Saying more NO to get more YES

Most of the time – I feel truly inundated. I somehow seem to be in a constant decision-making mode.

Like the clothes in my closet, stuff accumulates in my life.

There are these never-ending red numbers on the icons on my phone, indicating so-called messages and feeds. It takes longer to locate the Settings options that prevent these than to just click on everything. So I click away.

The yoga socks I locked at on Amazon last month appear now next to an article on Pivot tables I am reading for work (awkward ….).

There are gadgets everywhere. Seriously. There is a tool for everything. Walking through Target, I could point left and right and pick tons of products that would address some type of need in my life.

And let’s not even mention food. Food, or so-called food, is EVERYWHERE. It takes Christmas Day to arrive, 4pm, for me to realize that my nutrition options have dwindled somewhat.

Don’t get me wrong – I am thankful for the variety and the choices I have access to. I grew up in a country that limited the most basic resources. Most folks dressed in the same drab clothes, drove one of five car models and basically we all ate similar food. When I first came to this country I said YES to everything – new people, food I had never tasted and places I had never seen.  My only limit was money.

After a period of smiling at brand-name products and a materialistic-induced happiness at the purchase of one of those products, I am done. Honestly, for me its not about choice anymore. It’s a matter of time and disruption.  Time is wasted with every wrong choice. And every new choice poses a disruption to my previous one.

I started to say NO more regularly. I introduced a small prompt in my mind that I have trained to come up much more frequently these days before taking a sidestep. And it goes like this: Do I really need this right now? I use this question for everything – from purchases to experiences to meeting up with people. And sometimes the answer is a loud YES, and that’s when I indulge in 30 minutes of pleasure-filled Instagram surfing. But more often I answer with the following sentence which I must have picked up in Texas at some point: No – I have bigger fish to fry.

To help bring down the sheer volume of decisions facing me every day, I started making a conscious effort to remove distractions from my life. I have

• Un-subscribed from most email lists, even those that really interest me. When I need the product or service, I can find it. I don’t need daily email reminders.
• Turned off all notifications on my phone, except my alarm.
• Curtailed all shopping-related surfing, both online and by foot. I make a list of the non-essential things I need or place them in the shopping cart online and let them accumulate for a few weeks. While they sit in the back of my mind, it has happened that I came across an alternate solution or similar product I already own, often dissipating the initial need completely.
• Made a clear decision on what I want (which eliminates everything else). For example, I purchase only high-quality food, most of which I can find at the farmers market in less than 20 minutes. This saves me time walking aimlessly through crowded grocery stores perusing stuff I don’t need.

By saying NO more often, I say YES to the things that truly matter.

By removing the distractions of the outer world, I find more peace and time with myself.

This decluttering helps not only focus my actions, but also my mind. Doing more of what matters allows me think more about what matters. And what I think about is what I take action on. Which means: the stuff that matters to me gets done.

Its nice little loop that, if pursued with consistency, gets me to where I want to be.

Wishing you the strength to say NO more often,

With love,

Janine

“You are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
it’s own secret”
Rainer Maria Rilke