198: The Power of 20 Asks: From Wishful Thinking to Getting What You Want

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hey friends, welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. How are you doing? Can you believe that we are getting close to 200 episodes of the She Thinks Big! Podcast, which is going to mean that I have been doing this for about four years. That's crazy. That is crazy, crazy stuff.

But I would not have gotten here—I will tell you—to these four episodes, without asking for things, without asking the world for what I wanted or want, continue to want, without asking others to help me create that and get there.

Today, I have a really special episode for you. I've probably mentioned this concept in past episodes, I scrolled through, but I don't think I've ever done an episode on it. It's really this concept of what I call “the concept of 20 asks”.

I use this concept to help my clients get what they want. When I decided I wanted to do this episode on 20 asks, I also realized that I have to help you understand how to get exactly what you want and how to identify what you want.

We're going to talk about the concept of 20 asks and I'm also going to help you figure out how to get exactly what you want. I'll just remind you if you are listening to this in real time, you definitely need to get yourself a copy of the audiobook, She Thinks Big audiobook.

You can do that by heading to andreaslinks.com and clicking the Buy the Book button because if you go in that way, you're going to also get access to some bonuses, one of which is another piece of audio that is exclusive to only those who purchased the audiobook. If you want that, I encourage you to go in that direction.

All right. Let's dive in here. You know what? You can spend five minutes scrolling on social media. You can turn on the TV. There's a lot of talk out there about how society, and you can see it and feel it, how society is really full of wanting, but in a very selfish, greedy, ungrateful way. You can find examples of that with almost no effort.

But I want to suggest that the majority of women that I work with, that I associate with, really are just the common folk, just the regular people. We are not the Kardashians. We have not been on Love Island, which my daughter is watching.

We are not trillionaires. Even if you are a billionaire, you still can be just a commoner person. We're driving our kids around. We're going to work. We're hoping that someone likes what we did. We want to get yeses. We appreciate the days when we can get a shower and even blow dry our hair.

That's the kind of people that I'm talking about. If those are the people that I'm talking about, we have a different problem than the Kardashians. Our problem is we don't allow ourselves to think much about what we really do want or even what we need because we're so careful to not want to appear as wanting, to appear more humble.

We don't allow ourselves to think about what we want or even what we need. We're very worried about what other people will think, how it will come off, what the effects of that will be.

I do this exercise where I have my clients, make a list of 20 things they really want and are willing to take strides to ask for them or to work towards them. Most of my clients have a hard time getting past number six. They are so vague.

I really wonder if they've turned into a version of their mom or grandma because they'll say things like, “What I really want is just for my kids to be happy. What I really want is to be able to pay all the bills. What I really want is for my business to grow, but it doesn't grow beyond what I can handle. What I really want is I just want everybody home for Christmas.”

My mom used to say, “What do you want for your birthday or Mother's Day?” “I just want peace and quiet,” she would say. When they try to make a list of 20 things they want, it becomes very, very challenging to really get past number five or six.

Now, I'm not saying that this is really a problem. What I'm suggesting to you is that if you don't know what you really want, then you are certainly not going to work towards getting it. You are certainly not going to ask for it. You are certainly not going to show up as the person becoming the person who has it. You're not going to seek opportunities that are probably all around you to reach your goals if you don't have things that you want.

Now, can goals be things that you want? Yes, we probably could use this word synonymously, but what I'm really talking about here are wants. I want you to frame it as a want, not necessarily as a goal right here.

What I really want you to think about, these are specific wants, understanding what you really want will then allow you to find opportunities to get it, to get those things in ways that you otherwise will never see. Then that might become the goal.

I'm going to give you a little story here. Anyone who's read Lessons in Chemistry—I referred to it in a previous episode too, it's on my mind—by Bonnie Garmus, the book Lessons in Chemistry, or you've watched the Apple TV miniseries, the main character in there, Elizabeth Zott is really a brilliant and unconventional chemist in the late 1960s.

So think about this. Chemist, female, late 1960s. That was a time when that field was dominated by men who were really almost dismissive of talents, female talents, and intelligence.

It's kind of like the Mad Men Era. Elizabeth's desires, though, what she wanted is that she wanted to be recognized for her scientific ability. She wanted to be recognized as someone who was challenging the sexist norm of the era.

She goes after it. She pursues it. She pursues her ambitions with fierce determination. She doesn't let anything get in her way. She faces constant sexism. She faces setbacks. She faces disappointments. She faces life-altering things in her personal life.

But she continues to strive for excellence. She loses her position in the research lab. But she doesn't—even though she loses her position in the research lab—abandon that pursuit over that scientific pursuit.

Instead, she leverages her charisma and her intelligence and her knowledge and she really creates a TV show around it. She manipulates this Supper at Six TV show where she's been asked to go on and help women around the world create dinner.

She manipulates that and uses it as a medium to teach chemistry, subtly educating the public on science as well as promoting that women are as intellectually equal and amazing as men and that women can excel in scientific fields.

What she wanted was not just for her. It was for society. She had to navigate lots of challenges along the way. She's kind of a woman of land of resilience and innovation, she's a big thinker, she's got the tenacity to keep going for it but she does know what she wants. She is laser-focused on reaching that goal and because she's laser-focused, she sees opportunities where she might not have before.

That Supper at Six show that they put her on, just make a casserole kind of show, she could have said, “Oh, my gosh, I'm out of here. This isn't what I want,” but she saw it as an opportunity to get what she did want.

This is what I want you all to get good at. It is so much easier to think about what we don't want or what we just wish were different. That is so easy. Every coaching conversation, I would say not every, 95% of my coaching conversations when people want coaching on helping them get what they want start out by them sharing with me what they don't want or how they want things to be different.

It's so much easier. Sometimes our resistance to what we do want can even be disguised as a want. Let me give you an example of that. I just wish I could keep up with the laundry. That's saying like, “I don't want to not keep up with the laundry,” it's like, “I don't want to not keep up with the laundry,” “I do want to keep up with the laundry.” We have a resistance to what we really do want. We even can disguise it as a want, but we don't just go out and get it.

“I wish my husband would be totally in charge of all things outside.” Well, if that's what you want, then let's figure out a way to make that happen. “I wish my hair was longer.” Well, we can get it to be longer. We just have to make it grow. “I wish I had fewer wrinkles.” We got lots of solutions for that.

These look like wants, but in fact, they're just examples of resisting what already is or telling your mind to notice what's wrong. Like you have wrinkles, you're not keeping up with the laundry, or you have to do part of the outside stuff. It's just a way for our brains to recognize what's wrong.

I don't want a messy house. I don't want a husband who says, “I'm not doing that.” I don't want to look how I look. If we think like this, our mind's going to continue to find evidence that something is wrong. But I want you instead to let your amazing mind find ways to get what you do want.

A lot of times, this has to do with you getting to that place of establishing what you want and asking for it, and seeking opportunities to go get it. If you're someone who wants success, you want to be the next Sheryl Sandberg, you want to be Taylor Swift, you've got to figure out what you want.

Here's my suggestion to you. I want you to write about it every day. I want you to spend two minutes in the morning writing about what you want. I mean, what do you really want? What do you secretly want? I want you to get very, very specific. I want you to see what comes up for you and then see if your amazing mind is going to find ways to make it happen.

Now here's the spoiler alert, news flash. It will find ways. It will find ways. These ways don't always have to only involve you doing something, you being the whole how, if, when, what.

In the process, you might change your mind about what you want, however. Because there are no rules. This is really about you just discovering yourself and creating what you want and figuring out how to do it.

Here are a couple of examples of what my clients come up with sometimes when I ask them, “What do you really, really want?” “I want a cleaning lady to come at least twice a month.” “I want to spend one hour of one-on-one time with each of my kids each week.” “I want a luxury car that's in the luxury category.” “I want to eat only when I'm hungry and have the wherewithal to stop when I'm full.”

“I want a seven-figure business.” “I want to speak to over a thousand women every quarter.” “I want to be able to outsource every bit of marketing.” I forgot the travel one. “I want to travel out of our country twice a year for at least a week.” Some of these might sound impossible. But they’re not impossible.

If you allow your mind to stop resisting, you're going to figure out how to get there. If you spend time thinking about how impossible things are, how you can't afford it, how you don't have the time, money, people, and energy, you don't have those four most valuable resources, you're not going to see solutions. You're not going to find those creative solutions that big thinkers find.

If you allow yourself to truly want things and accept what is what, like accept the facts, accept the circumstances, you're going to find all of the space in your brain to find a way to get exactly what you want. There is always a way.

Sometimes these things involve asking. When I challenge my clients to then make another list of 20 things they can ask for this week, they get really creative. I can ask my husband or my partner or whatever, my family, if we can spend an hour this weekend test-driving luxury cars.

I can ask my neighbor who comes to clean her house and maybe the woman or man, since they're already in my neighborhood, will give me a discount. I can find the best marketing team out there and start to engage them in small steps until they're doing everything.

I can spend 10 minutes with each kid each day, and that's going to add up to an hour each week. But I have to ask or create that time. I can ask someone to empty the dishwasher so I can have the time to do something else.

I can ask everybody to put away their own laundry, so I don't have to do that. I can ask my assistant to manage my inbox. These are all things I can ask for, but you're resisting it because you haven't really figured out what you really want.

What do you want? I mean, what do you really, really, really want? What are 10 things that you could ask for this week, 20 things that you could ask for this week to get you to the place of creating what you want? 20 asks. But before you get to the 20 asks, you've got to find 10 things that you truly, truly want.

Okay, my friends, if you have not gotten the audiobook of She Thinks Big, you need to go get it because if you're listening to this thing in real-time, too, in October 2024, I am going to have a two-part exclusive author talk where we're going to talk all things She Thinks Big.

It's an exclusive talk with author Andrea, part one and two. If you can only make it to one of the parts, that's fine too. But it's also tying into the launch of the Think Big Coaching Program.

If you want to learn how to want and how to ask, then you need to be in that Think Big Coaching Program or one of my other coaching programs. If you join this month, there is a bonus that you are going to get.

Head over to andreaslinks.com, click Buy the Book, visit the website, set up a call with me, and we can talk through this, 20 minutes, strategy call. What I will guarantee you is that you will walk away with an “Aha! Now I get it.” I haven't met one prospective client who hasn't walked away with an aha. That's worth millions, my friends, more than the Kardashians.

Okay, I will see you next week. Have a great week. Get your hands on a book. Come join us in coaching. So many great things are happening. All right, we're creating a movement of big thinkers. Let's do it. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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