Why asking for help can be a life-changing decision
And why you should start doing it right now
I know I didn’t.
I started my own self-discovery journey in 2013. I was 24 years old and moved to Budapest by myself. The world was my oyster and I guess I was ready for it. I had a million different plans, achievable, and, mostly, unrealistic goals. I went for a lot of things: Bucket lists checks one after another; Google searches growing rapidly in length and diversity. And fresh out of a particularly hurtful relationship, I started to enjoy being alone. More than that: I craved it. And found out that I valued it, along with my independence, as I never did before.
During my search for the all-time happiness, I kept reading about a million different people which accomplished all these things by themselves. Willpower. Habit formation. Goal setting. Finding your “Why”. Blog after article after book. All of it made me curious, made me grow, made me understand what worked for me and what didn’t work.
Until I hit a wall, around 2016.
I didn’t want to read, research or experiment anymore. I knew the things I wanted to go through with, how to get there, how long it would take me. I was willing to take the risks, to make the sacrifices.
So, during the two years that followed, I kept on doing all those things I knew were correct and following certain protocols, knowing for surethat I should be able to achieve all these things that I wanted to, if only. If only, what?… I tried harder. Woke up at 6:30AM. I’d focus. If only I’d learn how to. Read the right books.
When I met my partner, there were still a million things I wanted to do, to change, to improve. One of the things was: I wanted to start running. Yet again.
Actually, that’s a lie. I wanted to run regularly. I wanted to do the whole thing from scratch. Run 1 minutes, walk 2 minutes, slowly progressing, run 5 minutes in a row, run 10 minutes in a row… (And yes, when I finally started, I could maybe run one minute without gasping, breathing my heart out and finally giving up)
This is NOT a story about how I found the right app, or the right routine, or the right motivation to run my first marathon. (Well, maybe the right partner, but that would be a whole other story). By the way, I did NOT run a marathon.
But this IS the story about how I realized that I would have never been able to do it alone.
I ran 7 km two days ago. And that was a big deal, for me (Screw you, overachievers!). But what really made two days ago a special day was that it showed up in my calendar that I had been running, every week, for 4 months.
Don’t get me wrong — Good for you if you managed to do it all by yourself. I simply realized that I couldn’t. I know that there is no way that I could’ve gotten out of bed on some of the days that went by. We went running when it was raining (So much that we seriously questioned our mental health before, during, and after the run), when we were exhausted, when I had headaches, when I had cramps, and when I simply didn’t want to. And when my partner also didn’t feel like it, but he complains way less than me.
And the thing that got to me, is that I didn’t feel any less deserving of this achievement just because I did it with someone else — Not even a bit.
It was still me who ran those kilometers, I just had someone running beside me. I had someone to count on, to support me, to encourage me, someone I wasn’t afraid to say “I don’t think I can do this” to. And eventually, I started to see things differently. And I’m not just talking about running.
There is nothing wrong with admitting that you can’t do it by yourself. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. Now, repeat after me. There is nothing wrong with it, and there’s nothing wrong with you.
There is this romantic idea of us studying hard for an exam on a coffee shop, or library, or running by ourselves, or closing ourselves up in your rooms for hours and hours and hours and slowly achieving all our goals. With perseverance. With inner strength. We see it all the time, in the movies. Day after day after week after year. But you know what? It’s NOT like the movies. At all.
The first time you feel terrible in the morning, your head hurts, a friends asks you out to go to the beach, for some drinks, or you have a hangover the next day… No, that part of the story never gets told.
When you need to clean up the house, go grocery shopping, go to work and come home exhausted. Doing it all by yourself. It doesn’t go by in a second, fast-forwarding through life. It’s hard to give up all those things you eventually have to, to achieve your goals.And sometimes it feels like you’ve doing it forever.
Bear with me for a moment. Let’s imagine that you succeed in running that marathon. Learn that guitar. Pass those exams. Who cares how you got there? Who cares if someone got your back, pushed you at times, got you out of bed? Why do YOU care? It doesn’t mean you’re weaker than you thought. It just means that we are not all the same. We each work in our own ways. But yes, you CAN do it. Maybe you just can’t do it alone.
The other thing I found out, which is something we often forget about, is how rewarding sometimes it is for the other person, the one in the other side of your “I think I may need your help with this”. Trust me, most of the times this is a really nice phrase to hear.
My partner is a much better athlete than me. He crossfits. He can seriously run. He has a six-pack (she said proudly). Yes, he was almost walking beside me for the first month of runs. I thought it was a huge favor he was making me, a gentle pat in the head. But, surprisingly enough, he later told me he could never run regularly before, too. He would have never have run by himself in the freakin’ rain. He never made it a habit, never started to do green smoothies afterwards, never took it THAT seriously — Or at all. And, most importantly, never had anyone to run with him, and that last bit made him incredibly happy.
Running together made us closer, more intimate, and, generally speaking, a better-looking couple, which is hey, just the way it is.
Now, when I think about reaching a goal, I think differently: Should I ask for help with this? Who would actually consider it not a burden, but a refreshing task? A challenge? Who would love to teach someone, to have someone talking about what they learned over the years? Who would love to be a mentor, a guide, a trainer, and never had a chance to?
I can seriously say that this changed the way I see my future, my mindset, my life. I always thought something was missing.
Maybe you do too.
And maybe that thing you were missing was simply someone else. A mentor. A companion. A friend. Someone you admire you can follow the footsteps of. Maybe your mother, or father, or best friend, or simply someone you know who is doing something you wish you could or knew how. So well, get out of that high horse of yours, do it now and do it today. Life is there for the taking.
And all you got to do is ask for help.
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