Say yes

My new years resolution was to eat more ice cream. Eating more ice cream seemed like a reasonable resolution because I've abandoned the ideology that packing my lunch 4 days a week will make my life better or that making up my bed everyday really matters. It just doesn't, for me.

I wanted a resolution to match all the other "yes saying" I've been doing for the past five years. I've said yes to lots of things because I thought I might need the experience one day. Saying yes to volunteering, to extra work, to extra friends, to extra well, life, because my current cadre of life experience wasn't doing the trick. I felt perpetually unprepared. Saying more yes and less no, I thought, would give me more opportunity. As it happens, it does.

Taking every opportunity and doing it (whether or not you want to) creates a little nugget of stuff to put in your pocket and use when you need it. Volunteering for that grant writing project that you don't have time for leads to conference invitations, to best friends, to your biggest champions. Becoming a sexual assault counselor because you might want to be a genetic counselor one day gives you the opportunity to hear everyone with fresh ears, with greater compassion, and better coping skills. Writing a eulogy for your dad lets you hear yourself be at your most vulnerable in front of 200 people and learn that the only way to grow is to be vulnerable. Taking on an extra project at work just because you want to say you did it lets you talk about it in your next interview.

Opportunity to be better and do more is all around us all the time. It's just so hard to say yes to it. It seems like too much. It seems like too much until all those experiences lead to landing your dream job. It seems like too much until all that extra effort leads to friendships that last a lifetime. It seems like all those people out there got their awesome jobs and awesome lives because they were just awesome. They aren't. They are like you and me, except they say yes when everyone else says "no" or "not right now".

And when that opportunity taking pays off it seems like there was never any other way to live. Like saying "yes" instead of "later" or "not now" was the key to really living how you always wanted to. So say yes. Take the opportunity. And put it in your pocket. Then grab some ice cream.