Someone asks you for a favor.
Normally you would say yes. This time you know you don’t want to, and after thinking about it, you say no.
Almost immediately, you feel guilty.
You start wondering whether you were selfish. Maybe you should send another message. Explain why you said no. Offer to do something else instead.
Nothing about the no feels particularly good.
It’s tempting to take that feeling as evidence that you made the wrong choice.
Maybe you did. Saying no isn’t automatically better than saying yes.
But the discomfort doesn’t settle the question.
If you’re used to making yourself available, not doing so may feel wrong even when there is nothing wrong with it. If you’re used to explaining yourself, a simple answer can feel rude. If you’re used to taking care of a problem as soon as you see it, leaving it for someone else can feel irresponsible.
The old response may have become familiar enough that departing from it produces discomfort of its own.
That creates another place to work.
You don’t necessarily have to make the discomfort go away, argue with it, or convince yourself that your new response was right. You can leave the no where it is for a while and see what happens.
Maybe after an hour you still think it was the right answer. Maybe you realize you were harsher than you wanted to be and decide to say something differently. Maybe the guilt remains even though you still don’t want to change your answer.
The same experiment can be much smaller. If you usually explain yourself at length, give the explanation you think is needed and stop there. If someone offers help and your first impulse is to refuse, wait before answering. If you usually step in when someone else is struggling, see what happens if you don’t step in immediately.
Then pay attention to more than whether the difference feels comfortable.
Does something actually go wrong? Does the other person respond differently than you expected? Does the discomfort change if you don’t immediately act on it? Do you still want the same thing once you’ve had some time?
Sometimes discomfort is telling you something important. Sometimes it’s what unfamiliarity feels like.
You may not know which at first.
You can let what happens next help you find out.