Clean Requests

"You can have anything you want in life if you are willing to ask 1,000 people for it"

 -Byron Katie

When it comes to having what we want in life, the most powerful tool we possess is the ability to ask for it.  It never ceases to amaze me how often we are only a couple clean requests away from having what we want. Whether it is asking for a raise, asking a client to hire you, or asking your partner to mary you, you are much more likely to actually get the results you want if you ask for them.  Equally amazing, is how unwilling we are to actually make those requests. Let's look at this a little closer.

The best book I've ever read on the power of asking is The Aladdin Factor by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.  In this coaching article, I'm going to be introducing some of the key factors outlined in this book.  If you'd like to explore these ideas further, I highly recommend you read the book.

The first question worth asking is, why are we so unwilling to make requests for what we want?  The Aladdin Factor, highlights five primary reasons people don't make requests:

1. Ignorance: We don't ask because we don't know what to ask for, we don't know what's possible, we don't know what we really want, and we don't know how to ask.
2. Limiting and Inaccurate Beliefs: We don't ask because we don't believe it will do any good, because we believe we shouldn't have to, and because we believe we will be taking advantage of somebody else.
3. Fear: We don't ask because we are afraid of rejection, what others will think, what others will do, and what others will say.  We're afraid of what asking will mean about us: we're stupid, we're weak, we're helpless, and we're a bad person.
4. Low Self-Esteem:  A lot of people in the world, in their heart of hearts, don't think much of themselves.  In turn, they don't believe their needs and wants are important or relevant so they don't ask for those things.  If you feel worthless, you're not likely to ask for what you want because. 
5. Pride:  This probably shows up more frequently for us guys, but we've all avoided asking for help or assistance because we don't want to appear a certain way to others.

This is a pretty compelling case for not asking.  However, there is an even more compelling case for asking.  The odds of you actually creating what you want in your life goes through the roof.  

Here are some of the benefits of asking that Canfield and Hansen discuss in the book.

1. You Can Literally Ask For Anything: "You can ask for a hug, comfort, listening, forgiveness, attention, time, intimacy, caring, respect, love, nurturing, a massage, healing energy, prayers, an explanation, loyalty, sexual fidelity and a 100 percent commitment..." To name only a few.
2. You Will Take Control of your Life:  When you begin to ask for your needs and wants, you are moving from being a victim of life to a creator of your life experience.
3. You Will Have Better Business and Personal Relationships: We rarely get what we want in relationships when we don't actually ask for them, because believe it or not, people can't actually read our minds.
4. You Will Have and Give More Love:  It can be difficult to ask for more affection, more kindness, and more love because of the fear of rejection; but, love is worth it!
5. You Can Enrich Your Lifestyle: You can ask for things like an upgrade to a first class flight, or a better hotel room.  You can also ask for people to hire you and for more money for your services.  You never know, you might just get it.
6. You Will Maximize Your Talents and Skills:  Often times opportunities are created only when we ask for them.  So if you want to really get the most out of your gifts in life, ask, ask, ask.

This article is called Clean Requests because often times when people think they are making a request it is actually a demand or a threat in disguise.  It isn't clean.  For example, if you ask your partner to do the dishes, check if there is an unspoken "or else..." hidden at the end.  Much of the resistance that people have to being asked for something is that they feel pressured or pushed, and remember, when we are pushed, we push back.  So the next time you are wanting to make a request, first ask yourself if you are making it okay for them to say no.  A clean request means you are simply asking for what you want, neither a 'yes' or a 'no' means anything about you or the other person, and nothing about the relationship is at stake. If you want to be a master of asking, practice clean requests. 

Next, let's take a look at why we might get a 'no' to our clean request, and what that means.  There are essentially three different reasons that you will get a no, and this comes straight from another one of my favorite books, SuperCoach, by Michael Neill:

1. Other people's fear that you will make them hear something they don't want to hear or do something they don't want to do.
2. A lack of understanding about how what you're asking will be of benefit to them, either directly or indirectly.
3. A genuine awareness on their part that they don't want to be, do, or have what you are requesting

The beauty of all three of these is that none of them are personal.  If people are afraid, that's to do with their own thoughts and fears.  If people don't understand, than that's to do with their own lack of understanding, which you can address or not.  And if it's a genuine no, than it's nothing to do with you, it's simply them being aware of their own inner wanting and trusting that.   One of the most important realizations I've ever had, is that a 'no', is never personal. Receiving a no does not mean that you are somehow unworthy or have no value as a human being.  The reality is a 'no', is just a 'no', and doesn't mean anything about you unless you make up that it does. Your willingness to receive a 'no', will increase your willingness to ask.

Alright, so far we've explored why we don't ask, why it's worth asking, and why we might get a 'no' response and what that means. The last piece of the puzzle is looking at how to ask so that you maximize your chances of a yes.  I'm going to take this straight from The Aladdin Factor because I love how the authors put it:

1. Ask as if you expect to get it
2. Ask someone who can actually give it to you
3. Be clear and specific in your requests
4. Ask with humor and creativity
5. Ask from the heart
6. Be prepared to give something in order to get something
7. Ask repeatedly
8. Be gracious in accepting a 'no'

There is a lot of breadth vs. depth in this weeks article, so if you want more information, do check out the two books highlighted in this article.  This will get you started though; so get out there and start practicing your clean requests today.  You might just be surprised at how often people say yes.

Love and Light,

Coach Ty

The Myth of Know How?

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

- John F. Kennedy - 

When I speak with people about setting goals and creating what they want in the world, one of the major perceived obstacles is that they don't know how.  They don't know how to do it, how to get it, how to achieve it, or how to create it?  But the mistake isn't in not knowing how, it's thinking that you need to know how before you can get started.  Believing you need to know how, before you start something new is a myth.  I call it the Myth of Know How.

It doesn't matter if you want to have a better relationship with your spouse, or if you want to create work you love; not knowing how is not a useful reason for not pursuing something you want.

When you were a small child, did you know how to walk before you did it?  When you were learning to ride a bike, were you an expert before you ever got on the bike?  When you were first learning to drive a manual transmission, did you know how to do it before you put in hours of learning and practice?  No, it didn't stop any of us?  We just immersed ourselves in these pursuits because they were worthwhile to us.  It didn't matter that we had no idea how.  We were committed and that was what was really important.

We learn how by doing, by getting our hands dirty.  It takes time and practice to master skills and strategies.  There was some research done into how long on average it takes to master something; mastering meaning you are one of the top experts in a field.  They kept coming across the number 10,000 hours to mastery which was referenced in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers.  10,000 hours of practice broken up into 3 hours per day, equals approximately 10 years.  So let's dispel the myth right now, it takes a long time to learn how to do things really well.  We don't just wake up one day knowing how.

The people we see doing things masterfully didn't wake up one day suddenly spectacular, they almost certainly have put in their 10,000 hours already, or are well on their way. So, it's not a matter of can you do it, but are you inspired enough to want to make your life about learning how?  If you really want it, if it's a true authentic desire, if you are truly committed, then there is almost always a way to create what you want;

Sure, nobody really knows how the future is going to turn out; and nobody knows if something is possible or not before it is created; but the unknown, that's where possibility lives.  Nobody has every creating something truly great by stopping themselves simply because they didn't know how.  Thomas Edison attempted over 9,000 experiments before he got a light bulb to glow.  The Wright Brothers tried dozens of test models and crashed several times before having a successful manned flight.  You probably crashed and burned dozens of times when you were learning to walk, but none of that mattered.  It was all just feedback and experimentation.  What's really important is in all these examples they were committed, determined, and persistent, and that's what it takes.

So what do you want to make your life about?  What are you waiting for, go out there and get creating!  It doesn't matter how long it will take, or if you don't know how.  What matters is that it is a worthwhile pursuit for you.


Coaching Tip of the Week:

1. What do you want?  What have you been inspired to do, but you stopped yourself from moving forward because you didn't know how to do it?  
2. Ask yourself, if you knew you could actually have what you want, and you knew that it wouldn't make you any happier, would you want to spend your time and energy creating it?
3. Next, ask yourself, if you knew that knowing 'how to' was irrelevant, what is the very next action step you would take to move yourself forward toward creating your goal?
4. Finally, assuming you've identified this as a worthwhile pursuit for you for now, commit to it.  

Love and Light,

Coach Ty

The Inner Gatekeeper

“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive—the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”  

 ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

Would you be interested in taking more actions and creating more results in your life?  If you would, then this might just be the coaching tip for you.

One thing I have found over and over again in my work as a coach is that people want to create things in the world and often times the reason they don't get those creations is because they don't actually do anything about them. This means one of two things in my experience; The first is that they don't really want what it is they say they do, it's just sort of a logical next step goal, or it's a 'should' or 'ought to' goal, without any real inspiration behind it.  The other reason people don't go for what they want is because they get stopped.

So what actually stops people?  Gatekeepers.

Now, what is a Gatekeeper exactly?  Well, I looked it up in my trusty dictionary and it said:  a person in charge of a gate,  usually to identify, count, supervise, etc., the traffic or flow through it; guardian; monitor. 


Gatekeepers take many forms, but the two I would like to distinguish are the inner gatekeepers and the outer gatekeepers.  


Many people automatically think that it is the world that stops them from achieving and creating.  They think their circumstances in life are the reason for them not having what they want.  These are the outer gatekeepers.  The people and structures put in place out in the world that stand in our way. An example might be you really want to speak with a certain individual and you attempt to get a hold of them, but you have to go through their personal assistant who is under strict rules not to let people like you in to speak with them.  This is a reality, and sometimes there are very challenging external hurdles like this in the way of us getting what we want; HOWEVER, this is the exception, not the rule.


It is our inner gatekeeper that often stops us from ever moving forward in the first place.  This gatekeeper acts as our inner guardian controlling which actions and behaviors are acceptable and which ones are not.  This is the voice in our heads that is made up of all of the thoughts, beliefs, doubts, generalizations, and perceptions that we've learned over the years about how the world and people are 'supposed' to work.  The primary function of this inner gatekeeper is to attempt to keep us safe. 


Now, that may sound to you like a very useful mechanism.  The problem is, the things that our inner gatekeeper is trying to keep us safe from are usually pretty benign and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  Shakespeare once wrote: "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."  I agree and I would take that one step further and say it's not the doubts and stories themselves, but that we believe them worthy of our attention.

The gatekeeper uses fear tactics to keep us from doing and saying certain things.  Here's some of the fearful thoughts the inner gatekeeper uses to stop us: 'What will people think of me??? Who am I to request that from them???  It's no use... What kind of person would... I can't do that because it will mean... I'm bad, worthless, terrible, a loser, helpless... etc."  Here's the best part though, these are just stories, completely made up by us, told by us, and believed by us.  They are simply thoughts, not facts.  When you can see that they are fabrications, figments of your imagination, then you free up a tremendous amount of energy that was being used to "keep you in check" that can now be redirected to creativity and action.

One thing to be aware of as you begin to poke holes through your inner gatekeeper and the stories it weaves; other people might be telling themselves the exact same scary story and believing it.  That's what often makes them seem real in the first place. We interact with someone who's telling the same story, which is evidence to support the story being true for us. Eric Fromm had a wonderful quote, he said, "Just because millions share the same form of mental pathology, doesn't make those people sane."  And it's like this with our inner gatekeepers.

 Here's an example: a group of friends might be all telling the story that they can't create what they want because of the economy.  But, just because they all believe it, does not mean that it is true. There are many people who are thriving in this economy.

One of my mentors, Michael Neill, tells a story about when he was giving a talk to several hundred people, and he asked, how many of you have been negatively affected by this economy? Pretty much everybody raised their hands.  Then he went through and systematically asked how many of you have lost more than 25% of your investments or retirement? a couple people raised their hands.  Then he asked, how many of you have lost a home? Nobody raised their hand.  Finally he asked, how many of you have lost your jobs?  Again, only a couple people raised their hands.  He went around and asked why if only a few people had been significantly impacted, they all raised their hands in the beginning.  The answer again and again, was fear.  They were all caught up in fearful thoughts and stories that they were believing about the future economy, which was in turn stopping them from moving forward.

I was recently having a session with a client and we were discussing this action that she was afraid to take.  She was wanting to make a request of someone and was completely stopped by her inner gatekeeper. She was caught up in her own insecure thoughts about what it would mean about her if she asked for help, and how terribly this other person would think of her, and on and on.  It suddenly occurred to me that she had made up ahead of time that there was an outer gatekeeper(somebody that had what she wanted and was unwilling to give it to her) without bothering to actually find out for herself.

We all do that, do we not?  We all have this inner voice that makes up stories about the resistance we will face in the outside world.  This might be useful if the stories were accurate representations of reality, but they rarely are.  I've found more often than not, there's not actually any gatekeepers  in the outside world where we imagined there would be.  And even if there is, at least they are real obstacles with real solutions that you can then bring your creative resources to.  Made up problems are much harder to solve.

One last thing.  You may be having some resistance to ignoring your inner gatekeeper because you think you will go on an evil rampage.  One of the major concerns I get is this, that if I'm not kept in check by fear, then won't I just do bad things or hurt people?  I don't know the cosmic truth, but my experience tells me that is just not true. The opposite is actually true.  It is fear and insecurity that have us act out irrationally. When we allow the gatekeeper to quiet down, you will actually become aware of a different guidance system that is far kinder and much more useful.  That guidance is your Inner Wisdom.  To learn more about listening to and following your inner wisdom, keep an eye out for it in one of my next coaching tips

If you are really worried about it, do a quick ecology check. Ask yourself if this action is safe to you, safe to others, and safe to the planet?  If you answered no to any of those, enroll the aid of a coach or friend to make sure that it's not just your inner gatekeeper on steroids. If you answered yes, DO IT.

Weekly Experiment:

1. Think of some action that you think might be useful to move one of your projects forward but your inner gatekeeper has been going nuts 
2. Pay attention to what thoughts and stories you've made up about taking this action.
3. Thank your inner gatekeeper for sharing and acknowledge it as thought not fact
4. Ask yourself, if I didn't have this story about it, would I want to take the action?
5. If Yes, then do a quick ecology check by asking, 'Is it safe to me, to others, and to the planet?'
6. If Yes, DO IT! Then take the action, knowing that your inner gatekeeper will likely be kicking and screaming along the way
7. Notice how often your inner gatekeeper's stories have no basis in reality.

Until next time.

Love and Light,

Coach Ty