Getting to No
Until recently, three bright red block letters cheered me on from my office wall, inspiring me with an insistent “YES.” For years, the philosophy of yes propelled me forward, brought ideas and people into my life, brought a smile to my face. Yes, I can help with that. Yes, I know someone who’s looking for your skill set. Yes, I can write that letter, pick up the kids, start something new, scale that mountain, go to dinner. Yes. Living in the era of yes was a lot of fun. Until it wasn’t. Believing that everything is possible served me well. Until it didn’t.
Early in my career, I devoured William Ury’s book Getting to Yes and fell in love with the idea of “both, and.” I pictured the book cover when I purchased my ebullient red YES and brought my own love affair with action and cheerfulness and results into the subconscious of everyone in my professional life. The YES was literally sitting on my shoulder, a constant command to myself and my world: Yes, you can.
I began to feel some unease around the whole yes thing after so many people who saw my office during pandemic Zooms commented on the background, its pluck, its cheer, its Pollyanna-like insistence. As months of working in comparative isolation turned into years, I started to resent the cheerful yes. I started to recognize that no, I did not want to keep doing some of the things I said yes to on the regular. I did not want to go to dinner just because I was asked. I did not want to say yes to every project or initiative just because someone nice had asked me. As my very wise mom pointed out to me as I was trying to accommodate something, “You know, Sara, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you actually should.”
I remembered this when I was three layers into Expedia.com, trying to get from Jackson to Nashville to Laramie to Kansas City and back to Jackson within a six-day period. I realized I had gone from a stroll to a trot to a flat-out sprint on the hamster wheel of saying “Yes” too many times. I had a flash of awareness in the moment before pressing the “confirm purchase” button, feeling my stomach in knots, my jaw locked tighter than a pitbull’s. I stepped away from my computer and took my dogs outside. I decided to switch gears and, for once, try no. Everyone whose event I declined replied with complete understanding. They were not the problem, and never had been. My problem was that I had slipped back into my bad relationship with the tyrant of taking action without reflection.
It’s still true that I’m wired to move, make waves, act, try. Just a few days ago, I grinned with authentic appreciation when a friend said to me, “I love this about you. You are a woman of action.” People who don’t act, or show up, or speak up have always scared me a little, making me feel like if I fell out of the boat, they might be like, “I wanted to help her, but I really don’t like getting wet.” It’s taken me a lot of stumbles to recognize that taking action, any action, can be as or more damaging than taking no action at all. Sometimes it means that everyone ends up in the water.
On my office wall now hangs the most glorious painting, “Green Dreams,” on loan from a friend who knew how hard it would be for me to break up with yes. Full disclosure, the “yes art” found a new home in my life, less prominent, but there to remind me that I like saying yes to life, to impractically adopting (another) new dog, meeting a friend at a restaurant after just getting home, spontaneously taking a long hike. And I also like saying no. No, I can’t take that on right now. Thank you but no, I prefer to stay in this evening. No, I don’t have the answer.
Yes can be exhilarating, and no can be complete freedom. Both, and. Yes, and no.
