One of the key components of stress & burnout is the inability to ask for help when we feel that things are too much.
“If I’ll just finish this, then I can relax.” is on the mind of most exhausted people. The problem is it never ends, right?
People who go through stress & exhaustion tend to take on much of the responsibility for the success of their work and have a hard time delegating or asking for help.
This tool is helpful if you want to help someone dealing with stress to ask for help. (*or yourself)
Let’s go:
1. Formulate helpful thoughts, using Tool no. 3
Here are some examples:
Unhelpful thought: Everybody will think that I am failing if I ask for help.
Helpful thought 1: Everybody needs help from time to time. I cannot read what other people will think. If I look for similar situations in the past, I cannot find many situations where asking for help was thought to be a sign of failing. Maybe some people will think that I could do better, but others will be happy to help.
Unhelpful thought: If I ask for help, this makes me incompetent.
Helpful thought 2: Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Nobody can know it all. If anything, asking for help shows that I am willing to get better and learn.
Unhelpful thought: Experts don’t ask for help. This is a sign of weakness (all or nothing)
Helpful thought 3: Experts sometimes ask for help. This is how they become experts. By learning and improving.
Unhelpful thought: It won’t make a difference if I ask for help or not.
Helpful thought 4: I don’t know if it will make a difference or not until I try it. If I can think about similar situations from the past, did it help me or not when I asked for help? Maybe I will get some new ideas, or maybe I will just ping pong some ideas with someone else.
2. Formulate your request, depending on your need:
Ask for help: “I am trying to get A, but I cannot manage. I have tried B with the C result. And I tried D with the E result. Is there anything else that I can try”?
Ask for clarification: “From what I understand from our discussion about A, the situation is B. can you confirm?”
Ask for information: “I am trying to find out information about A. I heard about you from B. Can you help me with this, or can you direct me to someone who can?”
Thanks for being here. If this is not for you, can you tell someone about this tool?