HELP
Asking for help is the hardest thing for a human being to do. For some people, they are helpless because they are on the other end of the spectrum. They never learn to do anything for themselves. What I am focusing on is the person who pridefully says, I can do this on my own. I don’t need to ask anyone because I should be able to do this without help. They continue to argue with themselves and say, “Hey if I ask for help then I am less of a person and I am not as good as someone else.” News flash - there are people better than you. I have come to accept my own moderate level of mediocrity. There are things on the bell curve of my life that I am on the high achieving end but for the most part these are flashes of brilliance amongst the dullness of waning bulbs. Yet, I have learned to ask for help. A myth about asking for help is that the asker is really suggesting that the helper become a surrogate. In East Asian cultures people work together because they do not expect people to know everything. They infuse the culture with a teacher student master cycle which allows for mistakes and instruction. Western culture infuses a unyielding pride in the idea that only ask for help to fix a problem but never ever submit to a relationship that might require subservience. This is an interesting paradox in a nation of Christians. I thank God that I can ask help from my mentor. He is my teacher and I am incredible grateful for his time, patience and attention when I ask for help. I need to ask for help more often so that I can be at the high end of the bell curve. AH
Mike on 09 Jun 2008 at 1:00 pm #
It is cool when you can ask for help, especially from someone that you know wont look down on you.. I think thats the problem, people are so afraid of what others think.. I have a mentor i know i could always ask for help.. but i dont, I should do so more often, i know he would do whatever he could to help no matter how big or small..
Cris on 09 Jun 2008 at 8:10 pm #
Asking for help is truly difficult, in our culture thats not the way people think it works, for some reason most people think rich people become successful on their own, whether thats just getting a better job or actually being financialy free. When in fact its from asking for help, “do you know anyone looking to hire” or “can you teach me what you did to become successful”? Remember that saying its not what you know but who you know? Well I would take that a step further and also say its who you ask for help. We build each other up, knowing that investing time into someone is the greatest gift you could give. No matter how big or small, ex; when I was 16 working at a fast food joint, the manager once said to me “have you ever thought about being a physcial therapist? I bet you’d make a good one”, Nothing more was said and I just took it in, well that person invested in me, and that turned out to be the reason I went to college, and stuck it out to graduate and worked 5 years in a physical therapy clinic.