I’ve been thinking about saying no lately.
Not because I’ve always struggled with it. Quite the opposite, actually. I love saying yes to things. Spontaneous dinners, unexpected invitations, a trip that sounds like a phenomenal idea before anyone has even looked at flights.
But more recently, I’ve noticed something strange.
Something I was genuinely excited about when I agreed to it often felt completely different as the event approached.
And suddenly, there’s another decision to make. Do you honour the commitment because you initially said yes? Or do you give yourself permission to change your mind?
It’s funny how sometimes you barely recognise the person who made those plans. Even though that person was you, just a few weeks earlier.
The strange thing is, even when you have a perfectly good reason to change your mind, saying no can feel surprisingly difficult.
I’ve had plans recently that I was super excited about, only to find myself in a logistical nightmare as the date approached. I couldn’t figure out how to make it all work, which was incredibly frustrating. And yet, the thought of cancelling made me feel awful.
There’s the guilt of disappointing someone who was looking forward to seeing you. And the uncomfortable fact that you were the one who agreed so enthusiastically in the first place.
You truly meant it at the time. You weren’t pretending, and you certainly weren’t planning on backing out.
But somewhere between making the plans and following through, circumstances changed.
So which feeling do you trust?
And so the back and forth continues. You think about cancelling, then convince yourself you can still make it work. You remember how excited you were when you made the plans, hoping the enthusiasm would help you jump all the hurdles that had appeared out of nowhere.
Eventually, I made the call to cancel. I still felt terrible about disappointing the people involved, and disappointed that I couldn’t make it work in the end.
But there was some relief, too. Not because I was happy about cancelling, but because I’d finally made a decision. At least the constant back and forth in my head was over now.
It’s strange how much we can complicate things when the choice is entirely ours.
As children, we spend years wishing we could make our own decisions.
The sleepover is happening. The second ice cream will be eaten. The full bag of Halloween candy will be consumed the minute you get home from trick-or-treating. No asking for permission, no convincing anyone, no being told you can’t do something because of xyz.
And then we grow up, have all the freedom in the world, and find ourselves wishing someone else would make the decision for us.
Life is funny like that.
Of course, changing your mind can mean letting someone down. There’s no sweet-talking that. We’ve probably all disappointed people, just as we’ve all been disappointed by someone else’s change of heart.
But I’ve been wondering why we’re often so reluctant to reconsider a decision, even when we have perfectly good reasons to do so.
Maybe we don’t want to be considered unreliable. Maybe we worry that cancelling means we won’t be invited next time.
And yet, the most disappointing part is that we really wanted it to work out.