Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The Difficulty of Saying "No"





Certainly, nobody wants a “No” answer. Especially when it is coming from the one you care about. Rejection is really difficult to accept. Usually, being the one to be rejected is painful. However, to be the person to reject another person probably hurts more. You know it hurts because we have a natural feeling of compassion to our fellowmen and not necessarily because you have experienced it.  

They say it is better to be the one saying “No” than to be the one who’s being told. It is quite understandable if you don’t choose the latter. After all, no one wants to bear the burden of getting rejected. But you might have overlooked the predicament of the other side of the coin – the difficulty of saying “No”.

Why is it difficult to say such two-letter word in the first place?

The first reason could be because we don’t want to be viewed negatively as we have the human tendency to please other people. We feel good if others think good of us. We don’t want others to think we are harsh or cruel. So as much as possible, we want to avoid refusals that may appear to be ruthless to others.


Second, we simply don’t want the other party get hurt because of our own preferences. If the other party isn’t pleased with your choice of rejecting him or her, he or she is likely to get hurt. And because you are humane enough, wounding someone else’s feeling is not something you’d like to carry to guilt. So you’d rather keep mum and be less evil than release your sour “no”.

The third reason springs from our being mindful of the clichés, “Do not do unto others what you don’t want others do unto you.” and “What you sow is what you will reap.” We certainly do not want to reap the bad consequences of our choice. You are simply fearful of the outcome after you have uttered “no” to something or someone.  The truth is you are afraid that any misdeed you did to a person might also happen to you.

The last reason could be because such expression is not really what you intended to say. It is pretty hard to go against your natural feelings. As much as you want to follow your instinct and say “yes”, but maybe, due to your personal circumstance or reasons, you prefer to say otherwise. There is the agony of depriving yourself of your own freedom to choose and do as you wish. It’s really hard to say what you don’t mean and do what you don’t want.

There might be one or two reasons from the above-mentioned that could be the same as yours or maybe you have your own reasons in mind. The bottom line is there’s always a difficulty in negativity. Any difficulty is burdensome at one point or another. It just so happen that saying “no” is a difficulty. So, all you got to do is to deal with it in a manner that favors you.




 Photo Credits: Google


Published on Sunstar Cebu | January 10, 2014
Also: http://weekend.sunstar.com.ph/blog/2014/01/10/difficulty-saying/

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