Good things come to those who ask

Last night I was scheduled to fly home from SF after visiting my daughter at school to attend a musical in which she was performing.

My flight was scheduled for 9:30 pm and I knew the earliest I could possibly arrive at home was 12:45 am. Ugh.

When our plans changed mid-afternoon, I had looked into switching to an earlier flight, but it was going to cost way more money than it would have been worth just to get home two hours earlier, and I would have had to give up my dinner plans with my friends.

So I had dinner with friends as planned, and then we headed off to the airport.

When I arrived at the gate, I found that the 7:30 flight was delayed a bit and was still boarding. The board showed a large number of people waiting to fly standby.

I sat down to wait. Or more precisely, my former self sat down to wait.

But Jill 2.0 figured there was no harm in checking to see if they might have any seats left on the earlier flight.

So I got up and approached the desk.

I had to wait while the agent was assisting another standby traveler with his boarding pass.  When he left, I started to step closer, but a young man approached the counter too, and I stepped back, thinking he was another of the passengers they had called to go standby.

When the agent apologized to him and said there were no seats left, I realized we were making the same inquiry. So I left the counter without asking or giving the gate agent my name.

The young man and I chatted for a few minutes. I told him about checking online earlier and he told me that when his family had checked in at the main check-in counters earlier they had been told that there might be room but that they’d have to pay an additional $50 per ticket - and there were four of them.

So we all sat down to wait.

After a few minutes, the agent approached us and said there was a chance she could get us on the flight, and that we should have our IDs ready.

And a few minutes later, she came out from behind the desk and said she could get the family on the plane if they wanted, or she could put me on the flight but then there would only be room for three of them.

From my perspective, he had gotten to the desk first and had “dibs” on those seats, so I wasn’t sure why that came up.  But I guess she had noticed me there too so maybe it wasn't clear to her who was "first."

As they got up to head for the jetway, he tried to apologize to me, but I was thrilled that his family had gotten onto the flight, especially since they had two kids with them so I figured the extra two hours were a much bigger deal to the four of them than it was to me.

I sat down to wait.

Suddenly the agent beckoned to me. She had another seat for me. 26D. I grabbed my bag and my backpack and headed down the jetway, wondering how on earth I would find space for my bag, being the last one to board the plane.

But when I got on, the flight attendant told me to put my bag in one of the open first class bins, so I didn’t have to wrestle with getting it all the way to the back of the plane and it would be easy to retrieve when deplaning later.

And it turned out that the reason my seat had become available was that two people had for some reason decided to get off.

Which meant that not only did I get to fly home earlier, and stow my bag in a more convenient place, I found myself on a “full flight” in an aisle seat with nobody next to me.

Now, I’m sure there is plenty of good karma involved in this series of events.

But the point I want to make is this:

I would have been fine waiting. After all, I had expected to wait.

But I also took it upon myself to just ask, even though I didn’t have any particular expectations of the outcome.

Had I not asked, I’d have sat there for another couple of hours. And I would never have even known that I had missed an opportunity.

If you don’t ask, you aren’t very likely to get your needs or desires met. People can't read your mind.

So my question for you is...

Is there something you want or need, that you are reluctant to ask for because you just assume you can’t have it?

Because one thing’s for sure - if you don’t ask, there’s no way it’s happening.

If you don’t try, failure is guaranteed.

So if there’s something you want to ask for, but you’re a little uncomfortable about asking, decide to ask anyway, because you have nothing to lose.

And if there’s something you want to make happen, but there’s a part of you that’s scared in some way, decide to try anyway, because if you don’t try, failure is guaranteed. Because you have nothing to lose -and everything to gain.

After you do this scary thing once, the second time will be a little easier.

If you are finding it hard or scary to ask for what you need, to get started with something, or to get yourself unstuck in any way, or if you are having trouble figuring out what exactly it is that you want, message me or comment below and I'll hop on a call with you and help you figure it out.