MEGAN FEDORCHUK

Do you find yourself saying yes to things you have no time or energy to complete? I think it’s time we all started saying no from time to time just to maintain our sanity.

Tuesday 7:40 p.m.: Travis Homenuk, Opinions Editor for the Sheaf, sends out the weekly text message in hopes of securing volunteers for next week’s issue. When you receive his plea, you are neck-deep in group work, final projects, presentations and creative journals — not to mention a lengthy student-exchange application that has already taken far too much of your precious time.

You would push these tasks into the evening, but your two part-time jobs and a committee meeting have you booked right up. You think to yourself, “It would be crazy to dedicate myself to an article this week.”

As you rationalize, you look down at your phone. What’s this? You’ve already responded with an “I can try?” What does that even mean? Oh wait, you’ve now clarified that indeed it means yes, yes you can write an article for next week’s issue. Swell.

Scenarios like these are textbook for the modern day people-pleaser. Of course, I do not mean to say that every effort separate of an individual’s own personal wants and needs warrants assessment. After all, creating good karma will only further benefit us in the future, right? So then what exactly qualifies someone as a people-pleaser?

As a self-diagnosed people-pleaser, I have a few theories. The first is perhaps the most obvious: you do not wish to foster feelings of unhappiness.

When approached with a task, you feel that refusal will make you solely responsible for another person’s despair. Not wanting to bear the weight of such guilt, as you know how it feels to be stressed beyond reason, you respond with a reassuring “yes” regardless of your own anxieties.

Another theory is one that stems from the innate drive to belong. A positive relationship can be assumed between a number of commitments and a number of acquaintances.

A people-pleaser may initially involve his or herself to fulfill this drive. Then, once becoming a member of a team, committee or board of sorts, the previous theory may apply. Before you know it, you’ve entered the trenches of an extra-curricular warzone, each involvement competing for your time, efforts, sleep and sanity.

The third theory more strongly relates to the social side of people pleasing, and is commonly known as a fear of missing out.

Pub-crawls, house-warming parties, potlucks — you name it! All events including one or more people you may know are anticipated to be the event of the century. Decline an invitation to one of these wingdings and you can pretty much throw in the popularity towel.

Finally, and to end things on a depressing note, perhaps the reason certain individuals suffer from the “disease to please” is because they value others’ time, gains and goals above and beyond their own.

Their unhappiness is less significant; their time is not as precious; their recovery and recuperation is not as validating as mediocre social gatherings. Is it that we — the doormats, the pushovers, the spineless — do not feel we deserve time dedicated to ourselves?

Competitive in nature, I am immediately irritated by the giant spotlight shone over my hierarchy of to-dos, revealing my own aspirations, lonely and weathered, at the bottom.

Will people-pleasers finish last, after all? Are all these efforts for naught?

Ironically, it was Travis himself who suggested I write an article on how to say “no” when you are too busy. People-pleasers both far and near, find the strength to say “no” during this busy season. You’ll thank yourself in the long run.

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Graphic: Stephanie Mah