Practical Tips for Asking For Help

Evaluate the Payoffs and the Price-Tagsn1.None of us behaves in a certain way (not asking for help) without pay-offs. But when the price-tags become greater than the payoffs, we may decide to change or tweak our behavior.
Some of the payoffs for not asking for help are: approval and admiration, singular control, career enhancement, self-confidence.
But the price tags you’re paying for not asking are:
No backup support, no sense of belonging, not getting needs met, stress, burnout, fatigue an/or illness, begin to feel people are expecting more than you can deliver

Take Charge, Not Controln2.We feel like we lose control when we ask for help. Looking at control in a different way can help you with this. There’s a difference between taking charge and taking control. Taking charge is knowing what you can control and what you can’t. Taking control is trying to control everything out of fear. When we take charge, we realize that it’s a practical matter to ask for help.

Birds of a Feathe
3.Do you hang around with others who can’t ask for help? Maybe you’re supporting each other in that Super-Mom thing. Identify friends who can ask for help and balance your friendships. We learn a lot from just observing others.

Change your belief
4. Change the Belief you have that “asking for help is a weakness”! When you put new behavior behind “asking for help is a strength” you realize that asking for help is a gift to the other person, that it’s a balanced exchange as you help and are helped.

Learn a Second Language –( How to ask for help)
5. “ People support what they help create” so you’ll have a better chance of acceptance if you include the other person in your request.
Example: Can we put together a time that we could talk about what you’ve learned about……
Would you be willing to educate me about……
Would it work for you to………

Doing Everything All By Ourselvesn6. We take a lot of pride in being able to pull this off, but what is happening as a result? We’re stressed out, not able to ever enjoy life, certainly not balanced, thinking about that to-do list that is depending on us, and us alone. It becomes overwhelming and leads to burnout and illness.
Would trading in the pride for a little support and help relieve the stress and raise our feeling of worthiness at the same time?

It's Become a Habitn7.We’ve become conditioned to our situation. We need to stop and realize what we’re doing to ourselves.
Remember the story of the frog that was put in boiling water and jumped out. But put into clod water and the temperature raised, he boiled. I think that’s a great example of what we do when we take everything on, all by ourselves, unable to ask for help. The world gets busier, technology more complicated. We’re too rushed to catch our breath, much less ask for help. We need to stop and look at what we’re doing to ourselves.

Peggy Collinsnwww.helpisnotafourletterword.com
peggy@peggycollinsspeaker.com

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