One of my favorite blogs to read is MizFit. Invariably, her posts either make me smile or make me thing. A lot of times they do both. One of the messages she frequently comes back to is “living your priorities”. Recently, she talked about how saying no to something is basically say “that’s not a priority right now.”
Lately, I’ve been saying no a lot. It’s fall. It’s my normal “holy hell, I’m overwhelmed” time of the year. Soccer, getting back in the swing of things after summer, two kid birthdays, races, training, work, etc. always seem to add up to a hard September and October. I find myself tired and cranky. And I say no when I feel overwhelmed.
This weekend, I began to attempt to say yes to those things that matter to me.
- I said yes to going to watch a soccer game, primarily because I wanted to see my friends that I hadn’t seen in ages.
- I volunteered to work the school book fair because it helps support our school and helps put books in the hands of children who may not have any other books in their homes.
- I’m signing up for a field trip with Shoo, even though my first reaction was how am I going to juggle everything else that week.
- I made plans for my kids to go to friends’ houses in a few weeks so I can spend an entire day hanging out with Beer Geek at a beer event.
- I’m going to a running event this week because I need something social that’s just for me.
I used to say “yes” to everything and found myself way over committed to things that weren’t important to me, so I started saying no. Now I’ve found myself uninvolved. This weekend was the beginning of my attempt to find a balance between the two.
Am I the only one who struggles with this? Do you find yourself alternating between too much and too little?
Are you going to the RLAM event? If you are, I’ll see you there!
Fall is usually my crazy time to but I’m getting much better at saying no and managed to get through September withou pulling my hair out! That’s progress LOL!
It’s so hard to get the balance right. And it’s harder still when your kids are young and it seems that everyone wants a piece of you. I’ve found now that the kids are older the demands on our time aren’t as great and I get to actually choose to do things I want to do rather than things I have to do.
I love this and the idea of saying yes to your priorities. It’s so important because honestly those are the things that are really going to matter in 10, 20, 50 years. I need to take this advice and work on it this week.
good for you for saying yes! I’ve been doing this a lot lately, too. Stopping by from the SITS Share Fest.