"Yes" and "No"

Both are necessary. And both are learned skills.

Improvisation actors train using a game called "Yes, and...".

The rules are, you and your scene partner(s) are planning something (an event, a campaign, a craft). A discussion takes place, and every reply must begin with the words "Yes, and...".

It's training an essential skill.

An actor's power lies in her believability - her ability to react authentically to the circumstances and the behavior of her scene partner(s) in each moment.

This requires her to 100% accept (say "Yes" to) what's happening in front of her eyes. If her scene partner is crying, she can't ignore it because it doesn't suit her motives for the scene. Even if she's playing a comedy where her character is pretending not to notice the crying, she must still perceive it in a way that's observable to us, her audience. We won't consider the moment truthful (or funny) if she doesn't.

Truth flows from "Yes", and "Yes" requires practice.

The same is true off the stage. Vitality, authenticity, creativity, and peace flow from a practiced acceptance of what is happening moment to moment, day to day. Suffering is wanting things to be different.

But that's one side of the coin.

Vitality, authenticity, creativity, and peace also flow from effective allocation of one's attention and emotional/physical energy.

Saying "Yes" to the moment doesn't mean you have to answer every email, live up to every person's expectation, do every chore, and respond to every "emergency" yourself. That indeed is suffering.

Actors make choices all the time. And we should be choosing to spend our resources on impulses that our research and our guts tell us are most likely to move us in the direction we want to go.

It means getting very good at respectfully saying "No".