This week I learned a valuable lesson, which I thought I’d learned quite some time ago – the art of saying no.

I think the universe sometimes decides I need to learn a lesson, then conspires to throw everything at me at once so I DEFINITELY learn it.

Here’s what happened this week:

A potential client, who, after I spent 2hrs prepping for our session together, cancelled because he decided he’s rather look for a therapist with ‘more experience’, emailed me saying they had changed their mind and they’d like to book in again.

Now, it was an interesting case so I would have liked to have worked on the problem, however, confidence in your therapist is key to any work done together being effective, so I really couldn’t see a way to move forward.

A couple of days later, my ‘friend’ decided to push my buttons and see how far he could push me before I told him, in no uncertain terms, where to go. To cut a long story short, it ended with me turning on my heels and walking away (literally) and him having to call me back because he didn’t know where he was going! Seriously, who can’t use Google Maps nowadays?! 

Both stories have a happy ending. I explained to the potential client that I couldn’t work with him and hopefully he’s found someone he clicks more with; the friend came round later that evening with lots of apologies and looking decidedly sheepish.

So, how were these lessons for me?

When I updated the website last week, I asked same friend to look at it for me and let me know what he thought. He said he really liked it but it was strange because I came across as much more confident on the website and blog than in ‘real life’. As first, this really worried me and I started questioning myself again: am I being fake? am I pretending to be more confident than I am? OMG I’m a fraud!

Then I took a step back, gave myself an imaginary slap across the face and thought about it logically. It turns out that when I write this blog, I probably am more confident than I appear in ‘real life’, but that doesn’t mean I’m being fake. This blog is where I can be myself and write about things I KNOW about. There are areas of my life outside work that I’m not as confident in. My daytime job is highly stressful and pressurised. It’s new to me and I question my decisions every day. My personal life got turned upside down when my ex and I parted ways at Christmas and whilst my confidence has grown leaps and bounds from being on my own, I still miss the security of having a partner.

So yes, I am more confident on this blog than perhaps in real life, but that’s because I am more confident about what I write here and my work with clients than I am about other aspects of my life. 

I can say no to potential clients without worrying about whether it’s bad for business because my intuition guides me more strongly in this area of my life than in any other. It was much easier for me to say no to the potential client than it was to leave ‘friend’ in the middle of the street. I didn’t question my decision to say no when it related to my business because this is my comfort zone. Navigating relationships and the corporate world is still very much a work in progress for me but it’s good to know I’m going in the right direction.

Questions for you to ask yourself now:

  1. Are you more confident in one aspect of your life than another?
  2. If you are more confident in one area, why do you think that it?
  3. How can you transfer that confidence to aspects of your life that need work?