No more saying yes

I am a people pleaser. I’m more likely to be saying, “Okay”, “sure”, “maybe”, or “alright”, than “no”. I find it difficult to say no, because I know that no one wants to hear it, so I end up agreeing while silently stewing in resentment towards the person who put me in this awkward situation. So it was with great interest that I watched Jim Carrey’s movie Yes Man. He challenges himself to stop saying no to everything and vows to answer yes to every opportunity, request or invitation that presents itself.

He says yes to a homeless man and finds himself stranded in a park, no cash, an empty petrol tank and a dead phone. In true Carrey style the scene is hilarious and had me yelling at my TV, “You can’t say yes to everything. That’s ridiculous!” But as the movie progresses, his character has the time wrapping my head around the concept of someone being a “no man” and struggling to be a “Yes man”. My problem is clearly the opposite!

Too often we’ve got too much hay on our forks. In order to get ahead in our careers, to make our partners happy or to volunteer at our past schools “food fair” means that something else has to give.  I’ve regularly found myself agreeing to work assignments knowing that I will let myself down, but agree anyway because I think it will compromise my career if I say no. 

In the end nobody’s happy, buy does that mean I should be a “no person”? Actually not! I realized that Yes Man is bout opening yourself up to new experiences with an open heart. So I started thinking about all the times I had said yes and been pleasantly surprised. A commercial radio station had paid for interviews and these are the bane of any talk show host life. 

It is actually easy to say yes and not really mean it, but think of the opportunities and experiences we are depriving ourselves of. It is not practical to agree to every single request, but to mean yes when we say it could see us doing things with a very different attitude and being pleasantly surprised.