Hello Reader,

Welcome to the conversation.

There's a scene in season three of Schitt's Creek that I've watched three times now and it still gets me.

John Rose, former billionaire, current resident of a motel he once would have dismissed as a punchline, has agreed to help Stevie develop partnerships for her small hotel. They visit a golf course. And John, who misses his former life with a longing he can barely contain, shows up dressed for a round. He drops hints. Elaborate, transparent, almost painful hints. The host notices. The host does not offer. John leaves deflated, waiting outside while Stevie steps back into the building for a moment.

When Stevie emerges, she has secured them a free round of golf.

John stares at her. How did you do that?

She looks at him, entirely unbothered.

I asked.

Two words. The audience laughs. And then, if you're anything like me, you sit with it for a long time afterward.

“ Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it. — Maya Angelou

From My Chair to Yours

I grew up with a 'happy life' map drawn for me. Graduate high school. Graduate college (preferably with an acceptable Major). Get married. Have a baby. Have a full, happy life. That was the full territory. Everything on it was labeled. Everything off it was uncharted, which meant, implicitly, not for me.

It wasn't that I was afraid to ask for things. It's that I couldn't fully see what was available to ask for.

Recently I've been in an AI masterclass with coaches who are building things I genuinely had not imagined. Not incremental improvements on what I already do... entirely new possibilities, alive with their makers, shared with a generosity that startled me. I found myself watching them the way John Rose stood on that golf course. Wanting something I couldn't quite name. Feeling the edges of my map.

The golf course had just appeared on it and my world expanded.

The Lens

Here's what I've come to believe: most of us aren't stopped at the ask. We're stopped much earlier.

There are three gates between where we are and what we want.

The first is visibility. Can you see the golf course? Not just intellectually -- can you see it as something available to you? The map we inherit from our families, our cultures, our professional scripts, draws the boundaries of what we believe is possible before we're old enough to question it. A contracted map produces a contracted life, not because we lack courage, but because we genuinely cannot want what we cannot see.

The second is desire. Once the golf course appears on your map, do you let yourself want it? John Rose let himself want it. He showed up dressed for it. But something stopped him at the third gate.

The third is the ask. Direct, unambiguous, Stevie-style. I want this. Will you give it to me?

Most coaching, most advice, most motivational content, lives at gate three. Be bold. Be direct. Just ask. And that's not wrong. But it's incomplete. Because for a lot of us, the real work is at gate one. The map needs expanding before the ask becomes possible.

This is where Depletion becomes relevant.

When we are running on empty, the map shrinks. Possibility contracts. We don't just stop asking. We stop seeing. The golf courses that were visible to us in our more resourced moments disappear from view. We return to the inherited script not because we believe in it, but because it's familiar, and familiar is what the Depletion stage reaches for.

The path back is not, first, courage. It is first, expansion. Exposure to what others are building. Permission to want something new. A room full of people whose aliveness reminds you that the course exists and that you are allowed to play.

Then you can work on the ask.

Then you can be Stevie.

Reflection

Three questions. One for each gate.

• What golf course has recently appeared on your map? Something you glimpsed in someone else's work or life that sparked something in you before you talked yourself out of it?
• If you let yourself want it (fully, without negotiating it down) what would that actually look like?
• What's the ask you haven't made? And what do you imagine is on the other side of making it?

Just keep going.

Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day.

-Joanna

Joanna Douglas
Conscious Leadership Coach, Speaker, Teacher Founder of Enneagram Ensight

P.S. This rewatch was prompted by the loss of Catherine O'Hara, who passed away in January at 71. She played Moira Rose with a kind of unhinged, ferocious specificity that was its own form of genius. If you tried Schitt's Creek in season one and it didn't take -- I understand, and I'd gently say: season three is where the characters crack open into something genuinely tender. It's worth the return trip. Just like most things worth having.