"Saying no is not alway a negative. Say no can be proactive and positive. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift from the Sea, writes, 'There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad or empty hours in the day or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself...Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures - an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.' We, too, can have a surfeit of good things in our lives. The people we care about are important to us, and we want to spend time nurturing those relationships. But some of us base our sense of self-worth on how well respond to the needs of others."
Ouch. That hurts pretty good.
