Yes Man
When you watch the Jim Carrey movie ‘Yes Man’ which explores what happens when ‘Yes’ is the only option you choose for every decision you have to take, the wild situations it leads to are hilarious in the movie, but can be dangerous in reality.
Saying ‘Yes’ to everyone around you, makes you a machine that satisfies whatever they want out of you, like a Robot custom built to do something. This happens when you go out of your way to satisfy others.
If you are an Yes man for others, then you are a No man for yourself. You put others above your own self. Now, this may appear egalitarian and philanthropic. But it is at the cost of rejecting You.
A lot of our lives are dependent on these two simple words ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. It is almost like a decision tree. At every point you branch out by deciding one or the other and your life takes an entirely different path based on that decision.
Even a simple thing like,
‘You want coffee?’
If you say Yes, then you are saying No to Tea and a thousand other beverages at that point in time. You have rejected thousands of possibilities which in turn can exponentially explode into a life that will be unlived by you.
It kind of shows how tiny and narrow our paths are in the large unexplored possibilities that life offers. The time we have is so less, you often end up riding the safe path. And the safe ones are what has been tutored into our heads reading and listening to others.
‘Getting up at 5 am will change your life’
‘Avoid Sugar like plague’
‘Do 10000 steps every day’
‘Read a book a day’,
‘Spread your risks’
and a million things are constantly fed into our minds, by the tiny paths of life experience others have tried out.
We are filled with such preachings because we say ‘YES’ to those unconsciously. The more you have said Yes, the more blind you became to your own self. That makes you live life like a computer program. Running the same code. Looping over the same path. It is safe but without life.
We have made our Education itself so programmed that it does not allow you to explore until you are freed from it. And when you are free to explore, it takes a great deal of time to undo what you learnt and begin to truly learn something.
True learning happens within you. When you find you are the greatest obstacle to yourself. When you drop your own filters and colors added by an unconscious saying of ‘YES’ to everything you encountered and you begin to see things as they are. When you are conscious, the choice of Yes or No can only be right and never can go wrong.
