TAKE NO FOR VITAMINS

There is a sentence you have heard, or one you are afraid you will hear, the moment you tell someone you are writing your story. "Who would want to read about that?" Sometimes it comes from across the table. Someone tilts their head, tries to be kind, and asks it out loud. But the version that does the real damage is the one that comes from inside. Someone says, "you should write your story," and before they finish, you have already answered for them. Who would care about my life? Who would read that? That is the first no. And you handed it to yourself. Sit with where that sentence puts you. On one end, you let it land as a verdict, and the book closes before it opens. On the other end, you let it land as a question with an answer you have not built yet. Same sentence. Two different floors to stand on. The one you pick decides whether the story lives. Most people pick verdict. They hear one no and treat it as the final count. John Hope Bryant heard no for a living. At eighteen he was sleeping in a black Montero Jeep outside the Los Angeles airport, the truck one step from being repossessed, five hundred dollars a month coming in. He describes covering the license plates from the inside so the tow trucks could not read them while he slept. He cleaned up in an office restroom before the workday started. And he made a decision about the word no that changed the math of his life. He decided to take no for vitamins. A vitamin does not taste like candy. It is not supposed to. It goes down rough and builds something in you that shows up later. That is what a no is for a memoir writer. Not a wall. Fuel. Because there is a number, a real one, of nos sitting between you and the yes that puts your story in someone's hands. Every no you collect is one you cross off. You are not further from the yes. You are closer, because you used one up. You think you have to become Jensen Huang first. Build the most valuable company in the world, stand on the stage, earn the right to be heard, and then you can write the book. Backwards. Huang says his parents landed here with two suitcases and nothing to fall back on. The story came from the floor, not the summit. So does yours. You cannot fall from the floor. Use up your nos so you can get to your yes. How many nos have you used up today?

When I asked myself why one no flattens a person and the same no fuels someone else, I found the answer hiding in plain sight. The no did not change. The position did. Jen Fontanilla put words to it on the podcast this week. She said what looks like a money problem is almost always a positioning problem underneath. Same product, two different shelves. One sells for ten dollars. The same thing, positioned right, sells for a thousand. Nothing inside the box changed. The position outside it did. Rejection works the same way. A no positioned as a verdict drains you. The same no positioned as a vitamin feeds you. The skill is not getting fewer nos. The skill is repositioning the one you already have. Three moves. Here is how they work. Step 1: Name the No. Write down the exact rejection, the words if you remember them. The tilted head. The silence where a yes was supposed to be. The voice in your own head that answered before anyone else could. Name it precisely, because you cannot reposition a thing that has no shape. Step 2: Find the Verdict You Made. Something happened in the half second after the no landed. You made a decision about yourself. "My story is not interesting." "I am not a real writer." "This was a mistake." That decision is the part that hurt you. The no was economic. The verdict was the disabling frame. John Hope Bryant said being broke is economic, and being poor is a frame of mind. The no put you broke for a second. The verdict is what tried to make you poor. Step 3: Run the Bryant Question. The question is simple. How many nos have you used up today? Take the same no and count it. One no, used up. One step closer to the number that ends them. Bryant did not feel his way out of that Jeep. He moved. Next office, next meeting, next city, until somebody said yes. Your version is the next sentence. The next page. The next person who reads it. I know this feeling because I lived on the wrong side of it. In 2023 I finished my first book. It came from ideas, concepts, frameworks I had pulled from more than six hundred books I had read by then. I wrote about ideas because ideas felt safe. My own life did not feel worthy of telling, so I kept myself out of it. I handed my next manuscript to my editor. She read it and asked me one question. What about your story, Asher? The floor moved. Two full books written, and my story was in neither of them. Not because it changed. Because I did not feel ready to tell it. Her question is what made me ready. I went back and started that book over from the beginning. It became Two Suitcases to Success. The story was worthy before I was ready to tell it. The events were the same. The childhood was the same. The thing that moved was where I stood when I looked at it. So now I ask you what she asked me. What about your story? Is it worthy of telling? I think it is. And the no standing between you and the page is one you can reposition, the same way I did. Name it. Find the verdict. Run the Bryant question. A wall becomes a step. You cannot fall from the floor. So you might as well build up from it.