Examples

I speak from experience here. Learning to get over the fear of asking for help was one of the hardest lessons I learnt in business, and it was so often offered. (I was just never prepared to notice it!) I assumed it was offered because people thought I was incapable. On the contrary, people thought I was so capable, they wanted the opportunity to work alongside me, to learn something and to help me. Another reason people offered is because they just wanted to help me. There was no hidden agenda, no attempt to undermine my career, or take my promotion. It was just genuine kindness, just wanting to see me finish work at a decent hour. For me, my instant thought had been (which I share honestly and openly with you) that the person offering help wanted to take something from me or that they were trying to ruin my success. And, in fact, this spoke far less about them, and far more about me. It spoke about my vulnerability, not about their intentions. And in this chapter I will share the tools and techniques that I utilised to get over it and win at work.

Exercise 1 – Automatic response

To find out how the fear of saying no impacts on you, ask yourself if you are able to accept help. Or do you think, ‘I’m fine thanks, I’ve got this covered’/‘I can handle this’. It’s a phrase that falls out of our mouths so fast sometimes it’s hit our ears before we’ve registered we’ve said it. And we so wish we hadn’t!

This is the thing to say, right? I can handle this? Of course I can! It’s the standard response to the question ‘How are you?’ . . . ‘I’m good thanks, you?’ See? No thought, just instant reply. So let’s look at the emotions behind the reason why we say these things:

• You worry what people will think.
• Depending on who asked, it could be you don’t want to put them out.
• You don’t want to cause them work.
• Maybe you don’t want them to respect you less.
• You don’t want them to steal your praise.
• You don’t want to let people down.

Have you considered that they want to help you because it’s their chance to do something for you?

Exercise 2 – Negative spiral time

When you think of someone offering help, how does it make you feel? Are you comfortable with it? Are there some people that you wouldn’t accept help from and others that you would? What reasons could there be for that? By answering these questions in your head for a moment you might find you begin to understand yourself a little better.

As you take the fear of the asking for help further, think back to the negative spiral. Imagine playing out a negative spiral here. I’ve used this with enough clients to know it’s a powerful tool to help you really understand the damage that not asking for help can do to your success. And, worse still, the power you can be giving to fear. If you assist fear today, you are helping it grow for tomorrow too. That’s scary, right?

Allow the negative spiral to play out in your head now. Think about a time when you wanted to achieve a lot and you were up against it. Maybe you had a big deadline, maybe things were going wrong. Did you ask for help? Would things have been easier if you had?

It’s not easy to ask for help, and at this stage I’m not asking you to imagine that you fixed it. I’m just asking you to think of the feeling of relief that you could have felt if you had known you were sharing the burden with someone else. I’ve a feeling your shoulders might have dropped, you may have sighed with relief and there may even have been room in your head to think ‘right, I think I may have space to work out how to achieve this with two pairs of hands and two brains working through to get the solutions we need’. (I only work in solutions, rarely problems.)

You see, success really is achieved when you ask for help. And if you realise as you read this that your success is being hampered by not asking for help, it’s probably a very real possibility you need to play out a negative spiral.

Power up your negative spiral to appreciate the results you are choosing to get:

• What is the likely course of events when you do everything yourself?
• What does that lead to?
• What does that then mean?
• What results does that create?
• What does that then mean?
• How does that then make you feel?
• What actions does that mean that you take?
• Then what do you do?
• What does that mean that you do?

And so on.

It’s highly likely you are creating a downward spiral that leaves you feeling trapped, out of control and overburdened. You feel like everyone puts on you. And when you feel negative emotions, you are more likely to create negative actions. And negative actions create negative results. And do negative results lead to winning at work? Or do they lead to more fear and more failure? Do they lead to more feelings and limiting thoughts of ‘I can’t do this’? or ‘I don’t win’. Ask yourself when you get overloaded. When you don’t ask for help, what emotions do you feel?

I hear a lot of business owners and people striving for success saying to me ‘I can’t trust anyone else to get it right’. Let’s look at this shall we?

First of all, if you don’t allow someone else to do some of the work, then what are you agreeing to? The answer is above – it’s a negative spiral that results in all the negatives you get in your life. I want you to really feel it. Really intensify your pain level. I want you to feel so uncomfortable about your negative spiral that you literally are moving in your seat, physically squirming! When I’m working with a client, I use questions like the ones above to help the client really feel the pain. Because when you are so aware of what you are doing to yourself that it feels embarrassing and uncomfortable, you will do anything to get away from it.

Think about this now. This is an actual exercise. You may have a grip on life and say ‘I don’t need any help at all at the moment’; however, everyone has moments in their life where they need a little help, and it is far better to know and appreciate how you will accept that proffered help today than when your head is buzzing with hassles, problems and deadlines.

Take a moment to think ‘What do I need to do or think to ensure that, if and when I need help, I make sure I accept it and allow that person to do what I want them to do, so that I create the mental space to enable me to power up my success?’ Remember if you don’t create a solution for this, what are you agreeing to? Are you agreeing that whenever there is too much on your desk or your proverbial plate of life that you have to be stressed, overworked, screaming or crying on the inside and wondering why is life so hard, thinking ‘How will I get through this?’ What impact could that have on your success? Therefore, it’s better to take a moment to think this one through, right?

If it feels like a big deal to you that someone else comes in and steals your thunder, start small. Don’t give anyone mountains of your work. Just ask for the tiniest of help. Maybe ask for help with something that you could actually do in your sleep. But think about this: if they are doing some of the jobs that you can do easily, does that not mean you have a bit of brain space to concentrate on the other things that are whirring and whizzing around in your overworked brain?

We’ve looked at why you should ask for help. We’ve looked at how you ask for help. However, I think it’s also important to look at how it makes you feel. It’s important that you really learn to reframe the thoughts you have associated with asking for help so that the fear is quashed for good. Look for every negative connotation that you associate with asking for help. Every negative thought needs replacing with a positive one. For instance:

List the negatives of asking for help. Then list the positives of asking for help. These could include, although are not limited to:

• It’s weak to ask for help.
• They will steal my great ideas and get my opportunities for themselves.
• It shows a lack of organisation.
• Asking for help is lame.
• Asking for help makes you look incapable.
• I’m not a child, I’m a grown up, I should be able to cope.
• Successful people do it alone; they don’t ask for help.
• I don’t want people to think I’m stupid.
• I could lose my job.
• People could laugh at me.

And so on and so on. Write as many negative ideas you can associate with asking for help. Really get to the bottom of why it’s such a bad idea to ask for assistance. It’s good to do this at this stage in the chapter because, despite having the evidence that says why you should, you will still be able to justify why you shouldn’t ask for help. (I’ve always loved the way a client can justify why they can or cannot do something! And I love the way, with the right conversation, we can work together to get that Eureka moment that shifts their thoughts into a more constructive way of thinking!) So let’s challenge your thinking right now.

Write your long negative list. Tell me why it’s such a bad idea to ask for help. Now let’s flip that on its head. How long a list can you create here?

Positives of asking for help:

• I free up my brain space to concentrate on bigger things.
• I play to my strengths and accept my weaknesses as areas to improve or things to accept.
• I know what I want to achieve and that’s what matters.
• People respect my determination to get results.
• It shows confidence in oneself to be able to ask for help.

Successful people rely on the right teams and support. In all organisations, even in the animal kingdom, everyone works on what they are good at to ensure the ultimate success of the community.

By asking for help, I can get more done in one day. I can get more goals achieved faster because I’m able to work smarter. Our 21st-century success is about thinking in a strategic way, that means I’m comfortable being honest about the person I am.

What will appear on your positive list to ensure you know how to accept help to achieve lasting success? What will make you challenge your thinking? What do you need to remember? What are your ‘why’s? Remember the goals you want to achieve and that we planned together in Chapter 2. Remember that by giving into the negative fear of saying ‘Yes’, you are agreeing to letting your success slide away too. It’s worth accepting that help now, right?

Your natural style

As with everything you wish to achieve in life, you need to go at a pace that suits you. And when you work in accordance with your personality (and not according to some universal measure online or in the media!) then you will get lasting results. Thus we need to identify your natural style. How do you naturally get things done? What is the natural way you make things happen? (and don’t worry if you are thinking ‘I don’t make it happen!’ That is still a style!).

To identify your natural style, we need to find out what kind of person you are. Are you the kind of person that, after being told that coffee is making your teeth go black, you stop drinking it that day, never to touch it ever again?

• Yes, you have a killer headache for a couple of days, and yes you miss it, but you get told to stop so you do.

Or

• You’re the kind of person that says ‘No! It’s my coffee! Don’t take my coffee! I can’t do this! How will I cope?’ and you don’t take any action at all.

Or

• You are somewhere in the middle.

Please note I deliberately chose an example that is not work related. Your natural style will permeate through every part of your life. There may be other areas of your life where you allow it to show more; however, you will naturally choose to act in a certain way at all times. Even if you are with a group of people that all act a different way and you are forced to act according to them, you will still display characteristics of your natural style. We are creatures of habit!

So what is your natural style? Once again, using the coffee example:

• Would you give up from that moment?
• Would you wean yourself off?
• Would you create a spread sheet or a mindmap?
• Would you need to talk to someone about it?
• Would you post your goal on social media to ensure you did it and create momentum?

Now is a really good time to think about your natural style. Do you need to write a list? If you are giving up coffee do you need to get support? Do you need to go and buy 37 herbal teas to get you through and research online how to give up coffee? Are you a thinker or a doer? By knowing your natural style, you are able to bring that back to your ability to ask for help and think ‘okay so if I’m not good at asking for help, do I start small or go large?’

• Do I start by taking on a housekeeper so I can concentrate on my career and business goals?
• Do I just need to accept that offer from my partner to cook dinner?
• Do you need to vocalise your need for help? (That in itself can be a massive obstacle).

Think about it. When I asked you at the start of the chapter how comfortable do you feel about asking people for help, were there people that you wouldn’t ask for help? So, of the ones that you could, will you? What will you say? You don’t need to write a script; however, answer these questions:

• How will I word my request to them?
• Do I need to formally arrange a meeting or will I just bring it up the next time I see them?

In this way, you can start to think about the reality of asking for help.

So, the next step comes when the offer is actually offered. How will you stand back and let it happen? I can tell you what to do. However, what are you going to do so that you challenge yourself to act in a different way from today? How will you ensure that when you need help, you accept that you are going to ask for it, and you work out how you are going to get it, you make sure you actually step back and let that help actually happen? Do you need to physically step away? Or will it be enough to remind yourself of this chapter and acknowledge that, by accepting the help, you are agreeing to power up your success, and eradicate the fear that asking for help is an admission of inferiority, inability or incapability?