How to Ask for the Help You Need
"You can do anything, but not everything." -- David Allen
Two years ago, I designed and facilitated an online course to help people transform their inspired ideas, inspirations, and ventures into reality. It was ton of fun and very fulfilling -- my "calling", if you will (and even if you won't).
Baked into the learning process were simple ways to help participants become aware of the places inside themselves where they were tangled or challenged in their approach.
One tangle that surprised me was how difficult it is for most people to ask for help.
While it is true that the creative process requires a healthy dose of solitude, it also requires a healthy dose of interaction with others and occasionally the well-timed support of others.
Indeed, there are times when even the most self-sufficient and confident person needs a push, pull, jiggle, jolt, feedback, encouragement, or hug.
Even though, most people intellectually acknowledge this need, most of us tend to default to the "I'm-in-this-all-alone" mode.
I've been pondering this phenomenon for the past few months, trying my best to better understand it. Here's what I've come up with:
Ten Common Reasons Why Most of Us Don't Ask for Help:
1. We assume that the people we want to ask for help are too busy.
2. We're unclear about the specific help we need.
3. We don't know who to ask for help.
4. We anticipate discomfort if our request for help is "rejected."
5. We don't believe we deserve anyone's help.
6. We think that asking for help is a sign of weakness.
7. We don't want to be "beholding" to anyone (i.e. if the person who agrees to our request turns around and ask us for help.)
8. We are afraid of strong personalities challenging our approach.
9. We are afraid of success.
10. We are afraid that our finished product won't be as incredible as we imagine it will be, so we subvert its completion by not asking for help.
So there you have it -- ten Big Bad Wolves that may have taken up residence in your head -- funky, old habits that compromise your ability to ask for help.
Please know there are many ways to go over, under, around, and through these obstacles. For starters, consider some of the following options. Then choose at least one of them to get the party started:
The Idiot Savant's Guide to Getting the Help You Need
1. Make a list of everything you don't know about your project.
2. Make a list of the kind of help you need. Be specific!
3. Make a list of everyone whose help you'd like.
4. Identify your preferred ways of asking for help, i.e. email, phone call, Zoom call, breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, walk, etc.
5. Identify what you can you barter in exchange for the help you are seeking, so it's not always a one-way transaction.
6. Think about who asked YOU for help in the past? How did you respond?
7. List your biggest limiting assumptions about asking for help.
8. Transform each of your limiting assumptions into a question, beginning with the words "How can I?" For example, if one of your beliefs is "Everyone I know is too busy to help me," change that assumption into a question, i.e. "How can I find out if the people I know are too busy to help me?"
9. Close your eyes and imagine that you had all the support you needed. How does that feel?
10. Sometimes, the hardest part of asking for help, is the opening line -- a way to break the ice. Towards that end, here are some conversation starters for you to consider:
-- "I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm immersed in a very meaningful project. The deeper I get into it, the more I realize that I need some support. I wonder if you'd be willing to (specific request here). I'm guessing this will take you about 20 minutes per week."
-- "Committed to (insert project name here), I'm in the process of putting together a team of talented people to provide support. I wonder if you're be available to be part of my team. Here's the specific support I'm asking you for (insert request here)."
-- "I have so much respect for your ability to (insert ability here). This, as you may know, is not one of my strengths. Would you be open, from time to time, to provide some input, coaching, or support in this arena?"
-- "Recently, I've run into some challenges with my project (insert specific challenge here). From what I can tell, you have already mastered this domain. Would you be willing to assist me?"
-- "Are you available, once a week, to meet with me and share your ideas and insights about my project?"
"Ask and ye shall receive."
The project I'm reaching out to friends for support
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April 30, 2022We Were Made for These Times!
What follows is an extraordinary call of the heart by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Not only is it worth reading, it's worth reading aloud -- so you hear it and feel it as well as see it. Then, you get to decide who you want to share it with -- and how. This is a piece of deep, soul-inspired, primal writing that deserves to travel to every corner of the Earth.
"My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The luster and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for."
Clarissa Pinkola Estes: American poet, post-trauma specialist, Jungian psychoanalyst, and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
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January 31, 2022Try to Love the Questions
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." -- Rainer Maria Rilke
In times of the unknown, like these days of the Coronavirus, most people want answers. Totally understandable. But, like Rilke notes above, there is great value in loving the questions that precede the answers. Towards that end, here is a list of 20 questions for your reflection. Hopefully, at least one of them will resonate with you and begin working its magic.
1. What is the silver lining, for me, in the Coronavirus cloud?
2. These days, what is there to learn about myself?
3. What is the biggest opportunity before me now?
4. How can I find joy in the simple things of life?
5. What am I feeling moved to do or create?
6. What am I thankful for?
7. What is my responsibility during these challenging times?
8. How can stay in a positive frame of mind?
9. What do I really want?
10. How can I best be of service?
11. How can I go beyond worry, doubt, and impatience?
12. Who do I need to forgive?
13. How can I tap into the source of my courage?
14. How can I better pace myself?
15. How can I reinvent the way I make a living?
16. How can I truly bloom where I'm planted?
17. What is there at this moment that I lack?
18. How can I better listen to the birds?
19. Who can I reach out to today?
20. What can I do, right now, to nurture myself?
Prem Rawat's series of Lockdown talks
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January 11, 2022The Information Overload Phenomenon
One of the biggest obstacles for aspiring innovators, these days, is information overload -- the all-too-familiar phenomenon of too much input coming our way, 24/7. Unable to process the overwhelming amount of information delivered to us by the nanosecond, we get distracted, fragmented, stressed, and mentally fatigued. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Click here for a newly published article of mine on this phenomenon -- the first in a series of articles like this I will be writing for PremRawat.com in 2022.
If you find value in it, please consider posting it on social media and/or emailing the link to friends and family. Thanks.
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March 05, 2021Regain the Lost Art of Reflection
Are you getting enough time, these days, to reflect or are you rushing from one task to another, swamped by information overload knee jerk responses. Here's a thought-provoking article on the phenomenon from the Harvard Business Review.
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August 13, 2020The Power of Introverts
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May 29, 2019How to Know If You Talk Too Much
Do people sometimes stop listening when you talk to them? Do they start getting fidgety or look away? It may not be their ADD or inability to go deep with you. It may simply be -- you talk too much. OK. Enough said. Here is more about the phenomenon.
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Thanks to Scott Cronin for the heads up
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May 13, 2019Millennials in the Workplace
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February 17, 2019Innovation as a Happy Accident
A little known fact about innovation is that many breakthroughs have not been the result of genius, but "happy accidents" -- those surprise moments when an answer revealed itself for no particular reason.
The discovery of penicillin, for example, was the result of Alexander Fleming noting the formation of mold on the side of petri dish left uncleaned overnight.
Vulcanized Rubber was discovered in 1839 when Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a lump of the polymer substance he was experimenting with onto his wife's cook stove.
More recently, 3M's post-it was also the result of an accident in the lab. Breakthroughs aren't always about invention, but the intervention required, by the aspiring innovator, to notice something new, unexpected, and intriguing.
LEARN FROM YOUR HAPPY ACCIDENTS:
1. Think about a recent project, pilot, or business of yours that did not turn out the way you expected.
2. Ask yourself if any of the unexpected results offer you a clue or insight about how you might proceed differently.
3. Instead of interpreting your results as "failure," consider the fact that the results are simply nature's way of getting you to see something new -- something that merits further exploration.
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel
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November 05, 2017Beyond Sage on the Stage Consulting
To borrow a phrase from the radically changing world of healthcare -- the essence of organizational culture change can be boiled down to three words: "Physician heal thyself"-- as in companies restoring optimum health to their enterprise from the inside out.
While many patients, anxious about their well-being, simply want the doctor to tell them what to do, that is, ultimately, a prescription for failure. Sustainable change only happens when people take full responsibility for their own condition.
Being told to "take two aspirins and see me in the morning" by someone with a framed medical school degree above their desk may be comforting in the short-term, but it completely misses the point. It's a paradigm whose time has come and gone.
The long and disappointing history of "change initiatives" bears this out. The data is there. 70% of them fail. And the main reason why 70% of them fail is because most organizations who enter into the culture change process rely too much on outside "experts" who, invariably treat their "patients" as someone incapable or unwilling to heal themselves.
Does the phrase "co-dependence" ring a bell?
If you expect your organization to make the kind of changes required for it to succeed, long-term, know this: the outside consultant as prescriber model (referred to in the OD world as "sage on the stage") has got to go. It will not work.
We understand, of course, that your company's Senior Leaders need some kind of roadmap or blueprint to help them navigate their way forward. They are not about to embrace an "organic process" that does not frame out the strategies and tactics required to help their company become an agile, innovative, best-company-to-work for enterprise.
This we understand. And, we will be happy to provide you with a blueprint.
But please understand this: embedded into the DNA of our blueprint is the highly collaborative process of co-creating the blueprint with you, your Design Team, and selected Senior Leaders.
We are not prescribing two aspirins. We are not asking you to call us in the morning so we can prescribe two more aspirins or a tourniquet. We are engaging you in a dynamic, interactive, collaborative partnership to ensure that the effort made is genuine, robust, and sustainable.
And that only happens when a critical mass of people in your organization are deeply engaged in the change process from the very beginning. No aspirins required.
This is the primary difference between our approach and traditional "sage on the stage" consulting.
And while we're at it, here's another way to think about the choices before you -- vacations.
Some people like to go on Safaris. Some people like to go to 5-Star hotels.
On Safari, everything is not always neat and clean. Conditions change. Weather shifts. The road is often bumpy. There are unknowns and surprises that require flexibility, adaptability, and in-the-moment decision making.
In a 5-Star hotel, everything is buttoned down, pre-programmed, and effortless. Indeed, that is what 5-Star Hotel customers are paying for -- for someone else to do the work, someone else to cook the food, someone else to make the bed. We get it.
But a large scale, organizational change effort is not a 5-Star Hotel
It is more like a Safari. And while there are definitely best practices to abide by and time-tested principles to be guided by, success cannot be prescribed by a third party -- especially if you are committed to internalizing the mindset, skills, tools, and processes, needed for you organization to make this their own, replicable process in the years to come.
Make sense?
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June 07, 2017It's Really Very Simple
Illustration: gapingvoid
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April 21, 2017Move the Hole!
I like what Edward deBono once said about the phenomenon of creative people trying to get results, but coming up empty (and I paraphrase). "If you are digging for oil and don't find any, move the hole!"
Pretty simple, eh? Sometimes, it seems as if aspiring innovators get fixated on a particular approach and, no matter what happens (or doesn't), they just keep doing the same old thing over and over again even when experience reveals that their approach is not working.
Of course, it's always possible that other factors are at play:
1. Perhaps the hole you've dug is too shallow and success is only a few shovelfuls away. Digger deeper, then, makes sense. Always possible.
2. Maybe you're digging in the right place, but the tools you're digging with are not the right tools for the job.
3. And, of course, it's always possible that in your effort to discover oil, you don't see the unexpected diamonds and gold coins you stumble upon because everything that is "not oil" is invisible to you.
So, let's make this real for a moment. Think of a project you are working on -- one you have passion for whose results have been slower to materialize than you hoped. Got it? Good. Now answer the following before doing any more digging:
CAN YOU DIG THIS?
1. What are your instincts telling you about how to proceed? Have you dug the hole deep enough? Might it be time for you to move the hole? And if it is the time to move the hole, where might you move it? What are some new approaches to try? Other places to look?
2. If you sense that you haven't dug deep enough -- that you've been a dilettante, slacker, or half-hearted digger for oil -- what can you do to martial your forces and commit to a more rigorous digging effort? And what support, if any, might you need?
3. If, in your digging adventures, you have stumbled upon some unexpected "finds", but dismissed them because you were only focused on oil, how might you extract the value from your accidental discoveries?
By the way, 75% of all product breakthroughs are NOT the result of strategic plans or "intentional effort", but the result of serendipity and "happy accidents" -- what happens when the open-minded innovator stumbles on something intriguing, pauses, and makes the right kind of effort to see if this discovery has value and is worth pursuing.
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March 10, 2017Making the Time to Be Creative
One of the biggest obstacles to creativity and, by extension, innovation, is the lack of time that is so prevalent in today's ADD culture. This two-minute video makes a very compelling case for you and all the people you work with to take some more time if you REALLY want to crank up the creativity.
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August 30, 2016I Am Not a Handyman
Are you a man -- or know a man who is, shall we say, "handyman challenged"? If so, then this newly published Huffington Post article of mine, is for you. Three minutes worth of comic relief. If you like it, please LIKE it and forward the link to your friends. Let's go viral!
90 other HuffPost articles of mine
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April 04, 2016What's the Key to Your Success?
Bring your most passionate project to mind -- the ONE THING you are excited about manifesting. Maybe it's just sitting there like a lump. Or maybe you are making progress every day. Whatever it is, take a look at the list below and CHOOSE the one quality you need more of in order to succeed. Once you've decided, consult our online GENIE. He can help. All you need is about 10 minutes. No charge.
1. Vision
2. Focus
3. Courage
4. Collaboration
5. Execution
6. Marketing
7. Funding
8. Fun
9. Creativity
10. Getting buy in
11. Feedback
12. Experimentation
13. Planning
14. Storytelling
15. Letting go
16. Immersion
17. Social media
18. Teamwork
19. Incubation
20. Perseverance
PS: If what you need is not on the list above, it will be on THIS LIST.
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The Crowdsourced Birth of a New Book Beyond Business InnovationGreetings! It's me, Mitch Ditkoff, author of this blog, President of Idea Champions, writer, speaker, husband, father, and dust particle. If you've been enjoying this blog, there is a good chance you will enjoy my forthcoming book. Towards that end, I have just launched a GoFundMe campaign and am inviting you to participate. We're talking crowd-sourced funding -- a way for me to buy the time and resources I need to write, produce, publish, and promote the book before hell freezes over. Hope you can be part of it! It takes a village... and a few village idiots!
Click here to find out more
Click here if you don't want to find out more
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July 17, 2015A Creative Tip from Einstein
One way to do so
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February 17, 2015On Being an Idea Champion
There's a reason why the expression "ideas are a dime a dozen" is so popular. Because they are. It's easy to get ideas. What's not so easy is championing ideas. And by "championing", I am referring to the kind of heroic commitment required to actually manifest those ideas. Here's my six-minute video elaboration on this often neglected topic. It's great that you have a new idea you care about. Wonderful. Now, ask yourself "What is it going to take for me to press through all the inevitable obstacles and bring this idea to life?"
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October 21, 2014What Does This Picture Mean to You?
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September 13, 2014JUST RELEASED -- Citizens of the Earth
Here's a powerful, 2-minute video, that supports the message of the International Day of Peace. If you would like to encourage your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, and customers to pause for a moment and reflect on the need for peace, this is a good link to send them.
Idea Champions is proud to be one of Peace for People's partners.
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March 29, 2014That Big Beautiful Idea of Yours
What big, beautiful idea of yours needs just the right touch of collaboration, support, and immersion to see the light of day? Your next step? And when will you take it?
One way to get rolling
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May 23, 2013Our Top 10 Huffington Post Articles
You may not know this, but our semi-fearless leader and Co-Founder of Idea Champions, Mitch Ditkoff, is now blogging for the Huffington Post on a variety of topics. Below is a sampling. If you like what you read, FAN him so you can receive email alerts whenever a new article of his is published.
1. 20 Reasons Why Creative People Like to Work in Cafes
2. The Syndrome Syndrome and the Rise of the New World Disorder
3. The Kindness at Work Manifesto
4. 27 Best Practices of High Performing Volunteer Organizations
7. How to Go Beyond Self Improvement
8. The Afghani Cab Driver and the $250M Salty Snack Food
9. How 13-Year Old Girls Can Wipe Out Terrorism
10. 100 Awesome Quotes on What It Really Takes to Innovate
The complete archive
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March 02, 2013The Gift of an Ordinary Day
I dedicate today's blog post to all Heart of Innovation readers who have grown children... or teenagers... or small children... or have ever been a child. Feel free to cry.
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