It’s risky business being human isn’t it?

And working on making real and lasting connections with others can be tricky and a bit worrisome!

Do you find that you’re going about your life, doing pretty well and then all of a sudden you find that you need help with something? Do you freeze and feel awkward about asking for help? Does that make you feel “less than?” But then, do you hesitate to lend a helping hand or offer to help someone else? Probably not!

Well, what if you or I truly need help?  What should we do? Try to over-extend and wear ourselves out? Let things slide and try to play catch-up later? Crawl into a hole and let the thought of what needs to be done bury us until I have come to a complete halt and unable to do anything?

What do you think?

Is it ok to ask for help?  Are you somehow less of an adult, less of a woman, less of a mother, less of a wife, less of a person if you let someone know you need assistance?

I think the difficulty sometimes is showing vulnerability.  Or maybe it’s that we fear we may seem “needy.” Maybe it’s not wanting to feel obligated to offer help to someone else in the future or in other words, indebted to them.

A woman I heard talking about, BRAVING, or learning to make connections with others, (and I wish I written their name by the note I made to myself!), made this statement: “If we devalue ourselves for asking for help, then we will devalue others when they need help.”  (And can’t we feel it when that devaluing attitude is present when we are on the receiving end of things?)

She said that, besides asking for, or offering help, there are many things we can do to cultivate real human connections that will help us to have healthy, life-affirming connections with our friends and family.

We can continue to learn to have greater love for ourselves; greater trust in others; more ability to guard the vulnerability of others by keeping their confidences; more practice at doing what we say we will do; taking responsibility for our words, actions and mistakes and cultivate an attitude of assuming the best about our friends and their motives.

It is a lonely and insecure world when we try to live in it alone.  Heaven help us to learn, by baby steps if necessary, to love and to be loved.

My love and best wishes to you my friend.

Jacque

P.S. If you know who came up with BRAVING, please comment so that we can give them kuddos!