Go Ahead and Ask

Transcript

If I can make such a bold claim I was thinking about going ahead and asking.

A few weeks back I was in the Andador Coronilla here in Guadalajara and this is a little walking street with a bunch of bars and Italian and seafood restaurants on the street.

And sometimes what happens is they have jazz musicians and other musicians play in the alley there and people start getting up and dancing. It’s a good old wholesome time, lots of fun having with many merry smiles going around.

At one point there was this band playing, a Columbian cambia playing these Cumbias campesinas. Cumbias from the countryside of Columbia.

There’s a lyric in one of the songs that is so simple that makes so much sense to me: “¡Baile, baile, a la cumbia campesina!”

Dance, dance, dance to the countryside cambia. All they’re doing is asking, or telling you literally telling people to come and dance. And people did, they came and danced.

You don’t need a lot to provoke people into doing something they already kind of want to do. I remember once I was already at an MC battle and I was rapping up on stage and I said something out to the crowd to put their hands up. I was kind of amazed because at least half the crowd went ahead and put their hands up.

People are suggestible when they want to have fun, they want to be involved and they want to be a part of something.

There’s also an important principle about asking for help. The other day I was talking to my friend. She says he has this guardian angel that’s always with her. I don’t know if you believe but this was a kind of parable, it doesn’t matter too much if people believe in guardian angels.

It’s just standing there and it might be sad, for a long time, looking at you and thinking “I wish I could help, but she hasn’t asked me and I won’t intervene unless someone asks me.”

I do believe in some sense this is a spiritual rule that a lot of beings will follow because I have seen it for myself. You try to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped and you get so much resistance. Someone starts complaining and you say “here have some solutions”.

It’s like that meme “I don’t want solutions, I want to complain.”

Just there picking up the solutions, burning them and throwing them away.

That’s what people are like that, people are how they want to be and it’s best to acknowledge so we don’t cause cause undue stress to ourselves trying to help people who really don’t want our help.

So, likewise, there are so many beings who want to help us but if we don’t ask for help they will sit and wait and they might wait a long time.

Timothy Ferris in his books and interviews he describes trying to become a best selling author. Of course one of the things you can do is model the behavior of someone who has already done it.

Just like in neurolinguistic programming. Find someone who has done it or is doing it and we find the points of their behavior that are important for us to do that thing.

So Timothy Harris would go ahead and call up Stephen King’s office saying “I have been a big fan for many years, I have always just wanted to talk to him.”

And they’re like “Let me check”. They go ahead and check. Timothy Harris also had this class where he was teaching people about these ideas and he said “Ok, go ahead and try to get in contact with someone famous”

To his disappointment nobody even tried because they thought “The famous person isn’t even going to want to talk to me.” What a shame.

As Timothy’s own actions proved when you do try, people will be quite receptive. It’s like a memorable quote like this. When a young man looks at the world he sees these great powerful beasts, overbearing giant with a great big beard. What a surprise it is when the young man takes the beard and it falls off in his hands. It was only ever an illusion.

Nothing that we saw that scared us so much, nothing was quite as real as it seemed. We can go ahead. We think those people, surely they don’t want to help us.

There’s nothing more any teacher wants than a willing student. There is no greater honor than for someone to ask you with genuine earnestness, can you help me? Can you show me the wisdom, the skill and knowledge you have worked so hard for so many decades.

Can you please show me? Can you please help me? Most of the time the answer is yes.

Thank you for asking for help. Thank you for listening to your guardian angels asking for help from the archangels, asking for help from mentors and teachers because that is how wisdom grows. You are doing your part to be part of the chain of condition in humanity.