The art of saying 'no'

How healthy boundaries can prevent burnout and protect your health

- DR. EDSEL MAURICE T. SALVANA

“No, thank you.” Learning those three words can do wonders for people’s mental and physical health.

Many of us have a friend who literally dropped dead of exhaustion. Or the relative who had a stroke during a business meeting. Or the acquaintance who had a heart attack in the middle of the night and never woke up. The list goes on, and many of these fatal or near-fatal incidents may be preventable if there were just a little less stress in that person’s life.

As a doctor, I’ve been overworked for pretty much my entire adult life. Starting with medical school, sleep has always been at a premium, and there never seems to be enough of it. Some classmates couldn’t stand it and either quit or gave up clinical work entirely after graduation. Not me, I went back for more.

In an internal medicine residency in the US, we worked 80 hours a week with on-call 24-hour duties every five days. This was considered light compared to the brutal 24-plus-hour duties every three days at home.

This willingness to accept inhumane work hours has haunted my generation (Gen X) and more than a few millennials who were convinced that this was a good idea by their Gen X parents. Taking on more work used to be seen as a badge of honor, and saying no was considered a weakness. “Suck it up,” was the common refrain from our seniors. If they survived it, then we could, too.

In addition, culturally, most Filipinos are people pleasers who are loath to say no to anything. Consequently, there have been a good number of us who are dropping dead in their 40s and 50s, along with a fair number of strokes and heart attacks.