Take No For An Answer!

Listening to Steve Chandler speak about his new Club Fearless and reading the book by the same name gives me a lot of ideas. Steve makes the point that "Yes" and "No" are like heads and tails. You can't have one without the other. There is no such thing as a coin with no tails. There would be no day, if there wasn't also a night. The two are exclusive. In other words, you can't have both in the same context at the same time. But the absence of one would force the absence of the other.

Now as for No, we do expend a lot of effort avoiding that word. Actually we equate that word with rejection and we avoid the rejection. I find it easy to consider postponing some activities because of the fear of rejection as I start my business. Maybe you're like some of my friends and you're looking for a new job. A large part of our lives gets wrapped up in our career. When we don't have a job and we're out trying to find a job, we can get a lot of our self-image and self-worth wrapped up in the difference between No and Yes. However, if we can realize that No makes Yes possible, maybe we won't take the No answers so hard.

Your job (especially if you're looking for one) is to:

1. Decide as precisely as you can exactly what you want (and don't be afraid to dream),
2. Figure out who is most likely to be able to say yes;
3. Ask the question in a way that makes it easy to answer Yes.

Once you've done that, go for it! You need to collect your No's as quickly as possible.

Decide now, while you think about your dream goal, that a No is just an interim result. Better yet, it is a necessary result. There is some number of No responses that you need to plan for. Set the number high and start getting them. Continually expend your best effort to eliminate the reasons for each No, but don't let them discourage you. Every No brings you one step closer to your Yes.