The Yes Project: A Not-So-Brief Explanation

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So. The Yes Project.

What the hell is it?

Back on October 7th, I came to an abrupt decision–in 2009 I was going to completely change my life.

It wasn’t that things were bad–far from it. I love my house, my neighborhood, my life. Yet I had the overwhelming desire to clear everything off the drawing board in one great sweep and start over again. It was coming time, I decided, to move back to San Francisco (having been gone for 14 years), and embark on a new creative career.

So I started to make some changes, clearing out clutter and tying up various loose financial ends. I don’t yet know when or how the move is going to happen, only that it will, and when the time comes I’m not hauling a lot of old, unwanted stuff, or carrying forward any old, unfinished business with me. I want a clean start, even if it means the only things I take with me are the cats and the computer and a change of underwear.

While decluttering, a lot of old anxieties kept coming up. I’ve always had a hard time letting go of stuff; I had a bad habit of hanging on to things that might be useful someday. To get rid of things would mean that they wouldn’t be there when I needed them–and I was sure I would one day need them.

It was a poverty mindset. Never mind that I was no longer in poverty, and hadn’t been for years; my brain hadn’t yet caught up with my bank balance. And the more stuff I forced myself to get rid of, the more “poor-thinking” arose in protest. Despite the fact that I’ve always managed to get what I need, I still carried around the fear that one day my luck would run out, and I’d be left wanting.

That same poor-thinking also made me a tightwad. Man, I was cheap. And I was so stingy that I frequently talked myself out of things I really wanted because they were “too expensive.” Travel, hobbies, new creative interests, better clothes, going out to listen to music–I spent money on books and art supplies, but that was about it.

I was very good at telling myself “No,” in other words. Worse, I often managed to convince myself that not only was something too expensive, but I didn’t really want it in the first place.

Which was bullshit, of course.

For years I have wanted to learn to play a musical instrument (as described here on my primary blog). But a guitar or piano were expensive, and so were lessons. The learning curve was bound to be steep, given that I had no previous musical training, and no discernible aptitude for music. Other than pitiful squeakings on the Flutophone and soprano recorder back in fifth or sixth grade, I had never made music. So buying an instrument and learning to play it meant taking an expensive risk, one likely to deliver a very small return.

I gave myself a host of reasons to say “No” to something I genuinely longed to do. And music isn’t the only thing I’ve said “No” to. I’d like to learn to sail, and to cross-country ski. I’d like to travel more, especially to Europe and South America and Southeast Asia. I’d like to learn new languages. I’d like to try something like fencing or martial arts, that involves my body as well as my brain. Despite the fact that I am horribly allergic to them, I’d like to learn to ride horses (because they make me sort of nervous and I’d like to get over that). I’d like to have a dog, someday (though the cats have said “No,” so I think that one’s definitely out).

I’ve talked myself out of every one of those things, and always with fear-based reasoning: fear of (perceived) expense, fear of physical harm, fear of looking stupid. Pick one, or two, or all three in combination.

I have said “No” out of fear far too often. And I’m not even going to go into what saying “No” out of fear has done to me as a creative person.

If I want to change my life as I’ve imagined, I have to let go of fear. That means that instead of saying “No,” and talking myself out of things, I need to start saying “Yes,” and simply doing them, minus all the mindfuckery.

While packing off old stuff to Goodwill, I confronted a lot of those fears. I kept a paper journal and wrote my way through them (and couldn’t help but notice how ridiculous they looked once they were on paper). But I didn’t realize that a real change had occurred in my head until New Year’s Eve, when I took the plunge and bought my very first musical instrument–a ukulele (and it’s a nice one, not a cheap toy).

I said “Yes.” And I liked saying “Yes” so much, I wanted to do it again. So I went online and bought a ticket to a music event later this month. I wanted to go, so I said “Yes” to it, instead of talking myself out of it with, “No, it’s too expensive! And the service charge! You’re kidding, right?”

Since New Year’s Eve, I’ve thought an awful lot about what buying that ukulele means. It hasn’t even arrived from Hawai’i yet, but I already suspect that learning to play it will change my life in ways I cannot yet begin to fathom. And it will do so only because I decided to say “Yes” to it, instead of conjuring a fear-based reason to say “No.”

Which begs the question: what if I said “Yes” more often? What might my life look like in a year? Even more radical–what if my default answer became “Yes,” and I had to find solid justification for saying “No”?

That’s what the Yes Project is about.

In order to change my thinking and fully integrate “Yes” into my life, I need to make it a habit. And I need some sort of powerful reminder every single day for at least 30 days before “Yes” will become ingrained. Taking a cue from Steve Pavlina, I decided to make a 30-day trial out of it. But what would I actually do during that trial?

Simple. If my creativity has been enfeebled by saying “No” to it too many times, perhaps it can be revived and strengthened through the power of “Yes.” So every day, I will sit down for an hour and create an image of the word YES. It might be acrylic, or watercolor, or collage–it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even have to be good by any artistic standard. The whole point is to focus on that one crucial word, to think about what it means, to think about what I want to say “Yes” to next–to make it real. And every day I will post the resulting image, with whatever commentary and observations arise from the hour spent making it.

How long will I carry on this project? A minimum of 30 days, but longer if it’s productive to do so. I like the idea of doing it for a full year, but don’t yet know if the project can sustain itself and remain meaningful for that long.

Will it work? I don’t know. Haven’t a clue. And maybe it’s a stupid idea; I’ve had a fleeting thought that it might be. But even if it is–so what? I’m saying “Yes” to it anyway.

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