by an expert Yes-person
Saying “No” might feel rudely impolite, brusque, unsupportive, or just plain negative. We’ll address another perspective on that, but first an admission: the word No sure has felt negative to me throughout life, leading me to perfect a practice of always saying “Yes.” With family, friends, and communities progressively suffering division, proactively finding points of agreement and understanding seemed vital. Here’s how I practiced challenging my own quick thinking: to any statement whatsoever (whether or not I agreed with it!), my first word in response had to be Yes. Then I would figure out how I genuinely could see the other point of view. I didn’t allow myself to lie or to cheat with a “Yes, but…” Whatever point of agreement I could muster had to be real. I practiced this with people whose world views were widely divergent from my own, and I found that the power of Yes led to wonderful evenings of conversation that otherwise would have been stressful and argumentative. The key was to mentally take people’s points “higher,” beyond distracting little details and particulars to the broader ideals that were driving the perspectives. In other words, we might disagree about the merits of certain players involved or the specific actions taking place, but were there higher goals at the heart of the matter? In the worst case, if I truly couldn’t say Yes to any of the ideals, I could yet say something like, “Yes, I understand what your objectives are here” (as opposed to, “No, I hate everything you stand for,” since we can be sure that such a statement would lead only to further strife).
What sparked a new perspective on the word No was actually a synchronicity — two novels I read in a row contained passages about the power of No, and I could hardly ignore the messages. The first was in Flann O’Brien’s surreal The Third Policeman. A character posits that No, generally speaking, is better than Yes. He explains that he did a life review and realized that Yesses had led him astray, and that only the power of No could ensure a life of serenity. His argument is straightforward:
I took all my sins out and put them on the table, so to speak. … I gave them all a strict examination, weighed them and viewed them from all angles of the compass. I asked myself how I came to commit them, where I was and whom I was with when I came to do them. … I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go. … I would say that the bad ones outnumber the good ones by three to one. … I therefore decided to say No henceforth to every suggestion, request or inquiry whether inward or outward. It was the only simple formula which was sure and safe. It was difficult to practice at first and often called for heroism but I persevered and hardly ever broke down completely. It is now many years since I said Yes. I have refused more requests and negatived more statements than any man living or dead. I have rejected, reneged, disagreed, refused and denied to an extent that is unbelievable. … The system leads to peace and contentment. People do not trouble to ask you questions if they know the answer is a foregone conclusion. Thoughts which have no chance of succeeding do not take the trouble to come into your head at all.
But what if a friend offered a glass of whiskey? The character says: “Such few friends as I have are usually good enough to arrange such invitations in a way that will enable me to adhere to my system and also accept the whiskey. More than once I have been asked whether I would refuse such things [and the answer is still No].”
So the argument is that saying No to everything will ensure that bad decisions will never come to pass, leading to fewer regrets. Having a great many disappointments over previous Yesses myself, the reasoning here was tremendously affecting.
The second novel I read was Hadrian the Seventh by Fr. Rolfe, containing this passage:
Cultivate the art of looking as though you were about to say No. You always can say Yes after No. But, if you begin with Yes, as you always do, you prevent yourself from ever saying No. That’s why everyone can swindle you.
That’s a good point, for how often have you quickly agreed to something that you later regretted, or been disappointed or angered over someone who promised something and then had a change of mind and let you down? Had they not said Yes in the first place, they wouldn’t have violated a verbal contract with you. No doubt we’ve all been there: we’ve thought that we should, could, or might be able to do something for a friend, promised to do it, and then weren’t in fact able or didn’t feel up to it or whatever. We thought that saying Yes was the right thing to do, yet the seemingly positive word ended up causing discord.
So the question, obviously, is: Do we in fact say Yes more often than we should, and might we say No more often, for the greater good? Having come from so many years of perfecting the art of Yeses, this frankly feels like a big challenge. But when synchronicities seem to be sharing messages from the Universe, one’s attention gets piqued. As a veteran Yes-person, must I outright reject the philosophy of No? No.
P.S. There’s a very cool yet uncanny way to take advantage of your body’s innate wisdom so as to decide on a Yes or No. Let’s say you’re at the grocery and wondering about trying a new brand of food. Hold the item against your chest, near the heart, for a few seconds. You’ll find that you’ll involuntarily lean either forward or backward just a bit. Forward, toward it, means Yes. Backward, away from it, means No. If the question involves more of an idea than an item, such as (sticking with the grocery setting) “should I cut back on sugar?” then imagine holding the question in your hand (as if it were written on a slip of paper or existed as a little thought bubble), then put your hand on your chest, wait a few moments, and find out how your body leans. You’ll experience how the answers come not from your conscious mind. It can be a fun way to make a decision when you’re otherwise at a loss.
[lllustration from Hampshire College’s The Omen magazine, 2001, by permission.]
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