Say yes 3

07May10

So I’ve been trying my best not to say no for over a week now. It’s harder than I’d imagined, because most of the time I just forget. But I’ve also done some interesting discoveries.

It’s easy to not say no when a colleague offers you a piece of pie on the occasion of his birthday. A full-hearted “Yes, please!” is very easy to achieve in such a case.

It’s hard to not say no to simple questions that require a yes/no answer. I think those questions should not count. I don’t intend to work around a question like: “Have you seen this?”, or “Have you locked the back door?”. Not saying no there is just plain inconvenient.

It’s hard not to say no when you’re on the phone with someone who is trying to sell you something you don’t need.

An then there were some interesting outcomes, things that I’ve done in the past week that I might have skipped were it not for the fact that I said yes to the people asking me things:

I wrote a Wikipedia article for the first time in years.

I attended Bevrijdingspop for the first time ever, and probably the last time (150.000 people in one place is way too much for me).

I went to Open Coffee Nijmegen for the first time: To be repeated, because there were interesting people to meet.

I’m going to write a book within the next 5 years. :)

This morning, I missed out on being bought a beautiful rose, because I said no when asked if I would have a vase for a rose as beautiful as that. I still wonder why I said no to that question.

So far, it’s been a very interesting experiment. Four days left!