New Year, New NO
Figuring out what we need to say no to is better than trying to make ourselves change to meet unrealistic ideals.
We’re ten days into the new year, and after the worst jet lag I’ve ever experienced following our return from Thailand, I finally had a full night’s sleep last night. Hallelujah! I finally feel like I can string a post together!
Of course, with it being the start of the year, there’s a lot of talk about change, resolutions, plans, and how much we love or hate these. If you made any, how are yours going? Although, like many of us, I almost automatically start thinking about plans and change as we move into a new year, I’ve learned that I need to let these simmer for a bit and then see what’s still lingering and feeling good for me in February/March and beyond.
I’ve always been a tad baffled by New Year’s resolutions. The older I get, the more I realise that a part of me rebels at this notion that the herd must be gathered and made to do something at the same time and that we’re supposed to collectively lose our minds over making it happen or appearing seemingly successful at it. And, let’s be real, often it’s commercial motivations that drive this, not authentic desire. We, humans, are programmed to stress ourselves out over certain days or periods in the calendar so that lots of companies financially benefit from it.
Now, let’s be clear: I do think that resolutions and desire for change have their place. I can even see the value for some people of feeling motivated to make change because they’re part of a bigger collective.
What I always have a problem with, no matter the time of year, is doing things from a place of programming instead of preference.
Programming is the conscious and unconscious messages you’ve internalised throughout your life. It’s the rules, shoulds, obligations, stories, fears, and judgements—your emotional baggage—that underpin your conditioning that drives your identity and how you think you’re supposed to show up in the world. A happy person is or does this… To be successful, I have to be, do and have… Oh-oh, I’ve got to avoid this… People like me do things like this. Not having a Valentine means X about me.
Remember earlier when I said I automatically think about change and plans at this time of year? That’s programming. Another example: From age 37/38, I started experiencing anxiety about my fertility and whether to have another child, not because this was an active, conscious consideration and desire but because of what I’d internalised primarily through the media about being a woman in my late thirties.
Preference, on the other hand, is your values, your preferences, principles and priorities for living your life happily and authentically. The core ones represent your character (who you are even when no one’s watching) and direction (what matters to you, which also shapes where you go in life). These feed each other because one drives the other. Secondary ones are about the look and feel of things. Personality, taste, interests, passions, hobbies—basically, anything that doesn’t require your character [for you to be interested in or portray it]. I’ve probably said this thousands of times over the years, but there are criminal masterminds and serial killers with similar tastes and interests as you. Don’t get things twisted! Anyway, I digress!
Preference is ultimately about knowing what to say no to so that you also know where you need and want to say yes. New Year, New You? Nah, it's more like New Year, New NO.
Yes and no aren’t separate from each other. Where you say yes, you say no to something else and vice versa. In my book The Joy of Saying No, I explain, “Think of yes and no like the heart and lungs, which work closely together to pump oxygen-rich blood around the body. It’s not a case of using one or the other; when one organ is compromised, it affects not only the other but also how the entire body functions.”
Preference in the context of change, including resolutions, means, for instance, based on who I am, I can make change at any time of year. While collective chatter about resolutions might help crystallise my thoughts on a particular aspect of my life and sometimes help get me in motion, my desire for change has to come from a place of love, care, trust and respect for myself, not fear or compliance. It needs to come from understanding, not from criticism or trying to make myself worthy and good enough.
Now, that’s how I roll; it’s vital to start discerning how you operate. Embrace who you are and how you operate instead of shaming yourself. Then, at least, when you endeavour to make changes, you’ll work with, not against, yourself.
What did 2023 (and previous years) teach you about where you need and want to say no but also where you want to say yes?
As I shared a few weeks back, 2023 was the year of Low Energy Nat. Exercise was minimal. I still did my few minutes of sun salutations most mornings and, of course, walked Chester, but not much more than that.
I’m tentatively ready to do a bit more exercise. Rather than go at things like gangbusters and then run out of steam quickly, I’ve signed up for a six-week program aimed mainly at 40+ women that starts in a few weeks. It’s a short-term commitment that will help me feel out where I’m really lsat with exercise and my body. I’ll also have to leave the house for the sessions, which makes me more likely to do it. My Peloton, which my husband now rides most days, testifies to this.
I don’t have any lofty goals. Instead, I’m motivated by a guiding question in my life:
How do I want to feel and continue feeling?
Knowing how I want to feel helps me recognise what’s for me… and what isn’t. When I feel less of how I want to feel, it’s a call for me to figure out my no(s).
Odds are, you don’t want to keep experiencing what I call the people-pleaser feelings: anxiety, resentment, frustration, overwhelm, overloaded, helpless, powerless, and low. Use awareness of these feelings as notifications about where you can say no. They’re signs you’re doing things not because you want to but because you think you should. Or you’re behaving like you have no choice or demanding too much of yourself.
You know I love a nana bedtime and being more slowed down instead of efforting my way through life, and I also want to feel a bit more energetic in my body. I also want to feel energised in other ways though.
This is where noticing comparison and envy are useful.
Sure, maybe you’ve compared yourself to someone on Insta or wherever and felt away about your life not matching theirs. Try to home in on what it is about their life that speaks to something in you. You probably don’t want their life; you likely want something about the way you imagine their life feels. But there are numerous ways to experience that feeling without, for instance, moving halfway across the world, getting the same job/partner/house/setup as [the person you’re envying], or committing to an exercise plan that you know you’ll abandon next week.
If anything, notice where that feeling you desire shows up in your life. Try to identify opportunities to move toward that feeling.
When I think of where I’ve felt a pang of something, it’s, for example, when I see people out on runs. I loved running when I got into it in 2018, but I overdid it (I trained from scratch and ran a marathon in four months, followed by injury). Whether I run or try out this strength training I’ll be doing as part of this upcoming program, I want to enjoy exploring what my body can do gently.
I do look at what others are doing work wise, particularly in the creative space. It’s so easy to carve at yourself with comparison or to feel shame and despair if you keep riding these trains of thought. What, however, I’ve realised from sometimes comparing myself to others and, in the past, making myself pursue certain things is, sure, I want to experience more joy with my work. But actually, it’s that I want to really lean into my roots and do my own thing, not the herd thing. There’s a part of me that’s envied their figuring out (or at least appearing to) doing things their way and feeling good about it. I’ve envied the freedom I’ve sometimes forgotten I have and that I value dearly. That’s what’s underneath these feelings.
Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of things I’ve made and shared over the last several years that give me pride and pleasure. The truth is, though, I’ve sometimes struggled with the process, the machinations of ‘business’ and sometimes pursued things that, with the benefit of hindsight, I see reflected programming, not preference. These pursuits made me feel like the outsider teenager again who couldn’t quite figure out how to blend in and be like everyone else and felt like there was something wrong with her, that she was never enough—that’s not for me. So it’s a hard pass on overthinking and doing things that are supposed to be done my way in other people’s ways.
Within a couple of days of the new year, I experienced a sense of liberation. I’ve felt so consumed by my book, The Joy of Saying No, for 3.5 years, and now it’s done. It’s out there doing its thing. Fly, my little pretty! Years of people-pleasing stuff around work and then my decision to slow right down and let some stuff go last year is also in the rear, along with the breakup with my mother. I don’t know what 2024 holds—Who the hell does? If you do, hit me up, yeah?😆—but I do appreciate the metaphorical clean slate. New year, new NO!
The more we get to know, embrace and live our values, the better our lives feel. We experience more compatibility and meet our emotional needs instead of trying to live our lives based on programming and what other people told us we had to be, do and have to be happy and successful.
What you say yes and no to shapes your life. Start from wherever you are, but endeavour to choose yourself more.
Paid subscribers, I’ve included some journaling prompts below to help you discern what works for you when it comes to change and figuring out your yeses and nos.