(Wisdom Wednesday) Am I Too Quick To Say Yes?

Jesus said, “But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).  I have found that most people have the tendency to throw the word “yes” around as if it has no meaning, and the word “no” is not even in some people’s vocabulary.  Unfortunately many people don’t really think through things before committing themselves.  They say, “yes, I can do that!” And then when the time comes, they say, “sorry, something came up!”  This can be quite frustrating…  Fairly regularly I organize events and one of the qualities of good event planning is to be able to delegate tasks that can be done by other people.  I admit that sometimes this is hard for me…  There is a part of me that is excited to hand off things to other people.  I like to see other people grow in their leadership abilities, and it also takes a load off from my to do list.  My hesitancy to hand things off is usually because I have been burned too many times when someone committed to do something and didn’t follow through.

I think for most people, something really does come up… but as a general rule, if you’ve committed to something and someone is counting on you, only an emergency is a good excuse.  Everyone has car problems, gets sick, or has to attend a funeral from time to time.  These things are unexpected and permissible.  What isn’t permissible is when someone procrastinates on something they need to get done to the point that they have to let you down in order to get it done.  It also isn’t acceptable when something more enjoyable comes up, though most people won’t tell you that honestly.

I think part of the problem is that some people just don’t know how to say no.  For more on that, you can see my previous post: “Why Do I Never Have Time To Get Everything Done?”  The danger of not following through with commitments is that you get the reputation of being irresponsible and unreliable.  If I am counting on someone to get something done and they don’t come through… I am very hesitant to count on them again.  Then when someone else asks me if that person would be good for a certain task, I have to be honest with them if I don’t feel like they are reliable.

My encouragement to you today is to let your yes be yes, and your no be no.  Anything else will only lead to frustration and hurt your reputation.  You may not want to let someone down by saying no, but most people respect someone who tells them no in a timely manner.  Respect is typically lost for people who drop at the last minute or don’t follow through on their commitments.  So I encourage you to really think about things before you commit to them.  Then once you know you can commit to something, do it to the best of your ability and only drop out when it is an absolute emergency.