No to Good

 “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Steve Jobs

“The ability to say no is a tremendous advantage for an investor.” Warren Buffett

This morning I was looking for quotes about what we were saying Yes to when we say No... or maybe it was the other way around, regardless, neither of these quotes was what I was looking for, but both say exactly what I mean...

I'd like to get one thing out in the open, I don't think it was well hidden, but I want this to be perfectly clear: My "No" muscle is very flaccid! 

There are countless times, close to infinite, over my life that I said yes to something without thinking it through, and ended up stressed, overwhelmed, running around doing a half assed job of everything and feeling resentful. Many of the things I say yes to are very important to me, they are things I feel very strongly about like family, friendships, volunteering, and living up to my values. Yet, now I am realizing how counterproductive this is, how saying "yes" has become a habit that is standing in the way of me making the best investment in my life, this one short life I have to live. I am realizing that keeping busy doing all these important things is an excuse for me not doing the work of letting my deeper energy surface and put my focus on something that will make me feel a sense of accomplishment and pride rather than exhausted and not disappointed in myself, but not fulfilled either. I'm not sure how I'm going to change, how I'm going to selectively choose to say no to some things because I want to do everything! But being a Superwoman is not the work that gives my life meaning, I want to find my purpose!

It's a pretty cool statement that Steve Jobs makes, to be proud of the good things they didn't do. It takes a lot of discipline to do that, and even more it takes a sense of direction to know where you are going in the first place.

Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett both had very clearly defined and iterated reasons for how they made choices. They made their choices because they knew who they were and what was important to them and followed that purpose, with what their heart and gut told them was important.

This is an excerpt from an opinion piece in the Toronto Star by  Emmanuel Adegboyega on June 29th:

I would like to leave you with some words of encouragement from one of my mentors, Dr. Myles Munroe. He once said that the greatest tragedy in life is not death, but instead it is a life lived without purpose. He also once said that the graveyard is the wealthiest place on earth. You might ask, why is that? Well, a graveyard is where you find Best Selling books that were not published, award winning songs that were not written, drama pieces that were not acted, ideas that weren’t given expression, multimillion dollar businesses that weren’t started, leaders that were not established, and more severely, dreams that weren’t fulfilled; simply because many died without discovering their purpose.

Last week I talked about a challenge I would take on each week (and this is for real something that is part of my purpose lol): 

This week's challenge is something I've been meaning to do for a long time! To look into what really happens with our municipal recycling and what I need to do to make it work. It is too easy for me to feel good about separating what I throw out and trust that it is being recycled, composted etc, but when I see everything being thrown together in the truck that picks it up I wonder how that happens. I don't believe that 'faith in the system' is taking responsibility for what happens to the garbage I create.

Cheers
Jeanne