I just kept turning up

Hello, you.

How do you know when to say no, and when to say yes?

You can be saying yes too much and not realise it until you’re overloaded, or lost. Or you can be saying yes without realising there’s a choice.

I experienced it in one of my first jobs. I enjoyed the people I worked with, just not the job. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, and I wasn’t sure I was doing anything of value. Each day was much the same. No one would have noticed if I did it or someone else did. Nothing was challenging, nothing was new. There was an absence of anything, really. It was a way to earn some money.

None of this made me quit. I just kept turning up. No one thanked me, and before long I was feeling lost, and I didn’t know why.

I was doing what I was told or expected, I had no autonomy to make any decisions of my own. So I just kept saying yes without realising, and without realising what I was saying no to. All the other things I could have been doing with my time. The experiences I could have been having. With nothing to point at, I had nothing to help me see where I was.

I didn’t know the words then. I may have had them in my mind somewhere. The No Fear posters on my bedroom wall at the time. Wanting to help people. The FOMO about a fun time had without me. I just hadn’t given them words.

That came much later. I found something that interested me, marketing, and in particular consumer behaviour, which then led me to find out about the world of psychology and organisational development, and that helped me find the words. There are four words I try to live by now. Courageous, wise, kind, funny.

But there’s a trap waiting in them. Doing anything could tick one of those boxes. Wanting to help people ticks the kind box, yet it still makes me susceptible to doing what others ask and saying yes to more than I should. So does the FOMO.

So how do you know? It comes from understanding why you are saying yes or no to something, and you can start asking that at any point.

If you don’t know the things that matter most to you, you can’t select them with accuracy, and you can become a passenger in someone else’s plans. If you do know (for me, it’s these four words), you can use them to understand whether it’s your decision or your indecision directing you.

If I’m doing something I don’t want to, the question is: why don’t I want to do it? If the answer is that it doesn’t align with my values, then that is a good decision to not do it.

Or am I not wanting to do it because I’m scared of the opportunity? If I’m the type of person who values courage, should that be the reason not to do it? And fear doesn’t only say no. FOMO is a fear too, and it says yes.

Even when you don’t know why you’re saying yes, there’s a question you can ask.

For what reason and for whom?

A decision comes from knowing what matters and who it matters to. It could be you, or it could be someone else. If everybody only accepted requests that met their own needs, there’d be no give and take. And sometimes the question is whether you had a choice at all.

In that job, I couldn’t have told you when to say no, and when to say yes, because I wasn’t asking, I had unknowingly outsourced the decision-making to others. I just kept turning up, with nothing to point at.

Asking won’t sort it on its own. But it gives you something to point at, which is more than I had. Go slow.

One thing to try this week. The next time you’re turning up to something, ask yourself why you’re there and who it’s for. Just that. You do not have to change your answer.

Your turn.

Who was your last yes really for?

And if that turns over something heavier than a line will hold, it needs someone better qualified than me. That’s not me ducking it. Samaritans are on 116 123, free, any hour. You don’t have to tell them your name.