DailyJim: The courage to ask for help for myself

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, November 21st, 2024, and today I want to talk about how the courage to ask for help for myself.

Now, often I've talked about asking for help, and again, it could be asking for financial help, It could be asking for emotional help. It could be asking for physical help, intellectual help, marketing help, whatever we want to call it.

I find, at least for myself, it is much easier to ask for help for a project that I'm doing, or a friend that I have, or something that would be more external to me. That wouldn't be something maybe considered core to myself or to my being. Asking somebody for help to pay rent scares the hell out of me. Asking somebody for help to help a friend pay rent, that's scary. Asking somebody for help to help a friend find a job, Oh, much less scary than asking for help to help me find a job.

I find if I ask for help to do a specific task, it's a lot easier than asking for help to do something that's more generic.

I say, for example, I have an app that I want to build, and I know that it'll cost, let's just say something, who knows, this is not the right price, but $10,000. Let's say I know it costs $10,000. It's much easier to raise money for me to have the courage to say, hey, will you contribute to me spending this $10,000 with this company? And this is the timeline for when this app is going to be built, dot, dot, dot, dot, the certainty in something external. But to say something more like, hey, will you support me with $10,000 and I don't know specifically how I'm going to use it, maybe I'll use it for savings. Maybe I'll use it to take a vacation. Maybe I'll use it to build the app. Maybe I'll use it to build two apps. Maybe I'll use it to run workshops at organizations. Maybe I'll use it to donate money to people who are in slums. Maybe I'll use it to support school fees for somebody who is in a slum. Maybe I'll use it to travel to a really big conference where I have an opportunity to network with so many people. Leadership conference, like a TED conference or something like that, to pay for a ticket to go to a TED conference. So. There's lots of things I might use it for. But to ask for that generic help, which I think financial help can be the most generic, versatile one, for me, can be so hard. And I started reflecting on something called the MacArthur Fellows Program. And they give, I think it's $800,000 across five years, no strings attached to about 30 people that they choose every year. And one of those guys years ago was David Foster Wallace, a famous poet in the u.s i think 90s early 2000s and read an essay about him receiving that grant and how he freaked out it can be really hard to receive that much unconditional cash or that much unconditional love or rather that much unrestricted cash or love.

Because we don't necessarily think we deserve it. We don't think, you know, why do we get it and other people don't get it? We think maybe the other people don't have it, so why are they giving it to us? And that's just on the receiving end, but on the asking end. Hey, to ask people to give me help, to support me, me as in me, not me as in this project that I'm doing or this initiative that I'm doing or this idea that I have or this organization that, but me, oh, but, if we are, if I am constantly asking people, will you help me because I want to help people in this specific way? Will you give to me so that I can give? It's like, I constantly think about how I'm giving to others and I don't just let people give to me. And I don't just ask people to give to me. It would be like if I'm having a really sore back and I ask someone, hey, will you give me a massage? I think that's recognizing I have pain in my back. I would like a massage to relieve this pain. I know this person is maybe good at massages. Will you give me a massage?

But what I seem to be doing is like, hey, will you give me a massage? Because if you give me a massage, then I will have the capability to wake up in the morning. And then in the morning, I'm going to be able to help one, two, three, four people by running these workshops. And it's like, dude, just ask for the massage. You don't have to tell me everything you're going to do with the benefits of the massage you receive. Sometimes just the giving of the massage and receiving of the massage is okay. And this is something I argue and I push people on when I give things to others. But when I ask, I have this almost knee-jerk reaction to, no, no, but you see how much I'm giving? You see, give, give to me because you see how much I'm giving so much. Do you see how much I'm giving? Instead of like, will you please just give to me? It doesn't have to be about how much I'm giving to other people. Yes, we don't want somebody who is taking, taking, taking all the time.

But sometimes I think I've realized, you know, I said before, you know, we're more willing to help others when people are helping others. You know, like when I see that somebody is helping other people, then I'm more willing to help them to an extent. Yes. Um, what I've seen in asking other people for help in the last couple of months is that sometimes people seem to get pissed off because they're like, dude, you help other people too much. I don't want to give to you. If you're just going to go help someone else immediately. Can you just receive it? They don't say it so explicitly, but that's kind of the gist of like, I want to give to you, not to them. I want to give to you. And so I think...

It's a lesson I'm trying to learn. How do I just ask someone to give to me and let them give to me and receive it and be grateful for that specific moment, and not have to connect it to a greater giving that I'm doing?

I wonder how non-profits would work if it was a little more like this, instead of saying like, hey, give us money because if you give us money, we're directly going to convert it into this many meals for kids or this many schools that we're building. What if it was just like, please give us money. If you believe in us, like if you believe in us and you care about us, please give us money. We'll be very grateful.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the balance is. I think maybe that's too hard of an ask for some people. But I think at the same time, I like the massage analogy. If someone asks me to give them a massage, I give them a massage. if I'm able to, and I'm willing to. I don't say, well, you know, I'm only giving this massage because I know you're going to use this improved health to go off and do better on your exam tomorrow. And if you do better on your exam tomorrow, therefore, you're going to be a better doctor. And as a better doctor, you're going to take care of so many humans. It's like, no, this is somebody I care about. They've had a hard day. Let me give them a massage.

Or this is somebody I care about. They have a dream. I don't really know exactly what the dream is, but like I see them excited for something. And if I can help perpetuate that excitement, I don't know where it's going to go. But can I help them with that excitement? Can I help boost them and just see where it goes? Can I take a risk and an experiment and help somebody that I care about? Because even if it doesn't have a huge impact on the world, maybe it has a huge impact on their world.

Maybe that's why we give so much to, you know, family members and maybe it's kids and, and relatives and romantic partners, because we see, we want them to be well. And it's not even so much about other people in their lives. It's them. We care so much about them. And then when they ask, hey, can you give me this so I can do this? And this is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to be well. frankly if you have savings maybe you'll be more well like i want you to be well and that's one thing i loved about the macarthur's uh fellows program this idea that like people could do whatever they wanted with the money and so maybe they get the money and they bought a house or maybe they um save the money maybe they put it into like a 401k or something and they just put it into a savings account. Because for so many of us, I mean, yes, it can go into the, you know, what impact will they have on the world if they have a house, if they have kind of the emotional security of having a house or money in the bank.

I think that's more of the foundation approach, but what if just the people in our lives that we cared about had that, just had a little more security how could it change their lives i don't know i don't know how much is it just talking about the changing of the one individual's life or changing of like the trickle-down effects of it but i think i focus so often on the trickle-down effects right now i'm curious to focus on just like not asking people to help this project or help that initiative or help this idea or this brand or this just asking people to help and support me me me me me and that may seem super selfish but at times we have to ask people to help us, something really core to us so yeah that'll be the last one for this week i'll talk to you all next week take care.