The Art of Saying Yes
Read about why selective enthusiasm matters and practise contrast linkers like although, despite, however, and whereas.
Read the Text
Although much has been written about the importance of saying no, far less attention is paid to its quieter twin, the disciplined yes. The advice columns are full of warnings against overcommitment, and the warnings are often necessary; however, an equally common problem is rarely diagnosed: the chronic refusal that closes a life off, one polite no at a time. Despite all the talk of boundaries, many people are not overcommitted. They are, simply, alone with their preferences.
The case for a thoughtful yes is that opportunities tend to wear unimpressive disguises. The phone call from an old colleague, the dinner invitation from someone you barely know, the workshop whose topic seems tangential, these are the seeds, while the polished, billboard-worthy invitations are usually too late to matter. Even though it would be more flattering to be discovered by a celebrated stranger, real opportunity arrives, more often than not, dressed as inconvenience.
Nevertheless, indiscriminate yeses are not what is being recommended. The skill lies in distinguishing the inconvenient-but-promising from the merely intrusive. In contrast to the easy targets (endless meetings about nothing, social events organised by guilt) the yeses worth saying tend to share a quiet feature: they make you slightly nervous. The unease, rather than being a warning, is often the proof that the encounter contains something genuinely new.
There is, on the other hand, a real cost. Time is finite; every yes excludes the alternative use of the same hour. The argument is therefore not that one should agree to everything, but that one should agree more often than seems comfortable, and reserve refusal for the genuinely depleting. Whereas a no spoken from fear costs nothing at the moment and a great deal over a decade, a yes spoken in modest courage often pays back compound interest of an unexpected kind.
In spite of the cultural fashion for protecting one’s energy, then, a quiet rebellion may be in order. The mature life seems, on inspection, to be assembled more from yeses than from noes, not because saying no is wrong, but because the yeses are what build the rooms a person eventually lives in.
Questions
What, according to the writer, receives far less attention than saying no?