Learning to say NO

Personally I have always had a hard time saying no, and it was simply because I was not clear about my priorities, and I let myself be fooled and distracted by the emergencies that without realizing it, took me away day by day from my objectives.

Priorities are our firm point in the day to day, for a mother, her children; for a student, to prepare the exam and go to classes; for a worker, to deliver his report on time, and so on.... 

Priorities are the daily tasks we need to do to achieve a specific goal, for a mother, that her children are healthy and attend school; for a student, to finish his degree; for a worker, to do his job well and collaborate with the progress of the company. 

It may happen that sometimes we are not clear about our priorities, and we allow ourselves to be distracted by emergencies, which are those distractions that take our focus away from our objectives and we end up wasting time.

An example of an emergency is checking cell phone notifications, a call from a friend you saw the day before, watching too much TV or currently watching Netflix, going out with friends every time they call you, and many more. 

Those emergencies are distractions that take us away from our priorities and if we don't know how to say no, we will be further and further away from achieving that goal.

As Fabio Rosini says in his book The Art of Starting Over: "He who neglects his own priorities to get caught up in emergencies is a fool. Whoever gets rid of emergencies to remain faithful to his priorities, is a wise man."

Whoever remains faithful to his priorities is true to himself and recognizes that he has an identity, is the one who knows when to say yes and when to say no. 

For this reason it is important to know what are our objectives, our values and principles, which will lead us to understand and assume which are those daily tasks, which are our priorities, which will lead us to the main goal. 

If we do not have our feet firmly planted on our priorities, we will live from distraction to distraction, from interruption to interruption, and we will not achieve anything.

Nowadays it is a challenge not to be distracted, we are constantly bombarded by notifications and external stimuli that make noise inside and do not let us focus on what really matters. 

Saying no to emergencies implies denial, perhaps it is a painful act because we are denying ourselves a pleasure, but if we do not make an effort, if we do not work on the character of saying no, it will be more and more difficult to say no and we will not leave room for what really matters.