Bill Custer's thought sphere

“Yes” can be agreement and acceptance without regret or hesitation: you know that something is true, and so you say Yes. When we make a Decision about something we want to happen, a successful situation, that was a Yes. The power of No leads to…
Nowhere. No goes nowhere. Yes goes everywhere: building, expanding and increasing our tree of knowledge as well as (most of) our family tree.

When we find a possibility that leads us to the best possible outcome and all the people in the situation agree about that, we can easily say yes. We can make that decision, a real breakthrough moment. It’s a moment where we are in Now: not the past, and not the future. It is a breakthrough to the Yes we needed to move to beneficial changes for us and everyone else in the situation. We eliminated all the possibilities now, those that do not point us to the best outcome. The breakthrough happens when we have found the win-win outcome and we can make a commitment to carry out our actions. Create, obtain and apply the necessary resources to will our intentions into existence as new types of material, energy or information.

The moment you say Yes is a breakthrough moment. You would like all of your decisions to be aligned with the best possible outcome. We can say yes to all of those engaged in the situation with us. Sometimes agreement means acceptance, which is what we want. We want to accept those in situations with us for who they really are, not who we wish they were. If they were only who we wish they were, then they would be only a model, or an imperfect representation of the real truth, the thing we can’t see. If we can’t see it, then the best possible outcome doesn’t get realized. Just like a mathematician needs the right formulas to do her calculations and get the right answer.

Now, people have unique perspectives in every situation, so saying yes to someone may mean something less than mutual commitment to actions. That needs to be clear, not vague or uncertain. We might be only saying yes: to agree others are free to find their own best outcome for the situations they are involved in, those without us. The ones which don’t involve us except to the extent we are aware of their situation, so the yes means awareness only, really. We want the best for them even if we can’t be a part of helping to realize that for them. We always wish them their own best, if we truly love them. With acceptance, we let them be free to be themselves and involve themselves in situations in which we are not really engaged. We are not true stakeholders in their situation’s outcome, except that we hope the situation turns out best for them, and they are happy. We show true respect for them in these situations. Saying yes can mean many things at once: we accept them for who they really are, and we hope for the best for them. In some countries, yes does not mean something like “Okay, I will…”, it only means “I understand what you said, and respect you”.

When we are involved in a mutual situation, where we share a common sphere of action or thought, our breakthrough decision points us to the best possible outcome for both of us, and really anyone else who is engaged in that situation, large or small. It might just be you, or the other individual. It might be both of you, and no one else. It might be you, them, your loved ones, their loved ones, and other people who are stakeholders in the situation. It’s harder to find full agreement and the decision that is really needed for that breakthrough, when too many people are involved, when there are just too many stakeholders to yield coherence, teamwork, and communication. It can be just too hard to communicate without a breakdown of some kind, which is why an Army platoon is about 10 warriors, and a squadron of fighter pilots is usually a dozen.

The Yes you really want is not only a win, or just a win-win. It’s more, and more rare: a moment of Now where everyone wins, we find the best possible outcome for everyone. We never have to solve or resolve that situation again. The idea was fully baked and realized. But let’s instead focus on a common issue, finding just the win-win. Can you find it every time? Maybe, if you truly love someone, they love you, you have mutual respect and trust, and you are honest with each other. Maybe, if you truly accept them for who they are and likewise they accept you for who you are. Then maybe you can always say yes. Now that is Real power. When you can always say yes and really mean it, then your mutual decisions can build and build into true successes.

It’s necessary to allow others freedom to contribute their personal best, if you want to reach a true success. Allowing your experienced and knowledgeable partners or team members be free to see for themselves how to help the most. Their actions and efforts really are important resources, and those resources always need to be applied with care. There are so many kinds of resources yet our creativity, efforts and time are clearly most important. The Power of Yes must demonstrate the positives, the wins in the perspective when it comes to fairness and equity in resources.

Back to the win-win: when you can honestly and openly say yes, you have expressed acceptance and agreement. Importantly, you also expressed needed confidence and positive support for partners. You exercised your Real power: the power to build the teamwork to find the truth that is the best outcome, the thing that is right and correct and needs no further improvement, at least for quite a while. It could be a situation or a math equation. The challenge in creating a win-win is to find people who truly respect and trust you and vice versa. Sometimes, the uncertainties about mutual resources or contributions to resources needed in the situation can be a big obstacle, a cloud of uncertainty about that equity. Poor people as well as rich people can create perspectives where the information about resources are really no problem, they are not an obstacle to things like trust and feeling respected or appreciated. We also see how poor people can be happy and in love, and rich people can be unhappy and out of love. When people have perspectives of inequality or inequity, they often become jealous or resentful. People can see when they are not really considered an equal or full stakeholder in those situations that they care about too.

Now, when people lose that hope they had for this situation’s success, they will often say No and just try to leave the situation if they can. And they now try using the Power of No to stop any and all momentum they fear: the undesirable outcomes they face or imagine. However, people having a tendency to say No are often off-target because their information is stuck in an old, sticky or obsolete perspective, perhaps even an inherited perspective. When this is the case, they may be uninformed or by the design of others, misinformed. Their views may even be irrational or unfounded because there was too much uncertainty when their views formed or were influenced by fear.

There could no real valid reason for that No perspective. Folks can have a virtually fictional negative perspective, fearing a fictional very bad outcome so they somehow think a less bad thing offered or championed sounds better to them. While the ones feared, the Yes people are wondering why those folks don’t see the same benefits, or are uncertain, or wanting a bad thing instead of that good Yes thing. If its best, it truly is inevitable, even if it’s our children who turn things towards the best. Somehow the fearful do prefer the known bad to the uncertain good that always starts as something wanted in the future. Look what happened: those fearful aren’t wishing the actual best for the others they disagree with anymore, if they ever did want a mutual best.

The Power of No only leads to separation and division, it leads nowhere really, except isolation of ones left behind because they prefer the known past. Even if the past situation is on the decline to its inevitable end. Those advocating a No by fanning fear of the future might sound positive to already fearful and divided people, but at the bottom is still a No. Those advertising a win for some while stakeholder losers left behind is also a No, because any win-lose Yes stops progress to the real Yes, the one that is the win-win.
We need instead the togetherness and mutual commitment we find our wins in the Power of Yes. When someone likes to say no or can’t really accept you for who you are, they probably don’t care if your dreams come true or not. When it comes to resources, often guarded and denied in a No environment, you can turn it around with generosity. As long as that is received in good faith. When you give more, resources take care of themselves. You will always somehow receive more than you gave because the situation got better for everyone, including you and often with gratitude and appreciation. It’s the better situation that must be the motivation, not an ego or other agenda.

Find within yourself your personal best way to apply the Power of Yes, and create a lifelong capability to always prefer a yes to a no. Find within yourself your self-love, self-respect, and self-trust, that you may then extend love, respect, and trust to the other persons in your life, especially those that you say you love the most. Find the Power of Yes, and hope for others’ dreams to come true: then probably yours will come true as well, does that make sense? Find yourself able to say Yes and reach those breakthrough moments when it really counts, when saying Yes means everyone made their commitment to the whole teams’ mutual best.

Everything beneficial happens because of a Yes, and almost never because of a No, although there are certainly valid no’s for health, safety, and defense. Look for those who would rather say yes, then you will be on the road to your own best outcomes. Thought speed is faster than light speed you know, information doesn’t need to ride on anything. We can observe information easily when it’s like your name on a lapel label, or your name heard on the radio. Now that is the same information riding on all the different stuff we can plainly see, feel, touch and hear. Yet information is not burdened or bound by these limits. Information is limitless, and as it doesn’t really need to ride on energy, we can only guess right now how fast: my guess is instantaneous, like trying to observe a quark.

Fly the very fastest speed in the universe: Fly at the speed of Yes.