In the dressing rooms at Marshalls stores, there are three hooks for clothes, and each is labeled: “definitely,” “possibly,” and “tomorrow.” Every time I go into a Marshalls dressing room, I immediately notice (and am frustrated by) the lack of hook options for someone who most definitely does not want to purchase a piece of clothing, thank you very much. Now, of course it would be bad business to have a “no way” hook, but what about “someone else’s perfect find?” You’ll never find one though; we’re trapped in the affirmative.Like these Marshalls hooks, our culture has no concept concept of the word “No.” Desperate to have it all, we over-stuff our schedules with a flurry of activity until the drawers of our compartmentalized lives won’t stay shut and the bottoms fall out. We are incapable of saying no.
We’re terrified of what might happen if we turn something down: what if that is my big break, and I miss it? And if we say yes? That is worse still, because to really say yes is to say no to everything else that may come along.
It doesn’t help that with one click, we can see the lives of everyone we know. Social media sites present the highlight reels of every opportunity and experience, while every problem hides behind filters with cool names like “Reyes,” “Valencia,” and “Slumber.” We are constantly comparing ourselves to our social media feeds, and we, being humans and not coolness algorithms, continually fail to measure up.
Through social media, and through our culture in general, we are force-fed a constant sense of inadequacy, so we do more to try to be enough. “Have it all, do it all,” is our culture’s motto, but the glossy image of overachievement disguises the exhaustion, stress, and strain that comes from such a lifestyle.
For several years, I believed that overcommitment was a virtue. I signed up for anything and everything that sounded remotely cool, and I supplemented it with poor personal boundaries that led me to feel responsible for everyone else’s problems. I was always exhausted, resentful of the activities and people I claimed to love, and often sick because my body couldn’t handle the stress. I could never do anything as well as I’d hoped, and I was always falling behind the pace that I’d set for myself.
It took three family tragedies to finally slow me down. Even then, it wasn’t voluntary, I just couldn’t keep up with my commitments, so I let them pass by. Overwhelmed, wracked with guilt at my inability to maintain my virtuous busyness, I desperately tried to get back up to speed. Then, finally, I stopped and said no.
At first, I said no to everything that had previously validated me. Resentful, tired, and too exhausted to keep trying, I said no to my college, to my town, to my friends, and to my goals. I took a semester off, moved to a new city, and enrolled in a program that was dedicated to cultivating emotional, physical, and spiritual health. Then, I came back, and I said no to a major, no to two of my three jobs, no to an honors project, and no to “fixing” my friends.
For me, saying no led me here, to the best three months of my life. But wherever it leads you, learning to say no will change your life for the better.
Empowered with the ability to say no, my yes has now become more significant: I no longer say yes to something because I don’t have another choice. For that matter, I know that saying yes means saying no to something else, and so I try to only say yes when I know that I can protect that commitment by saying no to everything else that might come along. I don’t always succeed, but I try to say no more than I say yes. As I have learned, your strongest yes is only as powerful as your weakest no. It has become my motto, and it’s an idea that our society needs more than ever.
We are in desperate need of a cultural shift. From our schedules to our dressing rooms, our culture needs to embrace a new set of values. We need to end the coolness algorithms’ tyranny over our lives, and embrace a new, more sustainable lifestyle. We need to miss out on our Fear-Of-Missing-Out. And, we need dressing room hooks that give us the chance to say no.
But, our culture won’t change until we do. It’s our job to make the tough choices, defy the cultural standards, and learn to say no. In a culture that only presents the options of “Definitely,” Possibly,” and “Tomorrow,” it’s time to start making our own option: “No.”
Image Credits: Maggie Griffin, 1