Dr. Ron Alexander sat listening to the record company
executives and staff he’d been hired to help. They’d
sought him out as a mindfulness expert and corporate
consultant to help them improve marketing and sales.
One major artist―a “diva” who shall remain
unnamed―had followed her first two highly successful
records with a third CD that had, so far, failed
miserably. What could they do to turn things around?
As people made suggestions, Alexander took notes. The
word no was used 76 times in response to a proposed
plan. Yes―or any other encouraging word? Eleven
times. “So over the next few weeks,” he told me, “we
focused on what it would be like if, before anyone
opened their mouth to respond, they went into a ‘yes
state’ to engage what I call the open mind, a state of
open possibilities.”
Yes Leads to Creativity and Problem Solving ~
Alexander, the author of Wise Mind, Open Mind , saw a
big shift at the record company: From the top down,
meetings had far less discord. “No is a constrictor,” he
says. Ideas about how to turn the artist around began to
flow, and soon, the majority of the responses were yes
or “why not?” Divas don’t get on buses to go cross-
country announcing call numbers on AM radio stations,
the executives had protested weeks earlier to one
unusual idea. By the end of Alexander’s process, this
diva did. Within weeks, she’d sold close to a million
CDs.
I’m not a record company executive (or a diva). But a
few weeks ago I decided to count how often over several
days my first instinct was to respond with some form of
no. There were more than 76. A lot more. I said,
“Probably not” to my 15-year-old’s idea that she and her
friend could save their money for a year to buy a white
Mercedes (seriously?), and no to her proposal that they
take a bus trip to Las Vegas (seriously?). I said no to the
idea of sitting down and playing the piano (I’ll sound
bad; I’ll be judged; I’ll get frustrated); no to my
husband’s that suggestion we grocery shop together
(we’ll get more done if we divide and conquer), and no
to the idea of joining a book club for parents of teens
(I’m not a joiner; I don’t want to talk about my
daughter’s “issues” with strangers). Thinking I was
being helpful, I said, “Don’t” when my son professed to
feeling guilty about something he hadn’t even been
responsible for causing. When I was done counting, I
was surprised that I, a “positive” person, was so, well,
negative. Turns out, there are a lot of ways to say no.
And a lot more reasons to say yes.
Saying Yes to Joining~
Dr. Robert Bilder is a professor of psychiatry and
biobehavioral sciences at the University of California,
Los Angeles UCLA and holds a chair in creativity
research. “Much of saying yes,” Bilder says, “is saying
yes to another person. By acknowledging that you are
going along with a plan initiated by someone else, you
are strengthening or creating a bond with them.” The
same neural circuits are engaged when we join groups,
Bilder says, as when we fall in love. Oxytocin levels
surge, which, because that makes you feel so good, has
an addictive quality. When you say yes to another
person, you’re engaging this reward circuit, making it
more likely that the next time you’re asked to join
someone, you’ll say yes.
Yes Broadens Your Outlook ― Literally~
At UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center,
researchers study the neurobiology of positive
emotions. Christine Carter, a sociologist there, has
written about bringing up happy kids in her book
Raising Happiness . “Your brain,” she says, “operates in
a really different way when you perceive resistance or
are resisting. When you’re positive or expecting a yes,
your field of vision is actually larger.”
“When you are anxious, or perceive a threat (which
brings about an extreme state of resistance),” says
Carter, “your vision needs to narrow in order to focus.”
When you’re not in this state of anxious resistance,
“you’re able to take in more stimulus across the board,
versus only being able to see what is right in front of
you.”
Saying Yes to Adventure Re-creates Your Brain~
Dawna Markova, a writer and inspirational speaker,
works in myriad ways to help people “learn with
passion and live on purpose,” including encouraging
people to test themselves in outdoor adventures. She
may be best known for a poem she wrote on the night of
her father’s death.
“I will not die an unlived life,” it begins. “I will not live
in fear of falling, or catching fire.”
Fear―of falling, or making a fool of yourself―is a big
reason to say no to adventure. But neuroscientists know
that when you expose yourself to new
experiences―from learning to fly-fish to climbing giant
trees―your brain releases noradrenaline and dopamine,
and the exertion brings on endorphins. This makes you
feel alert and better able to enjoy that moment and the
ones that follow. And, when you take a flying leap into
uncertainty (perhaps using a harness in the case of
high-flying leaps), you train your brain to believe that
you can. Your experiences literally re-create you.
Yes Is Good for Your Relationship~
The simplest way to make relationships work, says Dr.
John Gottman, considered the country’s foremost
researcher into marriage, is to say yes as often as you
can without sacrificing an important part of yourself in
the process. (Gottman makes it clear that agreement is
not the same as compliance, becoming who someone
else wants you to be). In fact, he has even come up with
a formula: For every no or negative thing you say, say
yes or something positive five times. Yes, that’s a good
idea. Yes, I can help you. Yes, I can make time this
afternoon.
And the “emotional coaching” we so often do to
alleviate our partner’s or child’s suffering? Don’t tell
someone not to feel something, as I did with my son,
says Carter. Just encourage them to talk to you. Then
listen.
Getting to Yes~
When you say no a lot, your brain gets in the habit,
literally paving more neural pathways and raising the
speed limit on your knee-jerk “No!” response. Luckily,
as brain scientists have realized, we can rewire our
brains.
We have knee-jerk responses, Carter says, because it’s
efficient. Our decisions come from two parts of the
brain: a quick, instinctive reaction from the basal
ganglia and the deliberate, considered response from
our prefrontal cortex, which involves an energy-
intensive process. Parenting, for instance, would be “too
darn hard if you had to constantly weigh every decision
and construct it from your prefrontal cortex.” The trick
is changing what those efficient, low-energy knee-jerk
responses are. With some practice, it can become just as
instinctive to say maybe as it is to say no.
Always Yes?~
In the end, Markova says, what’s important is not so
much the yes as the willingness to say it. It’s the pause.
If your gut, your heart, or your head (all of which, by
the way, are surrounded by neural circuitry) is
screaming no , you might say merely say, “I don’t know.
I’ll get back to you.”
Just being willing to say yes means you’ve removed the
barriers to new people, experiences, and feelings. And
after the pause? Sometimes you say no. If you’re
female, there’s a good chance that right about now
you’re thinking, but my problem is saying yes too much
. . . yes to driving teens around town, yes to
volunteering for anything people ask me to do, yes to
taking on far more than my share of household chores.
No, Markova says, can be just as much as an affirmation
of self as yes.
“Inside of yes,” says Ron Alexander, “You have to have
the capacity to set boundaries, to have brakes. No is an
essential part of a yes way of thinking. No, I don’t want
to do that. No, I don’t like the way you’re
communicating with me. It does lead to a yes. It leads to
a woman saying yes to her self-esteem.”
Me? I said yes when my husband asked about grocery
shopping, which turned into a funny date. I made new
friends at the book club and learned I’m not the only
one worried about my kid.
To my daughter’s plan to buy a white Mercedes, I said,
“Why not?” To my surprise, this kid, who has “lacked
initiative,” signed up for an online driving course,
started studying for her permit, and lined up babysitting
gigs to start saving money. All I did was pause and
listen. And not say no.
The piano? I sound bad. I don’t care. It feels good to
play music again.
But I still said no to the bus trip to Las Vegas. For now
Every day, take a mindful pause. It’s like taking your
pulse. During this pause, identify three things:
thoughts, feelings, and current beliefs. With each one,
ask: Are they positive, neutral, or negative?
Take a negative belief, and pose an antidote. For
example: I don’t believe I can pass this test. A positive
antidote would be I am fully capable of passing this test.
You may have determined, in your mindful pause, I feel
anxious about this test.
If your body is in a state of anxiety, he says, “You have
to shift your body’s physiology.” The quickest way to do
that? Get on the yoga mat, take a walk, go surfing. “The
physical exercise will shift the neurons in your brain,”
says Alexander, and enable you to shift from no (I can’t)
to yes (I’m capable).
Great Yeses of History
Yes to Imagine and Giving Peace a Chance~
John Lennon strolled into Yoko Ono’s art studio in 1966
and encountered a ladder. A sign at the bottom invited
“Step Up!” He climbed, expecting the words at the top to
read “Piss off!” Instead, he read YES. It was, he said, like
the sun coming out. He credited it with an
extraordinary shift inside himself, personally and
musically.
Yes to Nonviolence~
As the leader of Indian nationalism in the 1930s and
’40s, Mahatma Gandhi was convinced he could gain
independence for his country without firing a bullet.
How, Lord Mountbatten asked, did Gandhi expect the
British to depart? “I expect you will just walk out,” he
told the viceroy, who found the idea inconceivable.
Gandhi simply did not see the no, and in the end, the
British left peacefully and an international movement
for nonviolent protest was born.
When No Means Yes~
In a classic case of using no to affirm herself and half
the population of her country, Susan B. Anthony said
no: women will no longer accept having no rights.
Despite having a great fear of public speaking, she
stepped into a yes state and, with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, traversed the country giving speeches and
appealing to the government to treat men and women
equally. In 1869, she founded the National Women’s
Suffrage Association, and went on to say, “Yes, I will
vote,” in November 1872, for which she was arrested
and convicted by a jury that had been instructed by the
judge to return a guilty verdict. Though she was not
imprisoned, she was ordered to pay a fine of $100, to
which she said no (the fine remained unpaid for the rest
of her life).