Posted July 2, 2009 

Action will define you

    "Do you want to know who you are?
     Don't ask. Act!
     Action will delineate and define you."

- Thomas Jefferson

     For those of you living and working in Arizona, I have a new project you will be interested in.

    Please accept this invitation to join my ASK project and be one of 12 individuals who sign up to play life really big for six months. In this intense period of professional transformation we will learn to ask for what we want and get it.

     This is one group you will not ever be totally comfortable being a member of. Because your comfort zone will be the enemy. You will learn to work outside that zone.

     We will be twelve people who meet two Thursday nights a month to learn how to ask. To learn how to ask often, ask big and ask with total confidence. As Byron Katie says, you could have anything in life you wanted if you were willing to ask 1,000 people for it.

     Why are we so unwilling to ask?

     For one, no one ever holds us accountable for how much asking we do. (This group will change that.) For another, we carry irrational fears of "rejection" ... we carry them over from junior high school, high school and whenever we were learning to fit in and be approved of. All those wounds that ran so deep. Do they just disappear on their own? Never. We have to consciously process them out and reprogram the biocomputer to love asking.

     Those unprocessed fears will forever keep us from the professional life we want.

     How do we eliminate those fears and learn to ask for what we want?
Two ways: 1) By a deep study of the whole mind-body-courage process two evenings a month, so that our fresh new understanding of how to build confidence runs deep and becomes permanent. 2) Through repeated, monitored practice.

    We will pair up each week and the two of you will coach each other and act as spotters and personal ASK trainers insuring that you each get in your reps. Then you will report to the group on your partner's performance, and then a whole new list of People To Ask will be drawn up and they will be asked over the next two weeks with your new partner tracking your activity and vice versa. You will be trained by me, by the whole group and by your partner. Nowhere to hide.

    In this group, no one will be able fly under the radar. This is not a group where anyone will get away with sitting on the fringe, making notes and not transforming. This group will be all about activity and generating ongoing bold experience. It will be all action all the time. In the six months we are together you will ask often and ask big. You will no longer fear "rejection" because you will be getting so many interesting "no's" you'll realize they don't hurt at all. It will be information and nothing more.

     For the rest of your life afterward, you will be broken of the old fears and superstitions around hearing the word "no." You'll know the joy---through experience---of going for it.

     If you are a good professional person with a good service to offer then what you are seeking in life is already seeking you. What you are seeking is seeking you! Yet we hide out in our day, subtly arranging our communications---not to achieve maximum success---but rather to avoid the imagined pain of rejection. We don't see how much of that we do. During this six months we'll see it clearly and we'll see it for what it is: pure nonsensical superstition.

     Look at your calendar for the past two weeks. Look at your daily journals. How much time was spent asking for the thing that would move you forward? How much time was spent asking for what you want? How much time was spent in conversation with the people who could help you? Very little. If you are typical.

     Surveys show that the average sales person spends only 1.5 hours a day selling. These are people whose whole focus should be on asking and even they spend their days avoiding it. They are afraid of other people. What they might think.

     This group will change that. We will ask so much it will become second nature. Not only that, we will get graceful and confident doing it. It will start to become enjoyable. By the end of our six months, it will be the thing we most look forward to in our day. Anything you practice intensely takes on the element of joy. Anything. Even asking.

     From the beginning of time our great spiritual leaders have asked us to ask. It has been the message they most often deliver. Ask and you will receive.

     Junior high school kills all that. It replaces all the spiritual wisdom in the world with a psychotic fear.

     So we will learn to ask. That's it. That's the whole curriculum. We won't be asking small, either. We will ask for big things, too. We will learn to make unreasonable requests, just to see what happens. Just to break ourselves of the fear and stigma around asking for what we want. Asking for what you want,
next to your professional skill for the service you provide, will be the most important skill you ever have.

     We begin our work together Thursday evening, August 6, from 6pm to 9pm.
The fee for the full six month program is $10,000. I expect this group to fill very quickly. Many have already verbally committed based on the rumors around this project. The moment your fee is paid to guarantee your place in the group I will deliver a one-hour coaching session between me and you to prepare you for what lies ahead. I'll want to make sure, in advance, we don't have any observers in this group.

     Please email me at stephendchandler@cs.com if you want to play. And yes, I get that this will be one of the boldest things you have ever done. This will be you processing through the last fear you ever had.