Saying ‘No’

Hi. My name is Rachael and I am a people-pleaser.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But alone it isn’t enough. People-pleasers need help. Ironically, people-pleasers offer it to others and never call in a favour. They only ask for help when they realise they need it to stop from disappointing someone else.

Magazines have realised that being a people-pleaser isn’t as fashionable as it was in the 50′s. They have enlightened us to the warning signs and written many an article on learning to delegate and say ‘No’.

For a people-pleaser learning to say ‘No’ is tremendously important. It breaks the cycle of overcommiting in order to please everybody and depleating all available energy reserves. Learning to delegate is the opposite side of the same coin and no less important – it is the people pleaser learning to accept assistance.

For me there is a thrid skill that completely revolutionises the life of a people-pleaser. Let me explain. People pleasers like to please others. Yes sometimes this stems from deep insecurities, fear of rejection etc but often it is also the deep desire to serve. Service is one of my 5 guiding values in life, and I can honestly say that if I am not contributing to, supporting and serving my partner, child, family, friends, colleagues and community I feel dissatisfied.

The third revolutionary step then is the art of knowing why you want to say ‘Yes’. Here are some potential reasons you may want to say ‘Yes’ to a request, when all the magazine articles are telling you to say ‘No”:

• You want to be liked/seen as good/considered helpful etc
• You feel an obligation to
• You don’t know how to say ‘No’
• You have already said ‘Yes’ and don’t want to change your mind
• You want recognition
• You will receive a benefit in return
• You feel passionate about contributing
• You are fulfilling a value or goal by saying ‘Yes’

When you are clear on why you want to say ‘Yes’ you are more able to make the best decision and make sure it works for you. For example if you take on a project for recognition make sure you point out that you expect your name on the cover or a written reference or a bullet point on your resume. If you are saying yes out of obligation, is the other person aware that you would expect them to return the favour if the tables were turned? If you are saying ‘yes’ because you feel compelled to contribute – is this the very best way for you to do so?

When I learned to be clear as to why I accepted projects, offered help and generally said ‘Yes’ I found myself being more selective, more clear as to what my contribution would be, asking for benefits in return. In general understanding my needs in the situation helped me to honour myself more. The funny thing is that now that I can say ‘No’ and I am clear on why I say ‘Yes’ I have taken on more without the dissatisfaction and exhaustion of a people-pleaser. Oh, and yes, I am pleasing more people.

Love

In my experience love grows, develops, matures, accepts, embraces & believes. It can blindside you, overwhelm you, surprise you, change you. Love doesn’t judge, blame, hate, attack, defend, suspect, exclude or fear. Love is pure.

We so often mistake our cultural images of a couple ‘in love’ for Love itself. We confuse ourselves believing we can judge and attempt to change the one we love. We expect love and loving behaviour to look a certain way. Some of us even believe old cliches like ‘love is a battlefield’, ‘love is blind’ & love hurts’. Well, it isn’t and it doesn’t.

I don’t know about you but the moments of my life that throb and buzz with real authentic love were certainly not Hollywood glamour image usually recognised as ‘Love’. In my experience love is gritty, uncomfortable, blissful, exhausting, exciting, risky, outrageous, orgasmic and beautiful all at once. I have never managed a moment of real love without tears, sweat or messy hair – but then again maybe I’m doing it wrong.

My moments of real love:

1. Crying in the foetal position, as the realisation dawned on me that only I can take care of me
2. Naked under the sheets and realising that for the first time I had ‘made love’ as opposed to just having sex
3. Getting engaged under a lighthouse, on a cliff, in gale force winds
4. Sweaty and exhausted as I breastfed my baby for the first time (minutes after birth)
5. Unconfortable conversations kicking my partner’s butt for not prioritising his needs
6. Witnessing a girlfriend’s pain, really being there, without dismissing it or trying to cheer her up
7. Handing in my letter of resignation, to follow my heart interstate

Love just is. Love is effortless. Love feels good. Love heals old wounds. Love should never be a currency. Love is not a bargaining chip. Love doesn’t take work. Relationships do.

Relationships take work. Keeping the lines of communication open, being honest  & vulnerable takes work. Creating space in your relationship for love to flow, unimpeded, isn’t easy. But it’s worth it. Love is the easy part. Relationship. the art of sharing love, is a skill.

*Photo credit Agent FareEvader

People pleasing

I like to know that I am exceeding expectations and adding value. I feel good when I know I am doing an outstanding job. I am fulfilled and elated when my efforts positively affect those around me.

In an effort to achieve that I am a dot the ‘I’s crosss the ‘T’s kinda girl. I like to know (preferably beyond a shadow of a doubt) that all possible outcomes can be dealt with. I feel most comfortable when I have assessed need, planned adequately, mitigated risks, sourced logistics and trial run before the big event. Even if that big event is only a first birthday.

The roadblock to my personal bliss is a two-headed monster:

1. There are not enough hours in a day to be an outstanding mother, wife, friend, coach, sister, daughter, writer, teacher, community member, confidant, volunteer, spiritual seeker, student, cook, administrator and organiser.
2. People are fickle. What exceeds expectations today is tomorrow’s disappointment. Today’s effort may be overshadowed by  a crisis or celebration. It is impossible to please all the people all the time.

An attempt to enact my inbuilt inclination to excellence and people pleasing would only ever be a recipe for tears, Prozac and neurosis. So instead I compromised; I pick the events and roles to unleash to obsessive over-achiever in me and with all else I chill out. I’ll tell you a little secret; the areas of my life I have learnt to let go of are the ones I enjoy the most. Excellence come more easily when it comes from the heart and not the head.

Family

I don’t write about family. Not because there is nothing to write about, but out of respect. My largest lessons to date were borne out of familial situations. Now I find myself in, what I consider to be, a generic family quandary. So I think its passable to write about it.

I was a bit of a rebel growing up. I quite enjoyed rocking the boat and had an opinion about everything. Like every teenager in the history of the universe I felt that I could never live up to the picture of me my family held in their minds. It was far too narrow a box to contain my exuberant spirit. Or so I thought.

In reality the box was not narrow at all. I was simply the family member least aware of how my actions affected my kin and the family dynamic. My oblivious state made their (reasonable) expectations seem soul crushing.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. I am painfully aware of how every-body’s actions (or inaction) affects the other family members, individually and collectively. Including my own.

My Challenge: To have compassion for the spirited individual whilst championing and serving the collective.

You can’t have your cake…

‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too.’

The women of my family are almost famous for this phrase. It speaks to, in our case, a genetic disposition for becoming a martyr. It is used as an excuse to not have what you want, to not shower yourself with the gifts and indulgences you deserve, just in case.

It implies that having cake and eating it are mutually exclusive. Which is not necessarily true.

Let us first look at what it means to ‘have’ your cake. Do we honestly imagine we can keep a cake indefinitely? Surely not. This old proverb speaks to delayed gratification and wisely using what you have, not of our cake eating habits. Wisely using resources, be they love, time, money or luxuries, is timeless advice. What I find hard to swallow is the assumption that ‘having’ something precludes us from using it. I firmly believe the only real value in something is in its use and in sharing it.

Let me explain. As a child did you have clothes that you were never allowed to wear? The really pretty dresses that you Mum was afraid you would destroy if she let you wear them ‘around the house’? How many times did you wear said dress before you outgrew them?

How about the beautiful toy that was placed on a shelf only ever to be looked at incase a child were to break the toy amidst the joy of playing with it.

Do you own fine china? (Another of my little obsessions). Why do we insist on drinking our tea out of thick, cheap mugs when we have exquisite china tea cups? Isn’t their value the sensation of pressing the china to your lips and the feel of the delicate handle between your fingers?

Why do we use the informal lounge while the formal lounge, with the plush chairs and air-conditioning, only collects dust? The same goes for the expensive jewellery we never wear, the amazing bath salts we are saving and the gourmet condiments that sit on the shelf and are never opened.

Unless an item is truly irreplaceable, (in which case it probably belongs in a museum) enjoy it. Multiply the joy by sharing it with others. Make yourself feel special by knowing the value of the indulgence. You honour the intention of the object when it is used in this way too.

So if you aren’t eating your cake, I would challenge that is isn’t really yours to begin with. And if you don’t share the cake with others, then you are missing out; by sharing something you create more of it and multiply the joy.

**This piece was first published in the Online Magazine Connect2Mums.com.ning.au

Catching up

Do you feel like you are getting left behind? Like your life is whizzing past faster than you can keep up with? How often do you use the phrase ‘catching up’? We catch up for coffee, catch up on paperwork, catch up with family, catch up on the shows we missed when we were catching up with colleagues for drinks.

The culture of busy-ness and hurrying is a multi-faceted beast. It arises in part out of the information age and the resultant tirade of information and part out of the demise of rites of passage.

The information age, which to 20somethings like myself is the only age we have ever known, bombards us with thousands of media messages each day. This is additional to the work we do, the family responsibilities we have, the Facebook updates and Twitter feeds, the SMSs and calls we get on our mobiles, home lines, work phones and Skype. We do our best to surf the crest of the information (and thus expectation) wave. Some days we go to bed feeling like we failed our loved ones when we declined invitations, left emails unread, status updates unresponded to and messages not returned.

Then we are told, often by coaches like myself, that keeping our head above water isn’t enough. Even if you did accept the invitation, read the emails, respond to the updates and return the messages, did you engage in your world on a meaningful level? Did you connect with loved ones or take calls all the way through dinner? We resolve to do better, but the cycle of bombardment, response and lingering feeling of falling behind is unrelenting. So we try again to ‘catch up’.

In the good ‘ol days there were fewer messages yes, but the days and years were broken up with meaningful rites of passage. Times to celebrate, reflect and connect with those around us; Weddings, Christenings, 21st Birthdays, Sweet Sixteenths, Anniversaries, Kitchen Teas. Yes these events still happen and we mark them with a party but I think they have lost the element of reflection. What once were rites have become invitations and photos we review on Facebook. The wisdom they once held has evaporated.

So if you are tired of running behind your life, catching up here and there only to be overwhelmed again why not try something different. Put away the phones and laptops and have dinner and talk. Have a get together and talk about times past and notice how different you are ‘now’ to ‘then’. Punctuate the merry-go-round with something different. Create memories. Go places. Meet people. Perhaps then the information age ‘pressure’ to connect won’t overwhelm us.

Not just soft

The feminine is not just soft. She is graceful and open, receptive and welcoming, nurturing and loving. But she is also cyclic.

Cyclic nature is a graceful dance of balance and change. The simplest principles are often the hardest to understand. Such is the case here; cycles are grossly misunderstood.

The element of change is easy to see in a cycle; Autumn turns to Winter. Day turns to night. This type of change is so evident that the way the change occurs is overlooked. Cyclic change is predictable, measured & balanced in the truest sense of the word.

Cyclic nature by definition must have opposite extremes and move through these extremes on a regular basis. Like the waves of the ocean; the peak of the wave is only as high as the troughs are deep.

So how does this cyclic force manifest in the feminine nature? Diversely. Yes the feminine is graceful, open, receptive, welcoming, nurturing, and loving. The feminine is also awkward, unavailable, unfriendly, inhospitable, destructive and harsh.

I know many women but I don’t know any who would be happy to be called awkward or harsh. We aspire to the ‘softer’ side of our femininity and spurn the counterbalance. We disown half of our nature and thus forfeit half of our power.

We are led to believe that only the gentler side of our femininity is acceptable and apologise for our moods, our sarcasm, our withdrawal, our scorn and our wildness. We overuse our whisper and gag our screams. If we only use the softer half of our repertoire we belie our depth.

When you next need to scream, don’t bite your tongue. When you want to cry, don’t hide your tears. When you know you have to leave, go. When you need to crash, create for yourself a soft place to fall.

A woman’s strengths is derived from her cycles. All of her cycles. The feminine is not just soft.

Balance

Believe it or not, balance is a naturally occurring state. Something either balances or it doesn’t. It flows or it doesn’t. Making something balanced by brute force will never work, because when the force is gone so is the balance.

If we try to force balance in our lives we are never able to relax. We become exhausted and our forced balance begins to slip. We feel ‘out of balance’ and we go looking for tools, techniques and coaches to teach us how to manhandle things back into a forced balance.

We have all done it. I know I used to. I sense that something was consuming too much energy and pulling me off centre so I would work extra hard, ‘fire myself up’ in the hope of creating more energy or try to prop everything else up.

We feel we are not spending enough time with our friends. It would help to spend a leisurely afternoon and spending quality, restorative and refreshing time with a friend. Instead we over schedule ourselves trying to catch up with everybody in the same weekend. Or we feel like work is taking over our life so we do more overtime believing if we work super-duper-ridiculous hours we will get on top of it. All we end up doing is working more, and finding more work to do. The ‘on top of it’ moment never comes.

So what other choices do we have? We could quiet the noise, cease the busyness and just listen for a moment. Listen to what you really want to do next. You see when we feel off kilter we usually have a deeply hidden desire. Your intuition is whispering the ideal counterbalance. A yearning so simple we most often dismiss it. An unpretentious pleasure, easily achieved. If you tune in & act on the quiet voice the outcome is remarkable; instant balance.

Some of the small indulgences that have saved my sanity in the past include:

1. A pot of peppermint tea
2. Fine dark chocolate
3. A walk along the beach
4. Old movies
5. Reading a great book
6. Journaling
7. A sleep in
8. A day at the Museum
9. A good cry
10. Putting my feet up
11. Singing at the top of my lungs
12. Buying fresh flowers
13. Sitting in the park under a tree
14. Hiding in a secluded café for an hour
15. A weekend away

A girlfriend I caught up with recently named pedicures as one of her balance inducing activities.

None of these are goal orientated activities. In and of themselves they don’t  actually achieve anything. That is the key. You don’t create a balanced environment ripe for producing results by being results focused all the time. You have to play as hard as you work.

My small indulgences create space for me to stop ‘doing’ and just ‘be’. They break the cycle of craziness long enough for me to breathe. After a breath and a moment of real ‘me-ness’ my natural balance bubbles up to the surface and I can move on with more grace.

Now when I feel off balance I take my foot off the gas instead of flooring it.

Life/Work Balance

Why do we insist on referring to a reasonable ratio of work in our lives as ‘Work Life Balance’?

With the research demonstrating that Play is vitally important to our mental and physical (and I would argue spiritual) health, why isn’t anybody talking about ‘Play/Life Balance’? We could just as easily discuss ‘Sleep/Life Balance too with the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation well documented and estimates that our poor sleeping habits cost Australia between $3 and $7 Billion dollars annually. But we don’t discuss these things.

Societally we think that Work is phenomenally more important than rest, play, health, sleep and in some cases even family. The phrase ‘Work/Life Balance’ really says it all. At best work is as important as the sum total of our lives outside of work. At worst it is more important than the sum total of our life outside work. We even put work first in the phrase, which in the English language denotes priority and importance. I have nothing against successful careers & ambition. I just question whether tunnel visioned focus on career doesn’t negatively impact the mind, body and network of the worker. I can’t see the joy of a fantastic career in a failing body, a miserable mind and scarcity of loved ones to share it with.

How did we get ourselves so far off track? Do we really think that on our death beds (which will arrive a whole lot quicker if we continue to worship work as we currently do) that we will smile happily that we were a CEO, worked outrageous hours of overtime and made sacrifices for our work? Or are we more likely to lament missed opportunities for walks along the beach, adventures unlived and not having said ‘i love you’ more often?

With the recession forcing our society to reassess past practices we are seeing people re-ordering priorities, re-evaluating career aspirations and making headway on achieving their dreams. Are we beginning, en mass, to realise that our legacy could be more than a high salary and positive performance reviews?