Yes is more

I know I’m not the first person to get on the whole “Yes” bandwagon, but as time goes by, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that many, many good things come from saying yes.

Simple example?
“Would you like these free tickets to the rollerderby?”
“Yes!”
Awesome!

But what about a less obvious example?
“Would you like to go through your office with me to see what you’re still using and what you may not need anymore?”

That’s not fair, right? If you say “yes”, someone’s going to take things away from you. You’ll have less stuff. You’ll have to give up free time to do the work. That “yes” feels like a “no” doesn’t it?

But check this out. There are secret yesses sprinkled all through reorganizing and thinning.

* One of the most literal ones is finding things you forgot you had, sometimes even technically valuable things like money and gift cards.

* There are these yesses: “Yes, this is important to keep,” and “Yes, I can let this go.” And a series of those active choices is all it takes to conquer that crazy pile of things made up of who knows what, that you’re ignoring because it’s a little scary.

* There’s the “yes” of deciding that spending an afternoon on your space is not just worth the time, but critical to your mental health and functioning in other parts of the world.

* There are the important yesses along the way, when you decide to keep things that are important just to you. It’s your space and your stuff. Your decisions. (Just make sure you have someone to help you find good places to tuck the keepers.)

* And, at the end, there’s the long, satisfied “yesssss” that escapes your lips as you sink down in your desk chair and survey your freshly organized space.