THE POWER OF THE WORD NO! By Jeff Smith Achievable Wealth

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While our lives are always changing and evolving, life seems to be more complex than it used to be. Each of us tends to think we are giving more than the other members of our family, our co-workers as well as any organization we belong to and getting less in return. This is just human natural. Even the company slacker feels in their heart that they do more than any other two members of the organization!

There are many people however that truly don’t know how to say the word No! Whether they want to be known as the producer at work or the pleaser at home, they accept each task that is asked of them without fail. Unfortunately, these people are training their family and co-workers to hand off every crappy task that comes up and they don’t want to do.

Married men and women with children are often put into these roles. Typically in a marriage there is a pleaser. The pleaser has all the typical duties that society has deemed theirs in the family. Men must work, mow the lawn, repair, repaint, fix and/or move anything that is needed. In addition to all these traditional tasks of the husband/father it is now the proper thing for the husband to do half of the tasks inside the home that used to be considered for the wife. This is fair as long as the wife works and has an equal number of tasks to complete. However if the man works and has all the traditional roles of the husband/father at home and the wife is a stay at home wife, just like the role of the women of our parents generation, the care of the home becomes the woman’s job, if you really want to be fair.

Many married woman today work just as many hours as their spouse, yet are still responsible for all the tasks associated with their children, as well as the inside of the home. With all things being equal (hours at work, etc.) the responsibility of the home and children should be split between the husband and wife. In our situation, my wife ran our business, while I only needed to be in the office to see clients. This meant I was the keeper of the house and children the majority of the time. Since I really sucked at repairs and hated gardening, we had a gardener and hired a handyman when repairs were needed.

The pleaser and producer often begin to feel like the officer who is second in command on a submarine in the typically movie, it seems his only job is repeat what the caption says. Couldn’t the captain just say it himself? In families and business there are family members and co-workers that will spend more time tracking down the pleaser/producer to make a phone call or perform a simple task that would have taken less time just to do themselves.

While most people achieve a balance of pleasing and assertiveness, when it becomes overwhelming, many people simply can’t say no. No is a word that empowers those that use it. While I wouldn’t tell my wife, nor my employer “no” (that would be rude and perhaps life altering) I would explain that I would love to help however I have many projects I am working on which I must get done. This works if you really have projects to work on, but if you wife sees you watching TV five minutes later or your boss walks by and sees you texting your children or playing computer games you should of helped out when asked.

No, just like all assertive actions require common sense. You see people in stores and restaurants making complete asses out of themselves because something was less than perfect and they demand compensation. This is assertiveness gone to bad. This is assertiveness without reason. The only person that has a right to act this way is a person that makes no mistakes themselves.

It’s nice to be helpful and at times we all assume of the role of the pleaser/producer, but when you spend more of your time helping others than you do taking care of your own responsibilities it’s time to just say no.