Summary: The Black Hand ruled with an iron fist. Remember that character from Godfather part II? He was more like the Hidden Hand, because his crimes were subtle and yet they ran the whole neighborhood. I equate the hidden hand to the hidden price of things in our life. You say yes to one small thing, you acquire something benign, and this small thing brings a whole slew of other much more malicious inconveniences. In college, I took a course called Power & Influence One of the lessons taught that getting small yeses early on makes persuasion that much easier. Later on, I would see this in action when I interned on the trading floor of a financial firm. Yea, kinda like Boiler Room, but without all the crime. When cold calling, the rule was to keep them on the phone, keep them saying yes , to anything. Ramp up to the big YES. Well, many of the YESes in your life come at ugly costs. When you say yes to a new car, you’re also saying yes to insurance payments, to fuel costs, to parking tickets, and to the threat of theft. This new price isn’t worth it for many of us. The point is: be careful what you say yes to. Always ask: do I really want this, or need this? Will this yes make the next NO more difficult to utter? And always always ask yourself: What sharks are swimming in this calm lake? You’ll find that the better you get at saying NO, the better results you get from your YESes, the more meaningful each precious YES in your life becomes, the more presence you bring to all you do and all you are. Then YOU become the iron fist of your own life, in place of the Hidden Hand.
