Say YES

I can’t count the number of times I’ve said, No.

Published in

Writers Guild

2 min readMar 23, 2018

No to opportunities, no to connections, no to helping people, no to helping myself. Just NO. That simple word effectively stopped me from living. And every time I said no, I dug myself into a deeper rut.

What drives us to reject living, to say NO?

It’s fear.

Fear of change, fear of being rejected, fear of exposure and vulnerability.

It takes courage to step out of that rut and say, yes. I think people can be dismissive of how hard that is. Phrases like, “What do you have to lose?” or “The worst thing that can happen is nothing.” And so on. Those are motivating phrases, however they are not cure-alls. Maybe someone feels motivated for a while, but then is suddenly faced by one of those fears.

That motivation vanishes, and they go back to their safe little rut of NO.

For people like me who have succumbed to those fears in their subconscious, it takes more work than an article. There are underlying emotions which are crippling personal development, and until those are confronted and dealt with, there’s no chance of saying Yes.

I’m on that journey now. I’m facing a lot of those limiting fears which are rooted deep in my mind, and while it’s really hard and exhausting, I know that it’s necessary for me to live my life.

I helped someone yesterday. I said yes. More specifically, I donated some money to a legal defense fund. The reason is because the defendant is my age, just 24, and her livelihood and career are being threatened by a corporation, all because she spoke out publicly on an Instagram story. It’s punitive and meant only to make an example of her.