About 6 weeks ago, my son’s classroom teacher asked me to come in for a morning and teach the children how to make rocket ships out of old bits of cardboard as part of this term’s ‘Space’ project. One-on-one craft tutorials, not a probem. Teaching craft to a room of 30 people (even if those 30 people are only 5 and 6 years old) – that is so far out of my comfort zone that I would rather eat my own toenails!! But even though the voice inside my head was screaming “Nooooooooo, run away!!!!”, I found my mouth saying “Yes, sure, that would be great!”.

I then promptly buried my head in the sand and tried to pretend that it wasn’t going to happen. Then, this week, I started waking up at 4am drenched in sweat, with my heart palpitating and gripped with an overwhleming sense of panic. After two episodes of this it suddenly occured to me that the rocket making day was this Friday!! I worked myself up into a complete state of anxiety and even tried to devise a way to fake my own death in order to get out having to do this! But needless to say, Friday rolled around, and I found myself standing in front of the class trying to teach a bunch of children how to make rocket ships. And you know what, it actually wasn’t that bad…. and the children didn’t eat me after all…. (though I’m sure they could smell my fear!). But that’s not the point. The point of this cautionary tale is that all this week my body absorbed so much stress and anxiety for no good reason. I quite literally worried myself a new grey hair or two. And that could have been totally avoided if I had just said what I meant in the first place, and politely declined the teacher’s invitation.

So, Louise, I have to thank you once again for another valuable life lesson. Saying what you really mean is actually important to your health and wellbeing!

Really good comment Jo: the thought that putting ourselves first sometimes is either selfish or will lead to conflict is just so limiting and 99% of the time completely untrue!