Asking for help is not a display of weakness or proof that you’ve failed. Asking for help is a courageous confession of the facts as they are. It’s a commitment to the truth and the courage to tell it as it is. It’s giving voice to a desire, hope or wish. It’s is a display of trust. It’s humility over ego. It’s communion with your community.
Above all, asking for help is a form of prayer. Because prayer is all of these things: confession, petition, hope, trust, communion. Prayer is sometimes please and sometimes thank you, and usually both. Prayer is an invitation for love.
By asking for help you are issuing a divine invitation – giving someone else the opportunity to serve and share their gifts. This exchange of giving and receiving help brings us closer to together because telling the truth (that we need each other + that we are in this together) is raw, and irresistible, and magnetic. Sharing the gifts of our strengths lightens the burdens of our weaknesses. Giving and receiving help in any form is a redirection of the abundance of unique resources bestowed on each of us. What is more beautiful, more divine than that?
So let’s stop shaming ourselves out of telling the truth. Let’s stop the self-judgement and shut down the belief that we have to do it all on our own. Because you can’t do everything. You aren’t good at everything. You’re meant to ask for help. And you’re meant to pitch in and share your gifts. Both are noble. Both are necessary. Both are in service of the divine.
