HOW TO: Help Others 101

[5ft Diva]

I could have put this in the 'How To' forum, but decided it fit better here.

E's thread about asking for help put me in the person's shoes of how to give help effectively and wanted to discuss this issue a little more in depth with the rest of you. I think it will be fun and educational to hear how you have learned to really help others.

How do you know someone needs help? How do you approach someone who you know needs help that you know won't ask? How do you offer your help to others? How have others offered help to you that was really helpful? Have you ever offered your help only to not be helpful at all? What did you learn from the experience? Do you feel you should graciously accept help when it isn't helpful or even asked for or do you think you should be honest with others about how you're feeling?

Please share your thoughts - I'm excited to hear from you all!

[Erudite]

For me, I often base my offers of help on what I know I'd need in a similar situation. When I am sick, the house goes to pot and there's no cooked food. Food is the easy one for anyone to take, so I usually offer that first. We all have different standards and eccentricities about cleaning so it especially hard to clean someone else's house, since we'll either do it too well, or not well enough.

I think the other thing is to be AWARE of opportunities to help and jump on them. For example, last year my son's Webelos leader called to cancel Webelos because she was sick. Too often, we go "ok, no problem, I won't send him" and it doesn't compute that if SHE is sick, her family is not likely to get dinner and she's going to need a DVD that she hasn't seen before to keep her mind off how long it'll take her to get to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. So I forced dinner on her, especially after she said they'd be fine with Ramen...who is really EVER fine with Ramen?? She couldn't eat it because her tummy was upset, but her family had a hot, healthy dinner to enjoy and she didn't have to cook it. (I also have to point out that I got my webelos son to help with the meal and deliver the meal too, so that he was involved in serving his leader...always get the kids to help too because it sets up their antenna for service.) I didn't think of the DVD until later, but that's never a bad idea if you've got a good one. Now I brought up this particular example, because a few months after that she was called as an RS teacher and in one of her lessons, she mentioned "Sister E bringing dinner whether you liked it or not" and how very grateful she was that it had been done and what an example it was to her of someone finding ways to serve even when it wasn't totally perceived as needed. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but it was nice to know it had been appreciated.

Yes, there are some obvious "I need help" signals, but for the rest, WE need to pay attention and offer what we can. That's the starting point. I think, and hope to get there myself someday, that if we pay enough attention to the guidance of the Spirit, we can offer what we can't and then with the Lord's help, we'll figure out how to give what we didn't think we had. I don't know if that makes sense, but service is a GIGANTIC leap forward for our spirits and sometimes going beyond the mark is something we need to do to take the leap.

As for graciously accepting what you don't need...graciousness is ALWAYS in style. It is an attribute of Christ that is most visible in gentle but strong women. Graciousness allows you to understand the other's perspective, because to be gracious, you have to accept and love the other person for just who and what that person is. Once you can do that, you can accept or decline and other person is not offended one way or another, because through your graciousness he or she knows that the offering was acceptable even if it wasn't accepted. And in graciousness and honesty, we might also explain what is really needed. If the other person can not HEAR that, we still love them because we understand where they are and that's ok.

I hope that all makes sense. I don't want to be seeming to say that I have the above all done...I'm a strong woman, but not always gentle, so graciousness is a little way off still for me, but something that I'm working on. I would guess when I get there that asking for help of others and accepting what they can give will become easier. For now...I'm still a wimp.

OH! LOL and here I am trying not to appear weak in my reasoning for not asking for the help I actually need. Ok...I'm getting this. Oh! 5D...thanks for asking the questions and letting me type out my thoughts.

E

[5ft Diva]

Hey, anytime.

No, just kidding. I'm glad that this was an indirect blessing for what you are going through right now. I really appreciate your thoughts. I was beginning to think because no one responded and the site showed that plenty of people viewed the thread that my questions didn't make sense or that they were somehow offensive. Thank you for responding.

I really love your thoughts about how giving service to others is a gigantic spiritual leap on our part. And not only a leap, but probably a quantum leap. That really is a fascinating idea.

I, too, try to anticipate a person's needs by observing the situation and then figuring out what would be most helpful given their circumstances.

I have made the mistake of offering help before and not really being in a position to give it which made it awkward for everyone involved. These were hard lessons to learn. So my intentions were honorable, but I didn't have the capacity to honor those intentions. Since then I have learned to figure out how to get my intentions to match my capabilities (thus building credibility) by finding out what the person needs (based on what they've said they'd need), figure out how I can give it to them and then call them up and offer my specific services to them. I have found that there sometimes is a little resistance, but that they are always willing to accept it in the end. Examples of this are: Being able to lighten someone's load but not being able to get out of the house opens an opportunity to do laundry for that person. All I have to do is go and pick it up and I still can go about my day or not being able to help clean a friends house that needs cleaning because I can't get out of the house, but babysitting someone else's kids to free them to go over and help so that the cleaning still gets done.

I have also found that when I offer specific services the person to whom I am offering my services to is less likely to decline. Such as, "I will be bringing you dinner and I can do it any day but Thursday. Which night this week would you prefer dinner on?" I have found that it takes the awkwardness away from the person already feeling awkward about accepting the service. I think a lot of people have found this little trick so I don't think I'm sharing anything new and grand, but it's one of my favorite approaches because it works for everybody. It also makes it easy for someone to say no if they really can't use the service.

I think my thoughts may be jumbled - just typed away as the thoughts came so there's no rhyme or reason to them. Hope this made sense.

[Erudite]

Well, this has been an interesting set of questions for me to consider. The one I'm stuck on at the moment is "honesty" in asking for what you really need. I thought I did that. But the response back has been...well, let's just say, I would have appreciated being listened to a little more.

It's a lesson for me when attempting to help that I ask about all the reasons for the request, I guess. But until my request was met in a way that doesn't actually meet my needs, I hadn't thought about it very hard. I don't know that others would have either. You ask for something, but in your mind you have a specific way it should happen. Sometimes, it's ok that it happens another way, just so long as it happens (like my floor getting mopped...it was just wonderful, though how it happened was unexpected). And then you ask for something else and it DOES matter how it happens. I guess it's hard to know sometimes, even for yourself.

[Erudite]

LOL is this what drives men crazy about us women?? Sometimes it does matter how it happens and sometimes it doesn't?