My “Yes Man” Experiment

One of my all-time favorite movies is the 2008 comedy “Yes Man”. It stars Jim Carrey and features a guy who has a hard time committing to anything. He reluctantly attends a seminar with a friend and is called upon to become a “yes man”. From that point on he has to say yes to everything.

He ends up saying yes to things he normally would have never agreed to and his life is changed forever. He ends taking guitar lessons, learns Korean, goes out with his friends he had been neglecting. The list goes on.

The “Yes Man” Experiment in Practice

For years I’ve wondered what that would be like in practice. So, I finally decided to try a “yes man experiment” last week. Obviously, I put some limitations to it. I wasn’t going to do anything illegal nor anything to jeopardize my marriage. Even with that, I never was faced with any of these things. I decided that I would only do this for a week, Monday-Monday and I wouldn’t tell anyone what I was doing. Here’s what happened during that week:

What Happened

A lot of the requests came from my wife, Tara. Most of them were small requests, like changing Rhett’s diaper or taking out the trash. Some helped grow our relationship like a back rub before bed or going with her to the Doctor. On one occasion, we could see fireworks off in the distance. Tara said we should go find them. We went and found them close to our house and enjoyed a random firework show in the middle of February.

I got asked to do a lot of things at work too. There were random emails I would get inviting me to optional meetings. I went to those meetings. One of them was a wellness meeting teaching us how to make healthier meals. It was informative and I wouldn’t have thought of making those things in the first place.

With Rhett, I was more willing to play with him and cater to his wants and needs. There were plenty of times where he wanted to play, but I was in the middle of something. I am so glad that I stopped what I was doing because we had a lot of fun.

What I Discovered

I discovered that I said no to a lot of things. Most of the time I didn’t explicitly say “no”, but I would ignore questions or find ways around it. I didn’t realize how much I was missing out on.  It’s definitely hard to say yes to certain things. Some of the time I was saying yes to stuff I didn’t really want to do, but it ended up being really good for me.

It’s sometimes hard for me to stop what I’m doing in the moment and go do something else. I noticed this more during this week. I got invited to play a board game with my family at my parent’s. I’m glad I stopped what I was doing and played with them.

I highly recommend that you find ways to say yes more often in your life. This was a week long experiment for me, but I plan to implement this more into my life.

Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you. – Eckhart Tolle

Any questions about my “experiment”? When have you said yes to things that you normally wouldn’t have? What happened? Share your comments below, or on our Facebook page.