The clichéd advice to “do something that scares you every day” always seemed a little foolish to me. Driving on the wrong side of the road would scare me, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it. American TV writer Shonda Rhimes came up with a better approach I think: In 2013 she decided to say “yes to everything” for one year.
Shonda, who is behind hit US TV dramas like Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Scandal, was incredibly successful at work, and had three children at home. But she wasn’t happy – her sister described her as “asleep”. “You never say yes to anything,” her sister told her. And so she challenged herself to say yes, to everything, for a year, and then wrote a book about how that challenge changed her life.
The first thing she said yes to was a speech to new graduates at her old university, Dartmouth College. As the date draws closer, Shonda’s fear of public speaking intensifies, and you can see why she would not normally have said yes to this: “I wander around feeling white-hot terror searing all creativity out of my brain,” she writes in her book, Year of Yes.
“The fires of failure are whipping around, burning down any ideas I may have had. I’m writing an apocalypse up in my imagination. I lie on the floor of my office. I drink red wine. I eat popcorn. I hug my kids. I prepare for the end of days.”
Needless to say, the speech is fine in the end. More than fine, Shonda enjoys it: “For the first time in my life, I stand on a stage and raise my voice to the public with full confidence and not an inch of panic. For the first time in my life, I speak to an audience as myself and I feel joy.”
This continues throughout the book, with her terror before public speaking arrangements, TV appearances, magazine interviews and showbiz events gradually subsiding as she becomes more used to them.
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One thing that struck me is how she manages to say yes on her own terms, setting her own boundaries. The challenge is not about just blithely saying yes to everything. Shonda actually learns to say no in some cases, to friends who she realises are exerting only a negative influence on her, and to others who she realises are attempting to get closer to her only for her fame and wealth.
In other cases she says her own kind of yes. For example, she says yes to a TV appearance on the popular Jimmy Kimmel show. But while this interview is supposed to be on live TV, Shonda insists that she will only do it if it is pre-recorded. This compromise turns out well, as it reduces her stage-fright but the show is still a big success.
Reading this book, I was reminded of a visit to Ballymaloe House in Cork many years ago, a real treat. We spoke to one of the junior staff, and among other things he said how much of an inspiration Myrtle Allen had been. She had advised him to say yes to more things, he said, which had opened up huge opportunities. .
Shonda also believes her Year of Yes changed – and saved – her life. It’s a drastic step to take, but it got me thinking about all the things I often say no to, automatically, out of fear or nervousness. I wonder if I could turn any of them into a yes, challenge myself, and as Shonda Rhimes puts it, “dance in the sun”.