All your choices affect who you ultimately become

A few months ago, I posted the opposite of this story:

41 Things You Should Say “No” To To Become The Person You Want To Be In Life And Business

That ended up being my most popular post. And I like to think that it’s not only because of the cute puppy, though I’m sure it helps!

The choices we make define who we are or what we’ll become. It’s true for both the things we say “yes” to and the things we say “no” to.

In general, we are very good at saying “yes” to things, oftentimes leading to overcommitment, which can be detrimental to our health.

That’s why it’s very important to learn to say “no” to things. Once you’ve finished reading this story, please get back to my story on saying “no”, as they complement each other.

The Only Things You Should Say “Yes” to

Only say “yes” to things that work towards your chief aim.

It’s that simple. While it may sound selfish at first, it really isn’t if your chief aim is not selfish in nature.

What is a chief aim?

A chief aim provides clarity and focus towards a single endeavour. It also serves as a compass you can use to assess any job, business investment or decision. A chief aim helps you to prepare for finding like-minded people who are interested in accomplishing similar feats in life. It can also help provide direction on where to go from here. — anthillonline.com

The idea came from Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill.

Obviously, the first step is then to define your chief aim. It’s a requirement if you want to succeed in anything. You need clarity and self-awareness.

In fact, it’s so monumental that Brendon Burchard included clarity as one of the top 6 habits of high performers in High Performance Habits.

Once you’ve defined your chief aim, you have your roadmap. Whenever you’re presented with a choice of saying “yes” or “no”, you can refer back to your chief aim and ask yourself this question:

Does that work towards my chief aim?

For example, here’s my chief aim:

Help people thrive in the 21st century.

Simple, short, and to the point, yet still broad enough that I’m leaving room for great opportunities.

Once I defined this, I was able to say “no” to “incredible” opportunities that brought me no value. I became a master at saying “no” to things I should never have said “yes” in the first place.

And because my chief aim is not selfish, there’s plenty of room to not be a jerk and say “no” to everyone because it doesn’t benefit me.

Conclusion

Saying “yes” is easy. Saying “no” is hard.

When you know your chief aim, suddenly that flips around. You have more clarity as to what you should accept or not. When you start saying “yes” to the right things, you will then become what you really want to become, both in life and in business.

You can do this!

Thanks for reading! :)