Every time I visit my reflexologist* she reminds me, ‘You can always say no. And ‘No’ is a full sentence.’ She’s right of course. I constantly take on too many things, feel overwhelmed, and stressed out, with the accompanying tension headaches and stiff shoulders creeping up towards my ears. If I do say no to something I find myself over-explaining, as though I have to justify my refusal.
If you too are a chronic people-pleaser, I suggest you read ‘Please Yourself‘ by Emma Reid Turrell and ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k’ by Sarah Knight. Both are very helpful in making you check your ‘Yes reflex’; which I am convinced is a very female thing, where we feel we must acquiesce to others in order to appear ‘nice’ and ‘kind’, like the ‘good girls’ we were brought up to be.
I really wish I’d learnt to say ‘no’ to things earlier. Saying ‘no’ would have meant that I didn’t have to go to a Hen Party of some random in Edinburgh as a favour to a friend, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Horny Helen.’ Or going along to parties in my twenties when I knew rightly I was only being invited to boost the numbers or going to a piece of excruciating theatre to support a friend I never see anymore. Those are all hours I will never get back.
But I am learning, albeit slowly, to say ‘no’ a bit more. A phrase that has helped me is thinking, ‘what am I saying no to if say yes to this? If you have built time into your week to put on a face-mask and sip a prosecco, or watch three consecutive episodes of Gilmore Girls with your kids, then that should trump someone’s last minute request. It’s just a thought to all those people out there who are constantly checking their phones and never feeling off the clock. It’s damaging. It’s unfair. And it’s unsustainable. Later this morning I’ll be on U105 about this very topic, based on a brilliant article in The Guardian yesterday. I am more than happy to admit, I’m very much still a work in progress when it comes to this. In the meantime, here’s a piece I had published in Mslexia a while ago, on a small word which has become a bit of a trigger…
Just
Of all the four-letter words, the very worst one, which sets my jaw a-flicker and makes my eyelid twitch, is the seemingly innocuous word ‘just.’ When used as an adverb I believe it to be multi-faceted in its odiousness.
‘Just’ can be the jagged edge tagged on to a compliment. ‘Your new hair’s lovely, it’s just…’ There you are, smile at the ready and maybe about to relax into the moment when you hear the ‘just’ and you know they actually hate it. I think anyone with an opinionated mother can identify with that one.
Then there’s the ‘just’ of rejection. ‘It’s just that it doesn’t quite work,’ or ‘it doesn’t just ring true,’ or the generic dismissal, ‘just isn’t what we need right now.’ Fine, you want to say, ‘Just don’t get my hopes up next time.’
Or perhaps it’s that time-thief colleague or the annoying neighbour you skulk behind the hedge to avoid whose opening gambit is, ‘I’ll just take a minute of your time.’ It’s never a minute though, is it? Experience dictates that unless you shut them down quickly you can wave goodbye to the next half hour.
Worse than all of these, though, (and I’m convinced that this particularly pertains to women in the workplace,) is when it is used to couch a demand. How often is a request prefaced with ‘just’, as though the extra work is a mere scintilla, so slight you may not even notice it atop of your already teetering to-do list. How ironic, that a word which stems from the Latin, meaning righteous, is used to undermine or play down a time-consuming task?
If it really is ‘just’ one small thing, a thing so small that is barely a thing at all, then you could be forgiven for retorting, in as sweet a voice as you muster, ‘Maybe, you could just do it yourself then?’
For all of the above scenarios, I suggest you delve into your other four-word arsenal for a response, even if you decide to ‘just’ whisper it to yourself. Mslexia, Elevenses Newsletter, November 2023
*Yes. I accept how middle-class that sounds. Don’t care. Geraldine is a gift from God.
