Learning to Say No

There are a lot of little things in our daily lives that we could easily do without. Sometimes it's just a matter of learning how to say no. If you're anything like me, I try to please everyone around me. So much so that sometimes I forget to think about myself and my own responsibilities. If someone asks me a favor, I would likely drop whatever I'm doing to help them (or at least finish what I'm doing and then help them as soon as possible). If someone chats me on Facebook, I don't have the heart to tell them I was just about to log off, and so I keep up the conversation, using the same amount of energy to keep up the conversation as if they had chatted me when I had an hour of free time. "Hey, what's up? Good to see you too! I know, lol... *insert comments about random things that come to mind to keep the conversation flowing*"

So yeah. Learning to say no to certain things can be really helpful. And I'm not talking about saying no to drugs or the thing we learned in D.A.R.E. to say no to peer pressure (though seriously, say NO to drugs!! =].) It's smaller than that, and I find it's mostly self-pressure. For me, it's the pressure that if I say no, someone will be hurt or think less of me. But in actuality, that's not true at all. "Hey, do you want to go see a movie at noon today?" If I were faced with that from a friend and I ended up saying no, that friend might be a little bit disappointed, but they would probably still end up having a great time with some other friends. Same thing with the friend chatting with me on Facebook. If only I could say something like "Oops, I'm really sorry *name*, but I was about to log off. Catch you some other time?" then it would all be fine. I could get to doing what's important to me, and the friend will soon forget that tiny bit of rudeness.

I guess it's hardest to say no to your friends. (I was about to say that it is actually hardest to say no to yourself. But then I realized that's just self-control, which is a whole other topic =P) While sometimes saying no to your siblings lead to squabbles and conflicts, chances are they've lived around you enough to understand the reasons behind you saying no. With friends, they are mostly left guessing whether you said no because you don't want to talk to them, or if you really have something more urgent to do. So be a good friend and learn to say no, but explain why- are you really short on time? Money? Or you do you just need a break to be alone for a bit? I find the really good friends will respect that and like you more for it.