V

Vanquish your Vagueness

Are you one of those people who when asked something says “Mmm…..we’ll see” or “Let me think about that” or “Can I get back to you about that?” and promptly file it in your “Let’s Forget All About It box”, because you don’t want to make a decision? You might be afraid that you’ll make the wrong choice and won’t be able to correct it. Or perhaps you feel you might be roped into something

that you won’t be able to get out of later. Maybe the very thought of someone thinking anything negative about you sends you into mental turmoil, so you dither between saying yes or no. If you say yes, they’ll like you but you’ll have to do something you’d much rather not, on the other hand if you say no they won’t like you anymore.

Or perhaps you are the type of person who knows that you want more from life, but when asked what that more is says “I don’t know” get that uncomfortable feeling deep inside and look for something to distract you from it?. Maybe you’re not happy with your life and when asked to be specific you don’t have an answer, because you really don’t know. And you really don’t know because you haven’t been asked the correct questions to be able to find out. You are not asking yourself the correct questions and mostly others are not asking the correct questions either. And what is worse is, when someone does ask the correct questions you feel so uncomfortable that you shield yourself from them and change the subject or give very vague wishy-washy answers. And quite possibly you are vague because you don’t want to appear as if you don’t know, when that is exactly what is appearing.

I used to fall into the category of not wanting to do something but wanting to be liked, and then feeling I couldn’t say no. So I’d get roped into doing things that I really, really didn’t want to do. And the way I dealt with that was turn up late, completely unprepared

and then do the task badly, in the hope that I wouldn’t get asked to do anything again. All the while hoping (unrealistically) that the person who asked me would be able to mind-read my reluctance and say that it was okay, they’d get someone else to do it. Of course I rarely got asked to do something a second time. I also didn’t realise until much, much later that it had a much more negative impact on how that person saw me and it did exactly what I didn’t want it to do – they got annoyed with me and liked me less as a result. Over time my circle of friends grew smaller and I wondered what I was doing wrong, but would distract myself with other things so as not to have to find the answers within me, it was easier to blame them as needy people who couldn’t just be friends just for the sake of it.

The turning point for me on this was when my middle child was about nine. Herself and her older brother wanted to go somewhere and needed me to bring them. At the time money was tight, but this event was affordable. I was always conscious keeping some money back for “the unexpected disaster” and I was very wary of agreeing to something only to have to back out at a later stage which would have built up their hopes and then dashed them, yet I didn’t want to say no outright, so I said “we’ll see” to my son when he asked about it. He walked away and I was outside the room when he was telling his sister what I’d said

and she replied in a disappointed voice “that means, NO!, she only says that when she doesn’t want to say no to something”. In that moment I made the decision that I would bring them to the event. I vanquished the vagueness I had of disappointing others because of my fear of rejection.

As a result of that, I learnt it was easier to make other decisions too. I stopped dithering about other things in my life and started to make changes. I walked away from some situations and people who were not good for me and make strides outside my then comfort zone that helped me to develop into the person I am today. There are times when I still don’t give a direct yes or no to someone, but now when I say “can I get back to you on that, I need to check on some other things first?” it is because I really don’t know right then if I can do what they are asking of me and later I do get back to them with a definite yes or no.