People Pleasing #3: How to Ask Confidently for What You Want

Do you ever find yourself quietly hoping someone will read your mind? Maybe you wish your partner would ask before inviting the whole family to stay at your house. Or your friend would notice you're running out of social battery. Or your coworkers would magically realize you can't take on one more thing. Instead of speaking up, you stay quiet, stuff down your frustration, and wonder if asking for what you need would make you selfish, rude, or just... a lot.

In this episode, I'm sharing expressing your wants and needs isn't just "nice," it's your ethical duty. You'll learn why asking for support actually strengthens relationships, how to stop feeling guilty for taking up space, and my simple four-step "Velvet Glove" technique for asking for what you want with kindness, confidence, and zero bulldozing. If traditional assertiveness advice has always given you the ick, this episode is for you.

Coach With Sarah

Sarah offers a 6-month nervous system coaching program for humans who are neurodivergent, sensitive, and highly creative. Learn to rewire your brain for calm, load up your stress toolkit, and address the root causes of overwhelm . To learn more and get started, schedule your free consult or email sarah@sarahmaurercoaching.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to Climb Your Mountain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness to overcome life's challenges. I'm Sarah Mauer, a certified life and performance coach, front work facilitator, and trance geek. Each week, I show you how to change your brain fast for good and without struggle. Whether you're training to climb an actual mountain, building a business, dating, or climbing a fucking rebellion, these tools will help. Listen and learn so you can enjoy more of what you want. Happiness, fun, connection, creativity, courage, and the occasional mountaintop moment. Ready? Let's do this. Have you ever been that person who's riding in the back seat on the road trip, just quietly hoping that someone will suggest stopping for lunch? Or maybe your best friend is a chaos agent and she's always canceling and rescheduling plans, and it makes you crazy, but you just put up with it because it would be weird to point it out. Or maybe your partner just invited his whole clan to come to town and stay at your house without even checking with you first, and you're enraged. But you're kind of seething in silence, because is the problem really you? Are you a jerk for not wanting to host his family? Friend, if you've ever been in this place, in any of these places, wishing people would consider your needs, suffering in silence, feeling unsupported by your loved ones, this episode is for you. I'm gonna give you permission to take your own wants and needs seriously. And I'm also gonna give you a simple four-step process I call the Velvet Glove Technique to help you ask for what you want with confidence and in a way that other people can actually hear you. And we're gonna do all of this in a way that's assertive, but doesn't feel rude or demanding. And I think that this is really important. A little story for you. As a teenager, I went to a rare therapy appointment, and the therapist was a middle-aged man who probably had had a totally different life experience than a 16-year-old girl, and he was basically trying to give me some basic assertiveness training. And I gotta say, this all felt very masculine in nature. And no diss on the masculine, but hear me out here. It was all about being very direct and blunt and just kind of browbeating the other person into giving me what I wanted. So, me and the therapist, we did a role play, and I kept getting corrected a lot for trying to soften my statements or kind of meet the other person in the middle or show empathy. And in some ways, I kind of get it. I was actually at this point in my life so awkward about asking anyone for anything I wanted. I think the therapist kind of wanted to push me really far in the opposite direction, just to show me a whole other way of being. But looking back as an adult, I feel like this approach lacked diplomacy, which is an important skill also in dealing with others. And the whole experience, it kind of put a bad taste in my mouth around assertive communication. So to this day, the words assertive communication or assertiveness training are kind of triggering. So if you can relate, if you kind of feel like those kind of things are icky, you're really gonna love this episode because I'm gonna show you a way to do it that's gonna be diplomatic, that's gonna feel so much better. So, when you're thinking about communicating wants and needs, there are three main steps I really want you to focus on. And before you open your mouth, before you say anything, I really want you to start in your head by believing that your wants and needs really matter. I know a lot of you listening to this identify as ND or highly sensitive. And because of this, you may have gotten a lot of messages in your life that you're too needy, that you're too much, that you're high maintenance, that your needs are ridiculous, and that you just need to toughen up and deal. And you might wonder if you really have a right to ask someone, for example, to talk more quietly, or to ask for time for yourself, or to request that your mom watch your kids for the weekend while you relax and chill out a bit. You've probably learned to mask your needs almost to the point where you've become wantless and needless. And I want you to think about it this way. While not speaking up for your needs is hard and it's uncomfortable, it's also a little bit understandable that you don't do it, because it's equally true that speaking up is equally hard and uncomfortable. That's why you haven't done it much up to this point. So if you're gonna start speaking up and asking for what you want and need from other people, you really need a strong why. So I'm gonna go beyond the cliched advice about filling your cup or putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your kid. Because even though these pieces of advice are both actually true, your brain may need to hear it and think about it a new way. So I want to give you two reasons to speak up, and two reasons to really take your wants and needs seriously. One is an ethical reason, and one is kind of a spiritual reason. So, first, let's talk about the ethical duty to self-care. Self-care, which basically just means meeting your own needs, it isn't just a luxury or a nice to have. Did you know it's actually an ethical duty? It's a requirement to be a moral person to make sure that you're taking care of your own self-care. It is actually up there with treating other people fairly, being honest and transparent, looking out for the welfare of kids and animals, and caring for the planets. It is up there with all the other moral duties that we take on in our lives just as being part of society and wanting to be good people. And this is not just me saying it's an ethical duty. This is not Tony Robbins or some blogger saying this. This is from ethical philosophers with PhDs who spend all their time thinking, studying, and writing about how humans can be better people. So the way I actually learned about the ethical duty to self-care, and I think this is just one of the best examples out there. You may not know this about me if you're new to my world, but I have been in a day job, a marketing job, for 13 years, in addition to my work as a stress coach and chronic stress coach. I also market for a physician group. And the physicians in the group are primarily emergency room physicians. So that is a specialty that is very stressful. Of all the specialties, it's the one that is the most prone to burnout. And it's the research suggests that about 50% of emergency room physicians actually have symptoms of burnout at any given time. So it's very serious for our specialty. So, because of that, my company has a ton of wellness education aimed at the physicians. And one of the perks of my job that's amazing is they let those of us who are working on the support side in the office actually sit in on those. And the first time I sat in on a wellness session for emergency physicians, this was the first key thing that they taught. It was all about the ethical duty to self-care. And they really, really, really hammered home in the session that one of the biggest moral duties of a doctor is self-care. The physicians need to be taking care of their own mental and physical health. They need to be taking it very seriously because the consequences of getting burned out are huge, not only for the doctor, but for their patients. Burned out doctors make mistakes. They get sued more often for malpractice. And often they're not as good at communicating with their patients. They're not as personable when they're burned out. And this matters because if they're impatient or short with someone who comes into the ER with chest pain, for example, that patient is less likely to actually wait around and finish the ER visit until they have all their test results in. And they're also less likely to go on and go to their follow-up appointment after the ER to go to the cardiologist to get everything checked out. Which means that if they're at risk for a heart condition, it could get so much worse just because this doctor didn't communicate with them or was short with them or pissed them off in some way because the doctor was really stressed and burned out. So, you who are listening to this, I get that you are probably not an emergency physician. Maybe a few of you are, but even if you're not, I want you to think about all the people in your life that like that emergency physician you give value to. Even if the stakes aren't necessarily life and death. I want you to think about all the people who benefit when you show up calm, fed, rested, energized, and with access to your full brain power. These might be loved ones like your kids, your parents, your partner. They might include people in your professional sphere, like your boss, your co-workers, your students or clients. And they definitely include people in your community, anyone you interact with, including your neighbors, the store cashier, your kids' teachers. These people can all be brought up or down by your mood and how you're feeling. So, really good example of this. I'm gonna tell on myself a little here. Yesterday I was taking my mom to a museum, and I was kind of tired and grumpy when I was doing it because before I went to pick her up, I'd been rushing around all day and I hadn't eaten. And so here I was, just hangry and tired and stressed out, and I was trying to push my mom's wheelchair through the accessible entrance of the museum. And of course, this was totally annoying. There was a big strip of metal across the floor at the entrance, and I couldn't roll the chair over it. So the museum volunteer who's behind the desk sees me struggling, and she wanders over and she says very innocently, Oh, there's a lever on the back of the wheelchair that you can step on with your foot that's gonna raise the front wheels. Which maybe was a little condescending thing to say to someone who pushes a wheelchair all the time, but honestly, she was just trying to help. But because I hadn't been taking care of myself, I hadn't been meeting my needs, I totally snapped at her and I said, Well, believe it or not, I'm aware of that. And I then I pushed my mom in and just kind of breeze past her into the museum. So, was this an awful, an awful ethical violation and the end of the world? No. But did it make me feel good about myself? No. Was it a missed opportunity to give some grace to my fellow human? For sure. And I assume the stakes were pretty low, but I have no idea what this museum volunteer was going through in her life. For all I know, she was having like the worst day of her life. And here comes me being a grump and making it even worse. So that's what I mean about having an ethical duty to care for yourself. No matter what you do for work, no matter your family situation, even if you are the biggest loner imaginable, you can't escape sharing the planet with other people. And you have a basic duty, first of all, not to hurt them, and second, to do good for them while you can. Which brings us to my second and more spiritual reason to care for yourself. I'm gonna get a little woo-woo here, so you know, just kind of roll with me on this one. The second reason to care for yourself, to ask for your wants and needs to be met, is that I really truly believe this deep in my soul. You are here on this planet at this moment for a reason. You have medicine the world needs that no one else has. And the way you share that medicine, the way you live, that purpose, is not listen to me, by getting straight A's in school, making lots of money, or becoming some lofty career, like a nurse anesthetist. It's not by achieving anything at all, actually. And I want you to hear this by simply existing, sitting here, listening to my voice on this podcast right now, you are already living your purpose. By being here, you are bringing your medicine, you are raising the vibration of the planets. And the only way to live more of your purpose is to become more of yourself, to follow what lights you up. And hear me, you 100% can't do that if you're always bulldozing over your needs and putting everyone else's needs first. And by the way, if you're hearing me and you're going, Sarah, I'm not sure exactly what my medicine is or what lights me up or how to become more of myself, that's exactly what life coaching can help with. That is the stuff that is really at the heart of life coaching. So if you're hearing me talk about your purpose and you're not sure what it is, pause this episode, click the link in the show notes, and sign up for a free coaching consult. And we'll talk more about how coaching can help you uncover your deepest purpose so you can wake up every day knowing exactly what it is that you are here to do and do more of it. So that's step number one, just believing that your wants and needs are important. Hopefully, I have made a good case for that. And then, number two thing you need to do, this is again happening in your head before you even open your mouth. I want you to start reframing service and asking, I want you to start reframing asking for help as service. If you hesitate to ask for help because you think doing that is selfish or that it makes you a taker, hold on tight to your potatoes because this is gonna blow your mind. A lot of people see the helping relationship that way in terms of give and take. And if you believe that, if you believe that the value only flows one way, you're not gonna ask for help because who wants to be a taker unless you're really, really desperate. But what if you saw the helping relationship as a two-way street where the value and benefit flow both ways? I just finished a year in a business mastermind, and this was me at the beginning of the year. I was so shy about asking for help. I didn't want to bother anyone. I didn't want to take anyone's time with my problems. My I felt like my business problems were so small and so petty, and that I should be able to figure them out on my own, and that other people would be annoyed if I asked them for help with such trivial things. And I fortunately, I'm so glad I did this, I told my coach about this problem I was having in my head, and she just said the damnedest thing that changed my life. She was like, has it ever occurred to you that other people in this room might actually want to help you? That they might actually delight in it, that it might feel good for them, that it might be fun for them, that they might look back at the end of the day and be really glad that they helped you. And that blew my fucking mind because it had never occurred to me to even consider that. Even though I also personally like helping people and don't usually want anything in return a lot of the time. And I think sometimes this comes from our upbringing. I definitely grew up in a very middle-class family where it was a bit dog-eat dog, the mentality. So you didn't want to be like in a position of owing anyone anything. And so this was just a totally new thought to me that other people might want to help. They might want to be generous. And if this seems a bit hard to absorb, I want you to remember remember the last time you did a favor for someone. It might have been a friend, it might have been your elderly parent, um, one of your adult children, your neighbor. And I want you to remember what that act of helping felt like. And it doesn't necessarily, I'm not suggesting here that helping always feels good. There might have been parts of that helping experience that were kind of inconvenient or annoying, but chances are it was a net good, that you got a lot of satisfaction out of it. And in fact, the harder you had to work to help, the prouder you probably were of yourself. An example from my life. Last summer, my neighbor moved to France to start her international school teaching career. And she had two cats that were actually going to fly separately to France, and they were gonna stay home in her apartment, be picked up by the moving company, and then taken to France after a couple of days. So she asked me if I could feed the cats and scoop the litter box for a couple days until they could move, and I was so happy to help. I was really excited for her and for the cats getting to move to France. I kind of wanted to be part of her adventure. I also really love cats. I have my own cats. So I agreed to help out. And as often happens, things with the moving of the cats did not go smoothly. First, there was a heat wave, which delayed the cats moving by a week, and then there was a mess up at the moving company, which delayed their move by another week. And then the movers finally came to get the cats, and they missed the cats, they couldn't do it, and the cats missed their flight again because big boy cat was hissing and scratching and aggressive, and then Girl Cat, she ran under the stove and hid. So they couldn't even get the cats to take them to the airport. So I ended up watching these cats for about a month, and all this time I'm updating my neighbor by text. She's in France now, and she's so sorry and so apologetic, and she keeps texting me, apologizing, offering to pay me to Venmo me more money. And I think what she didn't realize was that despite the fact that this was admittedly kind of a hassle, I was now just as invested in getting these cats to France as she was. I wanted her and her cats to be reunited. I wanted them to have a good start at the next phase of their life, I wanted them to be okay and not distressed and missing her. At one point, I was yelling at the moving company and telling them they had screwed up so bad and they better make it right by this poor woman and her cats. And when the text finally came that the cats had landed in Paris and that my neighbor was picking them up, I was probably as excited as she was. Well, maybe not that excited, but pretty damn close. And I think if it had been easy, if they had been picked up and moved in three days, according to plan, it still would have been really satisfying. I still would have felt like part of their adventure and it would have been great. But to see it through a whole month to really fight for it and then to have it actually come true and happen, that was just so epic. It was such a high. I felt so good about myself. So with this cat watching experience, I received even more from that experience than I probably gave, and I received more, even more, because it actually had some challenge involved in it. So, if you're hearing me, if you are ready to make the ass to speak up for your wants and needs, you're probably wondering, Sarah, how do I do this? What are the words? And I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm gonna have you use the velvet glove technique to make the ask. If traditional assertive assertiveness training, the pushy, rude, blunt kind, gives you a serious case of the ick, never fear. There are ways to communicate your wants and needs that will help people hear you and want to help you. And yes, there are some rare situations in life where I do think it pays to talk tough and kind of use the iron fist approach, but for the vast majority of the people in your life, your kids, partner, friends, elderly parents, coworkers, boss, I think a bit of diplomacy and politeness is actually gonna go a long way. And it's not a weakness, it's just smart communication. It's psychology. And to help you express your wants and needs politely and respectfully, but still powerfully, I'm gonna teach you this velvet glove technique. It's super simple, just four steps, but it's wicked effective. And it actually uses the power of psychology to get people on your side. That's why it works so well. And it's especially helpful if in the past you've ever, and don't don't beat yourself up if you've ever done this, but if you've ever used shaming, blaming, guilting, or punishing others to get what you want, if you have done that, that doesn't make you a terrible person. You were just trying to get your needs met the best way you knew. And you're gonna be so especially excited to learn this velvet glove technique because not only is it gonna help you express your needs and wants so that others can. Support you better, it's actually gonna strengthen your relationships. Where maybe before the way you were going about it was kind of pushing people away. Now you're gonna actually ask for what you want and it's actually gonna bring people closer. Win-win, how cool is that! So before you do the four-step technique, take a moment and just get yourself in the right mindset. The Velvet Glove, it works best when you're calm and you're thinking helpful thoughts about the other person. So some useful thoughts are we are on the same team, we are in this thing together. Really think about how that's true. We want the same things. Also, it's possible they really want to help. They just they just don't know what kind of what kind of help I need. And they might really want to know how to be a better partner, a better kid, a better friend, or whatever they are to you. And you're also gonna look at your emotions. The best emotions to go into this with are curiosity, kind of thinking, I wonder what they really think about this. I'm gonna find out. This is great. And detachment, insufficiency. And really the thought behind that is I'll be okay no matter how they respond. I it's not life or death that they say yes, I don't need to convince them to say yes, I don't need to convince them to hear me. I'm gonna give it my best shot, and no matter how it turns out, it's gonna be fine. I'm gonna be fine. So I'm gonna walk you through the technique now. And the example I'm gonna use is you talking to your teenage kids about helping out around the house more. And if you don't have teenage kids, you can substitute anyone who lives in your house with you, whether it's a roommate or a partner or um anyone this will work for. And let's say that you've been really frustrated with your kids. They have chores, but they never do them, and you've been coming home to a mess and yelling, guilting, shaming, punishing them for not doing their chores. But you haven't ever really actually tried talking to them in a calm and respectful way about the problem and what's happening. So you're getting ready to do that now. So here's the steps. Step one, you're gonna open with empathy. This means that you're gonna acknowledge the situation from their point of view. So you may might say something like, I know we've been fighting a lot about the mess in the house. And one kind of substep you can add to this, if appropriate, is to own your own part. So if you've been yelling at the kids a lot about the mess, you might say also add something like, I know I've yelled at you for this a few times, and I do apologize for that. I know that really wasn't the right way to go about it. Step two, you're gonna invite them to explore the issue. And a lot this invitation is really key. A lot of us are really tempted when we're sharing wants and needs to dive right into telling the other person what we want. And that's not necessarily bad. It won't be bad if you do that, but if you really want the person to hear you, one of the smartest things you can do is get their consent before you share. And consent tends to disarm people and it tends to help them listen without putting up all their defenses. So a great way to pull them in and to invite them in and to increase the chance that they'll say, Yes, I want to talk about this, is to tell them exactly what's in it for them if you have this conversation. So, for example, you might say to your messy teenager, can we talk about how to work together on this so that we can stop yelling, so that we can get along better, so that we can have more happy times as a family. It can be as simple as that. And once they say yes, you're gonna make the request. And the request, you might frame it something like, hey, I'd really like you to finish your chores before I come home from work at six. Now, notice a few important things about this request. First, it starts with I. I would like you to. You want to focus the conversation on yourself and what you want. And at all costs, even if you think they really deserve it, really try to avoid blaming, shaming, or judging the other person. Resist the urge to say things like, you're lazy, you don't listen to me, you have to be asked a hundred times, you don't care how exhausted I am. A good way to avoid blaming and keep things civil is to lead with that I, to really talk about what I want, what you want. Second, you really want to keep this request respectful. A great way to frame it is as a request, not a demand. They're gonna hear, I would like, much easier than they're gonna hear, you better and you need to. And third, be really specific. It's possible, I'm not saying this is what happened, this is this is always what happened, but it's it's totally possible that even if you've asked your kids to clean the house before, that you and your child each have a different idea of what that looks like. They may believe cleaning the kitchen means rinsing off their plate and putting it in the dishwasher. And by the way, this is a little aside for all of you who are dating, I tell you this is a coach, a general coach who gets to talk to all the people about all the things. Dating is the one place where it's really important to express your needs and wants with clarity. Saying things like, I would like to go on more dates, or I would like to go on a fancy date, that might leave the other person confused. Chances are, if this person is into you, they want to know more. They want more information on how to really please you and make you happy. They want to know like how many dates. They want to know like what it what what your what that fancy date that you want actually looks like. So don't be afraid to express that often and give a lot of details and a lot of clarity. The the other person might be really relieved if you do that because then they won't have to be constantly guessing and they won't have to go through the awkwardness of asking if you just tell them. All right, so step four, final step. You're gonna do something we call flip it. You're gonna throw the request that you've just made back to them. You're gonna ask, Well, what do you think about that? And then, this is so important, close, close, close the mouth and listen, really listen. Often, if you listen and let them talk, this is where you're gonna hear something really fucking interesting. Like maybe you are gonna find out that your kid thinks cleaning the kitchen means means putting the plate in the dishwasher. Or maybe your kid is just gonna really open up and say, I know I haven't been doing my chores, and I just I wasn't sure how to tell you, but I am just really stressed about something that's going on with a friend, and I just think about it all the time. Or it's quite possible you'll your kid will just say, Okay, I get it. I'll clean the kitchen from now on by six o'clock. This is also where you can have a little troubleshooting conversation after you listen. Is there a reason they haven't been cleaning when you've asked them to? Is there something in the way that you can help with? Do they need cleaning supplies? Do they need a little walkthrough of how you clean you want it cleaned so they know what to do? Do they need some extra time to clean? Maybe they won't get it, can't get it done at six because they have a lot of homework this week. So maybe if you there you could talk about extending the deadline. Be willing to talk it out and meet them in the middle. Here's another question I really love, especially if you have teenagers. What do you think should happen if you don't clean it? You can even agree on your consequences together. You don't have to accept their consequence if you don't think it's a good one, but they also might surprise you. Some teens are really good at coming up with consequences that will motivate them, and that's a really good thing. So, friends, there you have it. I hope this helped convince you that your wants and needs are important and are worth taking very seriously. And I also hope that I've convinced you that other people might actually love to help, which makes it so much easier to ask. And I hope you're now gonna use the velvet glove technique anytime you want to ask for something. Whether it's more dates, something you want your partner to do in bed, if you want your friend to lower their voice and calm down a little while you're talking to them, if you want to eat at the quiet restaurant instead of the noisy one, if you want your mom to watch the kids overnight so you can decondition a bit. And the more you ask for what you want, the more supported you're gonna feel by the people around you. And I want you to really hear me on this. You're not gonna get everything you want. People aren't gonna hear all your wants and just like fall down and give them to you. But the more you ask, the more you're gonna get. And you're gonna get way more than you're getting now, and that's gonna feel amazing. So, friend, if you're listening to this, and if you think that you might need more help than a podcast to actually start asking for more of your wants and needs and expressing them in your relationships, if you're the kind of person who has always been like you'd rather eat broken glass than ask for support, can I just say that coaching is the perfect place to change that? If you're curious about how coaching works, the one-to-one coaching that I do, what it looks like, what we do, what we talk about, definitely click the link in the show notes and sign up for the free coaching consult. We'll talk about all of that. Don't spend another day feeling unsupported at home, at work, or with your friends. There are things we can do in that very first session to help you start turning this around. So click that link and let's talk. All right, thanks for listening, and I'll see you here next week.