As I sit here in the Pocono Mountains working on helping my mom this week, I find it interesting that this week’s topic is about accepting help. It’s good to actually know what help you need, to be able to voice that need and truly know what to ask for as I wrote about yesterday. Now I want to cover another idea about help in this world. How often have we refused to take help when it was offered?
As a young teen, I attended a vocational school. My dad actually was a teacher at the school while I attended, but he had taken a year off to work somewhere else. Once, I was talking with some students and teachers I knew from class about how I was struggling to keep gas in my car to be able to do some of the things I wanted to do as a teen. Another teacher walked in who I didn’t know and I was introduced to him as Jim’s boy. Immediately he pulls his wallet out, takes out a $100 dollar bill and offers it to me to be able to pay for gas for a few weeks. I didn’t know him so I refused. In my mind I could not see myself paying him back. My dad had taught me to be a man of my word, therefore I didn’t want to hinder a relationship he had with the man. It was later I found out that man offered me the money as a gift. He did not expect it back.
There is more to that story, but what I want to get across today is this: have you been offered help and refused it? Maybe you refused because you didn’t like the form of help you were offered, or maybe it was that you did not understand the terms of the help. Either way you turn the help down.
There’s a story about a man who was on the roof of his house as the flood waters were rising. A boat came by and asked if he needed help. He replied “No, God will save me.” The water
rose higher and another boat came by and asked if he needed help. Again he replied, “No, God will save me.” The waters rise and he’s clinging to his chimney about to go under when a helicopter comes by and yells down to him that they’re going to lower a basket to help him. Again, he says, “No, God will save me.” Then the water rises higher and he drowns. When he gets to heaven, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?” God answers, “I sent two boats and a helicopter!” The moral is not to turn down help when it’s offered because it doesn’t fit your idea of what help should be.
There will be times in everyone’s life that we get to a point of needing help. It may be money. It may be support to maintain a diet. It may be support to reach a goal in your business. We will also likely all be offered help at some point. Each of us will either take the help, or refuse it. Those are the only two choices you have. If you don’t understand the terms of the help – is it a loan or a gift – you must ask. But when it comes to accepting help, I always say if it was a gift you must pass that gift on to another.
Refusing help when needed is also really robbing the person offering the help of an opportunity to pay forward the help someone gave them once. This is something we have covered before. I call it the law of Karma: you get what you give. Not sure anyone else will agree with this, but it is true those who are willing to offer the true help needed were given help at some point in their lives as well.
So my challenge to you today is to ask yourself who is offering to help you now? Whose help have you turned down recently? The last time you received help did you continue to help others?
As coaches we have been helped so much in our lives, we just want to pass that on. My dad was a teacher for more than 20 years. But not only was he a teacher; he was a helper. I know people who tell how dad helped them. In one case he actually coached a man we call one of his other sons, George, to help him learn to restore a car. George told of many lessons he learned in life from a man who learned the lesson first. The lesson was passed on to him, and that helped him grow in a way so that he now leads a life giving help to others to the best of his ability. With that in mind, I encourage you: don’t refuse the help you are given; it may be the help that saves your life.
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s about time for you to Live the life you always wanted, Love what you do and who you get to share life with. How can we help you to be a RockStar in your world?
