The Lost Art of Saying No

Are you saying yes to things that move forward your goals or slow down your progress?

Saying ‘yes’ to one thing means saying ‘no’ to another. That’s why decisions can be hard sometimes.

Sean Covey

Unlike previous generations, we are often held back not by the lack of options, but by the near endless matrix of possibilities and choices we are posed with each day.

It can be easy to succumb to decision fatigue, and to allow our choices to be outsourced — often to our detriment. When we choose to relinquish our role as an active decision maker, and begin to live by default rather than design, we may as well be playing the lottery or rolling dice. The odds are against us.

Look around you, take stock of your life. Look in the mirror, do you like what you see? What you see is the accumulated product of many decisions, and my question to you is, “were they yours?”

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Jim Rohn

As you begin your day, refresh your intention before opening your phone to check emails or social media. Before you say yes to anyone or anything else, consider whether you are saying yes to yourself, and what you would be saying no to.

Most importantly, put some time and effort into determining what you want from life. Where do you want. to go? What do you want to do? If you don’t know where you want to go, well, any direction will do.

Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. Less but better.

Who do you want to become? What do you need to do to make that happen? Are you doing it? If not, why?

When we know where we are going, or at least the general direction, it becomes easier to determine what to say yes to. As well as when it’s appropriate to gracefully decline an opportunity. No matter how fabulous an opportunity is, it may or may not be the right opportunity for us. It’s possible that it’s a distraction.

How do we know whether an opportunity is right for us?

Every opportunity has a cost, is it worth it to you? We all have 24 hours in a day, no more or less. If we add something in, we will likely need to remove something else. Can you afford it?

In this case, money is the least of my concerns, often we trade much more valuable things for those of significantly lesser value. So long as we’re alive there’s a chance we can earn more money, but our time, health, wellbeing, relationships… these things are not so simple to recover.

But what if I told you that you could trade low value activities for high value ones? I know it sounds overly simple, but how often do you see this put into practice?

Small choices become actions, actions become habits, and habits become our way of life.

In this video we can see how a few simple choices led to significantly different outcomes over time. We can trade chips and Netflix sessions for apples and a walk around the block or a trip to the gym. We could trade scrolling our news feed for reading books to increase our skills. Depending on what we want from life, certain choices will be better and others will be worse.

Next time you feel like saying yes to something, ask yourself what you will be saying no to.