Be A Yes Man « Raising Your Game

From my friend, Joe's blog

http://raisingyourgame.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/be-a-yes-man/

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Be A Yes Man

One of the key steps in raising my game was when I watched The Yes Man on a flight to America last summer. The power of saying yes to life was imbued throughout the film.

‘Say Yes More’

It is a little Hollywood-y and over the top. For instance, the event that changed Danny Wallace, author of the book, was a conversation with a stranger on a bus who told him to “say yes more.” In the film, it’s a huge, ostentatious seminar. All the same, it made me think a lot about how just “Say[ing] yes more,” as the Amazon blurb for the book says, can change a lot of things.

Now granted, I was on the way to work at a summer camp in America at the time so I was already excited. But it still resonated with me. I had been on a back burner in my life for a long time. I’d just come out of my first long term relationship, and I took it worse than I thought I would. I went very much inside myself.

Watching that film changed my experience at camp.

I should qualify that. I strongly believe in the whole, one life philosophy, so there’s no way of knowing if my experience at camp would have been any different. But in this instance, I can categorically say that my experience was different and better because of saying yes.

The biggest change that happened was that I met the girl who eventually became my wife. But saying yes to a lot of opportunities meant that I got to do awesome stuff while I was there. I don’t recall saying no to anything last year. And my life is better as a result.

Yes is a powerful word.

Sometimes It’s Scary

I tried to keep this up throughout this year. Sometimes it’s scary. That’s something that’s addressed in the film. Eventually, I would love to read the book too, but I have a lot of other stuff to read at the moment.

While it might be scary, confidence comes from doing things that take you out of your comfort zone. Confidence comes even from making a decision to do something. And starting is an important step. One of the books in the blog’s Amazon store is Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont’s work on the work of writing. I have only read 50 pages or so of it, so far, but one of the most important lessons that she has is to think about writing through a “One Inch Picture Frame.”

Anything is daunting if you try to conceive of all of it at once. But if you take it in small chunks, anything is achievable!

What do you do to overcome apprehensions about starting something new?