Ask, and You Shall Receive

The secret key to the universe is in your hands. Use it.

When was the last time you asked for something?

Directions, information, favours big or small… When was the last time you reached out to someone—a stranger, a colleague, a friend, a talking statue—and asked for what you wanted?

Doesn’t matter what the response was, doesn’t matter if you got what you wanted or not. What matters is that you asked for it.

If it’s not that long ago, congratulations. If it was for something you really wanted, well done. You get a warm, delicious, gooey cookie as a metaphorical treat. You, Dear Reader, have learned how to use the secret key to the universe and you may stop reading. If you can’t remember the last time you asked someone for something, then read on.

Growing up, I wasn’t used to asking people for what I wanted. Being the brainy kid at school, I was usually the one asked for help, not the one doing the asking. And I never really wanted for anything at home either. (Except for a rollerblade. I remember asking for a rollerblade, getting it, using it once, then having dad lock it away in storage. Kids.)

Looking back, I was probably too busy studying to realise what else in life I’d like to have or to do. And I didn’t need anything I didn’t already have, so I never got into the habit of asking.

This habit of not asking stuck with me until much later in life, probably until only a few years ago when I entered the corporate world. When you’re working in a company, you can’t help but ask people for things: a reply to an email, a report you need help compiling, an extra headcount, so on and so forth.

And it was easy.

In my first proper corporate role, I was launching a mobile learning programme that required the cooperation of the Human Resources Head of a dozen countries, and I never hesitated to fire out a firm email asking each and every one of them to comply to my (many) requests, then follow that up with gentle and not-so-gentle reminders when the requests went unheeded.

I took this ease to mean that I was good at asking for things. Alas, I was mistaken.

It was easy to ask for things for work. But when it came to asking for things for me… boy oh boy did I agonise.

I launched my premium English tutoring service in April 2020. I’d been tutoring on and off since 2015 and I wanted to formalise my offering and give it proper branding and marketing.

So I created a Facebook page and came up against my first hurdle: getting Likes.

I can’t tell you how many times my finger hovered over that “Invite Friends to Like” button, always to flick away. Some of these Facebook friends I hadn’t spoken to for a decade, some I don’t even remember how we met. How could I reach out to them, cold-call style, and ask them to Like my page?

Daunted by the prospect of hitting that button, I decided to reach out to my closer friends and family first, ask them to Like my page and spread the word about my shiny new service offering.

I thought that would be easy. I was wrong.

Even asking my closest friend to Like the page and share it with their friends was difficult. And we’re talking about a friend of 13 years, someone who’s been through it all with me and never been anything but kind and understanding.

It was difficult to ask for even the tiniest favour, a Like on a page, when it was asking for me, when I didn’t have the excuse of work to hide behind.

After some agonising and soul-searching, and because I was desperate for clients, I finally reached out to all the people I could reach out to, and hit that “Invite Friends to Like” button.

I wasn’t spectacularly successful at getting people to Like it, my page doesn’t have hundreds of followers. But it doesn’t have zero either, which is where it would be if I’d never worked up the courage to ask.

Since that first hurdle, I’ve faced many others. Asking a friend to refer me for a job at their company (they said yes, but I didn’t get the job). Asking my entire professional network for job openings and sending them my CV when I was job hunting (the response was mostly positive, but no job materialised). Asking my subtitles coordinator to push back my project deadlines by a day or two (100% success rate so far, man I love my coordinators).¹

Again and again I learned: asking for things is hard, especially the things you really want. But if you never ask, well, you’re never going to get it… will you?

Deep down we all fear rejection. Up until the age of 25, I had only been rejected a handful of times: admission to a psychology camp at a top Thai university when I was in high school (that was crushing), two internships at McKinsey and BCG while I was at UCL (those were also crushing, but less so, probably because I was older and knew better), and an abrupt end to a love affair I thought would last until the end of time (I blame Disney). I didn’t have much experience with rejection, and I feared it immensely.

I was afraid people would look down on me if I asked them for something, afraid they would perceive me as an inconvenience, afraid they would think I was asking for too much, afraid they would laugh at my request and badmouth me behind my back.

It took me a while to realise: so what if they do all those things? I can’t control what other people do, only what I do. And it’s a fool who bases their happiness and self-esteem on what others do or think of them.

Once I let go of this need to control others’ perception of me, asking became easier. Because I was okay with being rejected. Because I knew that rejection would just set me back where I started, which is also where I would be if I’d never asked at all.

And actually, I’d say 95% of the time I’ve asked someone for something, the response has been positive. Asking a senior colleague to be my mentor resulted in endless streams of wisdom and guidance, plus a lifelong friendship. Asking a former colleague to pass on my CV to their network resulted in them giving me detailed feedback on how I could improve my CV (on top of also passing it on to their network). I didn’t always get what I wanted, but I also wasn’t laughed off the front porch.²

So when I launched this newsletter a month ago, I spent hours writing pretty much everyone in my network about my new baby (that’s the newsletter)³ and asked them to subscribe. I still hesitated here and there with certain groups, but in all cases I erred on the side of asking. And into the newsletter’s second week of its young toddling life, I asked my lovely blog readers to subscribe to it too (at the time of writing this email, my ask hasn’t led to subscribers yet… but I remain hopeful).

Some people I reached out to signed up, some didn’t. Of those who signed up, roughly half actually read it (that’s you, thank you).

But if I’d never asked anyone to subscribe to it, I’d have zero subscribers.

If you never ask for what you want, you’ll never get what you want. It’s not up to people around you to divine your needs and grant your wishes, it’s up to you to ask and be comfortable with rejection.

It took me a long time to realise this, but now that I have, it gives me a secret weapon I can wield to take me closer to all my goals. My secret key to the universe. And you have one too.

Ask, and you shall receive.

Read this newsletter, and you shall prosper. And once you’re prospering, I ask that you share it with your friends, family, colleagues, neighbour, and their three cats.⁴

Until next Friday… Stay cool, stay safe, stay thoughtful,

Val

1. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I freelance as a subtitles translator. It’s probably my second greatest love after writing, which you’ll hear more about in a couple of weeks (oh the suspense!)

2. At least not to my knowledge. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

3. I don’t have any real babies. Nor do I plan to, as you’ll hear more about down the line (even more suspense!)

4. See what I did there?