LET LIVE AND LET LEARN

PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES BEFORE OFFERING ANY ADVICE OR SUGGESTIONS

Have you ever met someone who wants to help everyone? Or someone who frequently offers opinions, suggestions or solutions for another’s problem or challenge?

It’s quite possible that someone is you. Most of us want to help and support others at times, however, from personal experience, I feel there also needs to be some caution regarding who we help and how and when we do this.

There may be a personal need behind our actions to help others and we may find justification for them, but the impact on us or the other person may not be what was intended.

We may exhaust ourselves in the process; the help may be rejected; or we could be blamed for offering a suggestion which was followed but didn’t work for the person, and resentment (on either side) may follow as a result.

Here are some examples of situations you might face, and want to provide help in: a friend is given a health diagnosis; a member of the community is experiencing financial hardship; your child is going through a tough time at school.

What would you do?

You may offer suggestions or potential solutions, tell them what you did in a similar situation and/or offer help of some sort.

While that may feel like the right approach for us, is it the best one for the person involved?

Consider it from your own perspective — if any of the above situations happened to you, what would you want?

Depending on your nature, the problem, resources available and your ability to do something about it, you may prefer to work through it yourself.

On the other hand, you may be someone who finds it hard to ask for help and therefore welcomes it when help is offered.

But perhaps you reject assistance for some reason, maybe you believe it risks your independence, or you feel unworthy or embarrassed.

One thing’s for sure, we’re all different, but what is the point I’m making?

As humans, we’re here to learn how to survive and thrive, how to adapt and develop, how to work through challenges, whatever they may be and find our place in the world.

When you think back over your life so far, what experiences have taught you the most? The difficult ones where you’ve had to get through something really tough or the easier ones which have brought success or achievement of some kind?

It’s likely to be the tough ones, the ones that test us, place us in unknown territory and outside our comfort zone. We certainly learn most quickly from those.

This links to my belief everything in our life happens for a reason — the good, the bad and the awful, and all of it is helps us learn.

I realise that may not be your view and is therefore hard to accept, but the main message is we can’t learn for another person — it’s their lesson not ours. As much as we might want to reduce or remove the pain of a situation for someone, whether emotional, mental or physical, it’s not our place to do so, even if we were capable.

That’s not to say we should stand back and do nothing — instead I suggest that there may be some questions to ask ourselves before we jump in.

What is our underlying reason for wanting to help? Is there a “should” in there rather than genuine care?

Has the person sought our help?

Do they actually need or want the help we offer?

Is what we are offering truly beneficial? What might be the impact of our helping or not helping?

By the way, I don’t have the answers, they’re for you to discern, but I believe the above is worth considering.

If helping someone diminishes or takes away the opportunity for the person to grow from the experience, then we may be reducing their ability to learn and develop.

You can always have a conversation with the person to ensure that any help or support you would like to offer does not feel imposing or detrimental to them and, whatever their decision, support and care for them in a way that does help them.

Help might take the form of regular calls, check-ins or a cuppa now and then, depending on the person and how well you know them.

Just a thought.