I’d like to take a moment to speak in defense of negativity.

These days negativity gets a bad rap. People build whole careers in social media generating and propagating motivational memes about thinking positive and not allowing negativity into your life.

As valuable as that message is, it’s not the whole story. Nor is it either reasonable or desirable to live a life that’s full of nothing but rainbows and unicorns.

It’s important to be more holistic, to accept and utilize both the good and the bad, the upside and the downside.

The wheel turns, as the saying goes.

Yet the narrative always focuses on the doers, rather than the critics, and the implicit thesis is that the critics don’t matter at all.

I’d like to remind those pundits who talk about rejecting negativity of what we were taught in Selling 101 about objections

Every objection is an opportunity to educate.

Being told No isn’t a rejection; it’s a request for more information. You’re not done pitching your idea, product or service until you’ve answered every objection that’s been raised.

If you haven’t overcome those objections, maybe your idea, product or service wasn’t the right one.

Think about everyone’s favorite Patron Saint of technology and innovation: Steve Jobs.

He was famous for shredding people’s ideas, and seldom was he polite about it.

That’s the power of No: forcing ideas to evolve and get better. He’d say No until he finally saw something that he didn’t just like, but loved.

All of us need to be told No.  It forces us to adapt, to grow, and to polish ourselves and our ideas.

Just think: if more people had said No along the path, either those stupid Amazon Dash buttons wouldn’t exist, or they’d exist in a form that we’d be unable to make fun of.