A Moment of YES - 2013 Talk
In this 2013 live talk, Travis Thomas shares the personal practice he calls his “Moment of Yes,” a daily discipline of waking up, listening to God, and committing to say yes to divine love. He frames “yes” as a spiritual imperative, arguing that divine love always meets every human need, and that true trust means leaping without knowing the “how.” Thomas illustrates this with the mantra “leap and the net will appear,” urging the audience to replace “how” with “yes.” He introduces a structured “30 Days of Yes” challenge designed to push participants out of their comfort zones through daily actions, such as eye‑contact affirmations. The talk includes an improvised volunteer segment where he play‑acts as “God,” demonstrating that when one trusts fully, mistakes are impossible. Throughout, he shares inspiring stories of individuals—Dave Cornthwaite, Robbie Stokes Jr., a foster‑care activist in India, and Paralympian Anjali Forber‑Pratt—who embraced their own “yes” and transformed their lives. The talk concludes with a call to action for the audience to identify and live their own divine yes, emphasizing that identity is separate from occupation and that saying yes is an act of total trust in love.
Chapters
January 1st, 2013. That is your very first moment of yes. Have a great day. Ooh, get that off. Scary. Good morning, everyone. How we doing? Plenty of good seats still available at StubHub, apparently. So lots of good seats. No one was out there scalping them this morning? Dang. Would have really made my ego feel good. How we doing? You 3 in the front row, all right. Either you got really bad eyes or— yeah, good. Thanks, guys. Good morning, everyone. How we doing? Clark, how we doing? Good, good, good. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I don't know what's going to happen, but it's a good thing. I've got a PowerPoint, I think. Let me cue that up, Dwight. Yeah, that's it. There we go. Moment of yes. So it's great to be back here. I love being here. What's this all about? EMAC, why am I getting choked up? What is it about this place? Thank you, Lee. That means a lot. Just bear with me for 15 minutes while I cry like a baby. All right, where are we going? Let's do something. Moment of Yes, it's for me, you know, it's for me every morning. It's my discipline, it's my commitment, it's my way of forcing myself to get up every day and listen and pray and be humbled and see what shows up. And so I started that January 1st. All 300+ videos are there. My mom's seen them. Have you? She's about the only one who has. I haven't missed a day yet. I have not missed a day. I've been on the road. I have a job. I have 3 crazy kids. But every day right now, that's my discipline, to listen to God. Amen. To listen to love and be humble enough to see what shows up. So that's my moment of yes. So we're going to talk about yes here a little bit this morning and why yes is so important to me and how you all are living your divine yes. But before we do that, I want you to turn to the person next to you and look at them. You 3, you're going to make a little triad, all right? Turn to the person next to you, find someone, look at them in the eye. Where am I looking? All right, you guys just repeat after me. This is simple. All right, you look them in the eye and then you just repeat after what I say. All right, this is going to be the most awkward thing you do all day. This is for me, not you. All right, you ready? You ready? I say it, you repeat it as you look into their eyes. You ready? Shh! Hand goes up, mouth goes shut. All right. Hey there. Hey there. Yeah, I'm talking to you. I probably haven't said it in a while, but you are awesome. You are beautiful. God broke the mold when he made you. I am humbled to be in your presence. Every bit of you I see, I feel, I understand. Now listen, listen, shh. I don't want everybody to hear this. I love you. I love you. All right, that's it. You guys are good. Yeah. The truth is, the truth is, is that that's true. Everything you just said to that person is absolutely 100% true. So what's it feel like? What's it feel like to live and express that kind of love? And even if we're not saying it, just to be that love. Be that authentic. That is living your divine yes. There we go. There we go. There we go. So, quote, divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. It's in every church. We've read it 1,000 times. Some of us, maybe a few more. Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. Yeah, yeah, I got it. I got it. I got it. Yeah, I got it, God. Yes, good. No, no, no, no. Divine love always has met, always will meet every human need. No, no, no, God. I got it. I got it. I'm good. But I really got to work on this thing right now. I got these bills to pay, you see. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, yeah, you got it. Good, good, good. Yeah, yeah, God. I got it. But I've got this thing that I have to do. So I got to worry about it and I'm concerned about it. So yeah, I get it. Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need, but my problem's a little bigger than that. So I'm glad that you're there hanging out, God love. What would it look like? What would it feel like if we truly lived, lived divine love always has met and always will meet every human need? What the heck are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? Who aren't you being because you're afraid? Who aren't you being because you're not sure? But if divine love always has met and always will meet every human need, why in the heck aren't you being the most authentic person you can be? Why aren't you doing that thing that you want to do or being that person that you want to be? Divine love always has met and And always will meet every human need. Not 9 out of 10, every. So who are you when you believe that? Who are you when you believe that? How does that feel like? Have you felt that? One of my favorite quotes is, leap and the net will appear. Right? Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. So leap. And the net will appear. What's it look like for you to leap? What's it look like for you to rely so fully on God, so fully on love, to just do it? Just be it. And I'm not talking about going out there and just being frivolous and jumping in front of the truck. Divine love has met always and will meet every human need. But what is it in your heart, in your truth, in your yes, in your authenticity that you want to do and be, but fear's holding you back? Leap and the net will appear. Or said otherwise, the answer to how is yes. How am I going to do that? Don't say how, say yes. How am I going to get there? How am I going to do that? How am I going to accomplish that? Hows have killed millions and millions of dreams worldwide, and it's killing them right now because you live in how. If you live in yes, it doesn't say divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. And here's how it's going to happen. No. You say yes, you do it. And as Tina Fey, the immortal Tina Fey— Say yes and you'll figure it out afterwards. Right? Say yes and you'll figure it out. I have had so many say yes and we'll figure it out moments these last few years. When I was inspired to leave Principia a few years ago, Not inspired because, get me out of here, but like it felt right. Like, all right, what am I supposed to do, Father? Is it stay or is it go? And the sense was, it's time to move on. But move on to what? I don't know. I don't get the how, but it's time to move on. And trusting and listening and leaping, and the net will appear. And it has appeared every single time. Now, it's not always the net that I would have dreamed up, but the net's been there every single time. And when you leap and let it appear, that's like living in total trust. Trust is not taking that next step when you know what's going to happen. That's not trust. Trust is taking that next step and you have no idea what's going to happen, but you know divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. So you can't not take that next step. I found this in The Message Bible Commentary by Eugene Peterson, Psalms. The answer is yes and yes and yes. There's no buts. No buts. We can live our life in no buts. No buts. I would really like to do this. No but. I would really like to do this. Yeah, no but. Right? No buts. No buts have killed millions of dreams as well. It's that how. It's that, yeah, I know God's taking care of me, but have you seen my laundry list of problems I've got here? Your yes, it's not what you do. And if you are like me, and I think a majority of the people in here, you might not be clear on what you're supposed to do in the world. I think that paralyzes a lot of us thinking, I got to know, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? We think it's a job. We think it's an occupation. We think it's a profession. We think it's something. So what do I do if I don't know what I'm going to do? Maybe I'm not worthy because that person, they know what they want to do and look at them. So if I don't know what I want to do, I could be frustrated. It could be scary. I don't think most of us know what we want to do. But we know who we love to be. We know who we love to be. We know when we show up a certain way, we love to be a certain way. It's authentic. It's authentic and it's genuine. It's your divine yes. And you don't have to know what you're supposed to do. That might change every day. I got a job I started in March. I love it. I'm doing it. They can fire me tomorrow. They could fire me tomorrow. That's not—it's not who I am. What you do is not who you are. It doesn't change who I love to be. So right now, it's showing up as a leadership coach in Florida. Could show up as a janitor the next day. Could show up at—who knows? I don't care. But leap in the net will appear. It's not what I do. It's not what you do. Any of you—it's—it's who do you love to be? That beingness, that Christ in you, that yes. That's what it's about. Don't live your life thinking once you do this, you've done it. Because guess what? That'll be gone the next day, and now who are you? Any attachment that you— of your identity that you connect to something outside of love, it's going to be taken away from you. And then who are you? So yes equals total trust in love. Total trust. So before I do that, I need a volunteer, preferably someone I don't know. All right? I need a volunteer. Yeah, do I know you? No. Come on up, man. All right. What's your name, bud? Ryan. Ryan. Ryan, I think I've maybe seen you years past. Go ahead and take the mic, Ryan. Ryan, come on over. Come on over. So trust, total trust. Ryan, I probably saw you when you were in middle school, right? Yeah. I don't think we've ever had a conversation. Yeah? Good? Yep. All right, Ryan. This is the fun part for me because I get to play God, right? For like 30 seconds, I get to play God. All right. So Ryan, I just want to— I'm basking in the fact that I get to play God right now. So Ryan, here's what we're going to do. Ryan, tell me something that you know absolutely nothing about Besides girls, what is something you know nothing? Just kidding. You're a good-looking man. I don't think that's true. It doesn't matter who you were. I was going to make that joke. All right. Something you know absolutely nothing about. Ancient Vietnamese culture. You don't know anything? Absolutely nothing. All right. Come on, Prince. Really? He doesn't know about that? Ancient Vietnamese culture. So, Ryan, for these next 60 seconds, you are going to be the ancient Vietnamese culture expert, right? But listen, man, I'm God. So no matter what you say, no matter what you say, I got it, right? You cannot screw up. You cannot make a single mistake. I want you to say the first thing that pops in your head no matter what I ask you. Don't say, I don't know. You say something. I'm God. I got your back. Right? God's going to kind of sound like a TV show host right now, but that's who I am, okay? Okay. All right? You roll with it. There are no mistakes. Okay. All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. So good to be here. At the commercial break, we've got our next guest who just flew in, just flew in from Vietnam, and we're blessed to have him. He is the expert on Vietnamese culture. His name is Ryan. Ryan, you just wrote a new book on Vietnamese culture. Tell everyone the title of that book. Ender's Game. Ender's Game. Ender's Game. Now I understand there's some copyright issues right now that you're working through. I wrote it first. You wrote— and you wrote it, you wrote it because it's a reflection of Vietnamese culture. How, how is that a reflection of Vietnamese culture? Because the Vietnamese people were very technologically advanced. Yes, yes, with the rice paddies and the— they were so technologically advanced. And you discovered, you discovered something as you went over there. And, and you lived there as a child? Yes, I did. Yeah, how many years did you do that? 45. 45 years. You were a big child. You were a big child. And the reason you were in Vietnam in the first place was? Family. Family. Clearly, clearly family. And by living in Vietnam all those years, you found, you found one key to their culture, which is? Flags. Flags. It's all about the flags, and there's something about the flags that connects everyone to each other. What is it? The patterns. The patterns. You discovered that there's a, there's a pattern to life just like there's a pattern to the flags. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And so, so when you wrote your book, you had this epiphany while you were up one night writing the book. You had this epiphany. You was like, I need to give this book a title. A title. And it was Ender's Game. Yes, it was. It was Ender's Game. And, and now you're getting ready to go on this world You're gonna teach people. You're gonna teach them what? Why Ender's Game is the greatest book in the history of ever. In the history of ever. Not ever, of ever, which is a country right next to Vietnam. Yes, it is. Yes. All right, thanks, Ryan. Good job, buddy. I had no idea about Vietnamese culture or the country of ever. However, I think the Print College Abroad is going there next year. Good. All right, so Ryan, I should have kept you up here. Ryan, did you feel safe? Yes. Why did you feel safe? Because you're God. Because I'm God, right? Hello, if God's got your back You can't screw up. And that's the reality. When God has your back, you can't screw up. Now, you can screw up, but God's still got your back. I don't think that was necessarily technically true about Vietnam, but I've got his back. So when you trust— when you trust in God to that level, that no matter what you do, he's got your back— all right, no matter what he said, I was going to justify it. All right. I wasn't going to go, no, that's not true. That's stupid. What are you doing? That's— right? Everything was yes. Everything was yes. Yes. Yes, and. Living your yes, and. God's got your back. Say yes. Figure it out. The answer to how is yes. The answer to how is God. How am I going to do that? God will figure it out. Say yes and let God work out the details. Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. So why do I have to figure it out? Just go. Do it. Say yes. So I try to live that. I try to imbibe that. I try every morning's moment of yes is, all right, what I knew yesterday isn't serving me today. Right? You know, a practitioner doesn't pray yesterday and say, all right, where's that prayer from yesterday? Let me just read that one again. I'm good. Right? Today is a new day. Today is, who am I today? Who you were yesterday isn't who you are today. Whatever inspiration, whatever is moving you, whatever authenticity is moving through you is different right here, right now, and your yes is right here and right now because God is right here and right now and he is always now and now and now and now. And that is your yes. And when you rely on it and trust it, just do it. Just go. Just be. Be who you wanna be. I've been inspired ever since starting this whole 30 Days of Yes. And all 30 Days of Yes is, it's 30 different activities over 30 days that force you to connect with your authenticity, to connect with your yes, to get you out of your comfort zone for 30 days. Like looking at someone in the face and having to say sweet nothings to them, right? So getting you out of your comfort zone for 30 days and seeing what shows up. Because when we try to be authentic, stuff shows up and it goes, no, don't go there, right? And we like— we don't like to look at it, so we go over here. I'm going to go over here. I don't want to look at it. What happens when you get out of your comfort zone and you look at the stuff that's preventing you from being the person that you want to be, not what you want to do? And that can be scary, but it can be fun. So I tried to create a program that's fun. And as a result, I've gotten to meet all these wonderful people who are living their yes, that are bucking the system. They're not bucking the system because, I'm going to buck the system. They're bucking the system because the system's not working for them. So they're like, this isn't my yes. This isn't what inspires me and drives me and makes me feel like I'm living on God's edge. So they just got it and they just leap and the net will appear. Right. I've got so many friends, a part of this community and outside this community, who are just so living their yes and it's an inspiration to me because my yes feels very small at times and I look at them and I'm like, yes! Dave Cornthwaite, not our Dave Cornthwaite, another Dave Cornthwaite from the UK. He was 25, working a corporate job, making good money, coming home, playing video games, vegging out on the couch and he was miserable. At 25, his parents got him a longboard and he quit his job the next day. And he got on the longboard and he rode the longboard the length of the UK. He didn't know why. He just— he was inspired to do so. He now has done these giant adventures all over the world raising money. for causes that inspire him. He was over— he swam the Missouri, 1,000 miles down the Missouri River here last year and ended underneath the Arch. 1,000 miles! He's got a motto and he's got t-shirts: Say Yes More. Right? He started off not knowing the how or the what. He just knew that that's what was inside of him. I met this gentleman at working. He came to speak to the school I'm at. His name is Robbie Stokes Jr. A year ago at this time, he was working a block from the White House, playing with President Obama's dog as an event planner in D.C., 25 years old. As he says, like, I was a 25-year-old black kid from Florida working in D.C. Making great, great career, right? It wasn't working for him. He quit, he sold everything in his apartment that he could fit into 2 duffel bags, he bought a one-way ticket to Europe, and he had these t-shirts called, I talk to strangers. He wanted to test a theory that was in his heart that said, what happens if we actually just started talking to people? So he bought a one-way ticket to a country he'd never been to and started talking to people on the street, and they started inviting them— inviting him to stay with them. And they're like, will you go? You want to do this? And so they— he had $2,000 in his pocket. He spent the next 6 or 7 months just traveling around out of the kindness of strangers. And this movement of I Talk to Strangers took off. And now Oprah's going to have him on. He's got a documentary. And the movement is just going. It's not what— he goes, I'm going to go start a movement called I Talk to Strangers. No, it was in his heart. And what happens when we just leap and the net will appear? Ian Former Pratt, a student that went here, was working foster care in St. Louis, went to India with no roots in India. I mean, genealogy roots, but no family roots, no connections in India. Went over there and said, India needs foster care. Okay. Is this the Oscars? Is this my party music? This is nice. I told Dwight I needed some music. That's a bell. That's a bell? That's an awesome bell, which means I should probably wrap it up. So he went to a country he had no connections and said, they need foster care here. So he did it. He did it. He's now started Foster Care India. He's been set up there for about 2 years now. He's changing a country, changing people's lives. Why? How? He didn't know. He knew it had to be done. His sister is a Paralympian champion, Anjali Forber-Pratt, for those of you who have met her. I have. All I can say is that she had an amazing Sunday school teacher back in Boston and that's why she's so successful. That was me. Okay. So, all right. So, I can't take credit for it. She was pretty awesome before I had her. She— so, just living your yes in a big way, not based on a prescription. So, what does your yes look like? What does your yes look like? Not what do I want to do? What does your yes look like? Who do you want to be? Think big. You're a Principia. You've got the foundation, the growth to be and do whatever you want to, whatever you want in a big way with a spiritual foundation, because the divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. That's kind of the big piece that's taken care of. So go do and be what you want to be. Thank you. Adults, anyone? There's another Yes 101 starting November 18th. Kids, get your parents' permission. That's it, guys. You guys are awesome. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. I love you guys. Take care.
