Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is don't agree to something that you will be grouchy about later. For the happiness of your

future self, and for the sake of your relationship with the person who is making the request,

you may be better off declining. As I recently heard it put, don't consent and resent.

So in our personal and professional lives, probably all of us have agreed to things that we know

we aren't going to be happy about.

You may also have had a partner or colleague consent to a request of yours, and then found

yourself on the receiving end of what feels like unfair resentment.

The person said yes, but clearly didn't mean it.

And now they are going to extract revenge in the form of being impossible to be around.

So how do you avoid consenting and resenting?

Sometimes we are not in a great position to decline a proposal.

If your boss assigns you to a project you aren't thrilled with,

you may just need to go along with it.

But other times, you may be able to compromise, or at least reach a place where you won't be

bitter about saying yes.

For instance, maybe your partner wants to host people at your home, which sounds fine, but you

know that you often get stuck with the lion's share of the extra

cleaning involved in making a home company ready. You can explain to your partner that you will

resent having to do all that. So if your partner would like you to be happy about hosting people,

you will need to split the list of work that you come up with.

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