Asking for Success: Transform Your Life with Mark and Crystal Hansen

Hello my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Mark and Crystal, thanks for joining us today.

Our pleasure. Thank you for having us.

So happy to be here, Kwame.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Well, how about you get us started by giving us a little bit of background. Tell us about yourself and what you do.

Okay. I'm best known as the co creator of Chicken Soup to the Soul and world's best selling author. We've sold 500 million books. I've written 312 books, 59 times, number one New York Times and spoken in 80 countries to some 7 million people. And my wife.

So I'm a transformational life coach and clinical hypnotherapist. And yeah, my work is all about finding the best version of you. And you know, I just sort of see like the incredible, polished, bright shining person inside of everybody. And I love helping, you know, foster an environment that brings that out in everyone. So that's what we do. I'm an entrepreneur, author, speaker as well. We travel the world together. When we used to travel, we will again. But yeah, just teaching and teaching leadership and all kinds of things. And we've just co written our first book together called Ask the Bridge from youm Dreams to youo Destiny.

Yeah, this is very exciting. So for, for me as an aspiring lawyer, I shouldn't say aspiring author, I have a book out, another one coming out. I'm hoping to follow in your mighty footsteps there. And also from a relationship perspective, I'm, I'm married. I know a lot of folks out there have, have significant, significant others and the fact that you can spend all the time together traveling, doing business and Writing a book. Even more kudos to you. That's impressive.

Well, both of us were divorced before we got married, and I'd written down 267 ideal things. I'd asked myself, what would I like in my ideal wife? And I asked. I wrote down 267 attributes, qualities, values, characteristics. And one was that we had a. Not only love each other, we had about exactly the same values. We both wanted to travel, and we both wanted to be each other's top cheerleader. How's that?

That's fantastic. Well, great. Well, let's talk about the book Ask. Now, when you were thinking about writing this book, you've already written a lot of books. You all are very. Both of you are very accomplished in your careers. What made you write this book?

Well, we traveled, like I said, to 80 countries. And we meet wonderful people, professional people, educated people, personal. But the difference in those who have a little success and those who have vast cellular success is one thing only we discovered from our own experience and from theirs. And that is, they have the ability to ask and ask. Our subtitle is ask. The bridge from your dreams to your destiny. We believe everyone's coded a DNA and RNA at birth with a destiny. And most of us are afraid to ask. So we're saying we discovered you got to ask yourself, ask others and ask God, because you don't get what you deserve, you get what you ask for. Right?

That's fantastic. And you're absolutely right. And this is a perfect message for a negotiation podcast, too. And I know I mentioned this in my email earlier, a lot of times, people focus so much on the mechanics behind what you should do, how you should say it, almost asking for a script in certain situations, but it's more than that. And, Crystal, I know for you as a life coach and a licensed hypnotherapist, which I love, as a psychology major, I love that. Can you tell us a bit more about the psychology that holds us back when it comes to actually making that ask?

Absolutely. And I love talking about this because it really wakes people up, because, Kwame, we all came into this world perfect. We were these perfect, uncorrupted children. And, you know, as we came in as children, we weren't afraid to ask. We weren't afraid of anything. We asked for everything. We wanted to know who, what, when, where, how, why.

Right?

And we also weren't afraid to ask for more. We wanted everything right, because that was our little spirit coming to life. That is how our brains and our personalities evolve. That is how we Become all that we are meant to be is through this beautiful curiosity, through this beautiful desire to have more, to learn more, to know more, to do more. And then over time, depending on how we were parented, how our experience at school might have been. Don't call on unless you are asked for. Just be quiet, listen to me. I am authority. All this stuff that happens to us, then we, you know, jobs that we've been at where, you know, our feedback isn't really appreciated or valued, we might, it's like just do what you're told again and again and again. So just basic life's rejection starts to shut us down and it crushes that beautiful ability that we were all born with to ask. And we Mark and I said if there's one thing that we need to do, it's to bring that back for everybody. We want to foster that and bring it back because it's the most important quality that we have for our success, for our happiness, for our well being. And so when we started writing the book, we realized that there are actual roadblocks. People carry around these roadblocks to asking. And we call them the seven roadblocks to asking. And we can get into that a little bit more. But I'll let you comment about what I just said.

I love it. I think that's really great. And you've piqued my interest to the seven roadblocks to asking. Let's get into that.

Okay. Well, okay. The first one is a sense of worthiness or unworthiness. Depends on where you're at and how you're looking and what your perspective is. The next is doubt. Then obviously you've got this whole big one called naivete. And we got a great story that Crystal will tell you about that if you'd like. Then we got excuses, which a lot of people call excusology. Then you got fear and then you got pattern paralysis where you do the same thing. When I was in graduate school with Bucky Fuller, his teacher was obviously Albert Einstein. Einstein said if you keep doing the same thing and expect new results, cuckoo or crazy, you know. And then last one, number seven is disconnection. And I'll let you peer into any one of them. And I just do one other statement. When we did the book, we wrote everything we knew about asking and getting out of our own dilemmas and taking disadvantage and turning into advantage, adversity into advancement. And then number two is that we interviewed 26 superstars and then we checked it out all the universities. And asking is so critical. But so unknown, especially in negotiation, like your seminars and podcasts are.

Absolutely. And you mentioned Crystal had an interesting story about one of them, too. Right.

Well, each one is just so interesting to dive into in and of themselves. But the naivete one. Let's talk about that because. Well, first of all, let me just go back to unworthiness. Unworthiness is something that we all, I think, carry. They're just little bits of unworthiness that we're not even necessarily in touch with, but it's still controlling us at some level. Right. And it's just that unworthy worthiness piece just is constantly, like, running at the subconscious level telling us we don't deserve better or we're not quite good enough. And, you know, wherever that programming started, we need to get rid of it, and we need to go forward and ask fearlessly for everything we were made for, everything we were meant to do, everything we want and be endlessly curious. The naivete roadblock is super important in the book we wrote this story, Kwame, about how this beautiful Filipina woman who came to work for us when my daughters had babies 16 months apart. And so it was crazy at our house. And then an older son. And so she was so lovely. She would make all these beautiful dishes from her homeland, which we loved. And then one morning, she showed up with this fruit and cut it up on a plate, and she said, try this. And it was this juicy, orange, delicious fruit. And I bit into it and I go, melda, what is this? This is the best fruit I've ever tasted. And she goes, it's a mango. And I was like, how did I not ever taste a mango before? I thought I was really worldly. I traveled all through Europe. I'm like, how did I miss the mangoes? And I was, where did you get it? Thinking she must have imported it from the Philippines. And she goes, at the grocery store. And I'm like, how did I. How have I been passing the best fruit in the world at the grocery store every time I go, never knowing it exists? And I'm like, I'm. Because I'm naive. I'm naive. I was born in Idaho, where we have a lot of potatoes but no mangoes, right? And so to a degree, we're all naive, Kwame. We're raised in a certain way with our certain environment, and so we're not aware of other things. Sometimes outside of that environment, I thought, what else am I missing every day that I'm just walking past? What person am I just walking past and not connecting with who might be my greatest advocate, my new best friend, Maybe the person I'm supposed to be a partner with or my life partner. You know, all of these things that we miss because it just isn't in our realm of awareness, because we're all naive in some way, or what opportunities are we just not noticing? Because we're not even. Our brains aren't even tuned to be curious or to wonder if something's there for us. And so that kind of goes back to that piece, like rekindling that beautiful spirit we were all born with, that curiosity, that wonderment. Like, we live in this world that is so full of amazing surprises, amazing opportunities, amazing people. And if we just took the time to wonder and to look and to look deeper and to ask, you know, tell me about you, what it is about you that I need to know. And it is so beautiful because not only does it take us down our path to destiny, it bonds us to humanity. Asking is the way that we all bond together, which is super important right now more than ever.

Absolutely. Oh, this is great. So the first reason this is great is I'm a Caribbean American. So the fact that you didn't know about a mango, I'm like, how? But of course I'm biased, right? Given my upbringing. But I think this is really fascinating too, because really, what you're showing, it's not just curiosity. It's also intellectual humility. It's also the willingness to recognize, hey, I don't know everything there. I am, frankly, naive and ignorant to certain things. And for a lot of situations, I'm going to need to learn and study beforehand. But then a lot of times, when we bring it to these conversations, I'm not going to learn anything unless I am humble enough to genuinely ask you for that information.

First of all, I like what you said. And humble doesn't mean to be lowly like a worm. It actually means to be educable or approachable or coachable or teachable.

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You'd asked about how relationships work in negotiation. So her mother sent her to a seminar I was doing called author101. I won't go into that part, but at the night we're doing a VIP meeting and I've got a throng of people around me and she's on the other side and a lady inadvertently, I think inadvertently hits a glass of red wine on her white pants and I see this. I just park the seized, so to speak, run over to and grab her and say, I know where the club soda is. Will you allow me to take you out? And after we started chatting for a few minutes, I said, look, it's late at night, but couldn't. Can I ask you out to go to dinner? And she said, I'm starving, it's 9:30. And me. I said, me too, but I can't eat in a proper cage. Everyone's talked to me about two minutes how to make their book a bestseller, which I'd love to do that I want to be with you. So we get to the top restaurant in Hollywood and the line is long and $100 bill won't get you into. We walk up and the guy sees clue retrudingness just emanating out of every pore of her being and says, okay, I give up. Who is she? Now remember, we're teaching how to ask. I said, you don't recognize her? The guy's head goes on steroids, man. He's going, people magazine, Vogue, all this stuff written style. And he said, no, no, who is she? I said, now remember, we're both Danish descent. So I'm joking. And I said, she's the Queen of Denmark. He said, no, she's not. And then all of a sudden he went, oh my gosh, she is. Who are you?

That's the question.

I said, who travels with the Queen? He said, oh my God, you're the king. We were goofing, but that fast. That's how great questions are. Questions can have you pivot. Questions in the moment can help you make a life decision that'll change you. Questions are why everybody is reading this book and it's rock and ask the bridge from dreams, Jesse. And they're telling us now the other day we got 121 letters. They're saying, I don't buy one, I bought three. One for me and my spouse or life partner, business Partner, mastermind partner, church partner. And one for the libraries, because the libraries don't want to give it up, but they don't have any money because Covid's closed and done. You got to drive up to a library. So people are doing it, and we're just going, wow. I mean, it just. We're making it a new phenomena. And we're saying, look, there's an ask movement and an ask challenge. And we're saying, look, once you get the book at Amazon, just go to askthebookclub.com and we're gonna do a free seminar with you, help you to become a master asker. Because it's within the power of everyone to do it, we believe.

Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. That is really, really fantastic. And again, it just demonstrates the power of curiosity, and the listeners of the show know about the curio and the power of it. Actually, in my book, the framework I talk about all the time is the compassionate curiosity framework, because it's just so important in all of our difficult conversations. And earlier you mentioned self worth, and I think that's so important. And one of the terms that really almost has become a buzzword, but I think it's rightly gotten to that point because it's so prevalent, is imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome. Because in many ways, that is a. It's a lack of self worth because you're constantly questioning, am I worth this position? Am I worth this opportunity? And then as it relates to asking, you're afraid to ask because you're afraid that you'll be exposed as the imposter that you believe that you are. And so can you talk a little bit more about self worth imposter syndrome and how it impacts our ability to ask for what we want and desire?

Absolutely. You know, I think it really goes back to the ask yourself part and ask God, because like Mark said, we say there are three channels through which to ask, ask yourself, ask others, and ask God. And so before you get to that point where you're really comfortable asking others, because all of those are equally important, but you really need to spend some time with yourself and ask, you know, whatever your beliefs are spiritually. I just think having that connection to all of creation and understanding, you're an important part of it, and you are a part of it. And so your ability is unlimited, your potential is unlimited. But the ask yourself part, you know, it really goes back to taking that time with yourself because you can't figure out what direction to go until you know where you are. So we say there are, like, three critical phases to the asking yourself part. And the first critical phase is, where am I now? Because you need to start getting. Getting real with yourself, okay? If there are things that are holding you back, you need to come clear. You need to ask yourself those questions. Where am I now? Am I comfortable about who I am? Am I confident in going after? Are there withholds? What is the origin of those withholds? What is that one thing that might be holding me down? Is it attached to an experience, an event? And am I still allowing that baggage to hold me to the ground and not let me lift off? You know, when we start doing the ask yourself part and start doing those deep, probing questions, those reflective questions, then we. It just is so critical to setting our foundation in place so we can move forward. So it's really. That first critical phase is ask. Ask yourself is where am I now? And being really gut honest about that, and then where do I want to be? It strikes me. I'm always amazed, Kwame, at how few people take the time with themselves to contemplate these things. They don't. They just get caught up in life and keep going with the momentum of life instead of stopping, slowing down, and taking that absolutely precious time with themselves to say, where do I want to be? What do I really want out of my life? And where do I see myself? Because we have to get that vision for ourselves before anything is going to move forward, before anything is going to change. If you just keep following the momentum, you are probably not going to end up where you want to be, and you are probably not going to end up being the full expression of all that you were created to be. So Mark and I always say, when you are asking that middle critical phase, like, where do I want to be? Ask it. We are challenging you to see. Start from the nth degree of your perfect vision for yourself. Start there. What is my perfect vision for myself in my career? And then ask the questions backwards. You know, who am I talking to every day? What is the specific influence I'm having over the people? Or what products am I selling every day? And why is that making a difference? Or who's using those products? And in that way, as you start to get the vision and then ask the questions backwards, you literally can create, basically engineer, your perfect life. And that goes for relationships. You know, same thing with relationships. Imagine your perfect relationship. I can't tell you how many times I meet with people, and all they do are, you know, they repeat the same terrible relationships over and over again. Because that's what they're holding in their vision. That's what they've always had. Maybe that vision, maybe that type of relationship has been modeled for them. And so they don't even realize they're falling into that. Asking the right questions in the right way is what will break you out of that. And that's why we're saying, ask yourself, ask others, ask God. And we have so many questions in the book that will guide you through some of these things, you know, but this asking journey is the most important journey you'll ever take. And so we're really challenging people to do it. And then the third part of that three critical phases is where am I now? Where do I want to be? And what specific action do I need to take to get there? Because we live in this physical, material reality. So we're going to need, as we get these breakthroughs. And I promise you, you will, when you start asking these questions, you'll suddenly go, I got the solution. Or you'll get an idea, or you'll get an illumination. Then you need to take action. It's time to take action. Pick up the phone and call that person who just popped into your mind that you haven't thought about in 10 years or something that you see that comes in front of you, act on it. And in this way you're going to start to see everything change in your life in the most really miraculous way.

Right?

Oh, this is great. This is great. Because again, I agree with the fact that most people don't take the time to go through this introspective process. First reason is because it's painful. Sometimes it's really uncomfortable to look within yourself and figure out some of these things. Because you're looking for truth, not comfort. Because sometimes the truth can give you large amount of discomfort. Right. But it's. We need to recognize that and fully understand the discrepancy between where we are and where we want to go. Then it brings clarity to us then, because now we understand what actions we need to take in order to do that, to get to where we want to go. And that's what I really love about this approach, is because it's action oriented.

Yes.

We spend some time in the introspective process looking inside of ourselves and doing a little bit of spiritual reflection as well. But then once we're done with that, then we take action. And I think a lot of times people forget that last part because we like to over intellectualize things and procrastinate and really procrastination especially in these cases, is nothing more than a manifestation of fear. We're coming up on time now, but again, I want to give you an opportunity to let the listeners know about the book and where they can get it.

Yeah, so best place is Amazon, of course, with all the crazy shutdowns and different things. But yeah, just Amazon.com, it's in every form, so you can get it. It's a beautif hardcover book if you want the book. But I'm a book person, so I love to hold the book, but also an audiobook and in Kindle. And yeah, once you buy it, just we'd love for you to join the book club so you can get an invitation by going to askthebookclub.com. love to see you there. And yeah, we just want to create a giant asking movement where people feel empowered and comfortable to be their best by taking this asking journey.

That's fantastic. Well, thank you again and listeners, too. I'm going to ask you all for something. A challenge for all of you is to ask for something. I'm sure you were probably listening to this episode and saying, you know what I should ask for, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's the chance. Go ahead and ask for that thing if it's on your heart and mind, and let us know. And let us know what happened. So I appreciate both of you. Crystal, Mark, thank you for coming on the show today.

Our pleasure. Thank you.

Kwame, wonderful time with you. Thanks for all you do.

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