Being able to say no honestly and courteously is key in this world. If you can't say no, who is to trust you when you say yes? How are you gonna follow your own vision if you let others guide you? How do you not end up being abused and used by others until you learn how to say no? It is one of the most basic skills people should have, and yet they will not teach this to us in school. (?!?) Parents often don't teach it to their children, for fear it would make them harder to govern. (!) It's the simplest thing, and yet many of us go through our whole lives without learning it.
The culture as a whole prefers to have us be sheep, easily herded like cattle. The world around us will have us think that we are supposed to be nice, and to make nice with everyone. Not so. We are supposed to make nice with ourselves. And in that process, we end up making nice with others. Or not. Who cares? We are allowed to choose who we wanna be, and who we want to spend time with. Life is limited, spend it wisely.
I had many opportunities this week to say no. Some of them, I mastered. But in one particular case I fucked up and now have to salvage the situation. What I learned, is that it's better to draw the lines straight away, in order to not create confusion. Clear boundaries are a beautiful thing! And mistakes are opportunities for learning...
But clear boundaries can also limit the experience. If we approach life through the eyes of someone who wants to choose the size of the frame before he knows the shape of the picture, how can we truly create art worth mounting?
ReplyDelete~Kat Kiddles
Yes you must always be true to yourself no matter what the situation. I tought myself to say no after living in Japan. I would always say yes to everyone there and find myself in some very uncomfortable settings at times. So I learned how to say "Yes, but no or "Yes but not now." This has been very effective.
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