Sunday Newscape Magazine

We all have friends, relatives and co-workers who are not good at meeting deadlines or managing their time. On a regular basis, they come to us with an eleventh hour emergency and that is when they beg us to save their neck. Because you’re such a good person, you alter your schedule, drop what you’re doing and come to their aid. That is okay to do, for someone who you care about, but no more than once a year.

The fact is that some people send much of their time goofing off and they put off the important things, which need to be done, until the very last minute. When it is the day before the deadline, they go into panic mode and scream out for help. If you find yourself being asked by the same person, on a regular basis, to help them because something very important needs to be completed by tomorrow, you must put an end to it because some people need to grow up and that often requires a hard lesson.

Now, this person might be very good at manipulating your sense of sympathy or laying a guilt trip on you. Still, you must summon up the courage to look him/her straight in the eye and say the following “your lack of planning will never create an emergency for me”. Then he/she will most likely respond with something like “well, this will be the last time, I promise”. Then you respond by saying, “no… the last time that I helped you, that was the last time”.

There are some people who will never learn any important life lesson through words alone. That type of person only learns by going through something uncomfortable or even painful. You must be prepared that he/she is going to blame you for what happens to him/her because you didn’t help him/her during this crisis. Just don’t answer and walk away, there are people who go through life using other people on a regular basis and the only way to break the cycle is for them to learn a hard lesson. Even though, they will act as if they hate you, you are actually doing him/her a big favor. You are teaching him/her a lesson that can help him/her rise up above their situation.

Just because you’re a good-hearted person and you enjoy helping others in need, that is not a green light for the “users of the world” to take advantage of you and bring their problems to your doorstep. You have a right to be happy and not be bothered by problems that you didn’t create.

The same goes for people who haven’t learned how to manage their money properly. On payday, he/she might go out and to party somewhere expensive and spend too much money. They might buy something expensive that he/she can’t really afford. Then, when he/she doesn’t have any money left to pay for life’s necessities, such as food, rent or gasoline for his/her car, they show up at your door asking for a little loan. 

If you have a friend, a relative or a co-worker who borrows money and doesn’t pay it back as promised, no matter how legitimate his/her reasons are for not keeping their word, you must shut off the pipeline. There are people, in this world, who are simply ‘users’.   They go through life using everyone they can for money, help or sex. When they are in need, they come to you with a big smile and professing a tremendous amount of love for you.

If you tell him/her “no” you are not the bad person here. So don’t ever feel guilty for saying “no” to a user. After you turn him/her down a few times, if they talk to you with anger in their voice, that tells you what type of person they really are. The whole thing was an act and you finally saw through it. Good for you… pat yourself on the back and be proud.

The world is full of phonies, those people who are out for all they can get who will profess to love you when they really don’t care about at all. They only care about what they can get out of you. Don’t be afraid to flush all the phonies out of your life. Even if you end up alone for a while, you’re still much better off.   Once you start circulating and meeting new people, you will find good people who will become your real friends and seldom will ask you for anything.

If someone, you know, is always being used by others, cut out this column and send it to him/her. It will improve the quality of his/her life. As always, I welcome your comments. You may write to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it