Knowing When To Ask For Help...

So, here’s the thing. Knowing when to ask for help can be tricky, and this is true for the many ways we can need it. Whether in business, and accepting when it’s time to hire more onto your team (YAY!) or in your personal life, if you’re needing support around the house or additional support from a medical team, asking for what you’re NEEDING can be a tough mountain to climb.

But looking at it from the flip side is key: in what ways are you NOT asking for help negatively impacting your life? For us, we feel the effects of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm physically in our bodies. We feel it emotionally. Which leads everyone around us to feel it emotionally, too.

It would be so easy for us to say, “When you start to feel like (insert emotion here), that’s your trigger to seek help.” But come on, we know all too well that it’s not how it works, and we’re JUST as guilty for this. But we also like to think that in our moments of clarity, we will reach out for help.

Here are just a few ways we did this year, and hopefully, one or two might resonate with you and encourage you to seek whatever help you need.

We tried therapy, both individually and couples therapy. We spent the first quarter doing virtual individual therapy, and while we didn’t stick with it, we did get some helpful nuggets of insight. Our viewpoint on therapy is this: everyone can benefit from it and should be in it. We don’t view it as a negative thing, rather you’re just looking to improve yourself or repattern some not-so-great habits. Whether you agree or not, that’s fine, this is just our opinion. This brings us to couples therapy. We met someone mid-year who was telling us how she and her partner set therapy sessions as date nights! They go and have their session, then go for dinner and spend time together, but it’s been a way for them to reconnect and repattern some habits. We really loved this viewpoint and went ahead and scheduled a session. While we think this might take some time to adjust to, the benefits are definitely obvious.
We delegated minor work tasks. We talk about this often but it is still extremely difficult to do, especially when there are very specific ways in which you like things done. But we’ve embraced video tutorials and have been delegating some time-sucking tasks over the last few months, which have made a great difference. Even if you don’t think you’re ready for a consistent VA, having someone for 5ish hours per month is just the perfect recipe.
Lastly, the other major way we’ve learned to ask from help is from ourselves. We’re learning to re-establish boundaries and allowing ourselves permission to say “no”. This can be insanely hard to do, especially when you’re still growing your business, but taking on anything and everything will only make you resent your business. This is probably the one we’re most proud of for this year and will continue to work on.

One of the books we read often with Remi is this silly book called “I Am Helpful” and it talks about the ways in which this girl, probably around 10, is helpful as her family welcomes a new baby (in addition to her twin brothers). It goes on about how she can help them and that not only helps them but also her parents. But the part that’s sticking out right now is one that says, “Helping myself is another way I can be helpful” – in essence, doing right by yourself, first and foremost, is one of the best ways to be helpful. Accept that asking for help is absolutely no sign of weakness and that it’s actually a strength that you’re able to recognize in your life.