On Loving the Ask

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In early 2022, I was starting over in some big ways.

I’d spent 2021 as CEO of Pilea, working to grow our business and network of coaches. For a year, all my energy and efforts went to building the emerging business as I put everything else down.

Toku and I decided to no longer run the Samurai Coaching Dojo. I was winding down my coaching business.

And by December, it was clear the role at Pilea was not the right fit. In a snap, what I’d expected to be a 10-year commitment was no longer the center of my world.

I had massive white space in front of me and a real need to choose where to step next.

Thankfully, I was well supported by my coach and community and, in early February, found myself at a beautiful workshop to create clarity and intentions for the year ahead.

A visualization exercise there brought me a surprising mantra that has shaped my life in powerful ways since.

Uncovering the Key

We were invited to imagine ourselves at the end of the year with all of the juicy goodness we desired in our lives — personal, business, financial, health, etc.Then, we thought of a symbol to reflect the lessons we learned along the way.

An image of a key popped into my head. One of those old-timey brass keys (that I still imagine were the same in every door so I don’t know how they worked, but anyway…) specifically was right at the front of my mind.

And the mantra it came with: love the ask.

Shifting My Relationship with Asking

This mantra didn’t sit very well with me at first. In fact, I outright resisted it. I was supposed to love to ask for things? Not only that, I was supposed to love when others ask me for things.

Nah. Couldn’t be right.

We’ll start with how I responded to being asked for things at that point: with fear, burden, and avoidance.

Something like, how dare you ask me to do this or to give you this? If I wanted to give it to you, I would without you asking. And now that you’ve asked, you expect me to say yes. I don’t get any say.

Now, that reaction wasn’t 100 percent universal but it wasn’t far off. My body would get tingly when I knew someone was about to ask for something. Since then, I’ve learned that’s what dissociating feels like for me but back then, it meant I was about to be in an experience I’d rather avoid.

Part of that belief is still in me, in my body, even as I write this. A squirminess when I think of people who ask too much or too often. It’s like an image of a worm making its way through my cells, going wherever it wants.

A fear of being wormed into by others. By someone I cannot say no to, who knows how to get past my defenses. Who sees a crack and pushes the door wide open.

I’m powerless in this old relationship to being asked. A victim of the worm. And the only way to stop it is to shut the door firmly and never open it. To close all the entrances outright. That’s my only safety.

Of course, it’s lonely in there. I might be safe but I’m not happy. I’m still on guard, looking out for anything and anyone seeking to gain entrance.

I was relegated to two choices: say yes and be bulldozed or say no and avoid. It was quite a zero-sum game.

This fear of the worm also extended to how I related to asking for, well, pretty much anything. I anticipated others would respond in kind to me: suspecting me of inching into their space unwanted, feeling the burden of the request, or responding with pure avoidance.

You can imagine that context for asking for things does not lead to stellar results in business or intimate relationships.

When I got what I wanted, I felt like an intruder. When I didn’t, I felt like a squished nuisance.

Letting It In

My all-out resistance to this new mantra gave me an idea I was onto something. So I took some breaths and leaned in.

What was available if I could potentially, maybe, one day learn to start to kinda love the ask — both giving and receiving?

(That question always opens me to something new, provided I’m courageous enough to stick with it.)

It turns out, there is plenty available when we begin to open our hearts to the generous act of asking — way more than locking ourselves inside to avoid the worm.

The Power of Asking

It’s helpful at this point to describe the world I desire to live in and the relationships I desire to have.

They involve people being fully expressed as they are, supporting each other, celebrating each other, and creating from joy and love.

The more I sat with this new invitation to actually embody love in relation to asking, the more it made complete sense. Let us count the ways.

1. Asking invites clarity.

It helps me know me better and helps me know others better.

This is a two-prong benefit so we’ll start with the first.

When someone invites me to make a yes or no decision, it helps me know where I stand. Absent of that choice, I may never ask myself how I feel about it. The question invites me inward, so that I take full stock of my thoughts and feelings in my desire to respond accurately.

What a gift!

If I want to live fully expressed, it’s nice to know I have people around me inviting me to get increasingly clear about what my expression actually wants to be.

Onto the second: asking helps me to know others better.

Without asking, I have to resort to intuiting or guessing someone’s preferences.

Now, I have done a great deal of intuiting others’ preferences. It’s how I lived most of my life, largely thanks to developing into an empath while growing up in unstable environments.

For a while, I resisted asking people things because I thought it somehow diminished my superpowers. Turns out my intuition isn’t always right, though, and trying to read people’s minds all the time takes a ton of energy. Simply asking is often easier.

Again, what a gift.

Just by asking someone what they think and feel, I get to know them better and they get to know themselves better through my inquiry. It’s wild. I’m shaking my head right now thinking about it.

2. It’s the start of the process of connection.

This one is related to last week’s post about learning to love “No.” No is a doorway to finding a mutual yes. It’s the same with asking.

Before an ask, we’re just spinning around each other. Afterward, we’re in full contact. One answer causes a reaction, then another, and another.

It’s intimacy playing out in real time.

And because it reveals us to ourselves and others, it’s a prime opportunity for healing (that’s probably why we avoid it) because…

3. It helps us practice being with No (and Yes).

We might not like the answer we get. We might not like the answer we give. We might have thoughts and feelings about how someone else will respond to the answer we’re going to give.

See, it’s one thing to say I want full expression. It’s another to choose to live it in the wild.

Full expression means I cannot control what happens. I can’t anyway, so I guess it means acknowledging I cannot control what happens.

Learning to love the ask is to live that lesson in real time, opening myself to whatever happens afterward.

It doesn’t always feel great to have someone tell me no when I invite them to something I care about. It doesn’t feel great to tell someone no when I know it’s something they care about.

Creating the world I desire requires me to be able to feel that without shying away. And that’s a gift because it allows us all to share more openly.

But hearing no isn’t the only answer that’s intense to be with. So is yes. Yes, you can have the life of your dreams. Yes, you can get the pleasure you want. Yes, you can be loved and accepted.

Be with that!

4. Loving the ask means loving life.

The essence of this life is creation — desire, movement, emergence. When we feel free to acknowledge and speak our desires, we clear our channel for life to run through us with more power.

That might come off woo-woo, but slow down and let yourself feel it. Breathe it.

If no one dared to ask for anything, to feel and act from desire, what would happen? What could happen?

Nothing. Life is inviting us, in each and every moment, to tune in, feel what’s here, and move towards it. Loving the ask is honoring where life is guiding us.

To deny it is to deny the very thing that brought us here.

What if This Really is the Key?

In all honesty, I’m not yet living this idea to its fullest. My growth is full of starts and stops. Fear gets in my way. Old habits get in my way. My environment pulls me back.

Still, I can feel where this shift is bringing me. And it’s not to a life of squirming into places I’m not wanted. It’s expanding where I am, and inviting others to come play along.

More of me is ready to come out, waiting to be asked, for me to tune in and give my answer.

Love.

Matt