Passion Catalyst lesson #7 - Start with yes

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

Do you ever find yourself saying no automatically to ideas or opportunities? Is that expanding your potential, or limiting it?

Last week I wrote about staying open to possibilities and avoiding the inherent limitations of tinybox thinking. One of the ideas I talked about in the post was the importance of saying yes. I want to expand on that idea, because it's an important one. 

If you want to expand your future by making one simple, small choice, do this: default to yes until you are really sure that no is the right answer. 

When you default to saying no, it automatically shrinks your potential. Because you will almost never say no and follow that up with, "OK, let me explore whether this is a possibility." You say no and you move on, effectively eliminating whatever you just said no to from the picture.

Saying yes, on the other hand, initiates further exploration. You may eventually discover that no, in fact, is the right response. But you will also find that yes keeps on being the right answer for a percentage of those opportunities. And those are opportunities you would never have had if you started out by saying no. 

There is no risk to saying yes until it's time to say no. There is only upside.

Try this: Next time you hear yourself saying no to an idea or an approach, ask yourself, "Do I really need to say no to this yet?" Then start to explore the idea. Look for ways it might in fact make sense. Explore how it might actually be possible. 

Another helpful habit to get into is to examine why you're saying no. Often the no has nothing to do with the validity or viability of the idea. It's because of inertia. Maybe it's just outside the scope of what we're used to thinking about. Or it might feel like it's too hard, or too scary. Or because someone told us we couldn't do something like that back when we were in second grade. 

The more you recognize the driving forces behind your urge to say no, the more readily you can recognize when the right answer is actually yes. 

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Comments

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[Padraig Cotter]

Hi Curt,

Thank you for sharing your lessons on your Passion Catalyst journey and I look forward to reading more of your posts in the future.
I am a career counsellor in Ireland and have just started out on my own and am very much encouraged by your advice. I like the emphasis you place on passion in career. I agree totally - without passion work is a dry and draining experience.

Warm Regards,
Padraig Cotter
www.walkyourownpath.ie

[Curt Rosengren]

Thanks Padraig. Congratulations on starting off on your own journey! Best of luck with it.