Say YES!

Many years ago I attended a talk given by Henrik Schyffert, a leading swedish celebrity/comedian, held at Stockholm City Conference. He had only one (1) single slide to support his presentation – as it read ”YES” . The talk was, in brief, about the philosophy of the comedian group that Henrik was part of, which was to say yes to the most absurd proposals and/or ideas when those arose. The rejection of bad ideas will eventually come but much later in the process, no need to start with that. It will only kill creativity.

And today I read little by and about ”Dr. Yes” — Richard Branson (Virgin), who is driven by the same (similar) philosophy. To say Yes instead of No.

Say YES, you can always back out later (at least most of the time 🙂 ). Say NO and you have no chance to change your mind (at least not most of the time 🙂 ) I’ve probably always (to some extent) lived by this philosophy but after listening to the talk of Schyffert, I embraced this to a much greater extent.

I’m better at doing this in my working life than in my private life. In the latter I want to have more ”proof” of that I’m making the right decision before I make it. But also because of Another simple reason: try to say YES to a five year old (or to a teenager for that matter) and then change your mind– well I don’t think so 🙂 .

It is a mental standpoint to be a yes-man. I might not quite be there yet. I’ll be even better at it. I want to get better at it. Today I’ve said YES to go fishing, I’ve said YES go biking, I’ve said YES to shoot air gun, I’ve said YES to candy, I’ve said YES to an evening swim, I’ve said YES to a late night movie, I’ve said YES to using every available tool there is, I’ve said YES fall asleep in the same bed. I believe that the world’s luckiest five year old is snoring in the room next door.

It is also in this spirit I say YES to Cho Oyu – it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Speaking of which, I need to say YES to another fact – I’ve run (jogged) for 20 minutes today – without any apparent side effects. It’s really good for my head to have fixed this – Midnight run – here I come.

Those 20 minutes appears to have had a great influence on my mental attitude (towards working out right now). The last few days I have felt that Cho Oyu, in just over a year, is very, very soon – I need to work out so much to be where I want/need to be in a year. Today, it feels a lot better.