'NO' CAN BE THE MOST CARING WORD!

One of the most enigmatic - and misunderstood - words in our day-to-day vocabulary is ‘No’!

It takes a good amount of healthy self-esteem in our hearts to say ‘No’ to someone with all our good intentions, and also to accept it from someone without feeling hurt or angry. 

If our self-esteem is low, then, saying ‘No’ to someone can be a harrowing experience to us! We worry: “How can I say it, though I want to… He may feel hurt… He may misunderstand me… I may lose the friendship or relationship… I may sound too insensitive and blunt…”

So, we struggle inside our minds; this causes more and more anxiety in the process… It makes us edgy and irritated. Finally, we end up saying ‘Yes’, when we really want to say ‘No’; and, this leaves our minds in more turmoil. Soon, we explode at the slightest provocation!

In the same way, when our self-esteem is low, we find it equally difficult to accept ‘No’ from someone. “How could he say that?”... “How could he be so insensitive?” 

The ‘No’ keeps playing in our heads; we keep hearing it, again and again… It makes us feel rejected, uncared for, even betrayed. In the process, it leaves us either angry or depressed.

In every walk of Life, situations demand us to say “No’ to someone… and accept it, too.

In other words, in every walk of our Life, we need to possess a healthy self-esteem in our hearts.

It is only when we possess a healthy self-regard, that we can really learn to regard another fellow-being. Yes, if alone we care for our own well-being enough, can we care for another human’s… This means, when we do not have a healthy self-regard, we end up caring less for our own well-being and try to fill it by pleasing others.

Saying ‘Yes’ when we really want to say ‘No’ comes from our ‘pleasing’ personality… from our innate desperation to be in others’ good books, always; or from our innate fear of losing them! 

This is like trying to settle down in a bottomless pit!

Thus, if we have to learn to say a well-indented ‘No’ to some one, or if we have to learn to accept a similar ‘No’ from someone, all that we need to do is: we should learn to care enough for our own selves. When we care for ourselves enough, and when we have good intentions towards others, we learn to be assertive in life… We learn to accept others’ assertions, too. 

By saying ‘Yes’ to others 


when we really want to say ‘No’, 


we not only do a lot of harm 


to our own well-being,


 we also, end up doing harm to others’…

Yes, we do. 

“A stitch in time saves nine!”

 

A ‘No’ in time can save ninety times nine!

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Aditi Kamath