Before doing this assignment, the thought of saying ‘no’ to somebody, especially friends and family, made me very nervous and anxious. I thought that if I did say ‘no’ to them, that they would either get mad and stop speaking to me or I would upset them. When I started doing this assignment and actually made myself say ‘no’, I was still very nervous and anxious but once I had done it, I soon felt better and it even made me feel more confident as I started to feel a bit more in control.
When I tried to say ‘no’ to somebody, just because I did not want to do what he or she was asking, this made me feel very anxious and uncomfortable. This was because I couldn’t just come out and say that ‘I did not want to do it’, it made me feel very pressurised and I didn’t feel that this was a good enough reason to say ‘no’.
Did the plan work?
My action plan worked a lot better than I expected it to. It took a lot for me to start saying ‘no’ but as soon I did, I realised that people are a lot more understanding than I thought.
I had a couple of times where people weren’t very happy about me saying ‘no’. This was mainly my little brother but I have realised that this is more a problem on his part than mine.
As part of my action plan I was going to say ‘no’ if I didn’t want to do something as well as if it was inconvenient. This part of my plan didn’t work very well. I tried to do it once and it made me feel very mean and uncomfortable because I didn’t have a valid reason why I couldn’t do it. My mum asked me to come over for my tea and I didn’t want to, so I said ‘no’, when my mum asked me why, because I didn’t have a reason other than I didn’t want to I changed my mind and told I would come.
Conclusion
I have achieved the main part of my skill that I wanted to, which was being able to say ‘no’, if something that somebody asked me to do was inconvenient for me. I know that I will now be able to continue using this skill and from this I have gained confidence. I now feel that I have better control over the things that happen in my life.
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