Battle festive overload by saying no, no, no!

Are you always helping people out? Practise saying one little word and take back control

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4 MIN READ
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Martine drops her six-year-old twins at the school gate and turns to leave for her part-time job as an admin assistant for a private advertising agency. During her lunch break, she will visit her mother in hospital and get some shopping done. After all, it’s the Christmas season and there is a lot to do. She is yet to buy gifts for her loved ones, and she still needs to decorate the tree.

After work, she’ll prepare an evening meal for the family, then she will drive her 13-year-old daughter to hockey. Her days are long and busy, and her weekends are filled with household chores and juggling her children’s diaries, but she can just about fit everything in if she’s organised. At the end of each day she usually has about half an hour to relax with her husband, Thomas, before it’s time for bed.

But just as she starts her car to leave for work, the chairwoman of the school’s Parent Teacher Association heads towards her. Usually, Martine is happy to help raise funds for the school, but right now her spare time is stretched to breaking point.

When she is asked to bake and run the cake stall for the school fair, her heart sinks, but she can’t refuse. After all, her children go there and she doesn’t want to be the only mum who hasn’t done her bit. “My first instinct was to say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it,” says 38-year-old Martine. “The PTA is raising money for the school, not themselves. My oldest daughter went there, and my twin girls still go there. It would have felt selfish not to help them out.

“But after I’d agreed I felt resentful. I went around the supermarket, throwing flour and eggs into my trolley. I felt so put upon.

“I usually love baking but I begrudged every minute I spent stirring, whisking and beating. On the morning of the sale, I was in such a bad mood. I felt like a doormat as other mums came by, all carefree and chatting with their friends. I wished I’d just said no.”

Martine isn’t alone. We all take on things we wish we hadn’t agreed to do. We say yes to please people and then we find we have taken on far too much. By then we feel resentful, but it’s too late to back out.

Shifting boundaries

When this happens at work, at home, in our social lives and even at the school gate, it adds up to a lot of favours. Has saying ‘no’ got harder, or are we all just being Superwoman?

Career coach Jessica Chivers blames what she calls the “always available” culture for so many demands on our time and energy.
“I think there’s a link with the belief that we can do anything, anywhere and all the time,” says Jessica, author of Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work.

“We don’t have the discipline we used to have. Thanks to technology, we can just press a button and we have information at our fingertips. Everything is instantly available. But just because we can do these things for people doesn’t necessarily mean we should do them.

“Our boundaries have changed with the world we now live in. Thirty years ago, if a child asked his parents for new trainers or a new game, they’d be told to wait until Christmas.

“Credit cards have changed all that. A parent may not be able to afford new trainers, but the parent and the child know they have a credit card and it’s no longer taboo to have things we can’t afford. There is a way to get most things these days.”

Jessica also believes we make our lives more complicated than necessary, and she quotes her own PTA experience at a recent Halloween party for children.

“The party started off fairly simple,” she says. “Then someone suggested the children carved their own pumpkins and we had a competition. Soon someone else suggested getting people to do some face-painting and before we knew it, we had a major event taking place.

“What started as a nice low-key event increased in complexity and we had bitten
off far more than we could chew.”

So how can we say no without appearing mean, selfish and unambitious?

Jessica recommends always trying to say a partial yes instead of a downright no.

“If you look at recruitment freezes in most offices or organisations, when someone leaves, they’re not replaced and their work is distributed among the remaining employees,” she says.

“When you’re given extra work, it’s OK to ask your manager which of your normal work they want you to drop so you can focus  on the new work. That way, you’re saying yes to the new work, but you’re not being a pushover.”

At home she recommends we encourage our children to come up with solutions themselves. “Don’t drive teenagers everywhere or give them money time after time for cinema trips,” she says. “Broker a deal instead. Get them to ask their friends’ mums if they will bring them home from the party if you agree to take them there. Or get them to take out the rubbish for a week in return for money for the cinema. If you give everything to someone on a plate, they will think of you as a pushover.”

Coach Sharon Eden says we often say yes to requests because we would feel too guilty if we were to refuse.

“It’s probably an old guilt, which stems from when you were a child,” says Sharon.

She says there will be times when someone close asks us to do something that we don’t fancy, but we’ll agree because we love them.

“That’s fine and sometimes it’s good to do things to make those we love happy,” says Sharon. “But when we say yes to every request that comes in, we’re not doing ourselves any favours at all. Saying yes all the time can damage our self-esteem and send our stress levels sky high.”

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