One Word That Can Bring Refreshment
The following blog post is written by Andi Teggart. An Ohio girl like myself, she took the plunge and went to California and is residing in San Francisco with her husband Eric and puppy Jack. She runs her own digital marketing shop Lucky Collective and enjoys traveling, reading, yoga and spending time with friends and family. You can find her on Instagram @luckyandi and read her blog .
I'm a yes girl. Yes to weekend road trips and happy hours and workout classes and mid-day coffee dates. Yes to a packed social calendar and plans and activities and things to do, always. When I first moved to San Francisco six years ago after graduating college, yes was my mantra (more about that here). I told myself to say yes to everything so that I could experience everything, visit everywhere, meet anyone. And it was the right mantra for me at that time - it really did help me explore my new city and adapt to a new phase of life.
Fast forward to today. I've often let the good that come from saying yes be overpowered by the not-so-good. Things like...the exhaustion, the frenzy of calendar organizing, the stress of constantly updating and adjusting plans. Oh, and putting my husband and family in the backseat to my yes, yes, yes schedule, routine, life. Yikes!
There's so many good things to say yes to - like change and growth and learning lessons and loving well. I never want to adopt a mentality of saying no, or resisting these things. But, I'm learning day in and day out, that there's power, and a whole lot of refreshment from saying no sometimes. No holds a lot of space - which is kind of terrifying for someone like me; a people pleaser, a doallthethings kind of girl, someone who is constantly being stimulated and distracted by people, activities, to-do lists, adventures.
Saying no gives me more room and space to breathe. Saying no encourages me to re-frame my focus and prioritize the people, relationships, experiences that truly matter. Saying no allows me to rest and recharge and be refreshed. Saying no enables me to truly value and appreciate those experiences I do end up saying yes to.
One of my very favorite authors (who I kind of dub as my patron saint or big sister or something like that) Shauna Niequist wrote: "Many of us are really, really tired of the hustle, and the next right thing is to slow down, to go back to the beginning, to stop. I'm done with frantic. The new baseline for me: will saying yes require me to live in a frantic way? I'm saying no more often than I'm saying yes. I’m asking hard questions about why I’ve kept myself so busy all these years. The space and silence I’m creating is sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrifying."
Yes, yes, YES to that.
So, being more intentional and deliberate with my "yeses" refreshes me. And being okay with "no" and what the space within "no" holds, refreshes me too.