The Real Price of Being Easy to Deal With
If you’d asked anyone who worked with me in my thirties, they’d have told you I was easy. Always available, never difficult, said yes to the extra shift, the last-minute favour, the project nobody else wanted. I took it as a compliment. It was closer to a diagnosis.
What easy actually meant
It meant I’d decided other people’s momentary comfort was worth more than my own time, energy, and sometimes judgement. It meant I’d rather do a thing I resented than endure three seconds of someone’s disappointment. And it meant that the yes I gave was never quite true, because a yes that can’t be a no isn’t a choice. It’s a reflex.
People sensed it, too. The easy man gets asked more, thanked less, and respected least, because everyone knows his yes is free.
Where the fury comes from
Every yes you don’t mean goes into an account. The balance builds. Then one Tuesday someone asks for something small and you snap at them with a force that makes no sense to either of you. They think you’re unstable. You think you’re finally standing up for yourself. Both of you are wrong. You’re just paying out the account all at once, to the wrong person.
I did this to a student once over a late assignment. The anger wasn’t about her. It was about two hundred favours I’d never wanted to do for other people.
The disappointment you’re avoiding
Here’s what I eventually noticed: the disappointment I was so afraid of lasted about four seconds. Someone asks, I say “I can’t this week,” they say “no problem,” and life continues. Four seconds. I’d been trading entire weekends to avoid four seconds. The accounting was absurd once I actually looked at it.
How I rebuilt it
Pause before every yes. Even a short one. “Let me check and get back to you” bought me the space to answer with my head instead of my reflex.
Ask what the yes costs. Not just the hours, but what gets bumped. If the answer was “my own work” or “my family” and the ask was casual, the answer was no.
Say no plainly. No long apology, no invented excuse. “I can’t take that on.” A reason if asked, offered once. Over-explaining is just pleading for permission.
Let people be disappointed. They’re adults. Their disappointment is theirs to manage and they manage it fine.
What changed
Fewer yeses, all of them real. People started trusting my commitments because they knew I’d have said no otherwise. The quiet fury evaporated. And a strange thing: people liked me more, not less. Easy is pleasant. Honest is respected, and respect lasts.
This week
Catch one reflex yes before it leaves your mouth. Pause. Ask what it costs. If the honest answer is no, say it plainly and time the disappointment. I’ll bet it’s under five seconds.
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The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.