Mar

Unreasonable Requests!

By Mary K

keep-right Today I was reading Curt Rosengren’s blog post from back in 2004 titled, For success make unreasonable requests. I highly recommend you give it a read, yet I’ll give you the gist of it so my comments below make some kind of sense.

Curt was talking about a woman he knows who makes it her mission to make five unreasonable requests a week. You know, requests she has no business making and that people have no realistic reason to say yes to. Get this… she figures that one in ten of them come to fruition!

This is really powerful. And boy, did I have a ‘flat forehead’ moment when it dawned on me that it’s also one of the first things young children taught me… how could I forget?!?

Anyone who has known me for awhile, knows that I claim, in all serious playfulness…that kids have taught me everything I know. And it’s TRUE!

Think about the steady stream of requests kids make all day long, day after day. Sometimes it’s what we would consider a very reasonable request… help cutting their food for instance. Yet how many times has your child made a request that was virtually impossible to fulfil… like the request to retrieve their kite that is snagged at the top of a 50 ft. tree!

But really… many of the “unreasonable” requests they make only seem unreasonable. In other words, because of some arbitrary limitation that we’ve made up… “I don’t have time”, “I don’t know how”, “It’s too far away”… whatever our excuse may be… upon reflection, doesn’t seem all that unreasonable at all. And the persistent child can amaze us by having exactly the experience they requested… even without any help from us! LOL

All of this leads me to offer you a modest proposal. I propose that we spend the next week risking success by making UNREASONABLE REQUESTS.

Reach back into your childhood… before you learned to censor your desires, before you understood “unreasonable” at all… and act as if you deserve EVERYTHING you need and desire.

Come from the place of knowing that the world is awash with all we need and the people and resources to grant it to us are at our fingertips. Be willing to replace the mediocrity with the incredible and remarkable by ASKING.

A well known leader you’d like to interview… reach out and ask her.

A famous author you’d like to have coffee with… reach out and invite him.

A ride across the country on the cheap… find someone going and ask them to ride along.

That kite up in the tree? Well… you’re on your own there.

The magic here is that you’re bound to re-define and expand your notions of “unreasonable” — and I suspect you’ll discover leading an unreasonable life to be a whole lot of FUN!!!

So hey… anyone out there want to make me a personal loan of $2000 so I can get that car I have my eye on sooner rather than later? I can promise you I’ll be good for the repayment!