“Say Yes” Challenge

We have all watched Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man” movie at some point in our life. In this movie, he agrees to say yes to anything for a whole year! This completely changes his life 180 degrees and eventually uplifts his spirit to cloud nine. I’ve mentioned before in the 10 Feel-Good Movies post that I wish I were brave enough to do the same thing. So two Saturdays ago, I finally plucked up my courage to challenge myself to say yes for a whole day.

Basically, I asked a group of friends to suggest challenges and I should not turn any down. And so they did, and this is how the “Say Yes” challenge went for me:

1) Tell a girl she looks hot. So I went to my friend, Sarah, whilst she was having a conversation with other friends and told her that she looked really hot out of the blue. She took one step back and looked freaked out! That was her instant reaction haha.

2) Walk barefoot at university. I am all about maintaining a decent image as an individual, especially in public. So to be challenged to take my shoes off and walk barefoot at university is a big thing to me. But I did it, and I didn’t mind the people…as long as I didn’t look them in the eyes haha. To whoever it may concern, wear a nice pair of socks every day because you never know when you will need to take your shoes off in public.

3) Write on my personal stuff “Neat Freak”. I am quite possibly the neatest person you will ever meet when it comes to my personal belongings. I don’t like when people write on my stuff or on my hand. I always erase whatever I wrote down if my handwriting didn’t look nice as usual. Some of my friends even say that I am on the borders of having OCD. So I think you can imagine how big of a deal it is to be challenged to write on my pencil case. My friend, Mariam, has been trying to write on any of my stuff for two years now because she knows how much this annoys me. She saw the “Say Yes” challenge as an opportunity to do so. She even took a photo of this great achievement, haha!

4) Take a selfie with a complete stranger. I was afraid that people were going to turn me down if I go and ask for a selfie so I looked for someone who looked like a nice person. I couldn’t judge based on the looks especially that it was a ridiculously hot sunny day so I just did it anyway. I found a group of girls (whom I thought would judge me) and nervously asked for a selfie and they so nicely agreed. So instead of a selfie with one stranger, it was a photo with four strangers. I don’t mind adding the photo below but I forgot to ask for their permission…oopsi!

5) Sing one of the worst ranked karaoke songs in public. My friend, Noha, helped me sing “Baby Got Back” in public. We sang it in a toy store, Hamleys, where kids were all over the place.

6) Draw a mustache on my face with a black marker and leave it on for a whole hour while I’m out. We couldn’t find a black marker so my friends drew a mustache on my face with a pink highlighter. I wandered the shops of City Stars mall with a pink mustache, where strangers and shop assistants stared at it shamelessly. Their stares literally reminded me of its existence whenever I forgot about it for a few minutes. I wasn’t really annoyed with having a pink mustache except whenever I came across a mirror. I couldn’t even take myself seriously when I was Snapchatting with it on. I impatiently counted down the hour to take it off, haha. This was my favorite challenge of the day. Thanks Aya for challenging me this.

7) Dance like a ballerina, instead of regular walking for a while. There was a floor piano at Hamleys which inspired me to do the ballerina challenge. With a pink mustache on I danced like a ballerina on the piano keys while Mamma Mia was playing in the background. I think those few seconds are one of my 2016’s highlights; the toy store was busy, but the music blocked the background talks, I was enjoying this leap of craziness by dancing to the summery tune, and this leap of craziness turned out to be a leap of joy.

I was also challenged to talk to a stranger about a very odd topic that would freak them out. This, to me, was the biggest challenge of all. I wanted to do it but I didn’t know what the odd topic would be about. Noha suggested that I go tell someone that my (hypothetical) boyfriend has just broken up with me. She wanted me to rant about it to a complete stranger. I was so up for it, nervous of course but still up for it, but I knew that no one would have given me the dramatic conversation I was hoping for. I looked all day for the person who would give me that kind of vibe but there was no luck. So this challenge is still on till I find the right place and the right stranger to go to.

The “Say Yes” challenge was quite a challenge to me because even though I mentally agreed to this, the challenge lied in being able to bring myself to actually do it. It was about not caring about people’s judgment and caring about my own pleasure. Maybe one of the challenges didn’t bring me ultimate joy at first but eventually it certainly did. To be honest, at the beginning of that day I was doing the first challenge for the sake of new blog content. But at the end of the day, I was genuinely happy that I did something new, different and completely out of my comfort zone. I did something that I would be telling my kids about and most probably encouraging them to do it too, even though my mum was (still is) completely against it. Long story short, the “Say Yes” challenge is one of my 2016’s achievements.

I still have many challenges left for me to do so if you guys enjoyed the “Say Yes” challenge, maybe there would be a part two. I recorded all of these challenges on Snapchat that day so make sure to follow me there where similar fun things are recorded and live coverage of future events I am willing to attend. (username is down below)

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