Is There A Place I Need To Ask For Help?

Questions have power! 32 Questions: A Personal Quest Through Questions is my book. This is your invitation to engage with important questions to ask yourself. This week is all about Question #9 in 32 Questions: Is there a place in my life that I need to ask for help and let someone in? Asking for help can be really hard. Yet I’m rarely disappointed by the results when I do ask for help. We are made to help and support each other. Most theories of human development (leadership development and even wisdom development) include the importance of moving from dependence to independence and ultimately to interdependence. Dependence = I can’t do this myself, I need you to help me.Independence = I can do this myself. Interdependence = I could do this myself, but with your help, it would be better and we all will be stronger. The thing with human development is we can get stuck or stagnated at any stage. Independence seems to be one of those “sticky” stages of growth. Our culture places a high value on independence. What if we came to value interdependence more than independence? What if we valued asking for help more than going it alone? After all, independence seems to be much more of an illusion that interdependence. Think about your last salad. You might have independently prepared it, but how many hands helped get that salad to you? Someone planted the seeds, others watered and tended the crop. It was harvested, sorted, packaged, transported, shelved, and scanned. A simple salad passed through oh, so many hands before you prepared it for your lunch. Asking for help with a problem is practicing the strength of interdependence. Sometimes the thought of asking for help is hard. I tell myself things like, “I can figure this out on my own. It is not that important, other people have bigger problems, on and on it goes.” The thing is when someone asks me for help, I never think “oh they could have done this themselves, or this is not a big deal.” I’m always happy to help. Finding helpers when we are stuck is like infusing new energy and wisdom into whatever problem has us stumped. The helper will undoubtedly see our problem with fresh eyes and with a new angle that we may have overlooked. When we are stewing on a problem it is easy to slide into patterns of framing and seeing the issue in the same way. We tell ourselves a story about our problem and then we stay pretty true to that story. Helpers may hear our story and offer us possibilities where we have convinced ourselves there are only brick walls. Our lives are such an intricate web of interdependence maybe it’s time we lean into what is already there? The other part of this question reminds us that we don’t need to let everyone in. It is about finding the right people. Not everyone is the right person to help with a problem or walk with us on a journey. We get to be strategic and thoughtful about the people that help us along our path. Sometimes too many voices are just too many voices, which become confusing and not helpful. Is there a place in your life that you need to ask for help or let someone in? Where do you need some help? Who do you need to ask? Enter your email to subscribe– It’s only ever used to notify you of new questions from The Art of Powering Down.

The post Is There A Place I Need To Ask For Help? appeared first on The art of powering down.