Why Cancer Patients Need To Learn How To Say No

​​Learning how to say no can protect you from a lot of unnecessary stress and suffering. Discover 6 reasons why you need to ​stop saying yes all the time.​ Find out the cause of our people-pleasing habit. And learn some powerful exercises you can do to say no with ease.

​One of the best words that you can learn to say is the word no. Many people have a hard time saying no and take on too much responsibility. We want to be noble citizens and help others.

But doing everyone a favor depletes us and causes unnecessary stress. Cancer patients are often caring and dutiful people. They want to please others. But this people-pleasing takes a toll on their health.

They give, give, give and never take. Helping others is an honorable and meaningful task. But even good things in life has a limit. If you don’t prioritize your needs, you create more pressure on yourself.

As I wrote about in my previous blog article, stress in one major factor in causing cancer. When you feel, stress the body releases stress hormones. These hormones will destroy your health if prolonged.

If you take on too much responsibility, you will deplete yourself. And you'll make it harder to heal from cancer.

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about why you need to say no more often. First I’m going to tell you why saying yes to everything is a bad idea. Then I’m going to talk about why most people have a problem with saying no and where it stems from.

And lastly, you'll discover how to say no with ease by using some powerful exercises.

​So let’s talk about why saying yes ​all the time is a bad idea and will only make your life more miserable.

6 Reasons Why You Need To Learn How To Say No

​1. ​When You Only Help Others You Neglect Yourself

Helping others is an honorable thing to do and will make you feel good inside. But everything in life has its limit. When you help others every waking hour, you have little time for yourself. Humans are emotional and spiritual beings and not robots.

We have limits in how much energy and attention we can expel before we become depleted. When you say yes to every request, you have no time to rest. You will come home tired and not have the discipline to eat healthy.

This tiredness will lead you to eat junk food and worsen your cancer condition. It is vital that you permit yourself to work on your healing. You can’t do that if you always say yes to every invitation.

Stop doing things you don’t enjoy or depletes you. When you take care of yourself, you’re also better equipped to take care of others. You can’t do that if you’re exhausted all the time.

Another reason you should say no is to create less anger in your life.

2. ​You ​Will Resent Others If ​You Give And Do Not Receive Anything Back

One thing that happens when you do everything for others is that you start to resent them. It's exhausting when you give and don't receive anything back from them. When this happens, you begin to resent other people.

Anger and resentment are toxic emotions that destroy your health. Suppressed anger is one of the most common emotional problems in cancer patients. If you want to improve from cancer, then you need to address your anger problems.

If you give too much and expect others to reciprocate the deed, then that will leave you frustrated and resentful. Your body is energy vibrating at a certain frequency. When you feel love and peace, it balances your body and makes it healthy.

But if you feel anger, you distort the energy field of the body and cause health problems.When you resent others, it's easier to say sarcastic comments to them or things you later regret.

Your relationships will become toxic and give you headaches. Another reason why ​you should learn how to say no is that you won't enjoy ​life otherwise.

3. ​​Saying Yes To Every Activity Will Make It Harder To Enjoy Life

If you say yes to everyone, you will not enjoy all the activities. You won’t appreciate life as much and become frustrated. People can sense when you don’t want to be with them.

Your relationships will take a strike and cause more tension and negative feelings. These feelings will only bring you down and make ​sick and tired of your life. If you don’t feel a zest for life, then it can be harder to take care of your health.

 Another negative thing about not saying no is that you will cause more stress and anxiety.

4. ​If You Don't Turn Down Offers You Will Feel Stressed Out

Saying yes to everyone's request creates stress and anxiety and an endless to-do list. You have a lot more to worry about and more responsibilities than you can handle. Stress will destroy your health and make it harder to deal with cancer.

Overcommitment leads to less sleep and more anxiety. You're also depleting your energy resources. Saying yes to everything will overload your body because you can’t do it all.You will only burn out and have no energy to heal your cancer or take care of your health.

This stress will worsen your cancer condition and eat you alive. Another thing that can happen if you say yes all the time is that you can get depressed.

5. Not Saying No Can Lead To Depression 

If you chase others love and attention you will become miserable and depressed. You can only feel good when you love yourself. Depression destroys the flow of energy in the body and your appetite for life.

If you don't have anything to fight for you will be less likely to want to survive from cancer. Another downside to people-pleasing is that you get less done.

6. ​You'll Get Less Done If You Say Yes To Everything

If you say yes to every opportunity, you will get less done. If you have a million things to do you won't give every task the right attention it needs. The things that you’ll do will lack quality.

Because of that, you will have more fires to extinguish and only cause more stress and trauma. If you want to get good results in life, then you need to say no to many offers.

Quality always wins over quantity. When you only focus on the things that are important to you, you will feel better and less stressed out.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, they were in a financial disparity. Apple lost $1.04 billion and was 90 days from being bankrupt. What was the thing he did to turn things around and make Apple one of the most successful companies in history?

He eliminated 70% of Apple’s product line. Steve had to say no to a lot of the ideas the company had.

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One year later, the company turned a $309 million profit. Jobs' plan also laid the groundwork for Apple's continued innovation. The company introduced revolutionary products including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

By eliminating a lot of products, they had less overhead work. And when they had fewer products it was easier for their customers to make decisions. Marketers know that if you give people fewer options, they are more likely to buy.

If you provide customers with too many choices, they will end up doing nothing.

One principle that is known by marketers is the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist. He discovered that 20% of the people generated 80% of the Italian economy.

By the numbers, it means that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your inputs. You can apply the 80/20 rule to most aspects of your business or working life. So this means that 80% of your action is a waste of your time.

When you say yes to everything, you take a lot of useless action that doesn’t bring you results. By turning down more things, you produce better results by doing less.

You will have less stress and can focus on more important stuff.

​​Doing Less ​Will Give You Better Results In Life

Stephen R. Covey is the author of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of his concepts in his book is the four-quadrant principle.

As you see, the two factors that define an activity are urgent and important. Urgent means it requires immediate attention. A ringing phone is urgent. Quadrant I is both urgent and important.

It deals with significant results that require immediate attention. We call the activities in Quadrant I crises or problems. We all have some Quadrant I activities in our lives.

Urgent problems consume most peoples' lives. They become crisis managers, problem-solvers, and deadline-driven producers. As long as you focus on Quadrant I, it keeps getting bigger, and bigger until it dominates you.

A huge problem comes and knocks you down, and you're wiped out. You struggle back up only to face another one that knocks you down and slams you to the ground. Some people spend all day putting out fires.

The only relief they have is by doing non-important, non-urgent activities of Quadrant IV. 90% spend their time is in Quadrant I and the remaining 10% in Quadrant IV.

​People who spend most of their time in Quadrants III and IV live irresponsible lives. Efficient people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because urgent or not; they're not important.

They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II. Quadrant II is where you should put most of your focus. It deals with things that are not urgent but important.

These activities include things like building relationships, exercising, planning, and eating healthy. Another word for it is preventive maintenance. These are things we know we need to do but don't like doing.

Quadrant I, will shrink in size as you spend more time with prevention and preparation in Quadrant II. To say yes to important Quadrant II priorities, you have to learn how to say no to other activities. Sometimes these activities can be urgent things.

Until now I’ve talked about why you have to turn down more things and how your life can become better because of it. But I haven’t talked about why we have a hard time saying no. If you don’t address these emotional issues first then it will become harder to say no.

Why We Have A Hard Time Saying No

Why do we have such a hard time saying no to others? The reason we want to please others is to make them happy. People-pleasers primary purpose is to seek outside validation.

They base their security and self-confidence on getting the approval of others. So in essence people-pleasers lack self-confidence. Instead of loving themselves and not needing others approval, they do it the opposite way.

Thus they take part in a game they can’t win. They worry how others will view them when they say no. We don’t want others to think we are lazy, uncaring, selfish or egocentric. You might worry that others will dislike you and cut you out from the group.

So our fear of saying no comes from our fear of rejection. Fear of rejection is the underlying feeling that, if I can't make others happy they might leave me.This fear comes from our early relationships on which love was conditional.

Maybe your parent rejected you or was emotionally unavailable when you grew up. That can lead you to seek validation outwards instead of inwards. If you had critical parents, you might develop a people-pleasing pattern.

For example, if you got harsh criticism or punishment if you didn't do as being told. This emotional fear may persist even if the parent is dead. To deal with that anxiety, we do everything we can do to please other so that they accept us.

So why are cancer patients prone to becoming people-pleasers?

​The Reason ​Cancer Patients Are People-Pleasers

Dr. Brodie was a holistic doctor. He talked to thousands of cancer patients. What he discovered about them was that their parents often rejected them. Cancer patients tend to develop feelings of loneliness.

This attitude is a result of their lack of affection and acceptance earlier in life. They have a tremendous need for approval and acceptance. As a result, cancer patients become sensitive to others needs.

And at the same time, they suppress their emotional wants.They become the caretakers of the world and show great compassion and caring for others.Cancer patients can become reluctant to accept help from others.

They might fear that it may jeopardize their role as a caretaker. There is nothing wrong with caregiving. But the problem arises when you derive your entire self-worth, and identity from it.

If you don't learn how to say no, you will be stuck in this role. Regardless of the origins, putting others needs above your own only lead to adverse outcomes. If you feel like you must achieve a lot to be worthy of others love, your to-do list becomes endless.

You need to be comfortable with who you are. When you stop attending others all the time you have fewer responsibilities and less stress.

So let me summarize the content of this blog article. After that you'll learn some exercises you can do to say no with ease.