Learning to Say No

Talk about being back-blogged!

My calendar is full of details on my expenses, meeting schedules, badminton games and to do list.

Amidst the busy- ness of it all, I have managed to define values that are important to me, learned how to define my goals both professionally and personally, and I am planning my week, planning daily. I hope to live in alignment with the values I set out at the beginning of this new chapter of my life.

I learned that living by this guiding principle of 7 Habits is not easy, although a lot of it I have already been pre-programmed to do, but to define values that I hold important, and to actually live according to those values is sometimes still befuddling me, the designer and creator of "my sea of opportunity" (regaining more control of my future). For instance, as I jot down each of my expenses for the day, I smile when I tick off my badminton goals and it isn't so hard to swallow the expenses incurred on that day. After all, my number one value on the list is fitness. The clarifying statement goes something like this:

I am taking care of my body, choosing what to eat, and exercising, to keep me fit, enabling me to live life to the fullest.


Then I list down another expense, this time for a dinner out at Greenbelt 5's Chateau 1771, which I thought, has a great view of Greenbelt 3 while we talk to our dear friend who I see, maybe twice a year only (because she's based in Malaysia), plus her Malaysian friend is also here, a first-time visitor in the Philippines. I flinch when I see the menu, knowing the price is jacked up because of location, location, location. My butterflied prawns were tastier at Conti's than at Chateau, at half the price! I shrug it off, saying to myself, next time I will do better in suggesting the restaurant, or in selecting what to order. After all, one of my other values is frugality.

" No expense. Be fair to others and to myself. In other words, waste nothing," as Covey puts it, or in my own words, " Save, save, save."


I justify this by saying Love is another value I carefully picked.

" I will show respect to all people, devote quality time to my friends and family. I care and love my team. I want to bring out the best in all of these people I value, reaching out to them in heart, mind, body and spirit."

Good try, as I hear on the courts, on my first week. I think I have been most successful in aligning my fitness value. The past two weeks, I formed two badminton game buddies, one with L's friends (we play on weekends), and another one at work, also successfully converting my gym membership into a badminton court fees subsidy.
(Yey!). Next thing I know, I played Wednesday with the Pepsi group, during the long weekend, I played from 6:30 to 10:30 PM last Saturday (San Lo, Power and Speed), played 2 hours at Don Antonio with Divina's group and my group, trained 2 hours yesterday and signed up for my first tournament on Saturday. Woo- hoo!

Last night, I fell asleep watching A Series of Unfortunate Events while a massage therapist was working on my calf muscles.

Good try, good try.

Let's see how this works out, how I weave what I work on daily into my carefully selected values. There are two more values I have selected, which are excellence and having a closer, personal relationship with God, who is my guide, my Saviour and my friend.

You know what I find the most gratifying action out of this? I can learn to say NO to all the other stuff that are not aligned to what I set out to do. I've always found it difficult to say no.