Earlier today I read a wonderful article on twitter. You should read it, but for the lazy/time limited ones among you, the basic premise is that if your response to something isn’t to say ‘hell yes’ then it should be a ‘no’. This may seem reactive and excessive, and at first it petrified me as I am very much the type of person who has always dwelled in the grey area. In the past I thrived on the intricacies, the confusion, the up-in-the-air aspect of the grey area.
But I’m starting to see that living looking for the ‘hell yes’ moments may have saved me a lot of pain and difficulty over the years.
I think about the man who constantly kept me hanging on by withholding affection and mental intimacy until I pulled away, which is when he’d drag me back in. Why did I waste so much time on someone whose reaction to me wasn’t ‘hell yes’? By staying in the grey area, I could convince myself that we had a future. I could read into the most minuscule of signs that I meant something to him. It kept me in this unhappy stasis where I couldn’t move on from him, but which meant the relationship never moved on. When I met my husband, I never doubted if he wanted to see me or be with me because his reaction to me was always a very emphatic ‘hell yes’.
I think about the friendships I helped to limp along because of a shared history and a sense of duty, when it was obvious that no one enjoyed them anymore. People change, as do priorities, and sometimes you have to accept that people who once meant a lot to you are not right for you anymore. I can think of so many of my friends who suggest meeting for coffee, or drinks, or an evening watching films at their house and I immediately think ‘hell yes’. If you have friends who get a much more lukewarm reaction, you need to think about why. If you dread seeing someone, imagine the better things you could be doing instead, or feel worse about yourself after you see them, you cannot (and should not) ignore that feeling. It’s telling you something important. My spare time is precious and since I’ve stopped making time for those who don’t deserve it, I’ve had more time for those who I learn from, who introduce me to new things, who make me feel wonderful about myself and about life.
So I’ve decided that I’m going to start applying this theory to everything in my life. Or at least trying to. I don’t want to live my life in the grey areas, from now on I am saying ‘hell yes’.