Reflection - 30 days of (saying) Yes

During this 30 days I realised a weird thing about myself - I don't like to say yes. That is not to say that I don't push myself out of my comfort zone; you know that I do. It's not to say that I don't take on new challenges and learn new things; these things are a given. But I dislike saying "Yes" - and I don't know that I fully understand why. So I thought I would try to tease that out a little in this reflection.

Let's take a step back first

I thought that I did quite well with this activity, although I can honestly say that the focus dropped off a little towards the end. Maybe that's because I got busy, and I know that when life ramps up I'm not great at maintaining focus on the 30 day activities - but I think it is even easier to explain. I felt that this would be a challenge for me, but it really wasn't all that challenging. So, I think I got bored with it.When I decide to do this, at some level I thought I was still saying no to too many things; I was procrastinating too much and not doing the things that challenged me in very confronting ways. But I think there is something else going on, I'll get to that in a minute. There was a list of activities I gave myself to say yes to during the month, I think I did pretty well with the list:

1. Submit emails to five podcasts – I have done four, and will complete this today.
2. Write letters to my parents – there is still a block to doing this, I can't fully explain it here (too personal).
3. Have a ‘sales’ conversation as part of a course I’m doing – I did take the opportunity to turn a conversation into a sales conversation, which really meant simply stating that I could help someone achieve something they were struggling with. Nothing has eventuated from it yet, but I felt okay with the new method.
4. A couple of people have recommended two local bookshops for me to approach to stock my book – I haven't done this, although I did send about 30 emails to bookshops around Australia (follow up calls this week).
5. Pitch my book to a Melbourne bookshop – Hill of Content are taking half a dozen copies on consignment; they are a really cool bookshop in Bourke Street :-)
6. Turn the book into an audio book – all of the audio is recorded, now the fun task of getting it edited and formatted for Audible.

As well as these, I mentioned a few other challenging actions in blog posts during the month - so all in all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I will try to maintain a focus on doing the things that scare me, or at least analysing why I won't do them. But there is still that realisation to discuss...

Saying vs Doing

I realised during this 30 days that I say no, a lot! And yet, I will often say no as I prepare to tackle the task anyway. It's like the part of my brain that interacts with other people avoids any challenges, but the part of my brain that controls what I actually do just ignores it. More perversely, often it's like I just enjoy saying no, even though I fully intend on doing the action - like no has some power for me.Maybe it's my risk averse reaction. This probably has some basis, my initial response to something that scares me or makes me uncomfortable is No - and then I have time to think about the options; weigh up the possible consequences; and temper that reaction with a more positive outcome. The problem with this is that I can say no, but still do it anyway, with virtually no time to reconsider the risks.Maybe I'm a negative person. Yeah, I don't think so either. While I am a realist, if you had to put me on the pessimist/optimist spectrum, I would definitely be closer to the glass half full. This hasn't always been the case, like many people I have moments where I was doom and gloom (I can still get there sometimes), but on the whole I'm a positive person.Maybe there haven't been a lot of things to challenge me and I'm using too small a sample set. Okay, there weren't a lot of 'huge' challenges that I wasn't already prepared for, but I'm making this observation thinking about how I am generally in life - and there have been a whole load of scary challenges in the last year alone (self-publishing for example).Maybe it's my response to years of being a people pleaser, and I simply enjoy practicing the act of saying no to people. It may be a simple backlash after years of always doing what other people wanted or expected of me. I know this isn't it, because it goes back a lot further, but I do think there is an element of that somewhere in this habit.Maybe I have a fear of committing... hmmm... I think that there might be something in this one. If I don't say 'yes' but do the action anyway, what is that giving me? Well it means if I back out at the last minute then that's okay, because I never said I would definitely do that thing. And I have come to realise that I have an intense dislike of 'owning' particular elements of my life. I think that there is definitely something in this, but it's not the answer.In truth, I think that it is a weird combination of some of the things mentioned above, and the need to feel like I have control over my life - that's what it feels like anyway. I think I need to ponder this a little more, because I need to consider the impact of willpower, courage, determination and trust.All of this is to say that the most challenging part of this activity is working out why I'm so contrary about enthusiastically taking opportunities and saying 'Yes' to people. I'd love to know whether you experience the same internal struggle - saying no but doing it anyway? Do you know why you do it?