……..so following along with my last post (for context if you haven’t already, read my previous post, Exorcism….Is It Right For You?) addressing our yes’s and no’s. Today we take a deeper dive. Know your why behind your response. Again, we can be so reflexive with our responses that we haven’t pondered if it is even a) doable; b) a good, ‘yes’, or a good, ‘no’ based on appropriate motivation and capacity to execute the task; c) what do I have to give up to follow through with my, ‘yes’ and is that a good thing to sacrifice? Not all things that suffer as a consequence of our, ‘yes’s’ are good things to shelve.
Looking in the rearview mirror at past yes’s and no’s, realizing that you may have said, ‘yes’ a lot for the wrong reasons, maybe even recently, maybe even you are carrying out the tasks attached to your most recent, ‘yes’ and you are grumbling audibly or sub-audibly; what do you do with that? We start by owning our yes’s and no’s. Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’, ‘no’. Matthew 5:37. We don’t want to be double-minded functionally or emotionally. I see the fruit of being true to our word functionally. If I say I am going to do something and consistently follow through with my ‘yes’, people come to depend on my word. That’s an awesome character trait, we become a person of our word. But what if I follow through consistently but with an unhappy, silently grumbling heart, shoving down resentment towards the person who asked? Do that enough times and we become bitter people with chronic illnesses by not addressing the inner friction. There are plenty of studies that link bitterness, stress and anxiety with cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune issues, etc. If we listen closely enough, and pay attention, we hear ourselves conversing with others and will hear phrases like, ‘I have to x, y, z.’ Or, ‘I had to’. Or, ‘I had no choice’. Understand that if it hasn’t already, this will become a pattern of thinking, a pattern of thought that sets up an unboundaried, chaotic life. It denies the fact that we always have choice. The truth is, we always have choice. There are always consequences for our choices for good or for bad. Sometimes our choices are between two really hard things. Not to be crude, but I will be. Sometimes our choices are between a crap sandwich and a crap sandwich, but we always have choice.
I remember the first time I said a really hard, but necessary, ‘no’. I didn’t want to say ‘no’, but it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to say, ‘no’, because fundamentally and authentically I enjoy serving others, helping out, and saying. ‘yes’. But this was a ‘no’ that had to happen for all the right reasons. Complicating things, at the same time, I also didn’t want to say, ‘no’ because I was afraid of what my ‘no’ would mean relationally. Would friends be disappointed in me? Would I lose relationship? I remember really being in anguish over my ‘no’. It was an unfamiliar muscle to exercise. Just as awkward as doing a biceps curl with a 35lb dumbbell would be to me, given my current fitness level (we won’t go there), I was clumsy, and if I can be totally honest, I felt nauseous, my blood ran cold at the thought of people being disappointed in me. I thought I might wake up in hell the next morning. It was an awful feeling and the very best, necessary thing I could have done. I exercised that muscle and woke up the next morning this side of the dirt, my heart was still beating and my lungs were still drawing breath and I lived through it. I didn’t wake up in hell. Greater still, that was a positive reinforcement that I could actually say a loving, ‘I’d love to but no,’ and live through it. I’ve been able to say no on multiple occasions since then and have developed my ‘no’ muscle.
In summary, you want to know your why behind your ‘yes’s’ and ‘no’s’. Let your ‘yes’ be a ‘yes’. You could and should carry out your ‘yes’ with a happy heart-let it be an authentic ‘yes’ and be ok with your occasional ‘no’. If your ‘no’ is for all the right reasons, let the person you fear being disappointed own their own emotion. That’s in their backyard. They get to choose how they will respond and feel.