I don’t know if you all remember the movie “Yes Man” from a few years ago. Jim Carrey starred as Carl Allen who was down in the dumps about his life and looked at everything in a negative light. He changes his mindset after attending a seminar that makes him say yes to life. He simply said "yes" to everything put in his path, which transformed his romantic life and professional title. Although this movie wasn’t one of my favorites, I have been thinking a lot more about the meaning behind it. It is so common to let fear get in the way of our happiness, success and personal development. I am experimenting with the concept of saying “yes” more.
This doesn’t necessarily mean saying yes to do things that can possibly be detrimental to my health, but just little things. Our generation tends to take the easy way out. If an opportunity that requires a lot of effort and work presents itself, then we tend to back out or find an alternative. As students, I am sure you all have Googled the answers, texted friends or sent your teacher a thousand questions before actually trying to work out the problem for your homework. Why is this? Are we so afraid of failure that we choose to not even try?
Jin Li, a professor at Brown University, evaluated the differences between the learning and school habits of Asian and U.S. students. She found that our cultures define “struggle” in very different ways. The U.S. students have been found to give up a problem after an average of 30 seconds after complaining that “they haven’t seen the problem before (NPR.org).” We tend to avoid conflict, struggle and problems because it just makes life seem to go more smoothly but, in reality, we are just hurting ourselves. We learn the most about ourselves when overcoming a struggle.
I was out to lunch with clients for my internship this past week and this same topic came up. One woman asked me what my greatest struggle has been so far in my life, and honestly, I couldn’t think of one. Does this mean I am not living? Or does it mean I have just been fortunate to live with an optimistic mindset where my struggles don’t seem so bad in retrospect? I mean, you hear stories about people losing someone close to them, getting a severe injury or having a serious life-changing event in their life. That is when I realized that anytime something bad happens to me I turn it into something good to motivate me to find a way to make something positive come out of it.
That being said, I still feel the need to live life to its fullest more. I don’t want to pass up opportunities just because it might not go how I’d like them too. Conflicts and negative events in our life shape us to become who we are meant to be. So try to be the “yes girl” or “yes man.” You never know what you could be missing out on by sitting out or avoiding that difficult problem. Be confrontational, let your guard down and challenge yourself.
