Always Saying “yes” To Others Often Leads To Saying “no” To Ourselves

How many times have you happened to do something you didn’t want to do, just for fear of the opinion of others?

Being collaborative, helping from time to time or doing a favor is good, as long as it comes spontaneously and you feel like it.

If we never put into practice the saying “ today for you and tomorrow for me ”, social relations would be very deteriorated; as always in life, balance is essential and everything has a limit.

The problem is that, at times, you exaggerate, and you end up saying yes to everything that others ask, propose or even impose on you. That is precisely the moment when you lose yourself, as you put aside your personal desires and criteria.

In reality, this behavior occurs out of fear of rejection, lack of approval or consent from others.

Assertiveness leads you to respect yourself

Of course, being welcomed and not rejected is a desirable and pleasant thing. If the group had rejected us in the time of the caves, we would most likely have been devoured by the beasts.

Approval, therefore, has a kind of evolutionary advantage that has remained registered within us and that makes us act in a way that is no longer useful to us today. To free ourselves from this attitude, we must practice assertiveness.

Assertiveness is the ability to express our rights, opinions and wishes directly and consistently, without infringing the rights of others.

Learning to say no is essential to stop disrespecting ourselves.

It is true that, at times, it can be difficult for us to answer “no” to someone who is asking us something, but it is only because of the absurd idea of ​​constantly having to please everyone. This is an idealistic concept, as it is impossible to please everyone and it is something we don’t even need.

If someone gets mad at you because you said no, the problem is theirs and not yours, since you just followed your criteria. Also, just as you have the right to say no, the other person has a right to be angry and you have to accept it.

“A well-styled no is sometimes tastier than a badly seasoned yes.”

Often you tolerate certain behaviors from others or act counterproductive for fear that they will get angry, because you would consider it a terrible and unbearable fact, therefore, you end up getting angry, and all out of fear.

You have to be brave

It is good to be brave and say what you think or feel, otherwise your pot will overflow and you will become aggressive with others, which will lead them to distance themselves from you. You will fear rejection so much that you will end up getting it.

In psychology, there are assertive techniques that, if practiced for long enough, will integrate into your habitual behavior and make you feel better about yourself and others.

One of the techniques used to learn how to say “no” is the stuck disk . It consists in repeating what you think, without getting carried away by the verbal manipulation of the interlocutor.

If, for example, you do not want to lend your car to a friend who has asked for it as a favor, you must be persistent in telling him that you are sorry and that you understand that he needs the vehicle, but that you do not intend to lend it to him or to him. to anyone else. What you can do is offer him alternatives and cooperate with his request.

It is very important that this occurs with consistent non-verbal language: you must be sure of yourself, direct, clear and look each other in the eye, because there is nothing to fear. His refusal will not kill you.

The other person will try to give you reasons why he needs the car so badly and to convince you that he will be careful. However, you don’t have to give in if your desire is not to lend the car. Eventually, after you have repeated your idea for a long time, your interlocutor will get bored and stop insisting.

Perhaps now you are thinking: “But isn’t this behavior too selfish?”. The answer is no. You must not confuse things: helping and collaborating is good, but losing your freedom is not.

From an early age, they taught us that we must please others at almost any price and that we must say yes, even if in reality we want to say no, because otherwise “who knows what others will think…”.

You must be clear that what others believe are just thoughts, not axioms. As we said before, everyone is free to think what they want and we don’t have the power to control it. We must accept that our “no” can have consequences: it is the price for freedom.