You say yes to everyone. Except yourself.
You’re probably good at your job. Your colleagues like you, more or less. 5 o’clock rolls around and a deadline is due, so you know you’ll need to stay late. No worries, sometimes it happens. The problem starts when you can’t say no.
You might be able to say no if you’ve got plans. You don’t want to let anyone down. But when you’d been looking forward to a night off? That show you’d wanted to watch, with a pizza and a glass of red wine? You can’t say yes to that. You say yes to your boss instead.
Or maybe there is no boss. Maybe it’s the people you love who never hear your no, or perhaps a community or a cause. There might be something you feel bound to, that you cannot let down.
You’ve noticed then, you’re always on. There are no off days. And sometimes it feels like you can’t even find the off switch.
And then a mistake gets made. There might be lots of people involved. But you find yourself taking responsibility for all of it. You know there’s no I in team. But there is an I in failure.
However bad it gets though, you have to pay your bills. People depend on you. You can’t just up sticks and leave. And so you keep going, on and on. The stress builds.
I cannot change the circumstances of your life. But what I can do is listen.
This works. It will probably feel good to get stuff off your chest — a vent, sometimes even a rant. I will listen for as long as you need me to. But as you’re speaking, you’ll be hearing yourself too. You might notice patterns. You might be reminded of something that seems, at first, unrelated. Together, we’ll explore the full picture — not just what’s bothering you, but why.
Eventually, space might start to appear. There will be lightness where there was once weight.
You might even connect with something that right now, reading this, feels absurd, almost laughable.
Choice.
