The Audacity to Ask

When was the last time you asked for something that scared you or made you really uncomfortable? Well, today we are going to explore the audacity to ask. This often overlooked skill has the power to transform your life, your career, and definitely your self-image. So whether you're feeling stuck, unfulfilled, or just ready for a change, learning to ask the right questions of yourself and others can open doors you never knew existed. So are you ready to challenge the status quo and ask for what you want? Let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where personal development meets style. Here's your hostess, master life coach, Tonya Leigh.

Hello, my dear friends. How are you? I hope as you're listening to this that you are feeling great. I hope you are enjoying your day. I am feeling very happy today and it's a bit confusing because my schedule is packed and my house is in complete mayhem because we keep getting delayed into moving into our home. We're having a few setbacks, and yet I am just completely happy and so grateful. I went over to our house yesterday and I was walking through and had a moment, one of those moments where I got a little teary and I thought to myself, "Wow, how did you end up here?" And what's really crazy about where we are building is I remember as a little girl, I used to come to Charlotte with my mom. There was a store called Mary Joe's Fabric, I think that's the name of it. And my mom would often make my clothes. And so we would drive to Charlotte. It was like a big city outing for a country girl.

And I remember going by South Park Mall and that whole area thinking, "Wow, I wonder what people's lives are here. I wonder what these people do." And it felt so out of reach for a girl like me. I mean, I was driving back home to a trailer, and so it was just one of those things that felt like a fantasy that wasn't possible for a girl like me. And now I'm building a house in that exact neighborhood. And yesterday, I'll tell you, I just had a moment of thinking, "Wow, look at you." And giving myself the space to be completely grateful, to be completely in awe, to be proud of myself, and to just enjoy that moment because oftentimes we create successes, we reach our goals, and we don't even take the time to take it in until we're off to the races to the next one. And yesterday, I just wanted to be in the moment and spend some time thinking about how I got here.

And one of the things that occurred to me as I was standing there is that I believe one of the reasons why I've been able to create the life that I'm living now, and I also see this quality in my clients, the clients who are reaching their extraordinary goals, the clients who are improving their lives by improving their self-image. They all have this in common. They have the audacity to ask, and I want to talk about what that looks like because oftentimes we just accept. We accept what's handed to us, we accept what we've been told, we accept things as they are, and we never question it. And then we wake up in these lives that we're not happy with and we think, "What went wrong?" And I will tell you all. If you have the audacity to ask, your life will begin to change in the most beautiful of ways. It's one of the reasons why I'm hosting a private podcast called 'Why Don't You?' Have y'all joined yet? If not, what in the world? It is so fun. I've recorded the first few episodes, I've loved recording them.

And this podcast series was inspired by Diana Vreeland's iconic column called Why Don't You? And she would offer these outrageous and extravagant suggestions usually related around style and your home. But it caused me to question, why don't we do certain things and why do we do certain things? By the way, if you want to really focus on your style, you are going to love this podcast. Make sure you sign up for it. It's absolutely free. It's 12 episodes. You can go to school of self-image.com/why and go ahead and start listening. Love to have you join us for the private podcast. But that column really just got me to thinking about why we do certain things, why we don't, why certain things are acceptable, why they aren't, and these are all just rules that other people wrote for us. And oftentimes we accept them as if that is the truth of how things should be and who we should be. Think about some of the rules that you have been following without questioning, without asking why, and if it serves you.

Some of us have been told that to be a good person, we need to put everyone else's needs above our own. We've been told that success means having it all, the perfect career, the perfect body, the perfect family, and you can see how that can create a lot of stress in your life. Have you ever questioned, what does success look like for me? If I could tune out all of the noise of the world and really just tap into what brings me joy, what delights me, what I love doing, how I love spending my time, and take off all of these unrealistic expectations, what would success look like for me? Maybe you've been living by the rule of don't ask for a promotion, just wait to be recognized, and that can often lead to you being overlooked for opportunities. Maybe you have been following the rule of apologize frequently to avoid seeming aggressive, or don't show emotion in the workplace, or don't brag about your accomplishments. We have all of these rules and we often don't even stop and wonder why and what is the impact of living by these rules.

So for today's episode, I want to talk about this in three different categories because as I was standing in my house thinking about my audacity to ask, there were three main categories that came up for me. So the first one is asking why. And what I mean by this is challenging the status quo. I want you to think about what you have accepted as normal that you feel like your soul is trying to outgrow. Or maybe you're just trying to reconcile it within yourself because there's a part of you that doesn't want that for yourself. For example, let's say that you have accepted that as a woman who is married, that you should want kids, but when you get really still with yourself and you get in a quiet room and you're really honest with yourself, you don't want children, but you know that not wanting kids may challenge the status quo. Listen ladies, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to be true to ourselves because if we aren't, we're going to end up living a very soul sucking life, and it really feels like that.

It feels like the life is being sucked out of you because you're trying to fit into these boxes that your particular soul was not made for. I remember this as a little girl. Growing up in a super strict religious household and going to Sunday school, I was always asking why. There were so many things that just did not make sense to me, and the adults around me did not like my questioning. And that's the thing, when you start questioning the status quo, there will be people who are very uncomfortable with it. And this is when you have to do a lot of your own personal development work and make your comfort more important than trying to make everybody else around you comfortable. But yeah, as a little girl, I remember one question that I would ask is, okay, Jesus turned the water into wine, but we aren't allowed to drink wine. It made no sense to me. And of course the adults tried to give me all of these reasons why it was different, it wasn't fermented.

I was like, "Does it say that? I don't understand because nowhere in the Bible does it say it was not fermented, it called it wine. And the last time I checked, wine is fermented. So I need a different explanation." I couldn't justify it in my head. And so even from a very young age, I've always bucked up against the status quo if it didn't make sense to me. And I'm sure there are things in your life that don't make sense to you, but you've just been following it without questioning it, just accepting it as this is the way it is. Maybe it's around money, maybe you've been told your whole life that women like you only make a certain amount of money. Really? Why? Why is that so? And who's telling you this? And what's their agenda? We have to ask those deeper questions. I want you to think about a belief that you have held onto that might not actually be true. Question it. Question it for you. And this leads me to the second point of the audacity to ask. I want you to ask questions that fight for your possibilities, not your limitations.

I was just coaching a member in the school of self-image, and every time I would try to pull her out of her story, she would want to tell me why, why it is the way it is and why she can't do it and why it won't work for her. And I see this over and over. I'm like, what if you trained your brain to fight more for your possibility than for your limitation? And the way to do this is to trade in I can't to, how can I? I can't start my own business turns into, how can I? I can't lose weight turns into, how can I? I can't get organized turns into, how can I get organized? If you spend all of your time focused on why you can't do something, that will be your experience because your brain is looking for all of the reasons why you can't do it. And it's not that you can't, it's because you're not looking in the direction of what you want. Energy is everything, my friends, everything. Where your attention goes is where your energy is flowing.

So if your attention is always on why you can't do something, why it's so hard, how you failed in the past, just notice where your energy is flowing. It's flowing to the very thing you don't want. If you want to have the audacity to ask of more of your life, you need to turn your attention to your possibilities. How can you do it? Why can you do it? Why are you the perfect person to do it? And you need to begin to collect evidence for that. Listen, I saw this so clear yesterday, standing in my house. It was like a vision. As I was standing there, I was like, this house is a result of where I've placed my energy. I have been placing my energy in the direction of the future I wanted for a long time. And listen, don't think for a minute that my brain doesn't want to focus on all the reasons why I can't do it, why I'm failing, why I'm not good enough. My brain loves to go there, but I just don't let it. I'm like, listen, we got to refocus.

Focus on what you want to see, what you want to believe, how you want to show up, what you want to experience. What you focus on grows. And so part of this audacity to ask is for you to ask the questions that will serve you. One of the concepts that I teach is called quality questions. Your life is a result of your questions because your brain will answer any question that you ask of it. So if you sit around and you ask yourself, why is this so hard? Why can't I get it together? Why am I overweight? Why does no one like me? Why is my life so hard? Your brain's going to be like, "Let's sit down and I'll tell you all of the reasons." But do you know what else your brain can do? It can also tell you all of the reasons why you're beautiful, why you're capable. It can show you how your life is actually good right now. It can show you your blessings. It can show you all of your strengths. It can show you next steps. But if you're not asking the right questions, you won't be able to access that data.

Think about the questions that you subconsciously are asking yourself all of the time, and the effect of those questions on your life. You will know the quality of your questions based on the answers that it gives you and how they make you feel. If you are asking yourself low quality questions, you're going to get low quality answers and it's going to create low quality actions. So for example, why am I so overweight? Well, because you're lazy. And when you're thinking you're lazy, what do you do? Probably lazy actions, sitting around, not going for walks, not doing the things that will give you energy and prove to yourself, "I'm not lazy. I can lose weight. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to learn how to take great care of myself. I'm going to enjoy my life today and I'm going to celebrate myself." And now all of a sudden your energy is flowing towards the future that you want. And that really is how I see it, and every moment wherever you're placing your attention, that is either flowing your energy towards more of what you want or more of what you don't want.

So have the audacity to ask the questions that fight for your possibilities, that show you more of what you want to see about yourself and your life because in any moment, there's evidence for all of it. What are you seeking evidence for? And then the final thing that I want you to have the audacity to ask for is the audacity to ask for what you want. This is a hard one for a lot of us. Why? Because we don't want to inconvenience people. We don't want to be disappointed. We don't want to feel rejection. And so in the meantime, we don't ask, and therefore it is not given. And I'll admit, this has been a hard one for me because I was raised to be very self-sufficient. I watched my mother, typical southern woman who's very strong, and she would rather sacrifice herself than to ask anyone to help her. And I took that on. For years I thought, if you're strong, if you're capable, if you're self-reliant, you don't ask people for help.

You don't ask for what you want, you just go out there and make it happen. And so I bulldozed my way through life, and yeah, I made some things happen, but it was hard. It was way harder than it needed to be. And so I started to think about, if you are a woman who is very comfortable with support, if you love being supported, if you're not afraid to ask, how do you need to think and believe? And I realized that I needed to create the beliefs of, people want to help. People want to see you succeed. People are people encouraging. Now, there's evidence for all of it, but as I was saying in the previous point, your brain will deliver to you what you're looking for. And previously, I had looked for all of the reasons why I shouldn't ask and why I shouldn't be supported, and therefore that's all I could see. But when I started to try on these thoughts, I will tell you, they felt good, and I practiced living into them, and it turns out it's true. I now ask all of the time.

I ask for help, I ask for what I want. Sometimes people say no, and that's where you need to become a woman who's okay with rejection. You don't have to make it mean something's wrong with you. You just can make it mean, hey, they don't want to do this thing that I asked them to do, and that's okay. Maybe it's not a good fit, maybe it doesn't work for their timeline, whatever. But that's the thing, we turn rejection into this personal attack, and I just don't see it that way. I tell people no all the time. It doesn't mean I don't love them, it doesn't mean I don't care about them, it just means it's not a good fit for where I am in my life right now. And my hope is that they don't stop at me, that they continue to ask. So many rejections often need to happen for you get to get that yes, but so many people are so afraid of rejections that they don't give themselves a fighting chance of getting to the yes. Sometimes they don't even experience the first rejection because they're so afraid of it.

What if you turn rejection into play? Into fun? What if you didn't make it mean anything about you but realize, oh, this is just all a part of the game, the game of life. We're not always a good fit for people, it's not always a good time, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't ask, ask for what I want. And you may be pleasantly surprised. I remember years ago I was at a mastermind event with some other colleagues. We were in Santa Barbara and we were at this beautiful restaurant, and I cannot remember, for the life of me, what we were talking about, but this topic came up, something around this, and I said, "I want to just ask the waiter for something ridiculous and see what happens." And I think, if I remember correctly, I asked him for a free bottle of wine. I was just curious if maybe he would do it. Well, it turns out he couldn't give us a free bottle of wine, but he was so fun.

I do remember he had such a fun spirit and he was like, "I can't give you that, but I can give you some other things." And I do remember he gave me a wine opener and he gave me one other thing, and I can't remember what it was, but I got something. I didn't get what I ultimately asked for, but I got something. And sometimes that's what happens. Maybe you don't get what you're asking for, but you get a little something. Maybe you don't get anything at all, or maybe you get something better than what you were asking for. I have seen the audacity to ask beautifully demonstrated by my man. He asks for things he wants all of the time without apology, without embarrassment, none of it. If he wants something, he will ask people for it. And it's been so fascinating to watch because 90% of the time, people say yes, and I'm always perplexed. I'm like, "I cannot believe they just did that for you. I can't believe that you got that."

Now, what's interesting about this, he's also one of the most giving people I know, and I've been thinking about, is there a correlation? The more willing you are to ask for what you want, are you also more willing to give without any kind of resentment? He just loves helping people, he loves giving to people, but he also equally loves asking people for support, for things. And what's really beautiful in watching him is he's so unaffected by the outcome. He's so unbothered. If someone tells him no, he could care less. If someone says yes, he's grateful, but it's just sort of his way of being in the world. I asked him about this a while back, just where that came from and what's underneath it all, and he was like, "We all have free will. And I'm not forcing people to do things, I'm just asking, and they can say yes or no, and I get to do the same." But it seems to me, what I've observed is that the more he asks and it is given, the more he wants to give. It's just like that energy just keeps growing in his life.

This giving energy that's just reciprocal, it's so beautiful to watch. And it all comes down to his audacity to ask. And there is a strong correlation between the ability to give and receive. First of all, it creates this psychological balance. Think about it, those who are comfortable giving, who are giving from abundance, who are giving from just pure love, not this giving because I want you to like me or I don't want you to be upset with me. That's a different kind of giving. That's a selfish giving. But this is just that beautiful, abundant giving spirit. They tend to be more open to receiving, and it creates this balance, this healthy self-esteem of understanding mutual support. Also, there's an understanding of your value. People who recognize the value and what they give are often more able to appreciate and accept what others offer them. It also comes down to self-worth because those who feel worthy of receiving are often more generous in giving and vice versa. And then there's the practice of boundaries. Having clear boundaries allows for healthy, abundant giving and receiving without feeling depleted or taken advantage of.

So I want you to think of it like this. I want you to see you as an ATM machine. And if you're always just giving, if you're always just taking money out of the machine, you are going broke. You are depleted. When you allow yourself to be supported, when you ask for what you want, when you allow others to help you, you are making deposits into your ATM machine. And those deposits, that life giving energy is something that you already know that you are going to pass on. You're going to give it to someone else, which is why I love feeling supported now. This has been one of the big beliefs that I have created in my life, is that the more I allow myself to be supported, the more I have the audacity to ask, the more I have to give. Think about it. If you have the audacity to ask your boss for a raise, and you're pleasantly surprised when you get it, now you have more to give to your family, to your community.

If you have the audacity to ask your neighbor to watch your kids for an afternoon, all of a sudden you get to go out and maybe do something that brings you delight and you're going to come home and have so much more attention and energy to give your kids. And equally, I hope your neighbor is asking for what they need so that they have the energy to come and help you. Can you see how this is just expansive energy? This audacity to ask also equals the audacity to receive. They go hand in hand. So what's been holding you back from asking for what you want? Because I will tell you, a beautiful life requires you to create that audacity to ask, to ask those questions that challenge the status quo, to ask the questions that fight for your possibility, not your limitations, and also the audacity to ask for what you want. Now I'm going to ask you something. Why don't you come and join us for this private podcast series called 'Why Don't You?' where we are going to challenge some of the fashion rules and help you discover your true, authentic style. All you have to do is go to schoolofselfimage.com/why and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Cheers.

Before we part ways, I have an exciting invitation for you. If you have been desiring to elevate your style, but find yourself stuck, unsure, or overwhelmed, I've created something very special just for you. Join me for a private 12 week podcast series called 'Why Don't You?' where we're going to dive deep into personal style, confidence and self-expression. It is an intimate journey designed for the discerning woman who knows she's capable of more, but needs that extra guidance and inspiration. And just so you know, this isn't about fleeting trends or rules, it's about discovering and embracing your unique style story. So to access this private series, all you need to do is go to schoolofself image.com/why and secure your spot. And remember, true style is timeless and it starts with you. Why don't you join us and unveil the most stylish version of yourself?