I always hated asking for help. I thought that I could do everything myself no matter what it was. If I couldn’t do it, I felt like I had failed, or that I was weak or somehow less of a person for not being able to figure it out.
It’s not a happy way to live.
This need to be good at everything caused me a lot of stress over the years. Even as a child, I pushed myself to be more than what I was. It didn’t matter what I was good at, I needed to be able to do more. And more and more and more.
I was hospitalized with ulcers when I was 10 years old.
The funny thing was, I came from a supportive and loving family who never pushed me to do anything. The drive and feelings of inadequacy came completely from within myself.
Fortunately for me, at the age of 13 I found the book “Creative Visualization” by Shakti Gawain. I was always an avid reader, and although this probably wasn’t the typical book for a teenager to read, for me it opened up an entirely new world.
It introduced me to the power of the mind and the ways to access a strength within that I didn’t know I had. Mostly it gave me permission to stop trying to be perfect. I realized that happiness and stress could never coexist, and I was more interested in being happy.
Those early struggles in my life framed everything about who I was going to become. It instilled a lifelong desire to always reach for happiness, even when everything around me was going wrong and I felt out of control.
At some point I learned to ask for help. This was a big step for someone who thought she was supposed to be able to fix everything herself.
We aren’t meant to be good at everything. We live in a world community where each of us has something important to contribute to the whole. Some of us are healers, others are builders or organizers, supporters or leaders. It’s a system that can work well, but sometimes it doesn’t seem to be that way.
Sometimes we operate from a scarcity consciousness and think that everyone else is out to take away from us what is rightfully ours. This attitude fosters greed, suspicion, anger, jealousy, envy and stress. When you look upon the world as a source of pain and suffering, then you will operate in a certain way. The love is missing, and the feeling is one of isolation.
When you look instead at the world as a community, one of sharing and support and cooperation, then the attitude you bring to everything you do is much different. It is one of gratitude and compassion, hope and kindness. It feels much better when you feel that others want to help you instead of wanting to squash you.
Honestly, the choice is ours. We choose how to see life, even how we process the bad things that happen. Although there are people who will try to take advantage of others, there are also many who go out of their way to be supportive. Look for those people in life instead of the other ones.
Be mindful in every moment of your intention and the intention of those around you. If you are miserly, then the energy you put out will attract the same to you.
You won’t be surrounded by happy people if you are miserable. They will distance themselves from you because they don’t want to immerse their own energy in yours.
If you have nothing to offer but always want something, your circumstances will change so that you are around other takers. The power of this magnetic pull to bring into your life a reflection of who you are is undeniable.
Stand naked to who you are right now. Look at what you have been offering the world with your beliefs and intentions and notice what has come to you in return. If you don’t like what is surrounding you, then you can change the very essence of what you have been attracting by changing what you have been offering.
Ask for help. Be generous with giving what you have to offer to others. Expect nothing in return and be grateful for every interaction, and recognize it as an opportunity to clarify how you wish to live.
We aren’t meant to move through this life alone and in fear. Help is there if you just ask.