“Learn to say no.
It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.” What a great quote by Charles Haddon
Spurgeon. Though I’ve blogged on
this subject before—how many feel incapable of saying no—I thought it worth another
mention. Learning to say no is one
of the most meaningful lessons a person can learn.
Saying no clearly establishes one’s boundaries. It disallows a person to be taken
advantage of. In addition,
learning how to say no—definitively and right from the start—helps manage
expectations. What do I mean by
that?
There are those who believe it’s kinder to let a person down
easy. So instead of telling them
no right when asked to do something, the person who’s been asked to do
something hems and haws, stalling.
Maybe they hope the other person will forget the request or move on to
other things. In the meantime, the
person who asked is left believing, since they weren’t told no, that there’s a
chance of getting what they want.
Here I must ask.
Is it kinder to string a person along like this? Or is it better to take a definitive
stance by saying no right from the start when asked to do something you’re
either unwilling or unable to do?
The art of successful communication is an art everyone
should invest more time in mastering, myself included. One of the ways we can accomplish this
is by practicing the skill of saying no when appropriate instead of misleading
others or being coerced into doing things we’d rather not or are incapable of
doing.
Just say no.
ReplyDeleteHey Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteExactly! : -)