I’ve been overcome recently as I notice how much I hate disappointing others. Sometimes it’s subtle. These I need to work around, but it will be more challenging. Other times I am just being ridiculous.

For example, we had a recent Airbnb guest who asked, the day before their last night, to stay an extra night. We had a two night break before the next guest, but my cleaning crew was scheduled the first night, and someone was coming to take pictures of it the second night. I also like time to air out between guests with Covid.

When they asked for the extra night, I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to make them happy, and fit everything else in place. Instead, it should have taken me 2 minutes to come up with the easy ‘no’, and be done with it – expend energy elsewhere. What’s more, obviously they didn’t have a reasonable expectation they could stay. Rather, they didn’t know and had to ask to get that information.

Sigh.

Clearly it’s not good to disappoint others for the point of it. Yet, staying silent or taking actions we think are necessary in order not to disappoint someone doesn’t serve us in the long run.

Here is an article on disappointing others that someone sent to help me.