At the end of a long day, or a long week when I’ve shoe-horned as many things in as I possibly can, I often wonder, how did I get in to this?
The easy answer is that I’m busy. But why am I busy? Because there are so many things going on that I want to do. Because there are so many important things in the world that I need (want) to be a part of. Because I want to be able to do it all. Because it’s hard to admit I can’t.
Because I don’t say no.
I find myself in this situation more than I’d like to admit. Then I usually give myself a good talking to, have a come-to-Jesus moment, and cut back a little. That is, until all of the compelling things I want to do start cropping up again.
Then I ran across a blog post by Nadia Bolz-Weber, a sarcastic and irreverent voice of wisdom for my busy day. She writes about The Spiritual Practice of Saying No. She had been answering emails from strangers who reached out to her and finally felt liberated when she decided to answer with a form email saying that she could not respond due to commitments to her family and parish. She had to accept that you cannot manage what other people think of you, and it’s a waste of energy even to try.
She offers a list of different reasons to say no. For some reason, I feel like I need a reason (if not an excuse) to say no. What I really need is to read this list a lot:
“There’s saying no because I’m too busy.
-There’s saying no because I am protecting my schedule from becoming too busy.
-There’s saying no to requests to co-sign on someone else’s bullshit.
-There’s saying no because the request has more to do with a projection than a reality.
-There’s saying no because I want to protect them from their own request being granted (example: no, really, I’m the LAST person you want leading a women’s retreat. Trust me on that.)
-There’s saying no when I really could say yes because I want to be able to be at home doing nothing with my kids.
-There’s saying no because what is being asked of me is simply not mine to do.
-There’s saying no because it will be good to show the other person how to say no.
-There’s saying no so that I can say yes to the next request that might really be mine to do.”
It happens that she also wrote a blog about saying yes, but, funnily enough, it didn’t get nearly as many hits.
Chances are, you need to say no to something, or you will soon. You can use these reasons or come up with your own. Let’s be gentle with ourselves.
And come see Nadia Bolz-Weber in Albany this December.