Say Yes To Everything

It feels like every week I send another invitation to an adventure to my Executive Circle. That's the group of people I've met through Reject Average, the magazine, social media, business, or just life, who have expressed an interest in traveling and doing some of these experiences with me. And if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm sometimes stunned by the excuses people come up with to say no.

I don’t judge. I genuinely don’t. Life is full of responsibilities, and running around the world and the country doing 'adventures with Brant' is not always conducive to work, family, marital relationships, financial success, or basic adult functioning. I get it completely. But after more than a decade of inviting people to do things, I've noticed a pattern. There are e!ectively two types of people. The first gets an invitation and thinks: "No, but let me see if maybe I can figure it out." The second thinks: "Yes, but just let me double check my calendar." Is that a subtle difference? Maybe. But that tiny difference builds on your psyche over time. I have at least a dozen very close friends who have probably replied to a hundred different adventure invitations with some version of 'no'. There's always some legitimate reason. And every one of them still tells me, "One day I'm coming on one of your adventures." Some of them are reading this right now and laughing because they know exactly who they are.

More than a decade ago, I consciously decided I wanted to become one of those people that if someone invited me somewhere, asked me to try something, wanted me to come along, or needed help with something, I'd start with 'yes'. Even when I wasn't particularly interested in the activity. So I stopped judging all of the invitations I got based on whether I thought I would enjoy the experience being o!ered, and I started judging them on whether or not saying yes would add something different to the routine of my life, however small. I was looking to add texture. That's something I've come to appreciate more and more as I've gotten older and spent years speaking to, training and working with CEOs and executives around the world. Their lives can be incredibly complex. Their businesses are demanding. Their problems are real. Their days can be filled with difficult decisions, pressure, travel and responsibility. But even complexity becomes repetitive. You wake up. You work. You solve problems. You have meetings. You go home. You answer emails. You sleep. You do it again. The problems change, but the structure doesn't. You can have a full, demanding life and still be drifting. Eventually, even the complexity of success can develop a remarkably smooth surface. You start gliding across it. Monday becomes Tuesday, Tuesday becomes Wednesday, and eventually entire months disappear without leaving much behind.

I was talking about this recently while flying through the mountains of British Columbia in a helicopter. It was a Tuesday. I asked the guys with a simple question. "What did you do last Tuesday?" Nobody knew. Then I

asked them to think about their camera rolls. How many days in the last year have absolutely nothing in them? Not because the day was bad. Maybe i was incredibly busy. Maybe you solved a huge problem at work. Maybe

you accomplished a lot. But nothing happened that made you think, 'I have to take a picture of this'. I'm on a quest to have fewer of those days. That has become one of the things I've been deliberately practicing for

the last decade. I want as many days as possible to contain something memorable, enjoyable, impactful, funny, strange, di"cult or completely unexpected. Something that gives the day texture. It doesn't need to be profound. It certainly doesn't need to involve flying through British Columbia in a helicopter. It just needs to be something that makes that day different from all the others.

That, to me, is really what Reject Average means. Average isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, that’s why it’s so easy to fall into. Average is comfortable. It’s familiar. It requires very little effort. If you leave enough empty space in your life, average will happily fill it for you. I joke that average is chasing you. It’s trying to find you. It'll hunt you down, catch you and blanket your life in routine if you let it. You have to actively reject it. And one of the easiest ways I’ve found to do that is to just say yes.

Not every yes will turn into an incredible story. Some will be mediocre. Some will be inconvenient. Some will probably make you wonder why the hell you agreed to them in the first place. That’s fine. Because this isn’t

really about adventures. It’s about developing the habit of being open to something different. Start small. Say yes to the dinner. Say yes to the day trip. Go to the weird local event. Help your friend with whatever ridiculous thing they’re doing. Don't require every experience to prove its value before you agree to do it.

Sometimes the value is simply that you said yes.

You went. You participated. You broke the routine. You met someone. You learned something. You now

have a story you didn't have before. And over time, those little decisions

accumulate. You'll find life has more texture and meaning. Just say YES.