Next weekend we are going to be launching the Yes! Initiative at New Life, the church I serve as lead pastor. The initiative will be a three year process to increase our understanding of generosity and to commit to giving the funds necessary to construct a Children’s Nurture and Discipleship building at New Life. To coincide with that launch we’re launching a five-week message series titled: Just Say Yes! I’ve already invested much time and prayer into planning and preparing for the process and the message series. As I’ve been preparing, I’ve also been working through Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus. Something he said in the series struck me as simple yet profound: The two most important words for increasing productivity are yes and no.
Yes and no. So many times, we focus on saying yes. Indeed, in order for us to start any new endeavor in our lives we must say yes. After all, until we make a commitment to get from where we are to where we want to be, which will mean saying yes, we will never get there. At the same time, I am realizing with Hyatt’s help that we will also need to say no. Every time we say yes to one thing we are saying no to something else. For example, if Nancy and I want to give money to the Yes! Initiative (and we do), then we will say yes to allocating funds from our income and or savings to do so. In the moment we say yes to that, we will be saying no to using those funds for any other purpose.
The importance of understanding that every yes also means at least one no cannot be overstated if we are going to be the most effective leaders possible. All too often, folks tell us we need to be positive; we need to say yes to being and doing more in our lives, if we want to be all we can be. I tend to agree with such thinking. It sounds right and it feels good. Yet we must challenge such thinking, because it can trap us into making one or more new commitments in our lives when we have neither the margin of time or money to fulfill them.
Let’s use a simple example: you want to become more physically fit. (Doesn’t nearly everyone?) What yes or yes’s will you need to say in order to do so? You may need to say yes to a new eating plan. You will probably need to say yes to a new or adjusted exercise plan. That will be a great start, but where will you get the time for your exercise plan, and what no’s will your new eating plan require? After all, we may exercise for an hour every day, but if we consume a half dozen glazed donuts afterward, we have just said no to becoming more physically fit.
When we start to think in terms of saying yes to one opportunity meaning saying no to others, we will gain a fuller understanding of how to move forward in every area of our lives and leadership. In order to start, though, we need to do what we’ve talked about from day one of this blog: examine our lives. We need to ask ourselves what do I really want to accomplish? Hopefully, we’ve already developed a life plan; we’ve already been working on life management, and we’ve already created some margin in our lives when it comes to time and money. If you haven’t done any of those things, then you can review the blog history and you’ll find posts about each of these important steps in examining our lives and leadership and then planning to become who we aspire to be.
Wherever you are right now in your life planning, life management and margin understanding the implications of saying yes and no, and particularly that anytime we say yes we are also saying no will be a giant step forward in accomplishing your goals and plans. I wanted to introduce this important idea today, and then tomorrow and the next day consider the yes’s and no’s of our lives separately, although we’ll understand that this is an artificial separation, since every time we say yes, we’re also saying no. Why not take ten minutes right now to consider the most recent yes’s and no’s you’ve said in your life and whether you considered the no’s that came with the yes’s and the yes’s that came with the no’s. (If that’s confusing, suffice it to say that every time you said yes recently you were also saying no to something, and every time you said no to one thing you were saying yes to something else.)
Here’s to leading better by understanding the implications of saying yes and no for our leadership–today!