Business Book Club Recommendation - A Quick Take: Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
A Quick overview of YEAR OF YES by Shonda Rhimes:
After a snide remark from her sister over Thanksgiving turkey, Shonda Rhimes embarks on her YEAR OF YES. This is simply saying yes to more things, but mainly, saying yes to the things that scare her - much to the delight of her publicist.
Challenge One: Take on a month of YES.
Challenge Two: Tell someone about it.
This book is part-memoir part-challenge to encourage you to begin saying YES to things that scare you, and things you donโt want to do because you never know where theyโll lead you.
YEAR OF YES encourages you to find your happy place - for Shonda itโs laying down, watching TV. For Betsy Beers, itโs her dog. Whereโs the space in your life that gives you a happy hum?
Main Takeaways:
Saying YES will always lead you outside of your comfort zones.
If you stay within your spaceship of safety, never reaching new planets, exploring new galaxies, or stepping back to admire the sun, you could slip into feeling stagnant, unfulfilled, and youโll begin to get bored.
If you say YES, you might feel a little scared or anxious. But have you stopped to think if it might all be worth it?
The spaceship of safety has a hardened shell to protect you from the harsh outside world of space - however, if you never drive the spaceship to new places to explore, you may as well be on Earth; in a bunker.
Saying YES will always lead you out of your comfort zones.
Saying NO, is just as hard to learn, and will keep your boundaries protected and your burnout at bay.
The hard bit is learning to balance them both.
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Exercises:
Whilst there arenโt any exercises within the book - aside from the main challenge - I curated some in the spirit of YEAR OF YES, and you can find these detailed here.
This exercise is actually from SET BOUNDARIES, FIND PEACE by Nedra Glover Taiwan, and is very in the spirit of YEAR OF YES.
For this exercise, youโre looking at what youโre currently managing - which you need to be aware and realistic about, before you start saying YES to everything.
This second exercise follows on from No1. (where youโre being realistic about whatโs on your plate) and allows you to stand at the buffet of what COULD be on your plate. What would you like to SAY YES to, if no holds were barred?
Throughout the running of my exercises, and repeated references to my space ship analogy, I felt it only fair that the โthinking timeโ song was also in keeping.
