Life Coaching Courses Online - Social Anxiety Post-Lockdown and Learning to Say No.

It’s a time to celebrate the reopening of our world to the new “normal”.  Restaurants and nightclubs fully operational, staycations being planned, holidays getting booked, a staged-return to our offices and breathing life back into our cities. We are filled with the excitement of seeing friends, family and work colleagues again after our forced separation. But many people who have come to me for coaching over the past few weeks are experiencing a new kind of social anxiety….a fear of meeting up.

We have been so conditioned over the last 12 months to be distant, to not touch each other, avoid crowded places, conduct most of our business lives via a computer screen so suddenly the idea of abandoning these newly learned behaviours and fears is causing many people to be consumed with worry.

It’s not just a fear of catching a virus - as of course vaccinations are helping with that. But the idea of ‘life returning to normal’ forces us to change what has become our ‘new normal’.

While lockdown came with many challenges it also gave many people a chance to slow down and reset. It made us rethink our goals, adjust our plans and look at new, and sometimes better, ways of doing things.

Spending more quality time with family, getting back to nature, avoiding the daily commute, communicating more with our neighbours were just some of the ways we improved the quality of our lives. And so with the world returning to ‘normality’ many people are concerned about potentially losing this new sense of balance in their lives.

In a world where many peoples currency was ‘being busy’ the pandemic meant people could legitimately do nothing and not feel bad about it. People stopped rushing and a slower pace of life showed people that being idle came with many benefits. Now as social and work diaries start to fill up with restaurant bookings, weddings and face to face life coaching client meetings we need to ensure we don’t plunge in too deeply at the beginning by remember to use the power of saying no.

So how do we say no, without feeling like we are missing out.

1. Be clear on your priorities. Knowing what serves you best and helps you towards achieving your goals will help you to know when saying no is goal affirming and not something to be seen as a negative.

2. Know that saying no also means saying yes. You only have so much time to do all the things you want to do so saying no to one thing means you can say yes to something else.

3. Bide your time. Take your considering a request, don’t feel like you need to give your answer straight away. Consider all your options before getting back to someone.

5. Try ‘no’ for now. Letting a person know you want to do something but it’s just not the best time is a great way of saying no. Offer alternative dates at times that suit you best.

6. Ask for support. If your find your plate getting full, ask for help getting some things done more efficiently so you can free up more time for you. Make an Important, Urgent, Not Important, Not Urgent matrix to help you figure out what you need to do first and what can wait.

7. Just say no. This is often the simplest but hardest solution but an unapologetic and firm no to something can be so life affirming.

For more tips or if you are interested in coaching or partaking in any of our coaching courses please get in touch. www.mindstream.ie

Ariana Dunne is an accredited APC Life and Business Coach and a Senior Facilitator with Mindstream.