All my life I have been a "yes" person, and I have run my personal and professional life with a cap-in-hand mentality that made me popular and busy but always at my own cost.
If I could accommodate, be flexible, change my plans to suit others or simply stand on my head and do cartwheels to please someone else, that's what I did.
And you know what I've discovered lately? It impresses no one.
As a small business owner and freelance photographer, I have always had the attitude that if a client says "jump", I don't just ask how high, but also if they want fries with that. The customer is always right and I am always at their beck and call.
Recently, however, the business has grown to the point that despite my best efforts, I am simply too busy to fit people in when it most suits them, and sometimes I just can't fit them in at all.
Saying "no" to requests for meetings and assignments was like finding myself speaking in tongues and I was sure it would see me in a position where the work simply dried up and went elsewhere.
What actually happened was the opposite.
The less available I was, the more I was wanted. The more firmly I said "no", the more accommodating were the requests.
I began to wonder if this methodology could work as well in my private life as it seemed to be in my professional one.
The theory that if you treat 'em mean, you keep 'em keen has always been just that for me ... a theory.
Being a little difficult and a little bit hard-to-get has simply never occurred to me.
Hot on the heels of my professional unavailability, I experimented by walking away from a few situations that simply hadn't been producing a return in my portfolio of personal investments. Within days, my stocks had risen and everyone was happy, especially me.
In a strange paradox, it seemed that whether it was with friends, family or clients, the number of "no" responses I issued was in direct proportion to the "yes" responses I got back in return.
Wanting what we can't have makes a certain amount of sense. Getting anything too easily is boring at best and breeds contempt at worst.
We are all guilty of being seduced by the unattainable and tantalised by the forbidden.
Accidentally, I have learned this to my benefit both at work and play, but the knowledge comes with a caveat: the definition of suffering has been described very cleverly as wanting what you can't have, getting what you don't want, and not knowing which. How's that for your thought for the day?
Eva Bradley is an award-winning columnist.
