How Saying Yes Changed Shonda Rhimes' Life | Super Soul Sparks

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1:03When was the last time you wholeheartedly said yes to life, faced your fears, ignored that no voice inside your head, and just said, yes, I'm all in? Well, that's what Shonda Rhimes did. Shonda described herself as extremely shy and introverted and felt it was time for a radical shift. So the mega-talented mastermind behind some of TV's hottest shows gave herself a challenge. For one full year, she erased the word no from her vocabulary. I am a completely different person. There's a transformation that happened that I wasn't expecting. It's a spiritual practice. Yeah. Shonda's year of yes was an epiphany.

1:52I said yes to my kids in a way that I had never done before. that impacted her life in unexpected ways. I lost 110 pounds. Right now on Super Soul Sunday. Yes can be a very small thing, and it can be life-changing. The transformative power of yes. So, welcome to Super Soul Sunday. Thank you for having me. Thank you for saying yes. Absolutely. Thank you for saying yes in this year of yes. And, you know, the whole point of this show is to open people's heart space a little bit. Yes. Get them to have different ways of thinking about things. But I just wanted to share that I knew something was going on with you because I don't say yes to a lot of things.

2:35I like being at home, but at least three times this year, I said yes to things. And at every single one of those things, you were there. We saw each other out. We saw each other. And so the first time I was like, hmm, Shonda's out. The second time, we were at a Selma party. Right. And then I invited you to the Legends, and then, oh. And I came, yeah. Shonda said yes. I said, what is going on? It was completely new for me. I thought Oprah goes everywhere. No, no. Those are the only places I've been this year. And you were out and about in a way that I had not seen. Ever. And then I heard that you'd written the book, Year of Yes, and that it was a conscious decision.

3:20It was. It was a real effort. to decide to spend a certain amount of time just sort of saying yes to everything that scared me. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the whole purposes of this platform, Super Soul Sunday, is to get people to open up and say yes to life. And, you know, one of the reasons I really appreciate the idea of the year of yes is that to say yes to life, you got to start saying yes to life experiences, to things that ordinarily would scare you or intimidate you or you think would bore you? Absolutely. So this all started with your sister Dolores. Tell me. It did. It was Thanksgiving of 2013.

4:02And we were standing in my kitchen. She's chopping things, making things for Thanksgiving dinner. And I was sort of doing what I always do, which is giving her this long, fancy list of all the invitations I'd received. People wanted me to speak here, and I'd invited to this party and that party. And finally, she just sort of cut me off. And she said, are you going to do any of these things? And I, well, no. And I was very surprised that she asked me that because obviously no. And she sort of shook her head and said, why not? And I thought, what does she mean, why not? And I said, well, I have, you know, the babies.

4:34I have two small children. I have an 11-year-old. I have two shows. I can't possibly do any of these things. And she looked at me and she said, you know, you have two sisters who live four blocks away. Your parents are 45 minutes away. They come and stay in a heartbeat. You have a wonderful nanny. You have fantastic friends, really close. You're supported all over the place. All you do is work. You never have any fun. You never go anywhere. You never do anything." And I thought, she doesn't know what she's talking about. I mean, I really got an attitude about it. I was like, I'm leaving this kitchen.

5:02And she said, you never say yes to anything. And that really stuck with me. And you had already accepted to be on the board of the Kennedy Center, because that was a seminal moment, right? Well, I don't even know if you accept being on the board of the Kennedy Center. I feel like when the president of the United States asks you to serve, you serve. Right. So I had to go to the Kennedy Center Otters because I had just been nominated to the board of trustees. And when I got there, I was informed that I was sitting in the presidential box. With the president and the first lady and the secretary of state and his wife.

5:35Now, generally, I think for other people, this would have been the most exciting thing in the world. Yes, like woohoo. I was horrified, like so stressed out and so nervous about the entire thing. But nobody asked me. They said, this is where you're sitting. And so that is where I sat. And I was really nervous, but I ended up having an amazingly fun time. It was an incredible evening. And where I started out sort of almost being unable to speak, by the end of the evening, I was really comfortable and having a delightful time. And when I got home from DC, I literally was crawling into bed and I had a thought, which was if they had asked you, you would have said no.

6:17If they had asked you to sit with the president and the first lady, you would have said no. Which is so sad. I would have missed this experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. And you would have said no out of humility and no let somebody else and no or just... I would have said no out of fear. Really? And what I realized was that I would have said no because I felt like why would they want to sit with me? What am I going to say? What do I have to add to the conversation? Because you're Shondaland. But there's a part of me that feels like that's those are the characters and the stories that I tell are very exciting but somehow I am not a part of that story.

6:55So that was over a year ago. That was over a year ago. And now you can say that in a year's time of saying yes, a year of saying yes. You are a, would you say you're a completely different person? I am a completely different person. I mean, everybody I, I mean, everybody who knows me thinks I'm a completely different person. I'm, I feel like a completely different person. There's a transformation that happened that I wasn't expecting. Well, first of all, you lost a lot of weight. I lost 110 pounds, which was a complete by-product of the entire thing. It wasn't the goal. It wasn't a thing that was part of it.

7:27One of the yeses, though, was one day I thought, well, you can't sort of say yes to everything and not say yes to taking care of yourself and not say yes to health. And that came from sort of having an epiphany of I work hard to succeed at every single thing I do. I work my butt off at work. I work really hard to be a mother. I work really hard at everything. Why do I think that losing weight is supposed to be easy? Why do I think that it's going to be fun to put down the fried chicken. It's never going to be fun to put down the fried chicken. I'm always going to hate losing weight. So if I can accept that I'm always going to hate losing weight, then either I'm going to do it or I'm not going to do it.

8:06So you made a decision. Yeah, I gave myself some rules. I mean, some really clear rules. Like I said, I was never going to tell myself I couldn't have something, which was a new thing for me because I'd always made a bunch of, like, really crazy restrictive rules. No carbs, no chicken with no skin, It lasts like three days and then I'd be eating an entire cake or something. Yes, yes. So now I sort of just made it. I could have whatever I wanted. And I made a really crazy rule for me, which was amazing, which was I only eat what I crave. Wow. I'd never even thought of it before. You just eat automatically.

8:41But the idea of just eating what you crave became kind of exciting because then I'd be like, I really want this kind of brownie. And then I'd have it. And I didn't even have to eat the whole thing. and I'd be perfectly satisfied. Versus you'd say, you know, I want some chocolate, I want a brownie, I want something. And then you'd eat all these substitutes. You're still not satisfied. I've eaten four health bars trying not to get to one brownie. It was life-changing. And it's no coincidence that it all happened at the same time. It's absolutely no coincidence. Yeah. I also think, you know, one of the things that happened during the year was I started saying yes to telling people what I think.

9:18You know, there's sort of a yes to no bowl going on there. And I stopped, I would say, I stopped eating all my feelings and just started telling people them. Uh-huh. Which meant I got a lot more frank and a lot more upfront with people, which was really good for me as well. Yeah. Were you one of those people, too, who never said yes to what you really wanted, but you said yes to a lot of things you didn't? Yeah. Yeah. I was absolutely the person who did anything you asked me to that I didn't want to do and then sort of grumbled about it quietly to myself. Which builds a level of resentment. Yes, and then I'd feel resentful towards people.

9:54Yes, yes. So when you left the Kennedy Center, you're flying back and you say to yourself, oh, that was, I actually had fun and maybe I need to take a look at my life. I really sat down and thought, I need to start saying yes to the things that scare me. If I never say yes to anything, I need to start saying yes to things that I would always say no to automatically. Yes. And I promised myself that I would do it for just a year because I thought that I wasn't going to survive. I really thought I'm going to die of shame and shock and fear. And so I sort of threw it out there.

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11:24We'll be right back.