Why is it so hard to ask for help? Why do we force ourselves to struggle to do all the things? Why do we torture ourselves doing time-consuming, and less than enjoyable things that don’t add value in the same way other items on our list might? Why not just ask for help?
Reasons we don't ask for help:
We feel pressure to appear that we can do it all.
We feel like if we ask for help we will be perceived as weak.
We feel like no one else could do the task as well as we can.
We don’t appreciate or value our very limited resource of time.
We feel pressure to appear that we can do it all.
While the stigma of being able to “do it all” has been something ingrained in so many for so long, today’s age of technology does not do anything to lessen that stigma. It actually makes it worse. We scroll through various social media platforms seeing what appears to be perfectly curated lives and homes, perfectly clean and dressed children participating in all the activities, families with gigantic smiles on their perfectly planned vacation (or staycation), beautiful home-cooked and healthy meals posted daily, perfectly executed Pinterest crafts, celebrations of professional successes… all the things, perfect, always.
The reality is the lives portrayed on social media are often not quite as perfect as they may seem, all the things being perfect very likely comes at some expense. There has to be a tradeoff for perfection, so what’s the gritty truth of what slips when doing what looks like doing it all? Stressed days, stressed relationships, just stress in general! Is it worth it? Stop scrolling and start asking for help!
We feel like if we ask for help we will be perceived as weak.
To follow on the above idea of having to do it all… what happens if we don’t? What will we think about ourselves? What will others think of us? I’m going to flip the script here… if you asked for help, and you accomplished even more than you could possibly imagine, albeit with a little help, what would you think of yourself? After taking a spin (hopefully, quick spin) down the guilt path, I would bet you words like creative, resourceful, savvy, brilliant and a million other positive things, enter your mind! Good for you! Because it’s true!
What will others think? Hmm, maybe they will think that you can’t do it all and have to ask for help, maybe they will think that you don’t care enough about the task if you would let someone else do it? Cool, great. Guess what, I’d argue that you just flat out do MORE and care MORE and are far from weak, but rather strong and wise as you prioritize life with purpose yet still get everything done.
We feel like no one else could do the task as well as we can.
This is perhaps the toughest one. Letting go. I’d challenge you to think of this in a different way though. Do you actually care about doing something in a specific way or do you care more about getting it done? Perhaps this is how you can prioritize what you might delegate. As a fellow Type A person, I understand this one oh so well, but have seen first-hand the benefits of letting things go that truly don’t matter. Is the task done? Yes, move on. It’s still a checkmark on the list, whether it was done in the exact way I would have done it.
We don’t appreciate or value our very limited resource of time.
There are many reasons to ask for help, but to me, this is the exact reason we should ask for help. Time is the one resource that we cannot get back, no matter how much money we have. Unless we are merely trading time for money, meaning, we value our time more than a certain dollar per hour amount that we could pay someone else to do the same thing, thus, giving us that hour of time back. It is only once we realize that our time is finite and prioritize the time we spend with purpose and intention, that we appreciate just how important it is to ask for help, to delegate, to make the most of the time we have. I’m definitely not the wisest person on this topic and I’ve spent many years of my life trying to do all the things only to cause myself a lot of stress and anxiety, so please know there is absolutely no judgment or smugness underlying this post. Like, zero. These questions and reflections have been part of my own time management journey and when I now look at my list through some of these lenses, I feel so much more confident in creating a strategy to accomplish everything on my list and still enjoy the moments that matter! Taking a deep breath, creating a plan, and asking for help has been the absolute key stops on my road map to finding more time in my day.
Megan Trask is the Co-Founder of Tula, an on-demand personal + virtual assistant service created to give you more balance + time in your days. In mid 2018, Megan found herself struggling with navigating a successful and fast-paced career along with caring for her two girls as a single Mom. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day. There were many times that it was simply too much to navigate all the things and find the right balance without feeling guilty on one front or another. Megan, being a resourceful problem solver decided to stop feeling stressed and searched for a solution to this problem. But, it didn’t exist. There were very marketplace, impersonal, less than flexible platforms that still took a fair amount of work in order to delegate and didn’t provide the trust and vetting a single Mom would want. Or, there were very personal actual personal assistants, a potentially amazing option, but one that came with a very high price and not the efficiency she sought. So... she, along with her best friend of twenty years and Co-Founder, Cody Galloway, created TULA to be the life balance solution for families navigating mental load, burn out, and the weight of invisible labor. We are your personal assistant at the touch of a button, the personal assistant you didn't know you could afford!