If You Don't Ask, You Don't Get:The Abundance Lesson I Needed Most

I have a confession to make.

Last year, on the Trailblazer stage, I listened to Amiee Parker from W by ATB Financial say something so simple it almost knocked me sideways: if you don't ask, you don't get.

And I realized, sitting right there in that room, that I had been doing the opposite.

I had journals. Beautiful, meaningful Daily Joy Journals that people genuinely wanted. And I had been quietly steering people away from them because I was afraid to sell out. I was protecting a scarcity that hadn't even arrived yet. I was so busy guarding what I had that I forgot to believe more was possible.

That moment on the Trailblazer stage cracked something open.

I went home and asked myself the question I ask every client: where are you letting fear of not enough keep you from calling in more than enough? And the answer was sitting right there on a shelf in a pile of journals I was too scared to sell.

What Asking Actually Looks Like

I made an appointment with Karissa, my contact in corporate wealth. She referred me to Gagan. Gagan met with me, truly listened, and told me that she and ATB believed in me and would be more than happy to support whatever I needed. I walked out of that meeting with a line of credit that let me order journals in a quantity that actually makes sense for a growing business.

Here is the part the story doesn't always tell: asking is not the same as grasping. It is not desperation. It is not lack dressed up in confidence. Real asking comes from a place of knowing your value and being willing to let the world meet it. That is abundance thinking in action, and it is a practice!

The Moment the Story Came Full Circle

Here is where it gets good.

The same week I got the line of credit and placed the journal order, Melanie from ATB reached out to ask if I would deliver a Joy Session seminar for their Corporate Finance Day of Learning. It gets better! They wanted to gift everyone with a Leadership Edition of The Daily Joy Journal. The journals that existed because ATB had believed in me financially. Delivered into a room of ATB financial professionals. HOW WILD IS THAT!?

I know deep down this is not a coincidence. That is what happens when you stop shrinking and start asking. Abundance, like Joy, is an energy. And when you believe in the possibilities, they begin presenting themselves to you.

And so is receiving.

Most of us have been conditioned to deflect. To say "oh it was nothing" or "I just got lucky" or to immediately start wondering if we deserve what just showed up. Receiving is its own kind of courage. It means standing in the moment when something good arrives and letting it actually land — not shrinking from it, not explaining it away, not immediately pivoting to the next ask before you've even felt this one.

When Gagan said ATB believed in me, I had to let that in. Really let it in. That is where the magic lives.

The Question Underneath the Question

This story is really about something deeper than business strategy. It is about where in your life you have been living in lack. Where you have been staying in a smaller version of your life to avoid the vulnerability of wanting more. Where you have been standing at the edge of abundance and stepping back because it felt safer to stay in scarcity?

JOY IS ABUNDANCE. Joy lives in the version of you who walks into the room and says, here is what I have, here is what I need, and I am ready to receive what comes next.

You already have more courage than you think. The ask is just the first step in letting yourself have what you are already ready for.

Where Are You Not Asking?

I invite you to sit with this. Not in a way that makes you feel bad about the scarcity you may be experiencing, but in a way that opens a door.

Is it the raise? The collaboration? The help at home? The boundary you have been putting off? The program you have been circling but not committing to? The thing you want to build but haven't told anyone about yet?

Wherever it is, I want to offer you the same thing Amiee offered that room of people on stage: if you don't ask, you don't get.

And you, my friend, deserve to get.

Xj Jillian