A No is Just as Good as a Yes

I heard this last night; I’ve heard it before. It’s so true. So many people, including me at times, hesitate to say what they really mean, and often when they really mean to say is NO. For the person asking, it’s binary and that makes life easier. Sure, maybe the answer you want is yes, but at least a no let’s you move on and make decisions. Getting a maybe, come back to me soon, I’ll think about it, yeah, that’s interesting, ad infinitum… sucks. It just has me stuck waiting to make decisions about other things. If you subscribe to Gladwell’s Blink philosophy, then you know most people make a gut decision quickly and that there is really nothing to wait for anyway, just tell me your gut, if it’s no, then fine. The same way your gut feeling about something is often right, their gut decision is too, but for them. That’s the distinction and that’s why people don’t just say no. You see, they try to think what I’m thinking, and they think that I’m going to take a no personally, that I won’t like them, that I won’t speak highly of them to others, whatever. That may be true, but usually not, not from me anyway. I like to say, “what other people think of me is none of my business”; if everyone subscribed to that thinking, well we’d get a lot less maybes and a lot more progress. So go ahead, just say no.