This is what happens when you say: Yes!
Nobody readily admits to being a negative person. Still, a lot of people could benefit from being more conscious about their Yes to life. Saying Yes to life not only makes you a more happy person, it is the key to personal freedom.
Why we say No.
A lot of people live life from a negative. “This is not me, I don’t like this”. It is a common behavior that people get taught when they are little children. As children (around two years old) you learn that saying No holds power. You learn to say No to your family, your friends. You start to build an Ego. It’s how you become an individual.
No is the foundation of Ego. It is how we define ourselves. We start saying: “No, this is not yours, it’s mine”. Or: “No, I don’t want to eat this, do this, behave like this”. Every time you make a distinction between what’s yours and what’s mine, you define yourself a little bit further.
When you grow up, this No forms your character and you become an adult that stays within the safe boundaries of your likes and dislikes, attitudes and beliefs. It is only in the process of awakening you start to feel how constricted the Ego, that you have built, really is. There is a longing inside you to break free, to get to of that eggshell that you constantly feel around yourself.
When you start to say Yes
Breaking out of the eggshell is not easy at first. It is difficult to say “Yes, this is me”. When you say Yes, when you show your real self, there is a fear of being laughed at. Or maybe a fear of being seen as arrogant or full of pride.
However, if you really want to live, you will need a deep Yes in your heart. It is only Yes that allows you to live. It gives you nourishment, it gives you space to move, to try new things.
Yes is life affirming. Saying No is keeping you in Ego, it’s strengthening the Ego every time.
It’s like the movie ‘Yes man’. The main character Carl is a lonely man with low self-esteem after his divorce. He avoids his best friend Peter. He has a boring job, stalled in a bureaucratic position and he spends his spare time watching DVDs.
Until the day he enrolls into a personal development program based on a very simple idea: say Yes to everything! Carl discovers the magical power of “Yes”, and sees his professional and romantic life turned upside down overnight: he gets an unexpected promotion and a new girlfriend.
Extraordinary things happen when you say yes to life.
Try this experiment:
Take a comfortable seated position. Sit with hands over heart area. Silently repeat “Yes” until you feel very fiber in your body resonate with it. Feel you body sing and relax.
Now do the same experiment with saying “No”. Feel how just uttering the word in your mind creates tension in your body. Experience until you have had enough. Make a conscious decision to Stop. Remember how it feels so you can catch yourself in daily life.
Return to saying “Yes”. When you feel good, close your experiment.
From No to Yes
Make this experiment a daily practice, a meditation if you will. Just watch – even when you are repeating the word yes, something starts opening up in you.
Say No and something shrinks. Say No repeatedly and you start killing yourself.
Say Yes and you feel overflowing, like you can take on the world. Say Yes and you are ready to love, to live, to be.
