This is me sharing some thoughts, being the Centre Manager of a very successful speech and language therapy centre (am deeply grateful for it).
Yesterday a very concerned mother called. She told me in some detail how her son’s speech articulation problems (as a result of him on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD) affected his school life.
For a young bright teenager, this is really troubling his mother, since he is now in a very good school and is in the national sports team.
Then I found out that he has intensive sports training on weekdays and even on weekends, on top of his busy extra curriculum activities (CCA) in school.
His mom said his sports trainings are important and the CCAs are important too. I asked her again what is really important so we can free up some time to do speech therapy, to which she said: “They are all important!” In fact, she probably said her son is very busy more than five times during our phone call.
I think you can figure out that eventually we could not find a time to help him with his speech problem.
I thought it is good for me to start searching for solutions, so who better than the personal development guru, cocreator of the phenomenal bestselling the Chicken Soul for the Soul series, Jack Canfield.
In Mr. Canfield’s book: ‘The Success Principles’, he mentioned in our highly competitive and overstimulating world, it seems everyone wants a piece of us.
Your kids wants you to witness the pre-school graduation ceremony, while you are rushing that month end closing for your company. You arrive in office and sees 100 messages in your inbox or your blackberry, meanwhile your Facebook account just notified you of your wife’s birthday tomorrow. You get the idea.
Mr. Canfield suggested “Just Say No!” – by creating a stop-doing list as well as a to-do list, you will bring more discipline and focus into your life.
In fact, it gets better. In the following chapter, he said you should “Say no to the good so that you can say yes to the great”.
In essence, you have to determine if those activities truly serve your goals or if saying no would free up time for more focused pursuits.
Well, if I could speak with the concerned mom again, I will share this concept with her.
Perhaps she will find it easier to work out what is mediocre, good or great activities for her son. Sports training may be great, so is CCA. Maybe having speech therapy is great, or maybe not great for now. Who knows.
Just say No! to the good, and let more great things start to happen in our lives.
To more of your great things in life…