The Year of No

I don't believe in new year's resolutions. I think that it sets an arbitrary value and not an intention, which then becomes too easy to become consumed by. If you say you're going to go to the gym everyday and you wake up January 2nd with food poisoning, you feel like you've just binned off the whole thing.

I believe in themes.

Sometimes they're for a year, sometimes they're for multiple years, sometimes they're just for a couple of months. You control them and they act as a North Star instead of a metric.

Yes, this all comes from Cortex and yes I've bought their notebook. In fact, I might have an unused first edition in a drawer somewhere.

The Year of No

I'm a yes person. I always have been.

On one hand, it's how I've accomplished things and built relationships. I owe a lot of who I am and where I am to saying "yes" to things. Even if I didn't want to (or think I could) do them.

Eventually, you say yes to too many things.

You spend months going seven days a week trying to figure out where you are and where you've been. Things slip, relationships changes, and you don't have an account of where you've been.

In those same months you've made impacts, learned things, and opened new doors.

It's a lot of balance, but across the board it is too much.

So this is the year I say "no" more often.

It's Nothing Personal

It's taken years in therapy to learn that it's okay to say no to people and if they take it personally, that's on them.

It will take me more years to stop thinking about it.

That's what this year is about. Learning to set boundaries on what I want to and don't want to do, where I want to and don't want to go, and who I want to and don't want to be around. The whole time not worrying (too much) about if someone or something is going to take that boundary personal.

Including the Guilt

I have a propensity to feel guilty for saying no. There has constantly been a balance struck between does doing this thing feel worse than the guilt of saying no. There was no balance and you'd be amazed at the lengths you will go to not feel guilt.

Part of this theme is working my way through handling that guilt and realize that it's not really guilt at all. It's setting space and boundaries for myself. Which isn't something to feel guilty for.

The Privilege of Saying No

We don't often think about the amount of privilege it takes to say "no" to anything.

People on the internet will brag to no end about their flip phone or their off-grid cabin not realizing that if you didn't have wealth and influence, people would just call you poor.

I am aware that I, at least right now, have the ability to say "no" to things. I don't pretend otherwise.