The Beauty of Asking for Help
This year, more than ever, I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty in asking for help. Long a perfectionist and frugal DIYer, asking for help could sometimes feel like failure. For most of my life I thought that if I didn’t do things myself, they’d either be done wrong or I'd lose control of the process. Therefore, it was always, always, better to do it myself.
Now, I come by my DIY genes honestly, folks. I was raised by two exceptionally capable people who are really good at just about everything. Dad fixed all the cars and did all the maintenance on the house. My parents heated our house through the New England winters via wood stoves fueled by wood they cut themselves from trees they felled. (Did this result in a broken leg once, perhaps, but just once.) The year I was 11, we built a 2 level deck off the of the back porch, they’ve built a beautiful two-story workshop in the backyard, they drywalled the basement in my home including the ceilings while I was on vacation, and my mom pretty well single-handedly grows over 300 pounds of produce in her clever backyard garden each year. The garden is a relatively small 10 ft by 40 ft plot that includes small built-in greenhouse thingies (technical term) that OPEN AND CLOSE THEMSELVES based on the temperature! Did they buy these fantastic thingies? Nope, Dad built them. Oh, and Mom also tests seeds for universities and tracks temperature, rain, and yield for them too…down to the ounce. Every year.
See, honestly.
Anyway, I do earn the “capable” moniker myself in that I can figure out how to do just about anything I’m interested in learning to do, though musical instruments always give me pause. Knowing this, I’ve traditionally had a REALLY hard time asking for help. Deep down inside I know that if I just keep trying, I’ll eventually master it. In fact, I find it fun to understand things from the inside out. I build furniture for fun. You know the kind, with the slots and the bolts and the word-free assembly instructions that make everyone else twitch. I get a kick out of figuring it all out.
So, how have I come to appreciate the beauty in asking for help?
It’s come to me in two ways. The first came during the busiest and most stressful time in my life a few years ago when I spent all of my time helping, rescuing, and serving others. At one point I hit a wall and I was forced to ask for help in order to accomplish what I needed to. I had to admit that I couldn’t do this alone. Not that I couldn’t do it well alone, I actually couldn’t do it at all by myself. It truly wasn’t possible. Having help allowed me to breathe a little, sleep a little, and remove my shoulders from the vicinity of my ears for a bit. It also gave me a chance to see in others the joy that helping can bring to the helper. This was a joy I was familiar with as I’d felt it many times while helping others. Slowly I started to accept help when it was offered instead of waiting until I cracked to ask for it or FINALLY accept it.
The second came when I realized that it could be downright expensive not to ask for help. Yes, I can figure things out on my own but how much time am I willing to spend doing so? Is the time better spent elsewhere? Has someone else already figured out how to do this and will they help me? The answer is, yes! I just have to ask. The beauty I found here was in reclaimed time and faster implementation. As the saying goes, you can make more money but you can’t make more time.
Where have you found beauty in asking for help?
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