Last week, The Danny Wallace Appreciation Society on Facebook held a little competition. To win a copy of Danny’s new book, Friends Like These, a beautiful Danny Wallace t-shirt and some lovely badges, people just had to send in a story about what Danny’s previous book, Yes Man, had inspired them to say yes to.

Rory Parle was the winner, and this is his fantastic story:

When I read ‘Join Me‘, shortly after reading ‘Yes Man‘, the power of Yes compelled me to join. Not long after, I said Yes to flying all the way from Dublin to Manchester so I could go to my first meet in Chester, meeting fifty-or-so people whom I’d only ever met before online (the first time I’d ever met “someone off the Internet”).

That ‘Yes’ led me to attend my second meet, in London. There I participated in a Free Hugging event, which loads of people saw and enjoyed and joined in with. One of those people later turned out to be a recruiter from Google.

I had already applied for a job in Google, and my first phone-screen was only days after that Free Hugging event. I was interviewed by a person in London; someone who—out of a city of tens of millions of people—had seen me free-hugging. This discovery really helped to break the ice and boost my confidence in the interview, which I aced. That gave me the momentum to get through the whole hiring process, and I got the job.

Since then, Yes has led me to America (twice), to Egypt, to Austria, to Italy, and many times back to the UK. It’s led me to meet Danny, and his one-time stupid-boy-project partner Dave Gorman. It’s given me a host of new friends, many due to saying ‘Yes’ to go to a party where I knew literally no-one, and many due to my persistence in saying ‘Yes’ to invitations to visit people in the UK.

Just last week I finally brought the free hugs idea home to Ireland. I took part in a hugging campaign to promote an Irish charity called spunout.ie, and ended up hugging not only Ireland’s most popular radio DJ, but also Terry O’Quinn from TV’s ‘Lost’ (who is surprisingly cuddly).

I have yet to say ‘Yes’ to my spam though…