“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
My wife and I recently had our first child and he’s a handful. We’ve only gotten through early parenthood because of family help, particularly my mother-in-law who stayed for 2.5 weeks after our son’s birth. What surprised me was not only did her help get us over the early hump, but she treasured those 2.5 weeks and was overjoyed to chip in. In this case, her help was a true win-win! We desperately needed it and providing it made my mother-in-law incredibly happy.
If help can be a win, why don’t we ask for it more often?
Because asking for help is tough. I’ve struggled with it in the past and asking for help requires me to open up and admit “Here’s problem Y. I haven’t solved it by myself. Can you help me?”. This can make me feel like a failure and almost worse, a burden on others and dependent on them to solve my problem. A common refrain I’ve heard from friends with similar issues is “I don’t want to bother you with that”.
The past few weeks have helped me realize how pervasive and backwards this thinking is. Asking for help isn’t a burden on others, but a courageous act. We’re being vulnerable about our struggles and sharing them out loud is incredibly hard to admit.
More importantly for most of my friends who say “I don’t want to bother you with that”, it’s not a bother at all!! I want to have the opportunity to help my friends and supporting them brings me immense joy. This is true in reverse, and my mother-in-law’s experience helped elucidate this even further. In her case, if we didn’t ask for her help we would have robbed her of the opportunity to share kindness and supporting our family in a way that brought her immense joy.
So my simple realization is I need to ask for help more often. Not only is help from others often the fastest way to solve my problem, but more often than not others are overjoyed to provide it. Helping someone else brings intrinsic rewards to yourself and makes it a “win-win transaction”. Just like I want my friends to “bother me with that” I need to do the same and ask for help whenever I’m on the fence.
My reminders about how to ask for help:
- When I’m flailing with life and I don’t know what to do → Chat with a close friend about my issues. Talking through it can help crystallize things
- When I’m overwhelmed with a specific problem (ex: kid won’t sleep through the night) → Ask friends + family who have been in same situation for advice about anything that helped them
- When I can’t solve something by myself (ex: moving apartment furniture) → Make a clear ask to friends + family about what my problem is, what it’s stopping me from completing it, and how they can help me