Book 250 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Losing Yourself Happens One NO at a Time!

Book – Year of Yes: How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes (Part 2/2)

Book Description: With three children at home and three hit television shows, it was easy for Shonda to say she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. And then, over Thanksgiving dinner, her sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything. Shonda knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.

This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her. The book chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.

Reflection:

Shonda spent a year of saying yes to the things that scared her, yes to living, and yes to herself.

Saying yes to yourself is one of the hardest and scariest things that any of us can do. That is because saying yes to yourself can often feel like we will be letting everyone around us down if we say no to them. It’s natural, we are social creatures, and we crave the safety and security of belonging to a tribe. If we follow our instincts to please the masses, we end up saying yes to all kinds of things we don’t want to do in this life and that takes us further away from who we say we want to be and how we want to live inside.

Here's the thing to remember, the compound effect of our actions is always at work. Whenever you make a decision and perform an action, you set the compound effect in motion. For instance, saying yes to that meaningless job because you “need the money” can trigger so many more unintended yeses that you never expected. You may soon find yourself to saying yes to values that your new company tells you are important. You may be saying yes to travel all the time to places you don’t want to explore. You may be saying yes to working 90 hours a week in that same meaningless job because you don’t want to let your team or your boss down. You may be saying yes to never seeing your children because you want to provide them with a “good” life. You may be saying yes to a marriage that is strained and distant because you are always stressed and worried. You may be saying yes to never having time to exercise or eat right. You may be saying yes to networking events and dinners with people you don’t care about and will never see again most likely in your life.

Before you know it, you look up to find that you don’t recognize the person staring back at you in the mirror each morning. You are depressed, angry, irritable, and an overall mess. You dread going to work each day. You are quick to yell at your wife and kids over any little thing that happens. You feel like you “never have time” to do anything you like. Your best friend is your bag of chips and scrolling Facebook each night looking at other people’s lives. That one decision you made to please others and belong to the tribe left you in the exact opposite place…alone!

Saying yes to others means saying no to yourself. Shonda said it best herself, “Losing yourself happens one no at a time”.

You are always saying yes in this life, whether you like it or not. You are either saying yes to what value or what someone else values…it is really that simple. The question is you need to ask yourself is, whose value system do you want to say yes to in your life?

It is easy to say yes to someone else’s values and in turn say no to yourself to feel like you belong. The ironic thing is that the more you forsake yourself to “belong”, the further away you drift from that goal as the compound effect of saying no to yourself kicks in over time and you find yourself miserable, alone, depressed, and scrolling Facebook while binge watching Tiger King and finishing off a pint ice cream.

No one wants to be around a depressed, miserable, and angry person. That is what you will find with people saying yes to everyone around them. The irony is that if you want to find a place to belong, only say yes to yourself. Saying yes to yourself sounds scary, selfish, and isolating on the surface. Dig a little deeper and it couldn’t be further from the truth.

People want to be around other people that are full of life, imagination, curiosity, and ready to tackle the big problems of the world. That person exists in all of us, but they can only be discovered by saying Yes to yourself, your values, and your purpose. When you say yes to what matters most to you in this world, you find seemingly endless energy, enthusiasm, excitement, curiosity, and genuine love for what you do. Others will take note because that type of feeling is infectious. Before you know it, your selfish act of saying yes to your values will fill your life with meaningful projects and meaningful relationships that are all in alignment.

If you lose yourself one no at a time, you will find yourself one yes at a time. People love to be around other people that know who they are, why they are here, and what they want out of this world. You only get that if you have the bravery to say yes to yourself. Once that happens, you will look up and find your life filled with meaning and a place where you truly belong, which is what you wanted all along.

Question: Are you saying yes to your value system each day or to someone else’s?

---

Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes