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Greetings. In this last post for this series, I am focusing on helping people valuing and practicing leaning how to say no as a strategy to protect yourself and your life. We all need to value who we are and what we have by using the word no or boundaries for the sake of protecting and not allowing others to enter in and steal or kill our values.

In this last post, I want you to think and come up with strategies to say no as a means of protection when it comes to your desires. Desires are important in life and when you face and want something in your life, it is okay to say what you want and desire. To desire means to focus on what you have or don’t have and then ask or pursue what you want. To desire something is to ask, seek, and knock for the sake of viewing a desire as something that is good. We all need to take responsibility for our desires.

So let’s say for the sake of an example, your spouse has a desire for a nice yard. Your spouse needs to take responsibility for his or her desire and not ask or nag the other spouse to match this desire. Now a spouse could ask for the other spouse to give in and provide a nice yard but her or she may or may not want to. But the requesting spouse for the nice yard still must be responsible for this. If the requesting spouse wants a yard, they must take the initiative to fulfill what they desire.

But if the other spouse does not want to match the desire or give to their spouse a yard, this does not mean this person should not be punished. Far too often one person has a desire and they want the person in their life to match that same desire, and if they do not, then blame will began to happen.

When blame happens and one person blames the other, then a pattern of blame will enter into the relationship. When we don’t fulfill our desires and we don’t hear or accept another person’s no, than that person may enter into a stance of blame, or even worse, feeling like a victim. You see, the victim mentally says this: The world and others are responsible for me and life is cheating me and not giving me what I desire.

We all need to respect other’s no and what they choose to not choose to give. We all cannot own other’s desires. If one spouse wants a nice yard and the other spouse does not desire this but gives the freedom and permission for the other spouse to have the nice yard, than the one desiring this must find ways to own and participate in getting what they desire or want.

The challenge then is this: We all need to take responsibility for our desires and respect others no so we do not blame others for not matching or fulfilling what we want. It is okay to ask for what you want or desire or what goal you want to see accomplished in your life. But take responsibility for this and don’t blame or put pressure on the other person to fill your desires.

My hope and prayer is that we all will find a way to say no in order to protect our lives and not feel obligated and manipulated into feeling the pressure to give and always fulfill other’s desires. Own your choices and desires and not ask others or manipulate others to be responsible for what you want or desire. If you need help learning how to protect yourself and say no, than give me a call and let me teach you how to value protecting yourself. Thanks for reading.