Saying No Requires Losing What Begs Us To Say Yes

​As I look ahead to the new year and start thinking about healthy life changes (resolutions), I find myself reflecting on one of the stories in the Frog and Toad Together series by Arnold Lobel: “Cookies.”

The Amazon plot summary of the story goes like this:

Toad finds a plate of cookies and shares them with Frog. As they enjoy the cookies, they realize they should stop eating them. They find it is very hard to stop eating the delicious cookies. Frog suggests they need willpower and puts the cookies in a box. Toad observes that they can still open the box. Frog ties string around the box, but Toad observes that they can cut the string and open the box. Frog climbs a ladder and places the box of cookies high up on a shelf, but Toad notes that they can climb the ladder, take the box down, cut the string, and open the box. Finally, Frog takes the cookies outside and offers them to a group of birds. Toad is horrified that the cookies are all gone, but Frog says they have no cookies but “lots and lots of willpower.” Toad replies, “You may keep all of it. I am going home now to make a cake.”

Many of us will soon pick resolutions for the new year. And my guess is many of us will plan to rely on more willpower - a stronger commitment to saying no to the cookies.

Only, in my experience, willpower is rarely enough.

Saying no to the cookies can feel impossible. So maybe this year, instead of trying harder, try feeding the cookies to the birds.

Spending less time on social media can feel impossible until you delete the apps - or better yet - put distance between you and your screen. A recent study of thousands of teens found that teens who kept their phones in another room while studying got better grades. Students who kept phones in another room while they slept got better sleep.

It is not a weakness to confess, “I don’t have the willpower to avoid this temptation.” It’s simply truth.

Few who crave alcohol or any substance have the willpower to say no to it. Keeping it nearby to “prove you can resist” is a losing strategy. It is much harder to crave what is out of sight, even if not out of mind.

Many of us will promise to “try harder” in challenging or even toxic relationships, when the reality is that the relationship may need to be fed to the birds. How many years now have you believed this will be the year it gets better?

Things can get better. They do get better. But rarely by trying harder inside environments that make better choices nearly impossible.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus says:

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

To be clear, in Christian teaching this is widely understood as intentional exaggeration (hyperbole) - not a literal instruction to harm oneself - but a vivid way of saying:

Remove sources of temptation

Be decisive about what leads you astray

Change your environment and habits, not just your intentions

It’s Jesus’ way of saying: Feed your cookies to the birds.

As we go into 2026 and consider our resolutions, it may help to think less about fixing behavior through force of will and more about shaping environments that make healthier choices easier.

We make it harder to say no when we keep things in our life that beg us to say yes. Which is where resolution failures often begin - when the things around us are better at demanding yes than we are at saying no.

So get rid of those things.

Feed them to the birds.