Nicola says:

My sister Sarah sent me a book from Australia via those lovely people at Amazon "The Yes Man" by Danny Wallace (Random House) - very very funny, indeed. 

And actually very moving.  She sent it to me (I think) because I must have said something about the tragic downturn of my social life due to my mid-life crisis (more about that later), and the amount of things I have been saying "no" to recently.  I saw Sarah for the first time in a year and a half in New York at the Mind Of A Millionaire seminar just before Christmas, and while I can’t remember saying anything about it, I might have done. 

(I obviously said "yes" to the Mind of a Millionaire Seminar when Andy Shaw suggested going, but there were many a moment when I wished I had said "no" - until I got there obviously!  Then I was very, very glad I had said "yes").

Or perhaps my other sister Heather, who lives just up the road and has to listen to me moaning about my existentialist angst (as my therapist calls it), has mentioned it to Sarah.  Heather is in Australia at the moment, staying with Sarah, and my brother Alex is there too.  Actually, I’m feeling just a teensy bit paranoid about them all being there without me - they must be talking about me even just a little bit.   The reason I’m not there is because it seemed more sensible to stay home……

So, to get my own back in case they ARE talking about me, here’s some pictures of them in Oz, enjoying themselves without me!  That’s my bruvver Alex in the pool and then again with Heather on the beach.  If you can call a long white expanse of sand with blue sea, blue sky, no people and pebbles, a beach!  And Heather with the obligatory kangerooo, then Nick & Sarah in the kitchen on Xmas Eve.  Sarah is hiding as she’s not keen on having her photo taken!

But back to the "Yes Man" and it’s quite profound effect it has…..

The Danny in the book was feeling that life was slipping away from him, that last year had been fun, a year of adventure, different, but that, now, six months into a new year, all his stories were about last year, he was cruising on past glories, dining out on better times - or worse, dining "in" on them.  It was a crisis, similar to the one in his twenties, when he lacked direction, but the problem was not that he had direction, but that he had, and socially speaking, it was down!

Then he met a man on a bus who said three simple but profound (to Danny) words - he said "Say Yes More" and the book is about what happens to him when he does.  He keeps a diary about the amazing, mad, surreal, fun, exciting, adventurous, scary things that happen to him when he says Yes to everything.

It’s funny, very funny, moving, thought provoking and it spoke to me quite profoundly.

Why?  Because I realised over this Christmas that all of my fun, my stories, my glories and the adventures that I experience are all about work, and while I LOVE my work, when the kids go to their dads, when Steve goes skiing, when the emails dry up because people are with their families, then there is an awfully big space between the mealtimes - and even the X Factor has finished.

I’m 44 and I know I need to find new things to say "yes" to, but I have also known for a while that I don’t even know what I might like to do!  How can you say "yes" to stuff, if you don’t even know what that stuff might be?

My crowd were clubbers - in our teens and twenties, we loved music and fashion and going out three times a week to dinner and then to dance in dark, trendy clubs and that was what my social life has been about since I was about 16.  Any other activities were out of the question because - when we were not out - we were sleeping, hung over, frazzled from late nights, saving our money for more clothes or the next night out….

Then in our thirties, it was about all of us getting together in each other’s houses, with the new and increasing number of babies asleep upstairs, and us eating, drinking and playing loud music and dancing - recreating our clubbing days if you like, but at various homes in a more baby friendly environment!

But that’s stopped to a large degree too now.  Because we are all growing up, getting more sensible, earning more and working harder, saying "no" more often. 

What used to happen to people in their twenties has happened to us in our forties!

And because I’ve been so focused on becoming financially free, and a good-enough single mum, I’ve been saying "no" more and more, delaying gratification, being and doing the sensible things, saying No to everything but the things that are easy, level one and level two kind of things.

According to Danny Wallace, there are five levels of "yes" or "yevels" as he calls them.

1.  Level One:  The Easy Level

Saying yes to questions like "would you like some free money" or "why dont’ you take the rest of the day off?" or in my case "would you like another glass of wine" or "some tiramusu?"

2.  Level Two:  The Still-Quite Easy Level

Like saying yes to "will you video that thing for me tonight" or "Will you give me a lift home as you go past my road"

3.  Level Three: The Making-An-Effort Level

Getting harder but not so hard that you want to make a fuss about them….saying yes (and then going) to a drink after work or a party you are not so keen on, or involving a journey of a journey of more than 40 minutes or one change of bus or train…

4.  Level Four: The Too-Much-Effort Level

Saying yes to something that you KNOW will be awkward or might be embarassing, that will take several days out of your life, saying yes when what you really want to say is "absolutely not".

5.  Level Five:  The Forget-It Level

Most of us, apparently never attain Level Five status.  That involves saying "Yes" to attending a wedding.  In Mozambique.  Yes to Fancy Dress, Anything involving planes, or pains or standing up and speaking in public or that involves change.  Anything that you know in your heart that you totally utterly, wholeheartedly, cant, won’t or mustn’t say yes to. 

Now I thought that, because I was saying "yes" to lots of things - sometimes quite high level four and five things - in my work, that I was entitled to say "no" a lot in my private life. That I deserved to take it easy outside office hours.

So I haven’t been going out much, haven’t been having much fun (outside work), havent’ been keeping up with my friends who involve a lot more effort to keep up with than the one’s who live locally (although I’ve been a bit bad with the local one’s too!), like Philippa and John who live in London, like Rona and Adrian who live in Spain.  I haven’t been calling my Dad who lives in New Zealand and where the timezone is inconvenient and whose phone number is always upstairs on my mobile that’s just run out of battery…..

So I was thinking about giving this "Yes" thing a go as I’m reading this book and then I realised that the one thing that I’m most challenged around at the moment is my weight and that has come about by saying "yes" too many times, about living life a bit too much to the full in some areas, the level one and two areas…….and that, if I go on this new diet (which I have found out a bit more about, by the way, and am going to an Open Day for, on the 14th January) then I’m going to have to learn to say "no" too.

And if I say No to level one and two areas, I’m going to have to find something else to fill my time and distract me…..and I would rather that the things I fill my time with are FUN things, rather than more work!

Then, just as I realise this, Danny in the book - after lot’s of Yes adventures, gets sent a t-shire that says "Just Say No" and thinking about it, he gets to a point where he’s tempted to start saying "no" all the time instead of "yes" because….

"No is power.  No says "I’m in charge".  Think about how many times you’ve said "yes" to in the last year, and how many times you would have liked to say "no" instead.  Maybe being able to say No is the one thing that keeps us sane.  Some people go through their whole lives saying Yes over and over again - Yes to things they don’t want to do but feel obliged to, Yes to things that allow other people to take advantage of them, just because that’s the way things are, the way things have always been.  Some people need to learn to say No.  Because every time they say Yes (to other people), they are saying No to themselves".

So he spends a day saying No to ideas, to invitations, to requests and he records in his diary how he feels and what didn’t happen and he concludes that a lot of horrid things didn’t happen, but similarly a lot of GREAT things didn’t happen too, and those are just the GREAT things he knew about, what about the great things that didn’t happen that he didn’t even know about?

So then he explores what would have happened if he had not said Yes to all the things that he didn’t want to do, all those things that hadn’t led anywhere good and fun and exciting……and he concluded that, if  he’d said No to those moments he would also have said No to the things that were fun, and good and exciting and those things that HAD led to something wonderful.

Then he goes on the internet to find out if the pain of saying yes (and regretting it) was worse than the pain of saying No (and regretting it).  He puts in the words "I wish I had said Yes" and then "I wish I had said No" and it brought up lots of blogs and websites, online guestbook entries and celebrity interviews.

Interestingly, the things that people regretted saying Yes to, were all quite trivial (apart from the people who had said Yes to something so obviously bad that it should never have been an option in the first place).

While the pain of the things that people wished they had said Yes to, were much more profound.  The pain of missing something, of not knowing waht COULD have happened, of discovering that, sometimes, opportunity will only knock once, the pain of knowing what a No had brought them and realising too late what a Yes might have brought them, the pain of not necessarily having said No, but of not having grabbed with both hands a YES!

So I’m thinking that, if I want to say Yes more, but I sometimes need to say No more (saying Yes to myself!), how could I make this work for me?  Because it needs to be simple or I won’t be able to do it.

And as I was lying in the bath, reading the last bit of the book (great ending to a great book, by the way!) it occurred to me that I could say Yes only to the things that were Good For Me.

Now that was quite a revelation, as I’ve always strenuously avoided doing the things that were Good For Me

(unless I actually actively enjoyed them like eating brussel sprouts)

because the words Good For Me actually seemed, when I was young, to suck all the fun and spontaneity out of life.  They were words for grownups and as I still don’t feel grown up, even at 44, they were words that I never intended to say, if I could help it.

But perhaps I should re-consider.  Perhaps I could combine the "Say Yes More" philosophy with the proviso "if it’s Good For Me".

Good For Me in the sense of creating a social life, of being fun, of helping me lose weight, of getting a life back outside work and being just a mum.

So I’d say Yes to all those things I quite fancy doing but always say No to;  evenings at the Brighton Jazz Club, to learning to dance (salsa?  tango?) to new clothes and more shopping generally, going to the Komedia Comedy Club, to buying a red bike and joining Esporta (rather than trying to make myself speedwalk round the Beach in the dark and cold), to lots more sparkling water, to going away more for weekends, to travel, to cruises with Marlene & Keith, to spas and luxury hotels with Judith & Nicola, to trying that new diet that we all know WORKS, to doing more things with the kids (scary one that!), to speed dating, to dating full stop, to more movies and to living life with no regrets personally as well as what I already have, which is no regrets workwise. 

While simultaneously saying No (or Yes To Myself) to lethargy, a glass of wine, negativity and excuses, a slice of cake, to taking too many new things on, and a very big No to Steve’s potato dauphinoise!

How much fun could that be?

(I’ll let you know!)

Nicola

p.s. I just called two old friends, emailed another AND my Dad and joined Esporta over the phone so I can take the kids tomorrow.  And I’ll stop at the bike shop on the way home!  At this rate I might be able to fix up something for New Year’s Eve……….should I throw a party?