Saying This One Word Will Make You Happier
“If you don’t prioritise your life, someone else will”
Have you ever found yourself agreeing to do something you don’t want to do? Spending time with people you don’t really like? Taking on more than you can manage? Doing what other people want, rather than what you want?
Nearly all of us will answer yes to nearly all of those questions. That is because we are not essentialists. We live our lives on default mode, responding to other people’s wishes and demands, rather than diligently pursuing what is important to us.
Several months ago, I read a book that has had a profound and lasting effect on my life. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown has one simple but fundamental lesson: do less but better.
In other words, learn how to say the one word that will make you happier: NO.
Most of us are terrible at saying no and I think there are two main reasons for this:
- We live in a culture of “more.” Our society rewards us for saying yes. Yes to more work, more belongings, more obligations. Nobody encourages us to stop for a moment and think about the value of all the things we are saying yes to, whether they will make us happy in the long run.
- We are passive not active. The vast majority of people do not take control over their own lives. Most of us exist in a “reactive” mode, simply responding to what happens to us rather than thoughtfully steering our lives down a chosen path. We don’t make active choices about who and what we want in our lives.
You might be able to do more than one thing at a time (especially if you’re a woman 😉 ), but nobody can concentrate on more than one thing at a time. This means that most of us spend our time rushing around, saying yes to everything, but doing nothing well (and not to mention feeling highly stressed as a result).
Our lives are short and precious, yet we are not giving them the respect we deserve. We are not thinking about what we want to achieve, create, contribute. We are just bouncing blindly from one thing to the next. We need to take back control and strip everything from our lives except the essential.
How? Let me show you…
Audit your friends
Now, this is where you’re going to think I sound harsh, but bear with me.
I think that we could all benefit from doing an audit on the people in our lives by asking one simple question about each person: “what value do they bring to me?”
I know this might seem ruthless and even selfish. However, if you think about it, what is the point in spending time with someone who brings no value, who doesn’t improve your life?
Of course, “adding value” doesn’t mean that someone is always fun and exciting to be around. There might be occasions when a friend is having a difficult time and it is upsetting and draining to be around them. However, this audit is about the long term. You need to consider whether, over the course of your relationship which each person, their impact on your life is positive, negative or neutral. If the conclusion is anything other than positive, then ask yourself why this person is in your life.
Most of us have one or two “negative” people in our lives and we probably know who they are before we begin the audit. However, the really interesting category is the “neutral” people, because they can be much harder to identify. These people are not bad in any way, in fact they are probably easy company and fun to be around. However, if you’re really honest, you probably don’t have that much in common with them, you probably don’t have deep conversations with them, you probably don’t admire and respect them.
Quality counts far more than quantity when it comes to relationships. It is much better to have a a few “positive” friends than lots of “neutral” friends. It has been said that we are the product of the five people we spend the most time with. We are so influenced by the people around us, yet we rarely take care in selecting who those people are. Take a look at the five people you spent most time with and ask yourself if you want to be like them. If not, change who those five people are.
Set boundaries at work
Work is probably the area where people are most afraid to say no. In today’s tough working world, we are terrified that saying no will lead to a bad review, a lost promotion, even being “let go”.
Yet work is the area where we need to say no the most. In recent years, work has bled more and more into employees’ personal lives. Greg McKeown makes an excellent point when he says that employers wouldn’t want employees bringing their kids to work during the working day, but they expect employees to work at weekends and evenings. There has been a loss of respect for free time.
The only solution to this issue is to create boundaries. If you don’t, and you continue to say yes to everything, someone else will create your boundaries for you and it’s more than likely that those boundaries will be set far beyond what you’re willing to give.
It’s hard to say no to your boss, because the fear of losing your job looms overhead. However, if you don’t push back then you will risk losing the other parts of your life.
Here are a few ideas for saying no at work:
- Be clear from the beginning about what you are prepared to do. If you start off by staying late and replying to emails at all hours, colleagues will expect you to always be available and it will be hard to re-draw boundaries later on.
- If you’re really busy and someone asks you to take on an additional task, ask what you should deprioritise in order to fulfil the task. This will make them realise that asking you to do one task comes at the price of another task.
- Set an email bounceback that tells people you only check emails twice a day and will respond later. This manages expectations about response times and avoids you constantly being distracted by email notifications. If it’s an emergency they will call you!
Decide what you really want to do
Most of us don’t plan our free time. We don’t think about what we enjoy doing, what makes us happy, what we want to achieve. We just end up rushing around, doing things either out of obligation or by default.
Obligation
We all hate disappointing people. We have evolved as social animals and, for our ancestors, being well-liked was crucial to survival. This need for social approval means that we end up agreeing to do all sorts of things we don’t really want to do, just because we’re afraid of upsetting people by saying no.
So how do we manage this situation? How to we avoid saying yes to things just because we’re scared of causing offence? Well, the answer is simple, but not easy: say no, clearly and politely, right from the beginning. Tell the person that unfortunately you cannot come along because you are spending time on other projects. Do not say yes, then agonise about it for weeks and eventually come up with a lame excuse and drop out at the last minute!
Default
We often end up doing things other people want to do, rather than what we want to do. Our friends like doing certain things, so we just sort of go along with it. This is especially true if we don’t have any clear passions or goals. We have nothing to push us in a clear direction, so we get pulled around by everyone else.
I think it is really important to ask yourself what you really want to do with your life. Take some time to think about what you enjoy doing, what you want to get better at, what you want to achieve. Explore your options and try things out. Then make your decision and cut out everything else. Once you have a clear path, it will be much easier to say no to distractions.
To sum up….
- Society encourages us to say yes, to want more, but actually we need less but better;
- Do an audit of the people in your life and decide who brings value to your life, who motivates and inspires you;
- Practise setting boundaries at work;
Don’t let obligations or inertia dictate how you spend your free time. Decide on the things that are most important in your life and focus on them to the exclusion of everything else.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver
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Originally published at ontheroadtohappiness.org on January 6, 2019.
