Learning to say no

Its 9:30 pm on a Thursday night and one of your closest friends calls you to go to the party you've all been looking forward to for weeks now. You remind yourself that you have a Biology quiz tomorrow morning that you still haven't studied for, but "what the hell, its Thursday and I need a break from this long week...I'll just wing it." When morning finally comes and you nearly miss your class because you’ve overslept, you realize that you are entirely unfamiliar with the test material on the quiz. Sound familiar?
This situation has happened to me all too often and I'm sure you can easily relate depending on your situation. Many of us, myself included, have continually kept up with trying to please different people in our lives at the expense of losing sight at what really matters. Whether it is the failure to say no to a group of friends about going on a vacation outside of your budget or simply not having the willpower to say no a decision that is might put a damper on your long term goals. These problematic situations occur because we have yet to condition our minds to make good decisions when encountered with a seemingly “tough” choice. In the entire scheme of things, if I skipped out of a particular party and was actually able to study the material to its entirety for a better grade, there would likely be no negative repercussions except the ones I’ve created for myself in my own mind. Therein lies the problem itself; many of us seem to simply hallucinate that there actually is a problem because we are conflicted with our short-term and long-term goals at the moment. A feeling of “I want to go with the party to have fun right now” usually doesn’t coincide well with “I need to get good grades so I can get into grad school.” Once we can train ourselves to continually make good decisions on a regular basis, it becomes a matter of just finishing what is truly important rather than exploring other pathways to sidetrack you.
Alright, so now that you have identified what might have posed a problem, how do we fix this? What usually works for me is to focus on the things that might be negatively impacted as a result of a bad decision. Essentially, put your complete focus on the ramifications that WILL occur if you chose the pathway that might sidetrack your future. Don’t tell yourself that they might, but rather make it known in your head that you shouldn’t even take a slight chance. After having put yourself in a number of the same situations, it will become rather easy to say no.
If this situation or situations like this come up often and you feel stuck in the middle, you should probably take a step back and look at the relative effect of these bad choices. Usually when we have to think twice about a question and its relative effect on our future aspirations you already know what you should do.