Cancelling Plans Doesn't Mean Cancelling Friendship: 3 Tips for Navigating Changes in Plans

Transcript

Making plans when you feel good is easy.

What’s not so easy is having to cancel them.

Sometimes we make plans for a future date with all the right intentions, but when it rolls around, we are not feeling up for it anymore.

If we are the friend who gets cancelled on at the last minute, it’s important to have empathy.

If we are the friend who needs to cancel, here are some tips on how you can do that, whilst still keeping your friendship in tact!

• If you are comfortable explaining some of the emotions you are experiencing, that can really help your friend to understand what you are going through. Are you feeling a little run-down and need an early night? Are you feeling overwhelmed by work and need some time to get back on track? Are you feeling sad and don’t want to dress up and go out?
  

• If you know ahead of time, give notice! If you wake up with a sore throat on Thursday and have plans on the Friday, it’s okay to give your friend the heads up that you might need to change plans. It’s always nice when friends keep me in the loop so that we can adjust plans if we need!
  

• Make an effort to re-organise plans once you are feeling up to it. This is just my opinion, but I feel like if you have cancelled plans, then you should be the one to suggest the next catch up. It shows your friend that you do want to see them!

So you’ve cancelled your plans, you feel instant relief…. But now what.

Give yourself what your body / mind needs.

Your mental health is important, and cant be fixed with a ‘self care day’, but now that you have some time back use it wisely! Use that time to lean into what you need to start feeling good again.

No matter how reliable we are, at some stage in our life we will have to cancel plans.

Do it with love - for your friend & yourself!