You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get

Hello, team. Hello, happy almost November. Happy almost Halloween. Happy Brewers are 3-0 for those who celebrate. I mean, I'm not a huge baseball fan and I'm not a huge Brewers fan, but I am a huge fan of people's dreams coming true. And for crying out loud, what a story that is. And it's delightful. Good morning, Speak Wonder. It is delightful how happy everybody is on the Brewers team, in the Brewers team, around Milwaukee, around, I mean, as a good Midwesterner, I just am so pleased that things are going so well for them.

Of course, there are, there's one more game to win, but four more games to play. So up to four more games to play. Anyway, I love watching people's dreams come true. I have a hole on my Instagram. I have curated my Instagram algorithm pretty well for myself and I have an entire folder where I save videos and I call it people's dreams coming true. What's on there? was something from the Brewers on there that I put there. There is kids getting puppies that they've always wanted and just being so delighted.

Guitarists playing on stage with Bruce Springsteen, a kid named Matthew O'Coin some years ago did that. He's been there. People singing. that one Michael Buble where the woman's like, you should sing with my kid. And then her 15 year old comes on stage and slays it with Michael Buble. Stuff like that. You know, people getting the golden buzzer on America's Got Talent, whatever it is, people's dreams coming true. I just love. I just love to watch that. And so if you have any suggest, please let me know.

If you have anything to any of those to suggest, please let me know. I I have a topic for this week. I called this week, You Don't Ask, You Don't Get. Because in addition to it almost being Halloween, it's almost election day. And I've run for election many times. And let's see, it's 2026. So my first time running for election was 21 years ago. And one of the things I learned on that first campaign, I actually learned it on other people's campaigns that I worked on before that, but One of the things I learned was this phrase.

It's a political term more than anything else. You don't ask, you don't get, meaning if you don't ask for somebody's vote, you don't get their vote. You don't ask somebody to support you, they don't support you. might be able to hear my cat crunching on some plastic back there, which I should probably put a stop to, but you don't ask, you don't get. Oh yes, you don't ask, you don't get. And so The context of an election is keep going, you have to make the ask. If you are on the phone with somebody, you have to make the ask.

And I have taken that, just that lesson, into all parts of my life. You know, if I'm at a job interview, at the end of the interview, I say I would be remiss if I didn't explicitly say I'd really be interested in the job. I'd like to expressly ask for the job. I put it more eloquently than that, but you get the picture. And I, but it's one of my rules of engagement because I think about it in the world. I, unexpected, so Speak Wonder says, I love that you document people's dreams coming true. Yeah, me too.

And I love that I have it to go back to. Imagine, I mean, because now I have dozens of them. So if I need 10 minutes of, is it possible for good things to happen? Like people's unboxing their books, unboxing their brand new books as an author, love that. I pay particular attention to that because that's my dream and I'm working on it coming true. But for many years I didn't even have a book deal and I was like, that's gonna be me someday. Unexpected love after profound loss. That's your dream. that has come true for you.

That's what, is that what that means? You had profound loss and now you have unexpected love? Oh, that's great. That's great. Like send me pictures. Like document it for me somehow. I want to see, I want to see all the details about that. Speak wonder. I love that. Side note, little side quest. I also keep threatening to do a podcast where I interview couples about how they met and fell in love because I'm Deeply nosy slash curious. Well, speak wonder. It says, no, that has not come true yet. Well, I imagine you've had some profound losses, but I hope you find the unexpected love and maybe start expecting it.

Maybe put together a little folder on threads or something because people are always telling their love stories on threads and put a little love story about their unexpected love and then you'll be inspired by that and feel good about it, which is always better than feeling crummy about it. Where was I? Side quest. There was some side quest I was on. I don't quite remember what it was, but that's all right. My brain has been like this for days now. I am in the middle of writing this book. I'm like trying all sorts of new habits on for size.

Like I wrote early this morning and then went to Orange Theory and now I'm back to it, which is hence the still wet hair. There was some other side quest I was on that was so, I'm sure, edifying. If you think of it, let me know. Otherwise, I will keep talking about you don't ask, you don't get. You don't ask, you don't get. I started thinking about that in my own life because, oh, I was going to tell you about the podcast. This is how my brain is these days. Interviewing couples, I'm good at drilling down and asking the questions and getting a lot of detail and I love, I'm very nosy and curious about how people met and fell in love.

So If that is something that's of interest to you, let me know. And if you'd like, if you have somebody to suggest, please let me know. But you don't ask, you don't get in my own life manifests in two different ways. One of them is, if I don't have a dream for something, it's not likely that it'll come true. And if I don't go out and take action, like ask the universe for it by taking action, then it's not, then I probably won't get it. Whatever you believe about intentions, your ability to create your reality, all that sort of stuff, my take on it, a piece of my take on it is it's good to have a visualization and it's good to have an intention.

But if I don't ask for that intention to come into my life by taking action, then it won't be there. And sometimes the action I take is practicing receiving skills. You know, you don't ask, you don't get. That's part of, you know, I've been doing this whole thing about learning how to receive really well without stress, without having it be a problem, without having it disrupt my beliefs about myself or whatever, that I am someone who can receive easily and well, material things, emotional, mental, spiritual, all the things, just learning how to receive.

And that's been a profound path for me. And that's sometimes that's part of the action I'm taking to bring, you know, I really choose to earn money doing things that I love and I'm learning how to do that even more successfully. And part of the way I need to do that is just allow and receive the good stuff as it comes in. So if I don't ask by taking the action, taking the action in some ways is the request itself, taking the action of learning how to receive, taking the action of sending the scary e-mail, taking the action of sitting down or in my case, stand up desking around at my computer to actually write the chapter I need to get to my editor this week.

If I don't take the action I'm not really asking is part of how I think about it. That that's my way of asking, is taking whatever action I can figure out. The thing that I've learned is sometimes the thing I've asked for comes not as a direct result of the action I've taken, not because I applied for this job and got this job, but when I started applying for jobs, all sorts of other things started coming to me, other opportunities started coming to me. Because I was just taking action, putting myself out there.

I consider it adventure as opposed to drudgery, and I'm doing my best to enjoy it as opposed to just be anxious about it. Be like, have that feeling in my body register as excitement instead of anxiety. But you don't ask, you don't get. If I don't put myself out there to, if I don't increase the surface area for luck in my life, that's how somebody put it recently. I do my best to increase the surface area for luck in my life, just putting myself in situations where people can know me or I can ask for things or they see what I'm doing and they're excited or they see a crossover.

And I tell you, I've been doing it all year. It's very, very magical. And sometimes they just come sideways. Things just come out of nowhere, right? I'm trying to find an institutional home for my work. I think I mentioned last week, I just out of nowhere got, I'm going to talk today with somebody about an opportunity for a fellowship next spring that I didn't apply for it. I didn't, you know, but the surface area for my luck is just much bigger these days. It's just much bigger. But that's how I experience it internally.

But internally, there's also You don't ask, you don't get. I don't ask for help, I don't get help. I don't, that's external and internal because I have to be able and willing to ask for help, but there's this internal piece of how much am I asking of myself? If I don't ask as enough of myself, I don't get very much for myself. I think about that right now with physics and nutrition, my physical health. I haven't been running very much. My knees make it hard now to run outside. And I do Orange Theory Fitness, but I have been more focusing on strength training here as well as doing Orange Theory Fitness.

Anyway, my cardio is down and it probably useful for me to get it up a little bit. But if I don't ask that of myself, it really won't happen. If I don't ask more of myself, more won't happen. You know, Gretchen Rubin talks about accept yourself exactly as you are and expect more from yourself. That that is a profound truth. Both of those things go for me, go hand in hand. I am exactly where I am on my health journey and it is understandable. I'm writing a book. I am doing work for clients, et cetera, et cetera.

This is a busy season where other things other than, oh, I need to lose weight or whatever, are occupying space in my brain and my life and It doesn't mean that I can't ask a little bit more of myself, hence the experiment today with Orangetheory Fitness, to go a little bit later, but to do a chunk of work beforehand, which worked pretty well, I have to say. That worked pretty well. I think I'm gonna fiddle around with it, but I think for a while I'm gonna ask more of myself. I'm asking more of myself to write this book, to work more hours, to put more time in.

I'm scared, so I don't want to. I'm scared so I want to do the minimum so that I can go back to being comfortable. But my dream will not happen in this comfort zone I've got going. You know, I've got an enormous comfort zone because I've done so many scary things. I've expanded it really well and if I don't ask more of myself, this dream of mine won't come true. This dream of mine won't come true. We won't be able to add, I think somebody just came in our building, we won't be able to add, I won't be able to add my video to my own list of people's dreams coming true.

You're going to see my unboxing video in a couple years, I think. So you unboxing your newly released books, that has come true for you. Speak wonder if you have a video of it, send it to me. I'd love to see that excitement and that joy, right? I spent time today When I was traveling, I went to the airport bookstore and I just scoped out the shelf that my book's gonna be on and I really imagined it and enjoyed the feeling of seeing my book there. I do a lot of stuff like that. I open up the New York Times bestseller list and just enjoy seeing my book there.

So that's what I got for you this week. You don't ask, you don't get. As a practical matter for stuff you want, very material matter, but also as an internal matter. You don't ask, you don't get. So thanks, CADRE. Thanks, Speak Wonder. Thanks, everybody.