Monday, March 22, 2010

Asking for Help

A very cool, very able group of women I regularly meet with were talking about how hard it is to ask for help. The excuses flying were: it’s more work to get the help, being unable to ask, having no one to ask, and no one else does it well enough.

One wise woman suggested that it was because of the story we'd seen play out with our own mothers not asking. She suggested that we break the pattern by asking for help from those around us. Afterall, it's the advice we give to others, "Ask for help."

I've been trying to get better at that each year/month/ day. Every time I ask, I am rewarded. Every time I ask, I give others a chance to give me something I really need too. My mom has been a great helper of others in her life, but gives us little opportunity to reciprocate. That leaves us all impoverished.

Also, there's a great study detailed in a really dull book called See Jane Win. The book tries to correlate success influences in the upbringing of 1000 successful women. They looked at education (private, public, post secondary), social strata, town size, birth order, religious beliefs, single parent, double parent etc The one thing, let me repeat, the ONE THING that was common to all successful women was that they had done chores as kids. The researchers proffer that doing chores is esteem building. So there, build your kids' esteem and give them chores!!!