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Overcoming the Fear of Asking for What You Want

creativelybijou

Updated: Aug 3, 2024



Just as I have kept my very first pair of gold hoop earrings, I also have carried along with me some qualities of much lesser value and finery. Namely, the inability to ask for what it is that I want. Instilled in me at a very young age was the principle that you MUST NEVER ask for something. Instead, there are two avenues available to you to achieve what you want. First, it is completely acceptable to hint at what you desire, even encouraged to deliver a lively verbal jig that gives illusions and implications of what you desire without ever saying forthright just what it is. If you are not up to the verbal tango, the other acceptable avenue you may take is to put your head down and work your bum off in doing everything in your power to possess, hone and wield the necessary skills required for what it is that you want. Once perfected you must perform at your best while waiting for someone to take note, put you under their wing and tell you exactly what you should have and magically help you get it. Most importantly, you are a follower on this path, never making the moves yourself but standing with open arms and heart ready to work your tush off. Never, in any of these situations, under any circumstances, should you verbalize or even know what you want. Doing so is the height of rudeness and is quite unbecoming in a person. As you may have guessed, this life strategy complicates matters quite heavily. So often, when it would have been sufficient to express interest, or excitement, I would find myself instead in a cone of silence, waiting for others to decide my fate.


So, the years plugged away. I made sure to dutifully await for the dice to land on Yatzhee while carefully cutting any harbored hopes that may have been found sprouting. In all honesty, this was not a real problem in adolescence, it was easy enough for me to know that I wanted good grades and to achieve those I knew I needed to dive deep into the assigned curriculum, a path which was easy enough to follow along. Athletics also played nicely into this set of rules as being selected comes from putting your nose to the grindstone and outworking every opponent. Coaches love a workhorse, and so I would practice by myself, hone my skills and give every ounce of what I had to give to be noticed by the coach in hopes of selection. For me, the real trouble of being “wantless” came after I left the wonderful womb of comfort and ease that is attached to youth. The first few knock-kneed steps into the real world were where the true fight began for me. Without an obvious pathway to follow I found myself a bit lost, a titch weary and perhaps a smidge cynical with the ways of the world. I kept waiting for the big moment where an acapella singing angel with killer dance moves would light up my shimmering path to a glorious life would magically descend into the scene. Unfortunately, no fairy godmother appeared to me; instead, to my incredulity, I found myself feeling rather stagnant and without the slightest bit of hope in climbing out of the “loser” I had become.


I was an educated, former athlete that had no prospects of success or idea on which path to saunter. The future seemed rather bleak and more than a little dreary as I felt bound to become a poor little beggar of a peasant, too shy and ashamed to beg for scraps. Okay, you caught me, this is an exaggeration, a slip into a more dramatic hyperbole than warranted. Though during this time, professionally, I felt like a tiger in a fish tank, while I was simultaneously having a spectacular time seeking adventures, new experiences and travelling to places I never thought I would. So, the above statement about being a dreary beggar is perhaps a bit on the overzealous side. The stagnation I was feeling came from the vacancies left on the dreams and goals pages of my journal. I continued to have amazing and unique adventures and experiences but still lugged around the constant feeling of emptiness and stagnation. I decided that it was time to grow. It was clearly going to be up to me to create a vision of what I wanted my life to be. I was finally ready to shed the restrictions I had ingrained in my mind of waiting for another to tell me what it is that I should want or work towards and give myself permission to create my own dream. I had to ask myself what it was that I wanted. It was up to me to create goals and dreams and my own responsibility to pursue them. I opened myself to the possibility of creating a vision of the future and discovering that I had to shed the old and odd belief that you must not craft your own future, that you must not ask for the chance you need, that you must wait to be told you are worthy of your wants. The most important decision I made, and have made to date, was to no longer hold back; to allow myself to do the worst thing I could do—ask for exactly what I want. To CREATE opportunity by asking for the opportunity.


These next three offbeat anecdotes will center on the far from suave instances where I found myself taking thin, trembling steps into the dark side by opening my mouth with the intention of asking for a chance to share my artist dream with an audience outside of my own eyes. I can’t wait to share these incredible opportunities that were created by simply sacking up and shouting out “Put me in coach!”.

 

As always,

 

Keep it offbeat!

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