The Fear of Asking

Yesterday afternoon, I posed a question to my 590 followers on Twitter and my 1600 “friends” on Facebook and received 2 good replies out of 3 total replies. To give my followers yet another chance, I posed the question again. No further replies.

The question was this:

If you could ask me anything regarding what I do professionally, what would you ask? Topics could be: Workflow, Influence, Dislikes, etc…

As someone who has grown exponentially in the past 8 months, the best thing I have learned is to ask questions to anyone willing to listen to me. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest reason is simply: I don’t know everything, and I need advice from time to time.

I’ve never been afraid of talking to people, but I have been afraid of asking questions. A common thought process of mine was “What if they think my question is dumb? Or what if I don’t understand the answer? Or what if they don’t know the answer?”

“I deal with rejection by persisting…” — Ryan Marrinan

One of the best things that helped me ask questions was being in need of true help. It was as if all fear fell aside with regards to how dumb my question may be because the fear of not being able to complete a task was greater. If the person answering the question doesn’t have a helpful answer, ask someone, anyone, ‘til you find what you are looking for. 

I open the forum up to you:

If you could ask me anything regarding what I do professionally, what would you ask?