You’ve heard it before, right?  That “No” is a complete sentence?  No?  Well it is?!  Sorry, couldn’t pass up an opportunity for a pun…but seriously. A long time friend and I were chatting over coffee about similar situations that we have found ourselves in where once again we have walked over the edge of our own boundaries and said, “Yes” to some situations where probably what we needed to say was, “sounds really nice, can I think about this and get back to you” or better yet just said, “no”.

I think if I polled my guy and girl friends that my guy friends would predominately fall into the category of being able to say, “no” with less effort and more often as needed where as my girl friends probably find it much harder to say “no” and say “yes” a lot more times than they’d prefer.  The result would be that then some of them might find themselves doing that passive aggressive thing where they don’t show up for a commitment that they said yes to because they really didn’t want to do it in the first place. Yucky, I know but many of us have done this.

I went to a psychiatrist for several years who looked like a character straight out of a Woody Allen movie,  or at least like she was transplanted into Austin straight from Manhattan, complete with a New York accent and all.  All that was missing for her ensemble to be complete was a cigarette in a holder a la Ms. Hepburn and she would have been perfect for the part (I don’t know why my imagination always throws in that accessory for her but it does). Anyway, this psychiatrist used to tell me when I quizzed her about setting boundaries that “you’ll know when you’re setting an appropriate boundary because it will probably make you feel uncomfortable”. And it’s so true, often times we don’t set boundaries and we yes ourselves practically out of existence because the pain of feeling guilty for saying no outweighs the pain of over extending ourselves.

I’m going to be saying “no” to a whole lot more things from now on so that I can be saying “yes” to a whole lot more things that I really want to be saying yes to, right?  It’s a choice, it’s always a choice about how I want to spend my time and energy and it’s about fully climbing into my body and being here now in my life and paying attention to what I’m doing with my time and energy.  I suspect saying no to more things that I really don’t want to do so that I can say yes to more things that I want to do will act as a kind of inoculation against any premeditated resentments in the future.  Just a thought.

What do you really want to say, “yes” to today?  What are you allowing to get between you and that yes?