Why do we keep saying yes when we already know we should say no?

Say no at least once a week to something that drains your energy unnecessarily. Say no to unnecessary noise and behaviours that take space in your life, that make your time unproductive towards your own personal benefit. Anything that doesn't make you productive in any shape or form towards your own personal life, towards your own personal goals, professional, whatever it is, say no to that. If you said yes, that's also okay.

Why is it okay?

Because then you have learned the lesson, the next time, or when a next opportunity surges, you can say no, or you can step back and redirect that something that you know for sure now, because you've been through it, and now you know for sure that you need to redirect or full stop no, so that you can protect your own energy, your space, your physical space, your mental space, and whatever goals you have in mind.

 What I am saying is: don't be prompt to say yes to everything. Don't always be kind. Remember, kind people get abused as well. Nice people get abused as well by other people. And quite often, people who are kind and nice are often misunderstood. So don't be afraid to say no when you feel this is wrong. Whatever is coming towards you, whatever that is, verbal communication, physical behaviours, space, environment that you're reading, say no.

Protect your energy.

What do I mean by protecting your energy?

What I mean by protecting your energy is when you're not capable of saying no, because you're so used to saying yes, and you are kind, you're a caring person. Remember, people who are carers are the ones who are more inclined to continue to say yes. Even though they've learned to say no, they will say yes even when they don't need to say yes, or when it's best for them not to say yes.

When you say no, and protect your energy, is as if you don't protect your own energy, and then after the event has happened, after the situation has happened, you're going to relive that, you're going to rethink that, you're going to complain about that, you will tend to complain about that, and you are probably going to blame yourself.

You are going to create a system within yourself: this is my fault, and you may well go and pin each point of that situation that is your fault. In reality, you are making it for yourself impossible to say no. Most importantly, impossible to protect your energy.

So, what that creates on your own personal vibration, energetic vibration, is that it creates a sense of anxiety, a sense of urgency, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of self-betrayal, a sense of I've learned to stand my ground and now I've lost it. I don't know how to recover it.

Sometimes we say yes when we want to say no. That doesn't mean we failed. It just means there is another lesson to learn.

What I want to make you aware of is that all of that is not true. All of that is not happening inside of you. Because if you have outgrown and if you have learned.

You know that you are now mature enough, emotionally mature enough to not go back to that urgency. You have outgrown your emotional insecurities; you have learned to detach from the people-pleasing behaviour.

Meaning, that is only your fear of forgetting for a second that you know exactly how not to go back to emotional urgency, emotional punishment.

Hence, I am here to remind you of that.

I am here to tell you, sometimes we say yes instead of saying no. But that doesn't mean that it's utterly bad for us. It just means it's another lesson to learn. It's another curveball for us to deal with.

And that means to remember not to make the same mistake again. Because patterns happen. Negative patterns, negative mistakes, misconceptions, misunderstandings, they happen. And sometimes they come in disguise. Sometimes the no that is approaching you, the question or the behaviour or whatever it is that is approaching you, already knows how to shake you, already knows how to make you unaware of unsettled.

Something that it does not help you. It then triggers your nervous system.

I am here to tell you that saying no is amazing. It's an amazing tool, but you don't learn to say no overnight.

And even when you create that tool within yourself, when you have that tool, when you learn to say no, even then, you will fail to say no. Because it's natural. It is human. You are a human being. You're alive. You have blood running through your veins. It is okay. Do not punish yourself. And do not blame yourself for not saying no, for saying yes instead.

By saying yes, you had somewhat chaotic events happening. Chaotic events might be that you just wanted to sleep, you just wanted to do other things, and you couldn't. Or chaotic events might be that you wanted to go on a trip somewhere else, and you couldn't because you didn't say no.

Let’s go through a scenario: You want to book a holiday at work, and because you couldn't say no, you couldn't go on holiday on that specific day.

Remember, you've already grown, learned how to grow, and you have outgrown now your emotional instability, your emotional pains, your emotional struggles, your emotional urgency. Now you are emotionally mature enough to understand that your losses when you say yes instead of no are gains in a productive way. And remember, you will not say yes instead of no more than once, more than three times. You will not. You know that. You know you will say yes once, which might be exactly the wrong time to do it.

But why is it the wrong time? Maybe there's a lesson there. Check your energy. Check how you feel afterwards. Check how you feel during the period that you decided to say yes instead of saying no.

 I want to focus on saying yes, the wrong way, saying yes at the wrong time, saying yes to the wrong places, to the wrong events, to the wrong memories, to the wrong behaviours.

 That's what I want to focus on, because we all know we have to learn to say no. Okay, full stop. We've learned that. But how do we train ourselves not to say yes? Because it's so easy to say yes when your whole life or most of your life you said yes. You know who you are. You know how easy it is for you to say yes. You know how it is for you to say yes, I can help you, yes, I can support you, yes, I can guide you, yes, I can change my holidays, yes, I can do this, yes, I can do that.

And you don't compare to the other people, you do not expect anything in exchange. You do it for goodwill. You do it just because you like to help.

When you say yes instead of the no, to change your holidays at work, and then you miss that date that you really wanted to go to this specific place because during that date there's something specific, that event that is happening there, a cultural festival. And because the dates have now changed you will miss the opportunity. And that festival is not going to happen until the next year, the same date or in a different date, but you already know you are not going to be available to commit for that next year.

How does that make you feel? Upset? Worried? Stressed?

Another scenario:

It might be something like you want to spend the day just in bed, relaxing, or just watching movies, and you can't. Because you said yes instead of saying no.

It might be that you went for a walk. You decided to go for a walk, and then your neighbour caught up with you:

Neighbour: Oh, where are you going?

You: I'm going for a walk. I'm going to do two hours walk.  

Neighbour: Okay, I'm walking with you.

You: Oh, okay, yes.

But you planned to walk on your own, to think, to relax, because you have so much gone on and you needed that headspace.

There is nothing wrong with any of those examples. Nothing wrong with that. The best part of it, the beauty of it, is that you have been allowing yourself some study time to learn to grow emotionally. And you know now how mature you are, how emotionally mature you are. To be able to feel the emotional, to feel the disappointment, the deception, then to move past it within less than 24 hours, and then to move on. You know how to do that. That's the important part.

Because sometimes we say yes when we want to say no, and we stick to that. And we feel that pain, and we feel it for over and over and over and over again. Sometimes we tend to verbalize things, negative things or behaviours, but that does not mean you are feeling in your heart.

 That's what I mean.

As long as you don't feel it for more than 24 hours, it's good. It's all good. But even if you still verbalise it after 24 hours, try to reduce it.

Because you are just reminding your brain. In reality, you are just playing it over and over and over again to understand how you could not say no.

How could you choose the yes instead of the no? Stop doing that. There's no reason for that. Stop it. It's gone now. It's past. You cannot fix the past.

You're in the now, in the present. Focus on the now, on the present. Focus on how I can say no next time? What I do? I go for my headspace. I go and relax, empty my brain, and then I reset.

How do I say no next time? This is me, Marcia:  Well, I have to confess, with time and maturity and age, I'm a bit grumpy now. So, when I'm not happy with the situation, I tend to say no for the next time there and then, in the moment, which is a bit rude of me. And I am quite blunt when I say it, which is extremely rude of me. But if I am being honest, I do not want to lie to people. I'm not feeling happy. It's not making me happy; I simply say it. It's not about me not caring that the other person doesn't have feelings.

It is me saying to the other person, look, this is what I expect, this is what I want, this is what I need to be. And then the person comes to me with their side of it, and then we can sit and talk about it. If I'm still not happy, I prefer to say full stop, no, that's it.

 And I tend to do it (to say yes) the first time, and then the second time I am already saying no but still inclined to give it a second chance. I have learned with time to be brutally honest with people and just say it as it is. Yes, it sounds rude the way I do it. And I'm not telling you to do it like that.

Be kind to people, please. I think I'm just a bit too raw when I say things. It works for me. But then I believe people know that I'm a caring person. I don't mind. I take care of them. If they need me, I'm here. But even that, I have my limits. And when I say no, it's a no. That's it.

Find your balance. Find your balance within yourself, within your space. Find your headspace to think through it, to organise your thoughts, to organise your life, to organise your personal interior life, to organise your physical life around you, to organise your professional life, whatever it is that you need to put in order. And then from that, it will be so much easier for you to understand why the no is so important.

But I hope you understood what I was trying to say. Instead of focusing, I need to learn to say no, let's focus on how I can say, how can I not say yes in a manner that I'm protecting my own energy.

Your energy is more important than anything else. Unfortunately, if we keep saying yes, what does that do to our personal energy? What does that make you feel?

How do you feel throughout the day? How do you feel when you go to bed, are feeling heavy, are you feeling guilty, are you feeling sad?

That is what I'm trying to get to you. That's what I want you to think about.

We know for sure that we need to learn to say no. We know that. That's not the issue.

The issue is how we get there. And the best possible way to get there, in my personal opinion, in Marcia's way, is how can I say this yes, how will I say this yes, and how will I feel after I say this yes. This is Marcia's opinion.