meant vulnerability and an ownership I wasn’t convinced I was ready for, and I hated the thought of it all.
So as a solution to not having to let people down I became somewhat of a “yes” woman. “Yes, I can blah blah blah.” “Yes, I'll try yaddah this and that.” “Yes, I can help you.” I said yes to wayyy too much and even in the moments where I found myself being drained a simple "No" was never enough to fix it. A let down of any kind had to come with an explanation. "If I was free I would" or "if I have time I'll try". Those were my sugarcoated "No's". As you can imagine surely saying yes to everything started to leave me depleted. I felt kind of powerless and constantly at the mercy of other people's approval often. It was a frustrating time, but I can say with complete confidence that if saying yes to too much taught me nothing else.....it taught me following:
Concerning yourself with pleasing everyone will leave everyone pleased but YOU after it's all said and done.
Go ahead and just let that marinate.
For all those times I said yes at least half of them meant saying no to me on some level. It meant saying no on doing what I wanted to do. It just meant no on a lot. Now I'm not saying just go out there and start saying "No" to any and everything....no. I’m saying just start saying "Yes" to you sometimes. Honor your own choices. If you don't want to do something....chose yourself. Don’t do it. If you don't want to be somewhere then don't go and know that the world will not end if you say the magic word. Know that it’s ok to just leave it at no and that you don’t owe anyone an explanation at times. It’s perfectly alright.
Respect yourself....respect your interests.....respect your wishes. Don't back down from standing up for yourself because it's ok to not please everybody all of the time. Spoiler alert: you'll take yourself to your grave trying to do something like that anyways. You'll never accomplish that feat and believe me when I say you don’t want to. So the next time you take the time to please someone or something, make sure that you’re one of the people you start to with.
Happy saying “No” dreamers.