Asking for Help

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Do you ask for help when you need it?

Or do you feel like you have to be strong, and being strong means being silent and figuring it all out for yourself?

Sometimes asking for help is a critical component to success.

In many areas of life.

There are several areas in my life where I continuously ask for help. Help from my friends, from peers, from mentors, from the universe.

Recently, I was feeling pretty depressed. It was winter time, dark and cold.

I was coming to the end of a huge, multi-year personal goal. It was time to move on to the next phase and the next phase wasn't going so well as I might have hoped.

The darkness and lethargy of depression settled in around my head, my shoulders, my heart and barricaded me in its depths.

I could have wallowed in this darkness, like a hippo in a pool of warm mud. I could have stayed there, stuck in my own head, filled with images and stories of untruth.

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But I didn't.

I asked for help.

I reached out to friends and family and said: I am depressed. I need help. I need accountability. I need your friendship and love and support. I need contact. I need to hear that I am not a loser who just wasted thousands of dollars and hours and hours of time. I need help.

And the help came.

In droves, from near and far.

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As part of my struggle with depression, my healthy habits had taken a backseat.

I could have ignored it. Bought bigger pants. Continued to eat junk and sit on the couch.

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But I didn't.

I asked for help.

And I received it. From friends, my health care providers, my family, the universe. It came to me because I asked for it.

And today.

Today I need help again. And so I ask.

I reached out to friends and strangers, acquaintances and peers, and I asked them to help me.

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I am searching for a job.

In the work world, asking for help is called "networking." It is not only perfectly acceptable, but often a mandatory part of being successful.

Today I networked, I asked, I spoke my needs and desire with truth and feeling.

I asked the universe to support and guide me, to lead me in the direction I need to go. I looked for signs and acted upon what I saw.

I am not too strong to know when I need help or too proud to ask for it.

In the business world it is acceptable and a sign of strength. In our personal lives it is a sign of weakness.

I disagree. I believe that asking for help, seeking the support of our village, is a sign of great strength, because in order to ask for help we must show our vulnerability, our soft underbelly, to the world.

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I think that takes great strength.

Do not fear asking for help, asking for what you need. I promise, you will be amazed at what the universe will deliver unto you if you only ask.