YES

I just had an epiphany, a personal epiphany. I had always thought to myself, when I get married I HAVE to get married to an open-minded, easy-going guy. I’ve always had the problem of being the only one in my family who enjoys spur-of-the-moment activities, and loves making a decision to go out or do something without having previously planned for it. It was my dream to live my life like that, and to me it seemed like since my family aren’t like that, my only hope is in the guy I marry. Well, you're probably wondering why I can't be like that in my own life, not depend on someone. Seeing as we live in a society and all our actions inevitably affect the people we interact with,to some extent, it would be – at times – awfully selfish to just decide to go out or do something all of a sudden when the people you live with aren’t like that; especially when your life is interwoven with theirs.

Anyhow, as you may have noticed in my Bookworm section, I’m reading Danny Wallace’s Yes Man, and as much as I’ve been enjoying the book and writer’s style (to the extent that I sometimes wake up my mom with the sound of my laughing!), I’m finding it a little difficult to completely embrace the details to be learned by the events. However, I picked up the book just a few moments ago, I’m in bed all tucked in and happy and I start to read. I’m not really sure which line I stopped at so I go over a little bit of the page. I come across a paragraph I realize I've already read before, but didn’t give that much attention to, here’s a few sentences (the section in blue is what really inspired me, the rest of the text is just to keep it in context):

I had been genuinely inspired by my short time with Marc. He was someone brave
enough to just let things happen. To roll with the punches. To go where the wind
took him. And he’d changed my attitude, somewhat. I realized, slowly, that I’d been treating Yeses like they were against me. That they were challenges to be overcome. That they were things I could fail. In actual fact, they were just part of life. And if I treated
them like Marc did, they would become life.

It feels quite amazing to me really, because just two days ago I read this same paragraph and I was like those Looney Tunes cartoons where an airplane zips over their head and they stand there like the goofballs they are going "Huuh?" ! I, too, realized that I’ve been such an idiot. I’ve been waiting all my life for someone else to be open-minded so I could be like them. I needed somebody’s approval to say yes to opportunities. I know I said I’m the only one in the family who lives by spontaneity – Uh..Big Lie! Well, maybe in my head I do, that’s what I want to be so much. But most of the time I end up being too afraid of actually going through with the things that I decide to do, I chicken out. I get too scared that something will go wrong, or maybe that I’ll be disappointed. So it’s always been a kind of struggle with me, I want to be one way, but I’m too scared to go through with it and maybe the surrounding atmosphere hasn’t been all the best help in that arena. So anyway, I just realized, after reading that paragraph from the book, that in order to have a life of spontaneity, open-mindedness, and loads of opportunities, The one person that I really need to be like that is ME. Everyone knows you can’t fill up a closed bottle with water, and by saying no to every opportunity I’m just tightening the lid on my bottle. It’s like taking the antenna off your radio and then cursing it for not receiving any channels! So it was incredibly inspiring to me when I discovered that I can do something about it and not just wait for someone else to come and scoop me off the land of No-No. It’s quite simple really, if you spend just a week being more open to opportunities then they Will come your way. And of all the chances that get thrown at you, one is bound to be something you’ve been waiting for.

Life is Good. Live it right and it will help you.