Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about how to ask for help. This is an interesting topic because maybe we never really thought about it before. So asking for help, did you ever have a situation where you asked for help and somebody gave you an answer that maybe wasn't very accommodating, like they obviously didn't wanna help, or maybe they hesitated and so forth, and maybe at that moment, maybe you took a little offense to that. I can tell you my experience. I've been very sensitive in this area. I have to tell on myself a little bit. I'll share in terms of nursing. This is, this is my philosophy about helping. When I was a, I'm a registered nurse. I am a registered nurse, and when I was working on the floor taking care of patients, I worked with the Licensed Practical Nurses, the LPNs. Who part of their practice is they're not, they can't do certain things. Very few, but most of the things they can do the same as the RNs. But there are a few things that you have to be an RN in order to do. One of those things is to give a IV push medication, which means that you inject medication right into the patient's iv. They're intravenous line right into their body. And the LPNs actually have to come and ask the RN. To do their IV pushes if they have any for their patients. And I remember that whenever an LPN would come and ask me to do that, I would be very sensitive to that and I would stop what I was doing and I would say, okay, I'll be right there. And I would go do it because I was very sensitive that that person was not able to do their job without help. So how does this relate in how to ask for help? One of the things that I've noticed is that when we ask for help, we are in a position of needing something or we are in a a lower power position. So one aspect that I am gonna recommend before asking for help, see if you can do it yourself. The reason for that is that if I do have to ask for help, I want it to be that I'm asking for help about the situation not asking for help for me. I hope that makes sense. What I'm saying is sometimes when we ask for help, I might be feeling a little bit helpless. I might be feeling a little bit confused. I might be feeling a little bit shaky, and I want somebody else to make me feel stable. So one of the things that I suggest is when you're going to ask for help. Try yourself first so that when I'm coming in I already come in with some information. Yeah, I tried to do it already, but I can't seem to figure it out. Can you gimme a hand? The second principle, it's just my contemplation of this because I've been hurt a lot of times, felt hurt a lot of times when I was in a position that I needed help and the person was not helping me. So first thing is try to do it yourself. Second thing is make it about the activity, not about you. This is important and you can do it when you, how you ask. So you can say, excuse me, so and so, I've been working on this and I've run into a snag. Do you have any information about this or do you have any expertise in this area that you could share with me that would be a big help? You see the language I'm using? Do you have any expertise in this area that you could share with me, that would be a big help. It's very important when we're asking for help that we're not talking about me. I'm not saying you are helping me. What I'm trying to do in this episode is I'm trying to give some suggestions so that we don't end up disappointed when people don't help us or people don't act like they're so happy to help us. There's a lot of times where I have come up to people or felt like I needed help and the person was not there to help, and it's been very devastating. So some of these things I've used in my own life to try to build myself up a little bit so that if I do ask for help or I use certain language that I'm not taking it personally. The third thing is to realize that whenever you approach somebody to help you or to help with a situation, you are actually giving them an opportunity to do something. You are giving them an opportunity to help. They may or may not do it, but if I understand that I am actually giving something, I'm not begging. This is the consciousness that I would like everybody to get rid of. This consciousness of begging. I'm not begging anybody for anything. Just because I don't understand something doesn't mean I'm begging. The good news is nowadays we have access to the internet and we have access to different things, and ai, even now. So many, many times we'll be able to figure it out ourselves, but there are times where you still need to reach out perhaps. So this third thing, you are actually giving somebody a chance to do something to help to do some good karma maybe, or share their expertise. So I have an example of. A situation where I clearly knew that I was trying to give somebody an opportunity, but they didn't wanna do it. So I was working with this person at work and we were in a small department and I was doing all the administrative work and all the education work and so forth. And every once in a while I would offer for the other person, do you wanna do this? Would you like to do that? And the person be like, no, no, no. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. I'm like, okay. I didn't take it personally, but I felt a little bit, it was a little unfortunate I felt, but the person had a choice is no problem, but they were missing out on the opportunity. Sometimes we see when we're asked to do something or when there's a call to action, we see it as a burden and not an opportunity. When we come to ask somebody for help, we're actually giving them an opportunity to do something positive, which is good for them. So we're doing them a favor. We have to keep that in mind 'cause sometimes we think that we're, you know, we're like in a begging position. The other thing is that, like I said, we have YouTube and DIY, do it yourself and all this. So there's a lot of help out there that we don't have to ask somebody. The final thing I put here is don't create any accounts with anyone. So what is an account? Here's the example. When my son was younger, you know how like when you have kids, you start to become a little friendly with some of the parents, 'cause the kids get to be friends and then you have to do play dates and you're doing this and that, and then you become friendly with the parents. So one day the kids were staying over and the kids were coming to play and the kids were doing this and that. And, and the lady who was the mother of the son who was playing with my son, she said, well, you know, you should have your son come over because my son comes over so much. And I said, listen, there's no account. There's no account. I'm giving what I wanna give, and you give what you wanna give. There's no account. Now, that's not to say that in any relationship, if you feel like you are giving a lot more than the other person, based on the understanding of the relationship, we were just acquaintances. You know, there was no real obligation there, but there are other relationships that have a more of an obligation, right? Where you can have an expectation or more of a understanding that both people are supposed to give this much energy. And if one person is giving all the energy and the other person doesn't care, then yeah, maybe that's not gonna work. But in this case, no account. You give as much as you want. I give as much as I want. Actually, that attitude is very, very powerful and very helpful 'cause it frees everybody up. There's no need to think, oh, I feel bad because they gave me something. And other, the other thing I was thinking of was gifts. Some people like to give gifts, some people like to, but I really don't feel. Like it's a good idea to feel obligated. So in this episode we're talking about asking for help, but also on the other side, if somebody asks you for something, you shouldn't feel obligated. You don't have to do it. It's okay. It might be an opportunity for you, you do it or you don't do it. But you see how like in all these scenarios, everybody is responsible for themselves. And I think that's kind of the bottom line. The reason I did this episode, like I said, is because so many times my feelings were hurt when I really felt like they should have helped me, or they should have said this or done this, because I felt like I needed something. In other episodes, I was talking about how important it is to get in touch with our own needs. If I know what I need and if I know how I feel, then I can be responsible for that. It is very easy for us to have a feeling or a need, and then wish somebody would do something to take care of that need or to give me something, and what if they say no, that I'm devastated, right? I spent much of my life feeling devastated because I wasn't getting my needs met or I wasn't getting what I thought I deserved or things like that. These are things, these are feelings that we can resolve in ourself. It's funny, I was just talking about asking for help, but it's really also about our needs, how we deal with them, our feelings. Do I make others responsible? The good thing about asking for help is it's usually about a situation. And so the advice here is to make it about the situation. Try it yourself first. Make it about the situation with your language. No accounts. Realize that you are giving them an opportunity so you don't have to feel bad if they say no, they just said no. It has nothing to do with you personally. But at the end of the day, what we want to be able to feel is respect for ourselves, maintain our respect in our relationships. Let people say, yes, no, do whatever, but that doesn't mean that I can't get my needs met or that I don't deserve or that I can't find help. If this one won't help maybe I can go to somebody else. That's something I really had to learn, is that if the person that I'm going to isn't gonna help, I shouldn't get frustrated right away. I mean, oh my goodness. There was such an expectation. Think about all the times you call customer service. I don't know if you have this expectation, but I have the ex had the expectation that I'm gonna pick up the phone, somebody's gonna get on the phone, they're gonna solve the problem. Does that happen anymore? I mean, I'm getting bounced to this and this and this, and I'm spending an hour on the phone. Like I called the health insurance one time. It was like a two day thing before it got resolved. We spent an hour on the phone, then she had to call me back because the office was closed and blah, blah, blah. It's amazing. So if I feel shaky inside and these things happen and this one can't help me, and this one's not how it's not getting resolved. I can feel very upset inside. It was very important to feel stable, to understand that the circumstances, the people are not responsible for making me feel more stable or for even fixing the problem. They're not really responsible, so I can remain stable. We have another situation at work. I'll give this as a last example. One of my colleagues is retiring and they made a mistake with her information, so the patients were calling her at home because they messed up the phone number and she had to come in and deal with that, and I could hear that she was frustrated and I could hear her correcting herself too. At first she was very frustrated because the person that she called it didn't seem like they were going to be able to fix the problem, and I think that's what she expected. I think she expected it to be fixed because it was wrong and this is not right and it needs to be fixed, and that person wasn't able to fix it. And you could see my colleague was kind of calming down when she, I guess I'm making this up, but it seemed to me that she was realizing that it wasn't gonna get resolved. That she needs to maintain her own composure and be able to get through the situation. So when we're asking for help, don't expect, maybe it won't get resolved in one conversation, maybe it will. But I should be able to maintain my dignity and my self-respect and my composure regardless of what's happening, right? So I'll leave it there. I hope that gave you some food for thought, maybe talked about this phenomenon in life, right? How we deal with these things maybe in a different way than you've heard before, and maybe some tips to handle it and maintain your own stability. So remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
