"Gisella you need to learn how to prioritize".
"Gisella people will always buy for your time"
"Gisella you're burning yourself out".
So far, this is what I have: I'm afraid of the word
When I was small, it was a lot easier to say yes to everything. I could spend hours helping someone else, yet still find time to finish my homework, play with my friends, and go to bed at 7 pm. But as I've grown older, I've also grown more responsibilities, and my fear to say no has started to come at the expense of not always fulfilling such responsibilities, or fulfilling them with few hours of sleep and high levels of stress.
When the students of the IA brought this to my attention last week, I knew that if I tried to explain to them that my fear of the word no came from a greater fear of denial, they would simply say that that was ridiculous. Because it sort of is. Although I know that most people won't get mad at me if I don't have the time or the ability to help them out with something, my mind still fears the word because it still fears that denial. This weekend, however, I came to understand that loosing this fear may just come from looking at the word with a different perspective.
Sometimes, my tendency to say yes to everything, or everyone, makes me feel scattered. It doesn't leave me the time to sit down and truly help someone out or really dedicate my time to one task. Thus, what if I viewed saying no as an opportunity to create beautiful work because it would give me the time to do one or two things at a very high level, rather than to do a hundred things at an ok level.
Combating my fear of no means changing my mindset, choosing between doing a lot of things poorly or just a few things beautifully, and recognizing that the word "no" may sometimes be the best thing you can say to someone.