The bartender shook his head.
Selina: “Is there anything you can give me?”
“I can give you some tap water”.
Selina: “Yes please, thank you very much”.
I walked away with a huge smile on my face. I had just done a “power exercise”.
Years ago, I attended a workshop in Las Vegas with Steve Pavlina and one of the exercises there left a strong effect on me.
We were given lists of tasks, things like Ask a stranger the time, Give a stranger a compliment, ask for a free meal, ask for an unreasonable favour, ask where you can become a stripper (we were in Vegas remember).
We were to rate them Easy – could do straight away, Medium – could do at a push and Hard – No way can I do that. We were then sent out in Vegas in groups and asked to perform some of these tasks.
We started with the Easy ones and as our confidence built, we were able to move onto the Medium tasks and even Hard ones. We would try things and recollect in our groups, celebrate and commiserate. It was so much fun.
We learnt “What was the worst that could happen?” People might say no. And sometimes said YES. Actually it didn’t matter, what mattered was that we tried, we did our part in asking.
Start easy and work your way up.