Ask Specifically for What You Need

Not asking for help because you might think you’re not good enough, and somebody who’s good enough would already know; that kind of things. One thing you might want to notice is that the thought “I’m not good enough” doesn’t have to do with anything. It’s not when you’re asking for help that you think you’re not good enough. It’s all the time. You all the time think you’re not good enough. Again, this is a sign you’re a human being. And every human being has somewhere inside of them the thought, “I’m not good enough; I’m not pretty enough; I’m not smart enough”. We all have that thought. In other words, you can ignore that thought. The only thing it means is that you were born a human being. Human beings all have that thought. That’s all it is. If you’re having the thought, “I shouldn’t ask because I’m not good enough”. Great, you know, “thank you for your opinion, my brain. That’s just your opinion”. There’s ways to learn. I always tell all my children, there’s two ways to learn, there’s the hard way and the easy way. The hard way is you try and you fail and you…there’s a lot of merit to that. There’s many things you only can learn that way. You can’t learn to play an instrument by talking to somebody about how to play an instrument. You have to learn and fail. But the easy way is to ask somebody for advice; and then not make the same mistake that they already made for you. So that is the easy way. Now, most people don’t take other people’s advice. So actually there’s only the hard way. There is another thing too that’s really important to know. if you ask for somebody’s advice, honor it, and that doesn’t mean you have to do what they said. You could say to them, “listen, I asked three different people; I really appreciate your advice. I decided to take this other person’s advice”. If you do take their advice, you can say, “listen, I took your advice. It was amazing. This happened as a result of taking your advice”, that’s better than any payment you could give anybody. It really is. It honors them. It makes them feel respected. It makes them feel they want to help you again. There’s nothing worse than mentoring somebody who never does what you say, and then comes back next week with the same damn problem. Following up after the next thing is also part of networking, right? So it’s follow up: “we had a coffee; I took your advice. Here’s an email telling you what I did. Thank you very much”. People appreciate that. It’s also following up after each follow-up and just keep. And again, not for no reason, but to say, “hey, we took your advice; a year later, we found out it was good…”.