How can we get what we want?
This article isn’t so much about determining what you want as it is about actually getting what you want.
How to Know What You Want
It makes perfect sense that in order to get what we want, we really do need to know what we want.
We must have a clear picture in our minds of what we want, but that’s not necessarily the easiest way to get it.
I want to start with a little story to paint a picture here.
Let’s say it’s the end of your long day, your work day, whatever your work is.
Maybe you’ve been running the kids here, there, and everywhere, and doing a million things, perhaps even volunteering at the school.
Maybe you’ve had a long day in your business, with lots of appointments, paperwork, questions, coordinating, and marketing efforts.
Maybe you’re coming home from work, and you’ve had this long day filled with all kinds of meetings or tasks or difficult phone calls and whatnot. You’re quite exhausted.
Yet you come home and dinner has to get made. You’re wondering about getting this done, and you start to head to the kitchen.
Then your partner comes home and sees you chopping away and getting this out, getting that out – starting to get the pots onto the stovetop or whatever it is that you’re doing to prepare dinner.
You barely say anything because you’re just overwhelmed. You’re exhausted and even slamming some of the cabinets around, or just spouting off with your words.
“Oh my God, the laundry has to get done. I have to get this or that done before I go to sleep tonight. After dinner, I’ve got to run this errand.”
You’re saying all these things to your partner, and doing all these things, but inside you’re kind of wondering:
“Why isn’t he helping me?
Why isn’t he helping me prepare this dinner, and getting the dishes on the table to serve the meal, or helping me chop these vegetables?”
And you’re thinking,
“Why isn’t this happening?
Why am I not getting what I want?
Why is this not possible?”
Maybe you’ve also had a situation where you’ve asked him to do something or you’ve asked your kids to do something, and you wonder, “Why is this still not done? My God, I’ve asked like three times! Why is this not getting done?”
You want this to get done. You want something to happen, but it’s not happening, and you’re wondering why.
These scenarios are all too common. I bet you recognize yourself in them to some extent.
If you do, leave a note in the comment section just validating for everyone else, or leave your own scenario of a situation that you run through that you sit there thinking to yourself, “I’m not getting what I want here. Things aren’t working out.”
Why Don’t We Get What We Want?
I wanted to paint this picture because this is almost a daily picture for many.
Many women struggle with this. They feel like they’re doing everything they can, working so hard, and yet still not getting what they want. Things aren’t happening.
We need to know what we want.
We need to be clear. We want help chopping some vegetables, or we want help taking the trash out, or we want specific things done. We want our kids to clean their room, and exactly how.
The problem is we don’t know how to actually ask for what we want.
First of all, you might be saying, “I shouldn’t have to ask. They should know that dinner’s getting prepared, and they should just dive in and help,” or “If I’ve already asked a few times I shouldn’t have to ask again.”
I’m not going to disagree with you in the sense that it would be nice if they would know.
However, if we’re going to live our lives thinking other people can read our minds, that they should know this, they should do that, we’re going to constantly come up short and feel disappointed.
The Power of Requests and Their 5 Required Elements
What I’m going to teach you right now has changed my entire life. It is so powerful for getting what you want.
Question
It’s the power of a simple request.
You think, “Oh my God, I’ve already asked,” and you gave this example of you ask and you ask and you ask, and it doesn’t get done. That’s because most people don’t know how to make an effective request.
There are certain elements of an effective request that must be included in your asking.
Clarity
First of all, you must be clear about what it is you want.
Do you want the trash taken out?
Do you want the vegetables chopped?
Do you want the room clean?
Conditions
Where we particularly miss is in the area of what’s called the conditions of satisfaction. In other words, if you want something done, what are your conditions of satisfaction?
How do you want it done?
When do you want it done?
In what way do you want it done?
What are your specifications?
Sometimes people will do things for us, say they got it done, and then we go and look, and the room’s not clean the way we wanted it to be. The vegetables aren’t chopped the way we wanted them to be. Things didn’t happen the way we wanted and we feel like we end up going back and doing it again ourselves.
Then we start to think, “Why bother to ask for help because it never gets done anyway.” That’s a huge, self-defeating trap that we fall into.
We’re never going to get the help we want if we don’t learn how to detail clearly our conditions of satisfaction.
We have to actually make the request with those details.
“Here’s what I want in this way, by this time, in this manner.”
We have to detail exactly what we want and how we want it, the conditions under which we want it done.
Commitment
Another element of an effective request that’s so frequently missed is that we need to wait and get the actual commitment of the person we’re asking.
If we’re running out the door saying to our kid, “Make sure your room’s clean before I get home,” and then we close the door and we leave, quite possibly we’ll come back, the room won’t be clean, and we’ll be frustrated. Then we get angry.
“Why did they not get this done?”
“Why can’t I get what I want?”
First of all, we didn’t exactly specify the details of what we wanted or how we wanted it done. We did not clarify the conditions of satisfaction. Maybe we said, “Get it done by the time I get back,” but what exactly do you want them to do? How do you want them to do it? What are the expectations of that?
Most importantly, we did not get their commitment. We yelled a request as we walked out the door, and we didn’t make sure they heard us. We didn’t make sure they understood our conditions of satisfaction. Then we came back and wondered why it wasn’t done.
Follow Through
The final element of an effective request is follow through.
If you make a request because you want something to get done, and then you don’t follow through to see if it got done, later in the week you may notice something didn’t get done and feel quite frustrated having thought it was taken care of.
Follow through is important, not just to make sure it got done, but also to express gratitude for when it does get done.
Let people know, “I’m really grateful that you did that thing for me. Thank you for making that happen.”
This kind of follow through will change a lot in terms of how much people are willing to do things for you in the future.
I want to paint a picture of what it could look like.
You’re in the kitchen, having had a long day. Your partner comes home, and you say, “I’m so tired. I could really use some help chopping these vegetables. I need them chopped into roughly half-inch cubes because I’m making soup and that’s the size I’d like it. Here’s a cutting board. Here’s a knife. Would you help me chop this in this way, and can you work on it now while I’m working on this other thing so that we can have dinner in the next half hour?”
Then you wait and they say, “Oh sure, I’d be happy to help you.”
They might say “Just let me take my coat off,” or “Just let me get my shoes off,” or “Let me go to the bathroom quickly first.”
(And, by the way, it’s best to ask for help when a person is giving you their attention, so perhaps give them a moment to come in, get their coat and shoes off, and go to the bathroom before asking so they feel they can transition into a new mode of being.)
You’ve asked for what you want, you’ve told them how you want it, and you’ve let them know when you want it. Your conditions of satisfaction are clear.
You’ve made the request. You’ve gotten their commitment. Then you need to follow through.
You’re doing your thing and then you look over and you notice — “Oh, look at that cutting board full of vegetables so nicely chopped in the size that I want them,” and you put them into the pot of soup you’re making. You follow through and say, “Thank you so much for helping me. That was a huge help. I really appreciate that.”
First of all, your partner’s going to be happy to help you the next time.
Second of all, they’re going to feel they were acknowledged and seen. Best of all, you are going to feel you got what you wanted!
Masculine and Feminine Awareness
You could say “But he sees me cooking. He sees me in the kitchen, shouldn’t he know that this stuff needs to happen? He knows that vegetables need to be chopped in order to go into the soup.”
The masculine has a very focused awareness, whereas the feminine has a very diffuse awareness.
If you think that your partner should know what needs to be done because they see it or they know soup has vegetables in it, the truth of the matter is they really don’t see it.
Your partner might come home thinking all he wants is to eat dinner. He’s not seeing what goes into making dinner. He just wants to eat, or he needs to use the bathroom. That’s where his focus is going to be. He’s not going to be thinking about the fact that the vegetables need to be chopped into half-inch cubes.
If you can give up on the idea that they should know, you’re going to alleviate yourself from a lot of suffering and frustration.
When it comes to making an effective request to get what you want, sometimes what you’re asking for needs to be negotiated a bit.
Maybe your partner says, “Sure I’ll chop them. I just need to go to the bathroom first.”
That’s a form of negotiation. That’s a form of saying “Yes, but I need to do this first,” or “I need to do it in this way.” Maybe he’ll say, “Oh, you left this knife and cutting board out for me, but I really like this knife. Is that okay that I use that?”
If you have a solid reason it’s not okay or it’s not going to work, you can present it to him at that time.
The point is to be clear about what you need and what you want, make the request with your conditions of satisfaction, get the commitment from the person you’re asking so that it’s going to be done, and follow through.
That is the absolute easiest way to get what you want.
Life Changing
Learning to make an effective request changed my entire life.
The way that I learned to ask my sons for what I wanted and needed, the way that I learned to ask for help from others and be clear about what I wanted and needed, even the way in which I started to plan things and invite people into my world as far as activities I was planning or events that I wanted to do, I painted a clear picture, and I was clear that this situation is for these kinds of people and this kind of commitment.
Even in programs that I offer, I will tell people up front, “Don’t join this program if you’re not genuinely committed to transforming your life or shifting your world.”
That’s a condition of satisfaction.
I might request that they check out my page for my Solace Program or my Sacred Nights of Winter Journal, but the page needs to detail what it’s about. Who is it for? Why is it going to be of benefit? Then invite them to enroll or make a purchase.
They know what it’s about. They know the conditions. They know they need to show up at this time for the meetings, and they need to participate during this time for the event.
If you were at work scheduling a meeting, you wouldn’t just say, “Hey, we’re going to have a meeting next week,” and expect that everybody knows when it is, where it is, how it’s going to be, who it’s for, or what it’s going to be about. You’d have to give them details.
A request is the same if you want to get something to happen.
In the realm of communication, language is generative. It’s what makes things happen in our life.
If you want to make something happen, you must be detailed about it. If you want to get what you want, you need to make effective and clear requests.
If you have a friend that’s been struggling with getting what they want, tell her about this article and the video version of this.
I invite you to practice making effective requests, and come back and tell me about the experience.
Maybe today for a friend or a colleague you’re interacting with, see if you can think about this and remember these steps to making an effective request of them. Practice it, try it out.
I’d love to hear how it goes in the comments. Enjoy getting more of what you want!
For a video version of The Easiest Way to Get What You Want In Life, at Work or in a Relationship, watch here:
