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Greetings. In my last post for the month of September, I invited you to learn how to say no as a value and strategy to protect yourself. When you have a house, you want to protect what is inside your house such as your kids, you care, your furniture, and other important items that you have purchased or know they belong to you. So you buy locks, a security system, and other devices in order to protect that which is good and keep the bad or intruders from stealing from you.

So let me ask you to consider how to say no as a means of protection and what can happen if you don’t own the things that are yours. When you don’t take the initiative to own and protect that which is yours by saying no, then you will allow others to come in and steal or possibly giving them permission to intrude what you own by taking the stance that what is yours is not important and they can violate your no by taking and misusing that which is yours.

As a parent, you can easily remember observing your child say these words: This is mine. This is my toy, my sandbox, my room, my belongings. Learning to say this is mine is good. But as we grow or age, someone comes along and criticizes or makes us feel that saying this is mine and having good boundaries about what is yours is not allowed and you start to feel guilty or start to minimize that which you think is yours. You give up your no and boundaries for the sake of getting someone to like you or to please the other person.

So what is yours that you need to protect? Let’s start with feelings. When you feel, these feelings are your feelings. They fall within who you are and you need to protect what you feel. If you feel sad, those are your feelings of sadness. If someone else feels sad, that is their feelings of sadness. We need to own and protect our feelings of sadness.

But we give up our feelings when we allow someone comes along and say: “You should not feel that way. Why are you feeling sad? Stop feeling sad and be glad or happy.” Instead of protecting your feelings, you allow someone to cross over your line of boundaries and enter into your life and judge your feelings and think that they can come up with ways to intrude your life and change your sadness. When you don’t protect your sadness then you allow someone or give them permission to manipulate or have a say in how you feel.

But your feelings, whatever they maybe, are yours and God gave them to you to preserve and protect. When you don’t say no and say to someone, “Hey, these are my feelings of sadness, stop trying to fix or change my feeling” then you are not giving that person permission to come in and have a say in how you should feel. Each person has feelings and each person needs to protect what is theirs. My feelings are different than your feelings.

When we change our feelings in order to please others, than we are saying no or not protecting what belongs to you. It is like saying to someone, “Here are my car keys, feel free to take or enter into my car at any time.” But that is your car and your sadness belongs to you. Take ownership of your car and your house and protect them and also take ownership and protect your feelings. Your feelings belong to you. If you are having troubles taking ownership of what belongs to you, give me a call and as I would love to help you. Thanks for reading.