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Say Yes to Opportunity
Next time an opportunity arises but you question your ability to meet it, what do you say? You say yes. Think Jim Carrey in Yes Man. Then learn as you go. On the job! That’s how you succeed, by saying yes to life and learning as you go. That’s what we’re all doing. Because no one is born with a life directory. We’re just thrown into the void and left there. Like, “There ya go — now, remember you need to pay rent and taxes!”
If you have dreams and big ambitions, know this: other people are out there going for theirs. They might be less talented than you, less qualified, less many things. But they’re saying yes to life and getting on with it. They’re achieving your goals simply because they’re willing to go for it, even though they don’t know everything. They know that they’re in good company with every other just-figuring-it-out-along-the-way human being. They decide to believe in themselves, and that makes all the difference.
Embrace Uncertainty
Even people with unfailing conviction don’t know what they’re doing for sure because there are no guarantees in this world. They don’t know what the outcome of their actions will be, but that just doesn’t stop them. That’s all. They’re more courageous amid the uncertainty of it all. And what in life is certain, exactly?
Remember that story I told you in the introduction about the morning of my first wedding, speeding to the ceremony with my mother-in-law, feeling certain and right about everything?
Yeah. There’s an old saying that only death and taxes are certain. And honestly, that might just be true. The fact is, you might not even live until the end of today. I know it may seem a bit morbid, but let’s face it: dying today is a legit possibility. So what makes you think you can control or truly know anything else, if you can’t even guarantee that you’ll see another sunrise?
We need to learn how to be okay with not knowing 100 percent that what we’re doing is “correct.” There are multiple ways to do any one thing, and there are far fewer mistakes than we fear. But feeling clueless and scared are among the most common experiences on earth. Think about it for a moment — isn’t that true?
I once coached a NASA employee who was scared to seek a relationship because she thought, “Other women are so natural and confident — how do they know how to be like that? I’m so awkward. I can’t date.”
The CEO of a marketing firm I worked with called me right before he would be speaking at a thousand-person conference and said, “The last speaker was so good. I want to fake food poisoning right now. I don’t know a thing about leadership!” At that point, he had seventeen years in leadership and was an expert on the subject.
Once, the editor in chief of a large, influential magazine told me, “I feel like they give me so much responsibility, not knowing my heart beats so fast every time my boss calls my cell. I always think I’m gonna get fired because I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Here’s the thing: none of us ever really knows what we’re doing. So can you relax and enjoy the not-knowing a little more? Because it’s all there is and ever will be. The world isn’t simply divided into people who know what they’re doing and people who don’t. There are just people who do despite the fear of getting it wrong and people who don’t do because they’re scared to screw up.
You’re never alone in the not-knowingness of your decisions and actions. My coworker called me crying during her pregnancy because she was worried that bringing a child into an imperfect world was a selfish thing to do. But as a married thirty-five-year-old woman without kids, I’ve been told that not having kids is selfish. Nobody knows a damn thing. We don’t even know, for sure, what happens when we die. So can we enjoy ourselves anyway? No other choice is really sane when you stop and think about it.
Life presents challenges and a bucketful of unknown uncertainties to all of us. So learning how to handle what we don’t know, and just chilling out a bit, is a big step toward living a self-approved, self-directed life.
Inner Alerts
What if being happy were simpler than we thought? Cracking the code of a life well lived? Deepak Chopra said that our heart is a “cosmic computer.” In other words, everything you need to guide and direct you is already within.
One of my first coaching clients, Melissa, said to me, “Susie, when I’m at work as an insurance agent, all I do (secretly) is pin fashion looks together and research vintage jewelry.” Her passion was so obvious. She created lookbooks on the weekends, followed designers on Instagram, and always looked beautifully chic, on a pretty tight budget. She just needed to step back to realize it. To acknowledge what she wanted, and then to let it in.
And now, years later? The last I heard was that Melissa’s a full-time stylist, navigating her way in the entrepreneurial world. It’s not perfect or easy, but she knows it’s the right path for her, and she’s following it.
Melissa knew what felt right when she was restless at work. Restlessness can feel annoying in the moment, but if we let it be, it’s really a gift — it’s like your wisest self telling you, “Nice one on getting us here, but let’s keep moving!” And that initial inner alert for Melissa was enough. It got her started. Those inner alerts are always available, on demand. Your computer never shuts down or gets a virus by itself. The only threat to it is your neglect of it. Or sticking your snout into other people’s computers.
We have this amazing, wise, eternal intelligence available to us at all times...but what do we do instead of checking in with ourselves? We check our likes! We check our little hearts and thumbs-ups. And when we’re busy checking our metaphorical (and literal) likes, we’re in a constant needy zone. We’re waiting for external support and approval — and we might get it a lot of the time. But then what?
We need it again, and fast, and we become dependent on external validation. When the real deal is actually there in the mirror the whole time. Because only you know the real you. Does anyone else know what you want in your custom salad, where you want to live, who you want to marry, and when? No.
So giving other people so much power and influence over our lives doesn’t make any damn sense! You are your best and only real approval, filtration, and support system. And that’s enough. When you look in the mirror one day and see an elderly face looking back at you, whose eyes do you see? Yours. Whose heartbeat is still keeping you there? Yours. Who do you answer to for all your choices until your final day on earth? Yep — you.
Did you know that the “right” thing for you just has to feel good to you? This isn’t a narcissistic approach to life — it’s actually a generous one. It doesn’t mean you should go out and have an affair, rob a bank, or indulge in a gossip session that feels bonding in the moment. All these actions might feel fun for a bit, yes. But they’re not loving actions...and so do they actually feel good in the long run?
In the Upanishads, the sacred Indian scriptures, it states: “The good is one thing; the pleasant is another. These two, differing in their ends, both prompt to action. Blessed are they that choose the good; they that choose the pleasant miss the goal” (Katha Upanishad 1:2:1).
Feeling good about something is a lasting feeling, and one that might not feel easy at the time. Perhaps the long-term answer that will make you feel good is to do something really, really hard, like break up with someone. Or leave a job you hate. Or decide to move because you feel called to a place. There’ll be a mix of other emotions, but one thing will trump it all: the choice will feel right to you. Think: When in the past have you made a good, lasting decision? How did the rightness of it feel, even if the process of making it was hard? It was probably a decision that propelled you forward, brought you freedom and expansion, opened you up to more, and didn’t hurt anyone else (intentionally).
When something is right, you know it. And that feeling...think about it. How could anyone else possibly know it (or feel