Ask for what you want!
If you’re wondering why you just don’t seem to get what you want — whether it’s at home with your family, as a student or in your career — it might very well be because you don’t feel you can ask for it. That’s not weakness; it’s socialization. If you understand this, you can begin to change your beliefs about asking — with the result that you’ll feel happier, less depressed, and more satisfied with life, relationships, school and work. Feeling entitled to ask for what you want is not a small thing. This post is intended to help you move in that direction.
I was talking my friend Dr. Meyer, a scientist with a long and successful career (and my professorial consultant for www.mycoachfran.com). As a child, Dr. Meyer had decided that he was not going to live in poverty, and from the moment of that decision, he actively worked to create the life he wanted for himself. In the process of describing that path to me, he talked about writing a paper when he was nineteen on a certain topic related to DNA. He began to be very interested in a very specific research question. Here’s what then happened:
1. He decided that he wanted to be involved in the research.
2. He asked his instructors who in the United States was doing the research.
3. They told him.
4. He contacted those people and let them know he wanted to work with them.
Ralph glossed over this story because it wasn’t really what he wanted to talk about; he had another point he was trying to make. But I stopped him cold.
“What made you think anyone would care that you wanted to work on this? As a student it never would have occurred to me that anyone would care,” I said, a little incredulous at the perceived audacity of a kid who approaches the big guys in his field and says that he wants in.
“It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t,” he said, looking confused, as though I had asked him to explain something that was self evident.
I explained to him that he had just encapsulated the difference between his upbringing as a boy and mine as a girl.
Read MoreGrades Don’t Buy Happiness
Young women hold in their hands literally a world of colorful possibilities, perhaps unprecedented, for exciting, one-of-a-kind lives.
But how many of your friends do you see moving in that direction? How about you? Why do we throw away the opportunity for remarkable lives?
There are lots of reasons to choose to play it safe – to choose to be a zoo assistant instead of an oceanographer, a day care teacher instead of a psychologist, a follower instead of a leader. Part of it is the subtle message, conveyed more to girls than to boys, not to dream too big.
But I find with many women that another huge part of it is that we’re not taught how to take on and walk through tough challenges. Couple that with the clamor for a 4.0, and you’ll witness stretch goals being replaced with sure things.
It used to be that the pressure for grades began at age six. That was the point at which the educational system warped children’s natural curiosity,
Read MoreFinding Your Path – Part 2
Okay – so you’ve got a boatload of new challenges this year, whether you’re a senior in high school working out what’s next or a freshman in college.
Here’s what I’d like you to do:
- Make a worry list. Sketch out a quick list of the challenges you’re facing – the ones that have you stumped, lost or stuck.
- Hide it. Put your list aside where you can’t see it for the moment.
- Create a gentle space. Plan a half hour that you can have all to yourself, a time when you’re free to think and imagine. Create a space that encourages you to expand into your thoughts. Maybe it’s a park bench, maybe it’s the breakfast room. You might curl up on the sofa with your laptop, or it might be more your style to go to a really nice book store to choose the perfect journal, a place of honor for the thoughts that you will place in it.
- Dare to imagine. Begin a post entitled, “Ideal Day.” This will help you create a larger context.
Take a Chance Anyway
Check out this great post in the New York Times by Rebecca Reddicliff. Reddicliff, who is going into her sophomore year, advises freshmen to “Put Yourself Out There and Do Something Crazy.” If you’re on the fence about whether to plunge into the adventure of college life or just tuck yourself away in your dorm room with a pizza, this is food for thought.
Reddicliff is in good company with her recommendation. The advice to “do something crazy” was expressed in entirely different words by Eleanor Roosevelt when she said, “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” That means
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