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In saying ‘yes’ to one place and one project I am by necessity saying ‘no’ to many other people and places. In saying ‘yes’ to working alone, I am effectively saying ‘no’ to the work partnerships that had been discussed. We are parting ways as friends and colleagues and the door is open to future team work options, but at this point it is ‘no’ to continuing to wait for others and ‘yes’ to going now and going alone.

Learning to say ‘no’ is as important as learning to say ‘yes’, and it takes discipline. In the world, and in the organisation  I work with, there are far more needs than there are hours in the day or workers in the field. Even when prioritised, there are often still more significant needs than available people…and ‘significant’ is a slippery term that each person measures differently.

Learning to hear someone else’s ‘no’ is as important as learning to say my own ‘no’. If I want people to respect my ‘no’ to their urgent priority, then I need to hear the ‘no’ of others to my urgent request. I hope that people respect that when I say ‘no’ it is because I have listened, reflected and decided. I do not say ‘no’ to cause pain, but because it seems the best path from the place in which I am making the decision. I hope that I return the respect when someone else’s ‘no’ is returned to me on a different matter at another time.

Learning to say ‘yes’ to things I don’t like but can see the value of and can make the time for is as important as being able to say ‘no’ to similar things. To balance the needs of others with my own, to sometimes do the unpleasant job that needs to be done, to take on the dull job that everyone is avoiding, to recognise that some things simply need doing if we want the whole to progress… I need to sometimes say ‘yes’, yet other times say ‘no’.

The spiritual discipline of ‘no’ and the spiritual discipline of ‘yes’. They are things that I am working on and things that I have had to practise a lot this year. I expect I will be a lifelong learner in this field, as saying ‘no’ or saying ‘yes’ is not always as easy as I would like.