It’s Okay to Accept a Little Help From Your Friends

One of things I’m working on at the moment is being okay with accepting a helping hand from other people.

I often want to make my own way through life, without accepting help. I think I used to be proud of this: it’s only slowly that I’ve come to figure out that it’s not ever going to help me get the most out of life.

Striking out on your own – and refusing help (or feeling guilty about accepting it) – is generally counter-productive. In my case, it can be almost childish; a dogged insistence that I can do it myself. Sometimes I wonder what I’m trying to prove, and to whom.

Yet, a lot of us struggle with this. Perhaps it’s because we’re trying to live up to some cultural ideal: the idea of the “self-made man” in America, or keeping a “stiff upper lip” in Britain. Perhaps it stems from our upbringing: Trent’s story on The Simple Dollar, about how he got to “financial Armageddon”, shows this:

Another problem is that I believed that accepting help from anyone was bad. My parents were strict libertarians and in many ways I respect their philosophy, but their personal beliefs kept them from ever accepting any handouts or assistance. Even though we would often scrape by on a single part-time income, we were never on welfare or food stamps and we didn’t go to soup kitchens or other such free offerings. The pastor at the local Presbyterian church practically begged us to eat at the church on Wednesdays and Sundays regardless of whether we attended, but my parents refused all handouts. I was led to believe that accepting a helping hand, even in time of dire need, was a sign of weakness.

(Trent Hamm, The Road To Financial Armageddon #1: The Earliest Mistakes, The Simple Dollar)

I’m still struggling to feel okay about asking people for help, whether it’s financial, emotional or practical. I also find it tough at times to accept help that’s freely offered. In this post, I want to explore a few thoughts that are helping me, but I’d very much appreciate your own contributions in the comments.

Relaxing the Rules on Success

Recently, I read Robert Holden’s Success Intelligence. Early on in the book, he goes through a number of common “rules” that people place on themselves, defining the conditions under which they can meet success. A common one, Holden says, is believing that in order to “succeed”, you cannot accept any help.

I recognised the truth of this in myself. It doesn’t apply in every area of my life, but it’s often the case that I feel I need to earn my success – and that taking a shortcut means it doesn’t really count. For me, the biggest area of struggle is finances: I inherited a lump sum last winter, and whilst I’m very grateful to have it, I also feel like it’s not really “mine” – that I haven’t earned it.

Holden’s book made me realise that this is a counter-productive attitude. The money has been given to me, and I’m free to use it in whatever way I feel will benefit me most. After some internal struggles over whether I should simply lock the whole lot away in savings, I’ve decided to soft-peddle on my paying work this year, to concentrate on my creative writing MA – with the knowledge that I’ve got money in the bank if I need it.

Sure, there’s a sense of pride and satisfaction in working your way up from zero. But there’s often a lot of drudgery and wasted time and effort there: I spent eight months in full-time employment, saving up as much as I could so I could quit and freelance. I’d have been happier, considerably less stressed, and able to do interesting, creative work sooner if I’d not had to build up my savings from nothing.

What rules have you placed on your success? Have you told yourself you need to “go it alone”? Why?

Striving for Interdependence

After spending years convinced it probably wasn’t worth the hype, I read Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and found it hugely thought-provoking (I actually read it twice, taking notes the second time – which is unusually diligent for me…)

One of the most useful concepts in the book was the idea of interdependence: the way in which we prop one another up. Covey emphasises the importance of developing our independence first and using this as a basis for truly interdependent (not dependent) relationships:

As we become independent – proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity – we then can choose to become interdependent – capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people.

(Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, p187)

It’s usually easy to offer help from a position of our independence. We feel good about being able to do someone a favour, even if it’s a small thing like lending them a book they want, or baking cakes for their coffee morning. That altruistic feeling is a great one: we feel warm and fuzzy and happy that we could make a bit of a difference in someone else’s day.

For me, there’s also something darker lurking here. It feels good to help because doing someone a favour is a sort of power. This works in a couple of ways. Firstly, you can clock up more favours on your side and feel smugly good about what a nice person you are. Secondly, depending on circumstances, you may be in a position to make a genuine difference to how someone’s day or week – or even their career or life – goes, and that’s a power-rush.

This darker side of helping others isn’t emotionally healthy, and I’m not proud that I sometimes have something like that going on subconsciously – but  I want to be honest about it here because I suspect it’s not just me who feels this way.

So, what’s the antidote? Being willing to accept interdependence. Letting other people return the favour – but not keeping track in a tit-for-tat way. Giving generously, and receiving graciously. Not feeling that you need to “repay” every gift in some way. That’s all easily said, of course. It’s much harder to do.

What can you simply accept, today, or this week? Who do you need to allow to “give back” to you?

Paying Forward, Not Back

In many cases, your relationship with someone isn’t completely even, and you can’t necessarily “pay back” a favour in any meaningful way. The most obvious case of this is when you inherit money: you can’t even thank the deceased for the gift. Other examples might be when someone far above you in your field offers you advice or help, or when your parents help you out with a car or deposit on a house.

Years ago, as a teenager, I came across the idea of paying forward on Holly Lisle’s site:

I do this page because a couple of idealistic writers (one who has gone on to be phenomenally successful) took me under wing when I was a neophyte and told me how to do things right, and taught me how to avoid making the major mistakes they knew about (though I’ve still managed to make some pretty impressive mistakes on my own,) and because one of them told me, “This is the way my help works. You can’t pay me back for what I’ve taught you, any more than I can pay back the mentors who taught me. You can only pay forward.”

(Holly Lisle, Miscellaneous Questions About Writing, HollyLisle.com)

I can’t pay back my grandparents and parents for the financial support they’ve given me – but I can pay forward, when I have kids of my own. I can’t pay back the writing mentors who I’ve had – but I can pay forward, when (hopefully!) I get further along myself.

If you’re struggling to accept help from friends, family or even strangers, because you know you’ll never be able to pay it back … think about how their help can allow you to eventually pay forward instead.

Who can you help out today, because someone gave you a hand a few years back? Who might you be able to help in five years’ time, if you accept someone else’s generosity today?

I’m not sure how to conclude this post. These are ideas that I’m still very much in the process of working through, and I’m intrigued by why some people find it very easy to accept help (or, in less complimentary terms, to mooch off others) whereas some of us are fiercely independent to the point of self-destruction. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this plays out in your own life, and about how to find true interdependence in our relationships.