Help - do you love it or hate it?
We all love to give but often find accepting help difficult. It is said that the most successful business people are the ones who know their limitations, understand what they do not know themselves and hire people to do the things they are not good at. This is something we should all be applying to our lives. What do you not know? What are you not good at? Where in your life do you need help?
Sometimes it is little things we need help with and sometimes it is major life changes. So where do you stand on accepting help? Do you love to help others? What does it feel like when you want to help, know you will make a difference and your help is not accepted? Turn that feeling around and realise that this is what you are doing to others when you insist on going it alone.
I love to help but I am learning balance. There was a time in my life I would drop everything to help someone. While this sounds like a good thing, I was forgetting to put myself first, at least some of the time, and draining my energy way too much. Over the years, I had a hard lesson to learn...people will love me (or not!) regardless of what I do for them. My self esteem does not need to be dependent on whether I help someone (or indeed whether I am seen to help someone). Given the nature of my business, which is effectively helping people to change their lives, I am very glad I learned this lesson first.
On the other side on the coin, receiving help, there are so many ways to look at it. In some instances, we need to be able to stand on our own two feet and be independent. I have this struggle this week with my son. He is about to start exams and the mother in me would love to be able to take away the stress of that for him. Not that I can do much about it, my knowledge of engineering is pretty slim! Part of me would like to wrap him up in bubble wrap so his life is easy but that would be doing him a huge disservice since he is very capable.
We also need to be able to ask for help when we need it. I experienced this last night when my mother got really confused. She called me from her nursing home completely convinced that she was in a hotel and had no money. She was appallingly distressed. I am learning when I need to drop everything to help her and when to let it go. Yesterday was one of those times, I knew she needed to see me. I was extremely lucky as my husband immediately offered to drive me across and help. He was amazing. Of course, I could have gone alone but having him with me to talk to and not having to worry about driving made an enormous difference. I look at a past version of myself and realise how that Lucy would have felt she needed to go alone and not disturb him or that I was being a nuisance. I would have messed up my peace of mind and also stopped James from giving me the gift of his presence when I needed it so badly. Luckily we were able to calm her down and the nurses in the home are taking wonderful care of her.
Community is a big part of life and it is important to engage with other people and allow yourself to be vulnerable, no matter how scary it is. We had an elderly family friend who suffered from dementia before she died. She prided herself on her independence and because of this became virtually impossible to help when her life was getting difficult. I became the only person she trusted so I had to do everything for her, regardless of the fact that she wa lucky enough to have about seven or eight close friends who were only to willing to help. It made me look at my life and see how I was going down the same path. There was also the added bonus that I had to accept help at the same time as I finally realised I could not do it all alone. I was also blessed to have some amazing friends.
It is hard to get the balance right, when do we help and when do we let it go? When to we ask for and accept help and when do we do it ourselves? Only we can know. Connecting with your heart by putting your hands on it and breathing in and out of your heart is a great way to clear your thinking. Next time you think you need help and are resisting it, stop long enough to take a few deep breaths and then make the decision. Your thinking will clear as you reset your stress levels with the heart connection and the deep breathing.
Of course, I always recommend modern energy tapping for all situation! Learn how to do it easily in my FREE Marvellous Mornings mini course!
If you want to know more detail about heart focused breathing, check out my blog from a few weeks ago here.
Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash
