The first step in learning how to say no, it's going to be to start to conquer some of your urges to go for this, and to go for that, to change your attitudes. And we're going to look in this short lecture at three approaches to doing this. The first is going to be to think about where you can control areas of your life and where you can't. The second is going to be think about how you can slow yourself down to give yourself more time to make conscious decisions. And the third is to move your focus onto the opportunities to say yes, so look, for those exciting serendipitous opportunities that can transform your life. Because if you're not good at saying no, then you won't have the time to take advantage of those opportunities.
The first thing to think about is what you can and can't control. Because it's very easy to get overly focused on the things in your life that are outside of your control. And as soon as you start to focus on those things increase your level of stress. Because stress fundamentally, is caused by feelings of lack of control. If you want to start to improve your ability to say no more effectively, to make better choices about yes or no, then the first thing is to concentrate on those things that you can control to break that cycle of feeling stressed, because you're out of control. So spend more time On the things that you're in control of, and less time going for this, going for that in a few times attempt to create a sense of control over things that are genuinely not within your control.
The go for mindset to go for this go for that attitude is often driven by a deep need to feel busy, busy, and to rush, rush wherever you go. And if this is the case for you, it's vital to slow yourself down consciously. To be more deliberate and more careful in your choices and in your decision making. When someone makes a request of you, rather than react straight away, ask for some time to think about it. When you've got time to think about it, you will know what the right answer is for you. And if you don't in later lectures, We'll take a careful look at some decision making support that you can create for yourself.
When you take the time to make the decision more carefully, you will more often make the right decision. One of my favorite words in English language is the word serendipity. It means an unexpected discovery or discovery that is made by chance. And our lives are full of serendipitous opportunities, chances to do something or to change something that really matters. But if you're constantly going for this and going for that and saying yes to everything, then you won't have the time to make use of those opportunities. In fact, chances are in your busy, busy, rush, rush, go for this go for that life.
You won't even notice all of those opportunities. When you start thinking about the value of taking the opportunities that life offers you, then you can start to see the value of saying no change in your instincts over your go for this go for that good for mentality is all we need for the moment because we're next going to move on to starting to think about when to say yes and crucially, when to say no. So join me in the next day.