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How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

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Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#171

Post by yowlingcat »

Razengan wrote: post #161
smoe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons why I prefer living in big cities. Compared to other places I've stayed, it makes it a whole lot easier to build and maintain human connections with people whose preferences and interests overlap with mine. I also do plenty of activities I'm not really interested in for the sake of socializing. But always just adopting to whatever is most popular at a given time would be soulcrushing t…

> This is one of the main reasons why I prefer living in big cities. Big Cities also amplify loneliness and make it more crushing when you just keep getting lost in the crowd. Concrete jungles with more traffic than trees are also a depressing drain upon the soul. My ideal sweet spot is Small Towns near a Big City that you can dip into once every weekend or so.

You just succinctly described why I decided to dip out of a big city into exurbia when the pandemic started. I figured that if I'm going to be lonely, I may as well do it in nature.

Turns out that being alone in nature (as I realized in college) actually doesn't make me feel lonely. This is going to sound kinda weird, but I actually feel a sense of togetherness and belonging being near trees, dense foliage, animals. I wonder why this is? I'm sure there are millions of years of evolutionary evidence to answer my question, but it remains fascinating to me.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#172

Post by markrages »

bumby wrote: post #162
throwanem wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that youth and health are sovereign against bad COVID outcomes sure is an assumption, too.

Isn’t that a statistically valid assumption for reduced risk at the population level?

Do you consider spreading to other more vulnerable people as a bad COVID outcome?

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#173

Post by cgriswald »

bladegash wrote: post #90
toyg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent poster, but in my apparently-similar experience, it’s just that not saying no will inevitably result in halfhearted effort down the line, which means the results will underwhelm and hence generate more issues.

Hah, I think I may be the exact opposite. It triggers anxiety within me, which then triggers perfectionism, which then triggers all kinds of unhealthy other compulsions. I really do try to tackle everything, and exceed expectations, at a personal cost (e.g., burnout). One time I lost 25 pounds due to stress, which ended up being a positive as I have kept it off, but was miserable at the time.

I definitely leaned on the perfectionist side. Some of this is messy and difficult to pull apart because although I brought this problem into the marriage my ex is not blameless either. One thing I know is a direct consequence of never saying no is a lack of respect and a lack of attraction. Regardless of why a person never says no they are seen as a doormat, which is unattractive in both men and women.

On the messier side, a few years after our divorce she ended up suing me to adjust our divorce settlement and as part of that process gave a deposition in which she gave no legally relevant details but instead offered a diatribe on what she considered my failures in our marriage. (This did not impress the judge.) It was surprising to me for a few reasons. First, our divorce had been amicable. Second, she had raised none of these issues while we were married so we could have talked about it and/or fixed the issues. Third, it showed that she not only didn’t appreciate the tremendous effort I put into the marriage and her and our family, she wasn’t even aware of it.

Some portion of that is on her, but by never saying no I definitely helped to normalize a very high expectation as “bare minimum” or “no big deal”. I definitely felt unappreciated during the marriage but I just kept trying to do more. And if I don’t appreciate the work I do... why would anyone else?

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#174

Post by sethammons »

bragh wrote: post #130
partyboat1586 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "High-Context culture people and Low-Context culture people"?

GP was not trying to be racist, such a concept does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...

What led you to the racist angle?

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#175

Post by jasode »

Loughla wrote: post #170
apples_oranges wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment. I would add that this ties in with goal setting, which is an activity where you set the priorities for your life. If it's fitness for example you will skip the drinks and go to the gym instead. If it's money you will work on your business and so forth. You decided it's social connections, but it will be different for everyone. It's important to sit down and decide what we want out of life, imho.

>It's important to sit down and decide what we want out of life I always get my hair up with this kind of statement. How do your goals look? Because the only goals I have are: a) not be homeless, b) not have my family die, and c) figure out how to have someone give me ten million dollars so I can stop coming to work. People who have specific, 'work-ish' goals in their personal lives sort of weird me out. I don't know…

>How do your goals look? Because the only goals I have are: a) not be homeless, b) not have my family die, and c) [...]

>People who have specific, 'work-ish' goals in their personal lives sort of weird me out.

I'm genuinely confused as to what actually bothers you about "work-ish" goals.

As another example, I used to have a boring (but very high paying) business consulting job. I hated getting on an airplane every single week to write another soul-crushing MS Word report and Powerpoint presentation.

I absolutely had to get out of that type of work or I was going to go insane. Therefore, I used my free time to study web technologies and iOS/Android programming. My "goal" was to reinvent myself to do something else so I could switch to a more enjoyable job or create a startup. I'm forced to use my personal time because my day job had nothing to do with web/mobile technologies. To tie this back to the gp's comment, drinking beers after work with my colleagues at the business consulting job was not a good use of my personal time because it conflicted with how I wanted to change my life for the better.

Using your framework of "not be homeless" and living with the constraint that I don't have a rich uncle to leave me with a $10 million inheritance... what "non-workish" goal should I pursue to build a better life? Or should I just let things "just happen" to me?

EDIT to reply to: ">simple alternative: savings to take 12 months off without becoming homeless. Use the first six months to build the knowledge

Proposing an alternative training schedule doesn't address the crux of the problem I was responding to. The gp is weirded out by people having "work-ish" goals in their personal lives. Therefore, me quitting my job for a year to train my self will still be labeled as having a "work-ish" goal in my free and personal time.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#176

Post by TeaDrunk »

nicky0 wrote: post #147
TeaDrunk wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan Peterson railed against a guideline that, from what I understand, had no consequences to him. He blew it up as if he was being persecuted but the actual law was just “hey please consider using people’s preferred pronouns”.

That isn't a good summary of the bill, and it didn't even mention preferred pronouns. What it actually did was add "gender identity or expression" to a list of protected characteristics to be considered when prosecuting hate speech and as a factor in criminal sentencing. (Peterson's interpretation was that it would have the effect of making misgendering or failure to use preferred pronouns into hate speech, thus that…

Oh so it's even more silly and blown up than I thought. I'd go back to correct myself but unfortunately I can't since the post is too old. Thanks for correcting me!

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#177

Post by ivanche »

cialowicz wrote: post #15
unkulunkulu wrote: post #13

A brother of mine gave me an advice on this recently, goes like this: “just say no! After that find a reason why and give it, but first a no without thinking about it” I liked it

It doesn't seem constructive to always say "no" to things. "Yes" is how things get built. If you say "yes" to the right things, and then execute well, you'll go far in life. I'm not arguing against saying "no" to things, but a policy of blanket "no" will leave you pretty unfulfilled.

If you say "no", you say no to only one option. If you say "yes", you say no to all other options.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#178

Post by JamesSwift »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #133
cutemonster wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less-than-optimal, but I would do it, anyway. How did those things turn out? (Been in similar situations at my previous job)

Comes up all the time between me and my boss with whom I share a mutual respect and, similar to parent, sometimes he was right and sometimes I was right. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter because as a manager the outcomes were his responsibility, therefore he gets the final say.

Exactly. Its not your job to make all the decisions. Its your job to make sure all the decisions are informed decisions.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#179

Post by sethammons »

Let’s say your problem is time: you agree to too much. I struggle with the balance of helping others and getting my own stuff done. My stuff gets done, but may take longer than I would like.

At work yesterday, I was helping some other teams and saw they were going down the wrong path. I had, at this point, already told them I had to stop helping to get my own stuff done. But I couldn’t just let them waste hours doing the wrong thing when I popped back into slack during lunch. Queue my need to help, and I was reengaged to avert lots of wasted time on a time sensitive issue. Now I’m a bit behind today. My manager would likely say to let them worry about, do my stuff. But that feels wrong to not support others where you can. This is my “saying no” problem.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#180

Post by jrumbut »

smoe wrote: post #140
Dahoon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the excact opposite experience. The closer you live, the more people protect their privacy sphere around them and more often avoid real connections with people they run into, like neighbors. After we moved from living close in the city to outside the city limits, with way more space around us, we went from "hello" when meeting a neighbor to now stopping up and talking for real and taking a real interest in eac…

I agree that in smaller places such interactions happen more organically. But you are still bound to who happens to live in the vicinity. In the big city I do have less interactions with neighbors, but on the other hand, whatever my interest is and however fringe, I will find likeminded people. I reckon it depends a lot on how far away your interests are from the norm as well as which and what part of the city you ar…

I think it's the difference between those who look for similar people versus those who prefer complementary people.

Naturally everyone does both but in the RPG of life some rogues tend to hang out in the rogues guild in town while others want to be out in a dungeon alongside wizards and warriors.

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