Did you just get a NO?

How did you behave?

No is a complete sentence…. Only if you don't desire it well enough.

— Abiola Okun

Before writing this newsletter, I spent a considerable amount of days thinking about this, and I not only realized how much of a problem this is, I discovered that this is the real problem.

Follow carefully.

Have you ever requested for something you wanted, you got a ‘No,’ and then you moved on with your life after that No?

It could be anything. An extra class from a lecturer, a raise from your employer, a job from a company, a grant from venture investors, a date from a girl, a scholarship grant from a school, a business venture, a career path, a skill you wanted to learn, the list is never ending.

What did you do after getting that No? Think about it.

Every day and every moment of our lives is an influx of questions, requests that we ask, of ourselves, of other people, of corporations and institutes, of our customers, of the world in general, and the quality of our lives is actually dependent on the answers we get from these requests and questions that we ask.

Tricky? Let me expound.

At the beginning of the day, we ask strength of ourselves to get up from the bed along with the first alarm. It's a request we make to our body, and quite fairly, sometimes our body says no. What do we do then?

When we are meant to do a task, we ask the same of our body and mind too, and what do we do when they say no? What do we do when our mind refuses to assimilate, or our body just wants to procrastinate?

Even when it's just us, it can be difficult, but what happens then when another person is involved, someone we have zero control or influence over? A third party you don't even know.

What happens when we ask someone to get the task done that we need to finish ours? What happens when the person says no? What happens when you ask for that relationship, that investment in yourself, a sale of your product, your business idea, etc., and they say no because they just aren't seeing how they'd recoup in multiple folds what they invest in you, they aren't seeing the value your product offers, or you just aren't communicating as you should?

At every given point in our lives, we are asking questions and requests of ourselves and of other factors at play in and around our lives. There are two possible answers they can give. A Yes, or a No.

Yeses are easy, favorable, and they mean that things are going our way, so there's not much to talk about...yet. For now, let's focus on No.

The real problem is what we do in the face of No.

What do we do when we ask our body to get up when the alarm rings and it doesn't get up, because it is too tired? Do we simply let things be and let the alarm snooze again hoping that, perhaps we'll have the strength to wake up in 5 minutes? This is the real problem.

What happens when we put the product we value out for sale and our customers give us a very loud No by the amount of revenue we generate as supposed to what we hoped for? What do we do then? Do we quit the business or throw out the product from the line of products? This is the real problem.

What happens when we ask the girl out and she says No for whatever reason, do you go, "Eyah, alright then. Peace be unto you and your household?” Perhaps that's the real problem.

Now I'm not saying that you should become what Twitter streets will call a 'simp', no, that's not the topic of discussion today. It's about how much you even want it in the first place.

When you apply for those jobs, the raises, the visas, the scholarships, and you move on after the first, "Unfortunately...," maybe that's the real problem. Maybe your interpretation of the no and your attitude right after it, is the real problem, not the No in itself.

We are too complacent and too quick to let things be when we get a No in life, and it's a huge decider of who we become as people. The culmination of our lives is the amount of yeses and nos we have allowed prevail in it. Our lives are a sum of the yeses and nos we have swallowed up.

A friend said to me several days back that the default response of most people is No. Many times, they just want to know how much you desire what you are asking for. They want to know what you'd sacrifice for what you are requesting.

Your body wants to know how much discomfort you are willing to take to get a yes. Your customers want to know how much advert, repackaging, and communicstion you're willing to put in. Your employer wants to know how much you need the raise and what you are willing to give. The girl probably just wants to know how valuable she is to you.

Your actions after the No tells how much you truly desire what you asked for in the first place. If you stopped at the first or even the 10th No, then it just means you didn't really want it as much as you thought you did, and if you did not want it that much, then — and this might sound harsh — just maybe you didn't deserve it.

If you settle with the answers you get from people all the days of your life, without figuring out how to turn those Nos into Yeses, then your life will be a mirror of what simply came, not what we wanted.

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At the Book Club this month, we have been reading The Alchemist, and of the many important lessons we have learned from it, one is how the shephard boy, Santiago, never took no for an answer. He asked the Wind to turn him into a wind, persisted so much after myriad of Nos that, even the Wind that didn't know how it can be done, did everything it could to make sure it happened.

It brought me back to reality, and the reality of things today is that we have forgotten how to persist in the face of what we truly desire, because there's an illusion of inexhaustible options, so we don't even know how to persist or truly desire one thing with all our hearts and go for it anymore, and at the end of the day, the outcome of our lives is decided, not by what we desired with all our hearts, but by what was merely available.

I don't want to live the available life, no. I want to live the desirable life. I don't want my lot in life to be merely of what was available to me, no. I want it to be of what I desired with all my heart, refusing to accept No, regardless of the amount of times it came.

I want that, at the end of this life, I should look back, nod with a smile, and say, "I got all I wanted," not only what was available.

I hope you make that decision too today.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨