by Mark Schiffman, M.S.
This past Monday night I went to the Barclay’s Center for the first time to see the New York Islanders play against the Vancouver Canucks. I happen to not be the greatest hockey fan in the world and could not even name for you anybody on the Islanders before Monday night. But luckily for me, as I walked in to the arena I was handed a free bobblehead of the Islanders Alternate Captain, Cal Clutterbuck, who quickly became my favorite Islanders player after he scored a goal, flashed his incredibly impressive Movember ‘stache, and taught me an important lesson about assertiveness.
With his head bobbing up and down on my desk, Cal’s bobblehead is a very powerful metaphor for what we don’t want to be. Many of us are classical yes-people. When someone else asks us to do something, we automatically and almost uncontrollably bob our heads up and down. It is almost as if we have no choice but to say “Yes, your majesty! Your wish is my command.” There are probably some irrational beliefs floating around in our heads that lead to our incapability of saying no. “If I can’t help my friend move that would make me a bad person!” “I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing my kids disappointed faces if I said I can’t take them to the game!” “If I tell my boss I can’t come in on my off day I might get fired and will end up living in a van down by the river, which would be terrible and awful!” So our heads bob up and down until the point that we have a figurative, and perhaps sometimes literal, really big pain in the neck.
Doing for others and even sacrificing our own well-being for others may be a commendable and appropriate thing to do in many situations. However, if we find that we are sacrificing too much of ourselves because we have an inability to say no even when the cost to ourselves is too big it may be time to step back and reevaluate. What are my thoughts that are leading to me saying yes all the time? If our yeses are motivated by irrational thoughts it might be time to challenge them and add an occasional assertive “I’m sorry, but no” every once in a while.
