Saying YES - What would you dare to dream if you knew you wouldn't fail

I love reading motivational articles, mostly when it comes to creativity in any aspect of life, and getting outside of your comfort zone. I found an article on getrichslowly.org called "The Power of Yes: A Simple Way to Get More out of Life" that talks about not giving excuses and turning down opportunities. Instead, keep your mind open to new things and challenges - and even if you fail, you learn from them. Kinda reminds of the movie, YES Man with Jim Carrey.

----- Here's some passages

For much of my adult life I’ve been shackled by fear. I’ve been afraid to try new things, afraid to meet new people, afraid of doing anything that might lead to failure. This fear confined me to a narrow comfort zone. Recently, however, I made a single small change that has helped me to overcome my fear, and allowed me to get more out of life.

One person recommended Impro by Keith Johnstone. Intrigued, I borrowed it from the public library. It blew my mind. Though it’s a book about stage-acting, several of the techniques it describes are applicable to everyday life.
I was particularly struck by the need for improvisational actors to accept whatever is offered to them on stage. In order for a scene to flow, an actor must take whatever situation arises and just go with it. Johnstone writes:

Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the action. [...] This attitude makes for something really amazing in the theater. The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it’s the most marvelous thing about improvisation: you are suddenly in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit.
[...]
These ‘offer-block-accept’ games have a use quite apart from actor training. People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone chooses more or less what kind of events will happen to them by their conscious patterns of blocking and yielding.

That passage had a profound effect on me. I thought about it for days. “What if I did this in real life?” I wondered. “Is there a way I could adapt this to help me overcome my fear?” I began to note the things that I blocked and accepted. To my surprise, I blocked things constantly — I made excuses not to do things because I was afraid of what might happen if I accepted.

I made a resolution. I decided that instead of saying “no” to things because I was afraid of them, I would “just say yes”. That became my working motto: “Just say yes”. Any time anyone asked me to do something, I agreed to do it (as long as it wasn’t illegal and didn’t violate my own personal code of conduct). In the past six months, I’ve put this philosophy into practice in scores of little ways. But the power of “yes” has made larger changes to my life, too, has exposed me to things I never would have done before.......

Most of my experiences from my “just say yes” campaign have been positive, but not all of them. I’ve had some failures, too. Surprisingly, I’ve learned more from the bad experiences than I have from the good.

Motivational speaker Brian Tracy says:

If you want to develop courage, then simply act courageously when it’s called for. If you do something over and over again, you develop a habit. Some people develop the habit of courage. Some people develop the habit of non-courage.

Tracy recommends that any time you encounter the fear of failure, you simply tell yourself, “I can do it.” Say it again and again and then do it. What’s more, he says, tell others that they can do the things they’re frightened of. How many times have you seen somebody excited about a new project become totally deflated when others tell them why it won’t work. Don’t be like that. Tell the person, “You can do it.” Be supportive.

Tracy is famous for asking the question: What would you dare to dream if you knew you wouldn’t fail? This is a powerful concept. What could you do if you stopped telling yourself “no” and simply tapped into the power of yes?