Shonda Rhimes, television producer, screenwriter, and founder of the production company Shondaland, spent a year saying “yes” to every opportunity. This spoke to me, but for different reasons. I was already doing this, just not intentionally, and it was overwhelming! So, I did the opposite. In 2021, I had my year of “no”.
I want to take a look back at 2020. This was a horrible year! The world was literally ending. We couldn’t see loved ones in person. Some were losing loved ones. This was the worst year of a lot of people’s lives. Everything about our way of life was turned upside down. But if there was one thing to take away from that year, for me, was the appreciation of time.
When you’re a child, time seems endless. You can’t wait to grow up! As I have gotten older and especially after having my daughter, I have realized that time is truly in limited quantity. The pandemic forced us to slow down. We didn’t have multiple parties and events to go to every weekend. I was working from home and not in the office 45+ hours per week (plus the hours I worked at home in the evenings!) Suddenly, I had down time, something I hadn’t experienced in many years. My daughter was doing school from home and her dance schedule had gotten significantly lighter being on zoom. My husband is a correctional officer, so he obviously wasn’t working from home. In fact, he was working a lot more. But, when he was home, we were too. For us, being home together was great. We did a lot of family walks and bike rides. Watched a lot of movies. Ate at least one meal together almost every day. I didn’t realize how burned out I was feeling in the Go! Go! Go! of pre-pandemic life. I knew I had to figure out a way to bottle up this “downtime” and keep it going.
I was telling my co-worker this one day and she told me it was because I said “yes” too much. Some one asked for my help on a project, “yes”. My boss asked me to attend this meeting with a client, “yes”. My daughter’s friend had a birthday party, “yes”. Her dance team was going to a movie for team bonding, “yes”. My cousins want to get together with the families for a pot luck, “yes”. She said to me, “you know, ‘no’ is a complete sentence.”
Let that sink in for a moment. No, is a complete sentence. Wise words! How many of us have fallen into the “yes” trap. It’s so easy and you don’t even realize it’s happening until the world stops. I knew I had a hard time telling people “no”. I just didn’t realize how bad it was! I was feeling stressed majority of the time. And I was seeing physical signs of that stress; hair thinning, a twitch in my eye that would last hours on end, panic attacks almost every Sunday evening. I needed to learn how to say “no” and take back my ability to choose how I spend my time.
The pandemic made it easy. Because of my husband’s job, I felt my family potentially had more exposure than the average family. We were doing all the precautionary things in our home, but I didn’t want to take too many chances. We used this as our reason to say “no” to a lot of things as the world was opening back up. This gave me an opportunity to practice saying “no”.
And you know what? No one minded when I said “no”. Probably more so because they appreciated we were being mindful of exposure. But, even as the pandemic was winding down and more people received the vaccine, I found that most people were very understanding when I declined going somewhere. After a while the guilt that I used to feel when saying “no” and therefor giving me the reputation as always saying “yes”, disappeared. I think this is partially because I got to practice saying “no” when it was socially acceptable to say “no” and partially because we as a culture changed and got used to people being more intentional as to how we spend our time.
Now, “No is a full sentence” is my mantra, but I don’t take it literally. If I am going to say “no”, I’m usually going to give a reason. I realize I don’t owe anyone an explanation of how I spend my time, but I have no problem telling someone that I have too many plans for the weekend and will have to say “no” to some of them.
Saying “no” has given me hours back in my day. I’ve learned to delegate at work. I’ve put more responsibility on my daughter when it comes to her schedule. She can take it upon herself to find rides to some events that I don’t necessarily have to attend. I’ll tell her that I can pick up or drop off and to see if there is someone else that can do the other. Nine times out of 10 there is a mom that feels the same way as me and is happy to not have to do both. I just never asked before. Carpools are a lifesaver! These are prefect for regularly scheduled practices too!
How about you? Where in your life can you say “no”? The next weekend you are invited to 3 parties in one day, instead of telling the last one a non-committal, “we will try to make it” where you know you will run yourself ragged to get there, just say “thank you for the invite, we already have 2 other parties that day and we won’t be able to make it to yours”. That way you get to remove it from your mental to-do list completely.
Try it this week! Say “no” to one thing that is not serving you. See how it makes you feel! Tell me about your experience in the comments below.
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