The Power of No

Today’s episode is about the power of No, it is about the ability for us to fix our mind in our mouth, to just say no. And this personally has been a hard process even with my with myself, I have the capacity to do so much. I have done so much. I have this natural ability to deconstruct things and apply myself into areas where I feel that I can be helpful. So early on in my design career, a lot of people would approach me with their vision or projects, even some non paying but very high profile projects. And for the life of me I was not able to formulate those to narrow letters that one syllable word that that word that we hear bellowed out by so many young children nowadays that word no.

Out of the desire to be helpful and to also be seen in a contributory life thinking that somewhere along in the future if I say no now it will close the door for an opera tunity later. Over time I found myself belaboured by so many projects, so many things to do so many commitments I was putting on myself just by an organization of three letters, the Y e s Yes. I’ll help you. Yes, I’ll do this. Yes, I’ll be there. Yes, I will. And that commitment that choice that decision requires not only effort, but it requires time and how to organize that how to structure that was something I was challenged with, how do you politely say no? How do you say no without hurting anybody’s feelings and if we are if we’re going to be able to prioritize, and that’s essentially, what this episode is about is prioritizing what’s important.

There’s a story that came across my path about the mythology of the man, Warren Buffett, he’s one of the richest people on Earth, an amazing investor. And it was a story about how he prioritize true success and why most people never get it. And he had a simple equation. He said, dreams become reality as a result of these three components. First, you got to know what you want. Second, you got to learn the tools to get you there. And three, you got to have insane focus to combine the two. The next part of the story is exercise. It’s a process that I want to challenge you to do, as well. And it’s a story that Warren Buffett is sitting there with one of his employees who’s a pilot, and on the plane, he’s offhandedly and jokingly talking to him, he’s saying, the fact that you’re still working with me, tells me that I’m not doing my job, you should be out there going after more of your dreams and goals.

So Warren challenged him, he said, You should go list 25 of the things that you want to do in the next few years, or even over the course of your lifetime. Just sit down and jot them down, whatever comes to mind as being the most important to you that yours currently not a part of your life. And I want you guys to also do this exercise. The next thing he said do is pick your top five, go through your list, begin to circle the five that are most important to you. Anything you wanted wanted to do, haven’t done but the top five. And so typically, at this point, we’re hesitant, because so many things seem equal, like Oh, I could do this or that I’m capable of this or that.

But narrowing down your top five priorities is about creating a level of clarity that you probably even haven’t experienced up to this point. And so Warren insisted that he can only pay five, five. So Steve, Pilate spends some time but it’s less than After careful deliberation, started making his mark. And so Warren looked at him and said, Hey, are you sure? Are you absolutely sure. These are your absolute highest priority for you? Constantly, the pilot looked back at him and said, Of course. Then Warren asked Steve, when he planned to get to work, and what his approach would be on those top five things. And the pilot looked at Steve and said, Warren, these are the most important things in my life right now. I’m going to get started on him right away, right now.

And boom, Warren’s pumped, he’s pumped, and then he’s looking at him. So once these top five plans are in place, what’s going to happen to the other 20 on your list that you didn’t circle? What’s your plan for completing knows? Well, unfortunately, the pie looked at him and say, you know, these came a close second. They’re not as urgent. And the power of this conversation lies in the next thing that Warren told the pilot. And I tell you, this is the power of No, this is the power of prioritizing everything that we say we want to accomplish those other 20 things that did not get circled, Warren says, avoid it at all costs, and stick to it. Don’t begin to try to implement the secondary plan don’t begin to try to let the other things encroach upon the top priorities that you’re trying to complete.

Now, the way that this relates to the power of no is that when we say yes, we are adding other things to our mix, how Much of our own priorities are getting accomplished saying no to something is saying yes to yourself, saying yes to a whole lot of other things that do not feed into the priorities that we have listed for ourself. Says No to our own dreams. It says that I’m willing to commit the time, the energy, the resources, the mental capital, the fatigue of my mind to try to solve and make other people’s dreams come true. At what point are you not going to make your own priorities primary? Why you? Why are you doing this? I do it, we all do it, it happens.

But is it going to chronically continue. And so the power of No, the power of prioritizing allows all that mindshare. All that time, if we are so focused and compelled to complete and compete on another level, to use that energy toward our own body of work, our own things that we are trying to bring to form into the world. Just because you can do all this amazing things doesn’t mean you should, the level of discernment needs to be high. So just imagine yourself as a computer, and you have a very system resource heavy program open. And you have another one and another one, the more system resource heavy programs you have it taxes what it taxes, the processor, that computer can’t think it cannot perform to its highest function, because it is overburden the processes, the random access memory, with computations, solving, figuring it out, and it will now take a longer time to complete the task.

If you just focus on a few tasks. Saying no to the world is saying yes to yourself. Yes creates a commitment. It creates a placeholder and time that you must fulfill. Maybe you can give a better recommendation and saying instead of saying yes, maybe you can help them figure it out in a conversation without necessarily needing to be present. Everything for me starts out as a no. And I weigh it against my aims. And against my prior judgment. It may not have necessarily deserve to be a no. So these are these are the things that we must begin to consider, as we are saying yes to everybody’s requests of us, to our time, to our resources to our money to our mindshare, and that’s why you see all these rich people just give him money.

What do you need? I can’t be there. But let me write a check. Maybe we’re not there yet. But ultimately, we want to be in a better position. Because I guarantee you. Warren Buffett is saying no to 95% of everything coming across his desk, until he weighs the prospectus until he does his due diligence, and then he sees how it fits in with his grand strategy. So this is the power of No, the power of no is saying yes to your unique gifts, is saying yes to the contribution that you can make it saying yes to your body, your work. It’s saying that I respect and value my own time. And if I use that time with the level of focus that I’m capable of doing, we could change the world one yes, two ourself at a time.