Yes lives in the land of no (DW #865)
Feb 12, 2021
Another distinction between owners and victims, according to Steve Chandler, is how they deal with NO: being rejected, refused or confronting failure.
"An owner is not afraid to make a request. That’s why owners do so well in sales and courtship.
Victims fear the word no and will do amazing things to avoid ever hearing it. To a victim, ‘no’ means rejection. Total, devastating rejection. ‘No’ doesn’t just sound like ‘no’ to the victim, it sounds like, ‘No, no, NO, you are NOT WORTH ANYTHING!’
But to an owner, ‘no’ is simply the other side of ‘yes.’ ‘No’ and ‘yes’ live together. Every human being has a perfect right to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and this does not bother an owner. An owner honors that right. Therefore, when owners hear ‘no,’ they don’t think something is wrong with the universe. They don’t conclude that life is unfair. They move right on to their next request. Life is requests and promises.
Victims spend the better part of their lives trying to avoid hearing the word ‘no,’ because they’ve made it mean rejection—total, thorough, and personal—rejection. It is little wonder they want to avoid it whenever possible. The trouble is that by avoiding ‘no,’ they also avoid ‘yes.’ The two go together. They live together.
The primary reason that people don’t get what they want in life is that they are afraid to ask for it. Afraid of the rejection they have made ‘no’ to mean to themselves."
Can you imagine how far we would in life if we were not afraid of a little rejection?
Since yes lives in the land of no, it means that we actually have to go through the land of no in order to get to the land of yes.
It seems that the only way to avoid confronting a NO is not to leave home at all . . . .
It seems that the only way to avoid confronting a NO is not to leave home at all . . . .
Or as Alan Watts would put it, some things simply go with other things so consistently that we should have a word "goeswith."
Night goeswith day. Light goeswith dark. Success goeswith failure. Yes goeswith no.
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