How Can I Help You?

For those of us in the help industry often lead with the question, “How can I help you?” If it is not just your job but your calling to help others, you will find yourself helping everyone, all the time, which if you let it get the best of you, will find yourself in burnout.

Helping others is a spiritual calling, one of the spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:28) which unless you have the servant’s heart, your offer to help will only be regarded as a job. If you have the gift of helps your drive to help and your efficacy in helping far surpasses your contemporaries, and it’s easy to get lost in the exercising of your gift of helps.

Any endeavor you are incredibly passionate about can get the best of you. You want to do your best, but in order to do so you need to give from the best of you. This is far different from giving all you’ve got until there’s nothing of you left.

In my mission, “Helping others achieve their highest and best,” the word, “helping” is right at the beginning of the darn thing. Believe me, I’ve let this helping consume me so much, that there was nothing left, and it is terribly apparent, if you allow your calling to overwhelm you, you will find yourself at the most desolate place in life.

You want to offer your assistance to others with the best intentions when you ask, “How can I help you?” When people or organizations accept your offer of help and have benefitted from your assistance, they can become obsessed with your ability to serve them. This is where you, as the helper, need to be responsible enough to manage their need in respect of your desire to help (not your ability to help).

When, “How can I help you,” turns into someone’s assertion, “I need you to help me,” makes you feel good as if you are accomplishing your mission and being true to your calling, unless or until your helping has fallen out of balance.

For me to help someone achieve their highest and best, I could give and give and give even more, without regard to my self-maintenance (and I have found myself in this situation, periodically). At some point, you awake from the momentum of enthusiastic helping with a moment of clarity in the realization that you’re in need of a little (or a lot of) self-attention.

What you do at this moment of clarity makes all the difference. You can say, “I made a commitment, and I must follow-through because I gave my word,” and let your integrity take you to an early grave, or you could learn how to apply your sacred, “no.”

All things in life are subject to change, so taking action as early as possible to renegotiate the terms of your agreement to help, is of primal importance for the continued performance of your gift of helping others in perpetuity.

Even if your client, organization, or friend protests and in tears and proclaims, “But I need you,” reinforcing with, “I can’t do this without you!” you are about to allow a miracle to take place.

Your ego might step forward and assert that there is no other way for this work to continue without you, as if you were not to continue to perform your function, all your work will crumble to the ground and fail. Recognize this and keep your ego in check.

Understanding that telling someone, “no,” is a sacred act on your part which offers the person you’re politely adjusting to experience a secret, “yes.” They are not aware of the secret yes at the outset, because they may experience a feeling of rejection. Yet, the secret is that there is an amazing opportunity waiting to emerge on the other side of every no.

In this way, your sacred no ushers in growth and expansion which desires to be brought forth. Every sacred no is a secret yes.

The whole universe desires to see all the goodness be born through the work you have begun and momentum you have helped to build. When you start to withdraw from a project, it allows others to step into their gifts and special abilities.

In this moment, they are able to overcome their inner fear and obstacles because their inner hero is being called forth. Thank God, you were able to allow this to be birthed. In this way, you have encouraged someone else to embrace their gifts and special abilities to rise to achieve their highest and best.

Your sacred no helps you to maintain your high level of performance and has helped to make the world a better place.

Try it and see what happens.

Never stop inviting others with your, “How can I help you?” Just be aware that you need to serve by being true to yourself and to share from your overwhelming love and care of yourself.

Thank you for all you do to help others and make the world a better place.

Preserving the Servants Heart

I have a servant’s heart, as do many of my clients. There is a downside to being of selfless service to others, and that is neglecting the self-care necessary to maintain a healthy life for the person possessing a servant’s heart. The result is a decline in emotional health, that left to deteriorate, will affect the biological system and adding undue mental stress. This could result in lack of self-respect, angst, premature aging and a host of other health-related issues.

Preserving the servants heart self respect healthy boundaries

The servant must find ways to preserve themselves to be able to better serve their clients, community and/or world at large. Often, the servant feels as though, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,” (Spock, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan).

There needs to be a healthy balance, even so – rarely – one may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good. Many have had to answer the call, including my 20-year-old son who answered this call on a particular 4th of July while serving in the Armed Services in Afghanistan, though most of us in the service of others will not face paying the ultimate price on their behalf.

That said, to better serve others best, we in service must pay enough attention to our own needs to maintain a healthy platform to work from enabling us to better serve our communities.

Servants need to stop feeling the needs of others are more important than their own. If you have neglected your own self-care, it’s time to take back your life to increase your effectiveness in servitude. Your needs are important and only you have the ability to tend to your needs. It can be uncomfortable, but taking steps to preserve one’s self is paramount to your success in effective service over time.

The key is balance

Learn to say, “No”

For the servant, it can seem counter-intuitive, but you were created with an internal sensor to help you monitor when and what serves your highest and best performance of your service. Some call it intuition; at the very least it is that undaunted feeling of overwhelm, a clear indication the situation at hand is not congruent with your personal terms of service.

In this moment it is certainly prudent for you to exercise your ability to simply say, “No.” (I can see that grimacing expression on your face. Stay with me…) you must start using this word. Uncomfortable as it may be at first, trust me, it will get easier. It’s a small two-letter word that will help you create enough space to establish a basic parameter. It is not your calling to be all things to all men and besides, saying no doesn’t imply that you don’t respect or like someone; it only means no. That’s all.

You may need a little wiggle room to muster up a firm, “No.” If so, you could offer up a stall tactic, like, “Let me check my schedule and get back to you.”

If you have a long history of always saying, “Yes,” when it was not in your best interest, you could dress it up a bit by saying, “Now is not a good time for me,” or, “that’s not really my area of expertise,” and refer them to someone more keenly attuned to that particular circumstance or project.

You can refer them to someone who is better suited or equipped to take on the task, or encourage the person approaching you to examine their own abilities and some insightful review might lead them to the conclusion that they may have the skills necessary to undertake it on their own. Why not use your intuition to give them the opportunity to grow?

In the event you have accepted a particular responsibility and felt uncomfortable or resentful for having accepted the challenge, this is a clear indication, that when approached with this type of offer in the future, declining the assignment is certainly in order.

For the persons who call on you to serve them, and have little respect for all that you do, ask yourself, “Would I let this person treat my son or daughter, like that?” If the answer is no, then it’s time to start setting some healthy boundaries.