How often do you say no to something and then feel guilty for saying no? How often do you begrudgingly say yes to something and then feel annoyed or resentful and go anyway? How miserable is that whole situation? So here’s my decision making tool…I call it the yes/no method of decisions.
Don’t say yes to something if you can’t do it without resentment. Don’t say no to something if you can’t do so without guilt. That’s it. That’s the tool. Or, you can think of it this way; If you are going to say yes, make it a full on, “Hell, yes!” If you are going to say no, make it a clear and absolute no and then move the heck on. Otherwise, you are choosing the worst aspect of either the yes or the no.
If you say yes and you are resentful, you’ve chosen a fairly miserable experience. If you say no but you are guilty, why did you even say no because now you are equally miserable. So in other words, you’ve chosen the worst version of a decision, one that will be unpleasant no matter what. If you say yes because you really want to or you’ve really decided to make the most of something, you’ll enjoy it. If you say no because you really don’t want to and it’s your right to set that boundary, then you will be happy that you said no.
Decisions that feel good and clear are the right decisions for us. When you use this method to decide, you’ll feel good about the decision and you’ll have made it not out of obligation, but rather out of a truly conscious choice. Let me know how you do.
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC