Defending your point of view can use up a lot of your precious energy. As much as 90% of our available energy can be used in this way.

If you do this a lot, stop doing it and see for yourself. You'll probably feel energised, not to mention liberated.

Sometimes it's necessary to 'defend your view'. If someone is trying to persuade you to do something you don't want to do either walk away or say the minimum. Such as "No."

People respect a simple "no", as long as it's said with conviction. Or you can be polite and say "No thanks". Just leave out the "No, but..." as this leaves an opening for the persuader to get back in to try and 'convince' you.

An example is that an ex-partner always wanted me to go skiing. I hated it but he was always trying to persuade me of its merits. This resulted in many tiring arguments where I defended my views on why I disliked it and he defended his views on why he did.

It was exhausting, I felt as if I was in court and had to come up with a good reasons not to ski!

Finally I realised that all it took was a simple, but emphatic "No". He skied, while I enjoyed the apres ski without the ski...bliss!

If you're not defending your right not to do something that you don't want it's even easier. As soon as defending your view stops being pleasant then just stop.

I can remember a huge row that divided a group I met on holiday. It began as a lightheartded chat about a particular movie. It soon became a heated row. The people who liked it thought there must be something wrong with the people who didn't. And vice versa.

I'm not going to say what the movie was, I don't want to start another row! However, I arrived on the beach the next day day to find them all 'fuming' about this ongoing disagreement. They asked if I'd liked the movie. Actually I'd loathed it, but said it just hadn't appealed to me, and I hadn't really thought about why....

I wasn't going to say another thing...I'd learned by too many mistakes.

If they'd asked me in the heat of the row it would have been wise to say I hadn't seen it! After all, whatever they thought or said would not change the fact I hadn't liked it.

That's the crucial point. Nothing anyone said would have changed my experience of that film. People's views are more often changed by experience, rather than persuasion.

It doesn't matter if it's ice-creams, cars, clothes, holidays, that are being discussed.

You know what you like, you know what you don't like. And that's enough. The more we respect the point of view of others the more they respect ours.

Janet trained as a Professional Stress Consultant. She owns the website http://www.womens-natural-health.com which offers lots of free tips for enhancing your health, happiness and beauty.