Let Your Nays Be Nays

One of the things that I have noticed in life is that many people have trouble "just saying NO"! It seems to be one the hardest things to say to people. My question is WHY!!!
Well this is my theory: While growing up one of the first words that we learned how to say was NO. Eat your greens , "NO", Come here "NO", Ready for a nap "NO", Give me kiss, "NO", Say bye-bye "NO" and the list could go on and on, Im sure many of can all come up with many things that we said "NO" to. The problem tho, is that once we began to use this new and wonderful word, our parents quickly corrected us and let us know that the word "NO" was not very good. In my case, the word "NO" led to a lot of meetings with the wooden spoon lol. The older I got the less and less I used it, and that even carried over into adulthood. For me, I had to change my way of thinking when it came to using the word NO, I had to learn that word could still cause me pain, but in a different way. Not being able to say not people has caused me a lot pain in the past. I have found myself saying yes to things and committing to things that I didnt want to do or even had time to do. This caused me some serious STRESS! All because I just didnt want to hurt anyones feelings or looked at as stuck up or rude. Often times after say yes to something, I would find myself wondering , how did i end up doing this, or being here. I would overbook myself and find myself running around town like a chicken with its head cutoff (lol..country quotes). This would not only stress me out but it would stress out my family as well. I would be so tired and angry I would lash out at them like it was their fault. I soon realized that I cant  keep living like this, there has to be a better way , and there was, all of this could be fixed by just saying NO. No to people and even no to self. I had to learn how to stop making decisions at the spur of the moment , and tell people that I couldnt answer them right now I would have to let them know later. This gave me time come home see what plans the family had or see what my schedule looked like and most importantly to PRAY about it. If I felt like it was too much or if I didnt want to do it, I just simply told the person NO. I ofcourse did it tactfully and in love but I said No all the same. This led to a less stressfull me. I use to still feel bad about it but now its just like second nature..lol..NO..Im not just saying no them but im also saying no to stress and conflict.
I hope that you all can find the inner strenght to say Yes to your sanity and No to things try to come against it..lol..God Bless