A Magic Word--Part I

A couple of days ago, I watched a film called Yes man. Jim Carrey is the main character, whose name is Carl. In this movie, he used to say no to everything, and his life was miserable. But after attending a seminar, he decided to start to say yes to everything, and then his life was changed. That movie gave me this idea for this article. I totally agree with the theme. “Yes” is a magic word. When we say yes, the world will say yes to us too.

 

 

It’s our nature to achieve, to build, to want to succeed. We all have certain goals that are important to us. They could be personal or financial goals. Some people want to save their first one million dollars before they’re thirty. Some people want to get married before they’re thirty, thirty-five, or forty. Some people want to get promoted and some people want a salary raise. These goals will not be achieved if we are just sitting here and dreaming about all of this. We need to take steps to fulfill our dreams. The first step is to say yes.

 

 

Here I would like to point out four occasions when we particularly need to say YES.

 

 

1. Say yes to things no one wants to do

 

Stanley Yen (嚴長壽) had his first job as an office boy for American Express. He didn’t go to college, so this was the best job he could get. But he tried to grasp every opportunity to learn, so when there are things no one wanted to do, he would volunteer to do it. When it was 5 o’clock, some people needed to leave the office but things are not finished yet, they would assign these chores to him. Once he tried to make a phone call for three hours to contact a client. Another time he stamped the office’s name on 500 pieces of letters. Soon he found he was popular. Every one in the office liked him and they assigned him everything that no one wanted to do. Mr. Yen accepted them happily and regarded them as learning opportunities. He found that things were not really that hard. So gradually, he was capable of doing everything in the office. His efforts were seen not only by his colleagues but also by his boss. And not only by his own boss but also by the boss of the next-door office. The boss of Trans World Airlines offered him a much better job, and his own boss offered him a promotion and a salary raise.

 

 

Mr. Yen’s story is the evidence. Say yes to things no one wants to do. We can learn a lot and probably earn a lot.