You Don’t Have to Give Your Energy to People Who Don’t Deserve It

Jeff Davis
3 min readJan 15, 2022
Photo by Ryan Chia on Unsplash

Something very recently happened that is genuinely ground-breaking for me.

Over the last few weeks I was on a stay-at-home vacation, in my safe, peaceful bubble. That’s when the doorbell unexpectedly rang.

I Politely Said No

It was a delivery man. He wanted me to take three packages for the neighbor.

I said no. It gives me anxiety to take packages for neighbors, as I’ve done it before and it then becomes my problem. It’s not a big deal, though it did cause some stress in the past.

Also, my new neighbor — the one the delivery guy wanted me to take three packages for — is quite strange (no judgment, that’s just an observation). He’s been rude and disrespectful to me and my girlfriend on more than one occasion. I didn’t take it personally — people are gonna be people — but this gave me added incentive to not hold three packages for him…and I wouldn’t have taken packages for the neighbor even if I liked him.

The delivery man, expecting me to say yes, started angrily swearing at me after I respectfully said no (this has been a common theme and recurring pattern my whole life — whenever I say no and set boundaries, people often seem to get extremely angry with me. I’m not sure if this is a vibe I give…

--

--

Jeff Davis

Award-Winning author, blogger, world traveler, TEDx speaker — a.k.a. Mr. Mountaintop: https://jeffdspeaks.com/authentic-leadership-blog/