When my husband and I were first married, we tried to do it all. On our first Thanksgiving together, we drove 12 hours from North Carolina to Connecticut, arrived at my parents' house around 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, ate breakfast, took a nap and then woke up in time to join my family for Thanksgiving round 1. A few hours and a ton of food later, we ditched that party for Thanksgiving round 2 at my husband’s aunt and uncle’s house. While I was glad to have the chance to spend some much-needed time with his family, I spent a good portion of the evening doing my best to not fall asleep on their very comfortable couch. The next morning, after a good night’s sleep, we decided that was not our best yes and we needed a different plan next time.

Person hurty jenna
Jenna Hurty-Person
Editor / Progressive Dairy

I confess, until recently, I hadn’t thought about that day in quite a while. However, this year one of our columnists, Rebecca Shaw Pfeffer, is doing a series on Lysa TerKeurst’s book The Best Yes. Her third and latest article in the series is "Managing the awkwardness of limiting 'Yes' and saying 'No’". If you missed the first two, you can read them here:

The basic focus of the series is that people can only say yes to so many things at a time before they’re overextended and set up to fail in some way.

Does this sound familiar? I know it does for me. I get excited about projects, events or new cookie recipes, especially during the holidays. Before I know it, I’m several dozen cookies deep, it’s midnight and I don’t even want to acknowledge how many dirty dishes I have to wash.

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In the series, Pfeffer focuses on using your faith, long-term goals and core values to guide your decisions. In this article in particular, she discusses the importance of being honest with yourself and others about your limits and priorities. It is so easy to become caught up in the excitement of the moment or a sense of responsibility and say yes until you’re overwhelmed and unsure what to eliminate. As I mentioned, holidays were particularly challenging for my husband and I to figure out. Over the years, we’ve learned that it is OK to say no to parties if you need a day to rest or bring a simple cheese tray instead of two different homemade cheesecakes to Christmas dinner. It is far better to show up at fewer parties fully charged and able to enjoy the event than to be falling asleep on the couch because you overextended yourself. Is that idealistic? Absolutely! But isn’t that the way goals should be? The perfect scenario of what we should do every time.

As we approach the holidays, an extremely busy time for many people, I encourage you to look through your to-do list and see how many of those items align with your goals for yourself, your farm and your career. Are there any “yeses” that should be “noes”? Is there a yes that isn’t on the list but should be? And in Pfeffer’s case, her saying no to her role in Dairy Bowl allowed others to say yes, so who knows, your “no” could open the door someone else needs to say “yes.”