Asking for help is an act of courage

We all need help from time to time. It’s pretty certain that, just as we did in the early stages of life, we will need some assistance during the other stages too. So why not use your life to practise receiving, to learn the art of asking for and accepting help?

Asking for help is an act of courage

We’re all afraid to reach out and ask for help because of a reason. We share with each other an unconscious thought­—if everyone else appears to be doing okay, I should also appear okay and be able to manage without asking for help. A cry for help is considered sinister and something to be avoided. To appear weak frightens us. When we can bring those or similar thoughts up into our consciousness and recognise them, we can begin to let them go. Then we are able to be honest with each other and create mutually helpful relationships quite naturally.

Have you ever cried in public?

Canadian poet, Shane Koyczan wrote, “Openly crying is like taking a vacation from the ‘everything’s okay’ mentality that the world wants everyone to adopt.” It’s high time we all take a permanent vacation from that fake worldview and become more authentic with each other. Asking for help isn’t necessarily as straight-forward as we believe it to be. Among my friends, the general consensus about what holds them back from asking for help was ‘not wanting to be a burden’ or ‘appear weak’. So, when finally there comes a point that one does ask for help, those beliefs are triggered, strengthening a particular pattern. We might spend our life making great efforts to be sure we never need ask for help, which can result in catastrophe if we let the pressure of trying to be that person get to us, and have it all go unchecked. Or we might find ourselves asking for the same help over and over. Each time we find help, there’s temporary relief but in a matter of time the same problem plagues us again. Old, conditioned reasoning kicks in, making us believe we must be stupid or lazy because we can’t manage on our own. These sorts of thoughts connect us to a universal victim/tyrant energy, a potent and pervasive pattern that runs our lives.

Crowdfunding and my fear of public humiliation

As I write this I’m in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign to publish my book the Steps, a new paradigm in healing for our time. Crowdfunding is essentially a large number of people contributing small amounts of money in return for ‘perks’ and the opportunity to participate in the manifestation of an idea. When crowdfunding was suggested to me, I dismissed it because, truth be told, I was terrified of the prospect of public humiliation. What if nobody contributed or so few did that I’d look like a fool? What if people ridiculed my project or called me bogus? All those subconscious fears surfaced. Then two women from opposite sides of the world sent me an Internet link to a TED talk by Amanda Palmer, titled The art of asking.  I took it as a sign to take on crowdfunding. What I have found through this experience is that crowdfunding is about much more than financing your project.

It can be the sort of ‘openly crying’ that Koyczan wrote about. It’s like jumping into fire to publicly ask for help in this way. For me, it has brought to the surface every fear of asking. It has allowed me to release unconscious patterns of thought so that I no longer attract circumstances into my life that allow me to play the victim. Bruce Lee said that a goal isn’t necessarily something to be achieved, but is somewhere to aim. Instead of scaling back and playing small, I took the courage to set my crowdfunding budget high enough to achieve my vision of the Steps and risk my biggest fear of looking foolish. In the process, I have freed myself from any fear of humiliation.

Have the courage to look foolish

We don’t all need to launch a crowdfunding campaign to release the unconscious patterns that hold us back from asking for help. We can just begin noticing. We can become our own calm witness to unconscious beliefs and the patterns we create that hold us back. A lovely way to practise asking for help is by asking your guides or angels—even if you don’t believe in guides or angels—you can ask and notice what is triggered, what fears come up to be looked at. The more you have the courage to risk looking foolish or weird by asking your guides for help, the more you will be able to ask clearly for what you need in the physical world. Support networks will appear, what you need will turn up. When you discover this for yourself, you release the victim/tyrant energy that enslaves so many. And as we each free ourselves from these binding energetic patterns, we create a world where everyone is acknowledged, cared for and freed completely from whatever holds them back from asking for help.