Say Yes to What Makes Your Heart Sing
And a solid no to things that don’t
“We are defined by the things we reject. And if we reject nothing we essentially have no identity at all.” — Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Saying “no” is something many of us struggle with, myself included. It’s so hard not to feel like we’ll miss out if we say no to social invitations or any opportunity offered to us. This common conundrum is of course widely known as FOMO, the “Fear of Missing Out”. However, if we said “yes” to everything or even most things, we would still effectively being saying no other things anyway, things that would probably be more important to us in reality.
The thing is, we are constantly making choices about what to do with our time. For all of us, some of those choices are made out of sheer necessity, such as needing to earn enough money to make a sufficient living and doing mundane household chores or looking after children, while others are optional, such as what to do on a Saturday morning maybe, or even more difficult, what to make for dinner. The fact is though, we can’t do everything we want to do, at least at the time we might want to do it, i.e. right now. We have responsibilities, work, family, friends, health, and wellbeing to attend to regularly, and what to do with our free time is precious.
