This reminds me a lot of a part of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/). One of his biggest pieces of advice was basically "if it's worth having, it's worth asking for". This is something that is surprisingly hard to live out, but the few times that I've consciously gone out of my way to ask for something I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen his lecture have paid off very nicely for me.