As I am observing my students they belong to two very distinguishable camps.
People who ask for help, and people who don’t.
I myself belong to the second camp. But my reasons for not asking help is different from yours… lol. Maybe.
When I look back at my childhood, I must have decided really early on that asking for help is useless. At best they say “go away”, or who do you think you are… At the worst they beat you up.
And I could use a lot of help. Especially in learning. Especially since by brain damage almost 20 years ago.
I never even told about that to my family… it would buy me nothing. I am SURE of it.
For years I lived in poverty, doing what the poor does: scrambling to survive.
I don’t know if I made it up, that about my family, that help wasn’t offered and wasn’t given… My little brother has had do problem asking for help: same family, different convictions. My older brother and I behave similarly… keep our problems to ourselves.
When I watched a documentary of a woman, similar brain damage, she got all the help form her brother. The story was not worth watching for me, only the way the brother related to his sister.
I detect that many of my students find it impossible to imagine that they could ask for something and get it.
Or they don’t want to ask for help… because they are stuck at a Tree of Knowledge place…
Needing to be superior.
That’s me, my insecurities, problems, and I did see In her shoes a few months ago and I loved it. “you’re responsible for you” is what phrase stuck with me the most. I feel I need help but I find barriers as to why I can’t get it. I’m scared and outraged as being seen as inferior or wrong. I want to get past all that and be the version of me that feels good to be like.
That was a comment on an old article
Help has a bad reputation on the Tree of Knowledge.
I have this coaching program where no one ever asks for help.
Where people call what I say: advice. Or Suggestion. Where people prefer to cry and weep over what I say than to ask: so what can I do? Can you help?
And they never change.
I have written about this. About this trap that traps your ass in a place where no sane person would go.
Help, on the Tree of Knowledge, is activated by the magic 3-word phrase: I need help. Or: Please help me.
It is easy to say when it is not specific. I hear it from people who are sick, or you are miserable, and they say I am supposed to want to help.
Their attitude, what they mean, is not the help I am talking about. They mean: do it for me. They pray to their god and say: please help…
But that is not help. That is being carried, while you play dead.
When a child is asleep, they are heavy as lead… When a child participates in the “being carried” they are like a heavy coat… you can carry them to the end of the earth.
The help I offer, the help I am complaining of not being asked for is the participatory “being carried”.
Advice, directions, instructions are useless when what you need is help. You can’t follow instructions because where you are stuck prevents you from being able to use the instructions.
I need help in learning stuff. The kind of stuff where I need to translate words into actions. You show me what you did… but if I cannot see how you got to the page where you do what you do… I am lost. Stupid. Dyslexic. Dense. Afraid. Can’t see… I don’t care what it is… I just want to get past it.
But whatever is making you not want to look bad to me is killing you. It doesn’t allow you to ask for help.
And no, complaining about your issue isn’t going to be useful. I may know what you need, but you need to say it. Say the magic words.
It’s taken me years to be able to say clearly where I need help. Because that is a higher level to get to.
I got there through lots of trials and errors… hell, if you ask me.
I know I am meandering: you want to know why you are not asking for help, and you want to know what you can do to ask for help. At least the more intelligent of you.
OK, some more meandering:
In a Landmark Education course, The Communication Course, there is a break where your assignment is to formulate a request for coaching.
It stumped everyone. Formulating a request for coaching is an even higher level than knowing what you need help with. But it is part of it.
You need to get clear before you ask for help or before ask for coaching. And if it looks impossible, then ask for help in getting clear where you need help, what kind of help… or you’ll never get it. It’s OK to ask for help… if you know what you need help with.
I have someone to ask help from in the current project I am doing (redesigning my site to look the same or similar in mobile devices as it looks on desktop computers) I know what is my issue: I am trying to do the steps with the videos… but my screen behaves differently from the teacher’s.
So if I were to ask for help, I would say: would you take a screen shot of the screen BEFORE you get to where I am supposed to be, and circle the button or link you pressed to get there? Please?
What is the issue? The teacher may say: what an imbecile! I am OK with that, as long as I get what I need.
I have no problem being the best at what I do, even if the path leads to it through being imbecile. It’s a path. It’s a stage.
The choice is: be stuck in not wanting to sound imbecile, or moving on toward the peaks of whatever mountain I am scaling.
It it’s health: then it’s health.
If it is setting up your water, then that is setting up your water.
I have sold hundreds of Water Energizer audios in the years. When I announced the Water Energizer contest… I was mortified to find out that only one out of 10 actually uses the audio.
The rest: they never asked for help.
Now, the 10% that submitted their pictures for the contest: they needed help. One person didn’t… Everyone else had something wrong with their setup.
Many still do… something is still blocking them from following instructions.
Depending on how strong your ego is, and how much it is trying to protect your own opinion about yourself, your superiority, you will make the changes or you won’t.
The water is just a great opportunity for you to see you, clearly, for the first time. You are unwilling to give up your distorted image of yourself… for something better.
Because the path to anything better is actually, always, through feeling stupid, imbecile, weak, mistaken, evil, or whatever is your worst fear.
I have invented a way to get through it. Sail through it.
I step back and look at myself and what I am struggling with and look at it as objectively as I can. I even pretend to be someone who doesn’t have that same problem. And then I judge. Judge harshly. I write down the words of judgment.
And then I formulate my request for coaching, or my request for help OWNING how I probably look to the other person.
I know I sound like an imbecile… and it’s OK… I may be. But can you please… and then say what I need.
or
I know I sound like an evil person… and I might be. But I need help to get past it… so can you please… whatever I need.
- I worked with one student for two whole months before he finally could do the right things and start coming up… healthwise. Now I am working with him on a spiritual issue, an anchor that threatens to keep his vibration very low for the rest of his life. Has he asked for help? Not with so many words… but with actions.
- I have been working with another student on her health… and there hasn’t been a breakthrough yet. Even her water setup…Today I discovered that she has truths that are not true, and probably a lot.
- One client (NOT a student) told me that her husband didn’t want a mini speaker in their refrigerator, and definitely doesn’t want a LIVE WIRE to charge it.The client and her husband are ignorant of some important things, for example that 5 Volt electricity is what the wire to charge the speaker, cannot even be felt. But for the electricity is electricity… and can’t see, can’t understand shades of gray… Now you know why she isn’t a student…Her case points me to something I haven’t said: If you can’t even see that you need help… Enough said.
