Won't you please, please help me?

Let’s add this to the many reasons kids are smarter than adults, and likely to be much happier, as well.
 
My grandson decided to get into the porta-crib by himself, so he grabbed a step-stool and started pulling himself up. I offered to help him, but he said, “I can do it.” And then he got stuck, so he asked for help.
 
Brilliant! He got stuck and asked for help. The greatest lessons are so, so simple.
 
So when do we lose the ability—no, the wisdom—to ask for help when we need it? As adults, we chant our rugged individualist, self-sufficiency mantras repeatedly as we damage our health, our relationships, and our survival. As is often the case, we would do a lot better if we acted like children.
 
I thought about my grandson recently, in a suburban diner, as I was catching up on life with a guy I hadn’t seen for about a decade. We were about 20 minutes into our highlight reels when I felt the need to explain how he could solve all his problems. (My old record was four minutes, so this counts as progress.)
 
There’s no doubt I was right, of course. I knew what he needed because I could see things objectively, without being bogged down by emotional baggage or unnecessary details of his life. Foolishly, he was challenged by minor issues like "ethics" and "people" and how many "resources" he could devote to the problems. Let’s just say that he didn’t take a ton of notes as I spewed sagacity all over the table.
 
We commiserated for a while about how easily we can solve other people’s problems, a particularly relevant topic for two guys who have earned their keep as consultants. When you’re in the business of finding solutions, though, problem solving is the easy part. The biggest challenge is convincing the client to accept and implement the plan that they’re paying you to deliver.
 
I encountered this frequently with business founders who couldn’t accept the limits of their insights. Paraphrasing just a tad, “I built this company and nobody knows more about this business than I do, so nobody can solve any problems better than I can. If I haven’t fixed it, it cannot be fixed. Now, what was your idea?”
 
This resistance is pervasive in our personal lives as well. Someone asks if we need help and we say, no, we’re fine, we have it under control, we can handle it, no need to be concerned. Except, of course, that we can’t get out of our own way and we’ll be wallowing in our slop forever.
 
Every one of us has a friend who is trapped in an eternal do-loop, continually hitting the same roadblock and making the same decisions that get them nowhere. Every one of us has a friend who picks the wrong relationship, the wrong investment, the wrong job, the wrong health choices, over and over again.
 
And every one of us is that friend to somebody else.  We need help, we know we need help, all our friends know we need help, and we still insist it’s all fine, totally under control.
 
This is one of those challenges that is dirt simple.

1. If we have a problem we can solve on our own, solve it and move on.
2. If we have a problem that could be solved, but not by us, we can ask for help.
3. If we’re too embarrassed to admit we’re stuck, we can choose to keep suffering, but it must be in silence.

 
Any three-year-old could make the right choice here. Couldn’t we be just as smart?
 
Before you start calling all your friends to get the help you’ve been avoiding, why not click here to subscribe to our weekly viewpoints? Maybe we can solve all your problems.
 

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