Can You Easily Ask For Help?

I am making a request this week for reviewers for my book and it got me thinking about asking for help…something I generally am not great at. I’m getting better (having realised that life is way easier when I do ask for help and that just as I love to be helpful, so does everyone else!), but I’m still more comfortable with just doing it myself. I know many of us struggle with asking for help, so I asked friends on Facebook what they struggled with in asking for help.

Here are some of the common reasons we don’t ask for help that came up:

Britishness. Also known as ‘not wanting to bother’.

I get it. I’ve done it. Even when actually doing the dreaded ask, one doesn’t wish to be a nuisance. I once asked my friend to pick me up from the airport in such a convoluted and bowing and scraping way that she thought I was going to ask her for a kidney! When I finally (after much “if you’re not busy” and “if you don’t mind” and “could I pretty please ask a HUGE favour”), she gave me an exasperated look and said ‘of course’.

Had she asked the same thing in the same way, I’d have responded the same way too. And how often have you said to friends (or perhaps had friends say to you) “why didn’t you ask me…?!” Friendship involves helping one another out. It is lovely to be able to help a friend. I am a super helpful person, and I’m sure you are too…so let other people have the fun of helping you out. They can always say no, right? And if they do say no, don’t take it personally or think you can never ask anything else…maybe they just can’t help this time – next time maybe they can.

Not wanting to appear ‘weak’

This is a funny (peculiar) one, because lots of us want to appear ‘strong’…but why can we not accept that we are human? Humans are strong and weak and wise and stupid and every contradiction you can come up with! Some days we are the ones leading the way, some we are the ones following behind. That’s just life.

Plus, asking for help is NOT a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of wisdom! It is wisdom to see and to know that you cannot do it all alone. It is wisdom to get advice and assistance from others. Otherwise you could be lost in the underbrush for hours, hacking your way through dense foliage with an axe…when someone you know could point you to a path! That’s not strength, that’s foolishness. Do the strong thing, the wise thing, the vulnerable, human thing…ask for help!

Control freakery/independence/sheer bloody-mindedness

Ahem. This one is possibly one of my biggest reasons for not asking for help. I can do it. I can do it. I bloody well will do it. Even if it takes me 1000 years and makes me cry in frustration. Which has happened a few times over the years. And all could be avoided if I simply asked for help. Facepalm. As I said above, it is not a sign of strength to not ask for help. It is stupidity. It is making your life way harder than it needs to be. It is not helpful! Just think of all those things you could also be doing if only you allowed others to help?!

And if you believe that you can do it best…you may be right, but is it also something you love to do? And what if you’re wrong and someone else could actually do it better? #justsayin Loosen the control freak reins and let other people help…you might even find it’s a GOOD thing to get help! OK, maybe other people don’t do it the way you would, or the way you think they should…but maybe their way will do??? And if not, how will they ever learn if you won’t let them practice and get better? (My answer whenever anyone says they’re not good at some chore and using it as an excuse not to do it…practice makes perfect!)

Don’t know who to ask/where to get the help I need

At the risk of pointing out the bleeding obvious here: ask for help to find the help you need! Sometimes you just don’t know what and who people know that could help you out. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought to myself “I don’t know anyone who can…” and struggled on alone – to then find out that someone I know (sometimes someone I’m really good friends with!) could have helped me.

That’s the thing with asking for help, it’s not always a direct ask…sometimes it’s a “do you know anyone who…?” or “do you know anything about…?” If all else fails, there’s Auntie Google and your Spiritual Team…you can always ask them! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked my Spiritual Team to help me find a resource and it’s practically fallen into my lap! My favourite being the time I was looking for a particular item and my friend on facebook happened to post about her new sideline…selling said item! Classic. And I would never have thought to ask her, because I had no idea that’s what she was doing.

Feeling unable to repay the favour

This is an interesting one – because those who worry about some kind of ‘favour tally’ are usually those who will help quite happily without any thought of repayment (or those who won’t do anything for anyone if there’s nothing in it for them). Karma balances out eventually. It may not be ‘tit for tat’, but it may be that you help someone today, and that someone helps someone else, and so on…until one day, years down the line, that chain of helpfulness comes back to you.

I genuinely believe that the more helpful I am to others, the more help I get (that’s not the reason I’m helpful though…I just am!). And it may not be (and probably won’t be, in fact) from the person I’ve helped. It doesn’t matter. What goes around comes around. I don’t keep a tally of the people I’ve helped so I can call in the debt some time in the future…generosity doesn’t work that way. Maybe we got this from too many mob-related programs on TV…but in the real world, people are nice and want to help. Let them be generous to you, as you are generous to others.

I don’t get the help I ask for so I don’t bother asking

Hey listen, I know I just said people are nice and want to help…but some people just want to take. And sometimes you ask for help and people don’t help. But please don’t let that stop you asking for help! Let it help you get discerning about the help you ask for, and who you ask for that help. Sometimes people want to help but don’t know how (and rather than ask, they just hope it’ll go away!); sometimes people fully intend to help, but forget; sometimes they just can’t help right now for some reason.

Don’t let the actions of a few who could not or would not (or forgot to) help stop you asking for the help you need and deserve.

And what about those who find it easy to ask for help?

None of them replied…but I know they do exist, I’ve met some of them. They believe that people will say no if they don’t want to help; they have the self-confidence to make that ask; they don’t take the ‘no’ personally; if one person doesn’t help (even if they said they would), they go ask someone else; they are willing to ask “who do you know who could help with X?”; they don’t worry about the ‘repayment’ because they know what goes around comes around; and they have the self-worth to know that they don’t need to struggle on alone.

What do you need to work on to be able to ask for help easily? What stops you asking for help? And what do you need help on this week? I dare you to go make the ask (and keep asking til you get the help you need!) My request is below…HELP!

Related Posts