help, help*

There’s nothing like the adrenaline of running sprinting through the airport knowing you have a one in a million chance of making your flight, but hoping beyond hope that somehow you pull it off.  Thanks to the help of a GREAT friend (who thought I was asking him to help me change my flat tire, when, in actuality, I was asking him to drive me to the airport during rush hour traffic), I’m miraculously on my flight to Milwaukee.  Thank you, NateDogg – you’re the epitome of awesome.

 

As my heart rate slowly returns to normal and the coughing and wheezing lets up (yes, seriously), I find myself engaged in a bit of adrenaline-induced introspection.

Why do I have SUCH a hard time asking for help?  I anticipate that this post will be as much personal as it is professional, despite the author’s preference that it be strictly the latter.  The fact that my friend thought I was asking him to come downtown and help me change my tire illustrates explicitly what I’m going to discuss in this post.  Why didn’t (couldn’t) I just say to him, “I’m in a really bad spot.  I have a flat tire, and I REALLY need a ride to the airport right this second if I have any chance of making my flight?”? (This grammar nazi isn’t quite sure that’s the accurate punctuation, but just go with it).

Instead, what I said to him (and a couple others) was more along the lines of, “Hey!  How’s it going? … Good, good! ....  Oh me?  Well, yeah, I’m not so great.  I actually have to catch a flight to Wisconsin, and I just came out to my parking lot, and I have a flat tire…. Yeah, seriously.  Can you believe it?  Murphy’s law, right? … Yeah, well I don’t know what I’m going to do.  What are you doing right now? … If you’re busy, I’m sure I could grab a cab.”  NateDogg, who knows me so well and, admittedly, over the years, has taken me under his wing as a bit of a second dependent (his wife is one of my besties), immediately said, “No, no, I’ll come help you.  Where are you?”

Thinking he was coming to help me change my tire, he called to let me know he had arrived at the designated corner.  I bounded out of my office, threw my suitcase in the backseat and hopped in the front seat.  “Thank you SO much for taking me to the airport.  You’re the absolute BEST!!!  Do you think we can make it there in 25 minutes?!?!” I gushed, breathless (ps – It was rush hour).

Ummm… what?  Wait… Um, yeah, I guess I can take you to the airport.  I just need to make a couple calls because I’m supposed to be at a dinner down south… No, no, it’s ok - I’ll take you.  Wait, where’s your car?  I thought you needed help with your tire?

Huh?  My tire?  Oh.  Shit.  “I know you believe you understand what you think I said; however, I’m not sure you realize that what you heard, is not what I meant.”

It’s my job to manage expectations.  I am expected to tell it to people straight and let them know what’s ahead.  And from the feedback I’ve received, I think I’m good at my job.  I don’t say this arrogantly… I have A LOT to learn, but I like to think I’m direct and people respect me for it.  So why, WHY, do I have such a difficult time saying to a close, trusted friend, “Hey, I’m incredibly vulnerable right now and completely dependent on your support.  Please, help me.”?

Why can’t I tell my superiors or colleagues that I can’t handle something, that I need direction, support, resources, etc.?  Why do I wait until it’s to the point that it’s absolutely unbearable before I’ll cry uncle?

I perceive a request for help as a personal weakness.  There, I said it.  Let’s start there (I realize I’m well into this post, and I think I’m just “starting”).  I hate admitting that I can’t do something for myself, which means I have a really, really (REALLY) difficult time asking for help.  I know this is flat-out wrong, on many levels (both personal and professional), but I just can’t help the internal reaction I get from admitting defeat.  I’m cringing just writing this.  I hate it.  Surprisingly, however, when other people ask me for help, I don’t perceive them as weak (when requests for help are used reasonably, of course – not necessarily sparingly, just reasonably).  In fact, I love to help other people.  This is strictly a self- perception, and it’s very much a double standard.

Before I effectively (unintentionally) tricked NateDogg into taking me to the airport, I had two VERY good friends say to me “I am busy, but if you NEED me to take you to the airport, just tell me and I’ll take you.”  And I couldn’t tell them.  Of course I needed them to take me to the airport – how else was I going to get there?  I knew I needed them to take me to the airport.  I knew my flight left in an hour.  I knew that even if I could even get a cab, it would be 65 bucks and the driver likely wouldn’t absorb my sense of urgency. I knew I was out of options. But I couldn’t form the words.  Three simple words that absolutely kill me to admit: I. Need. Help.

It’s professionally reminiscent of the moment when my boss told me to start making calls and begin building a team because we were to the point where I needed help.  I don’t need help, not yet anyway.  I got this, I thought defiantly.  But, lucky for me, he insisted (“as a precaution”), and I followed his instruction and made my first call for “help.”  We hired my referral (who is AWESOME) pretty much immediately.

Three months later, I’ve made two specific calls for help, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.  There have been a couple of projects and a couple of clients that I, admittedly, only reluctantly released control over.  I had taken it as an insult when colleagues and superiors told me that there was no way I would be able to chew all that I had bitten off.  This week, however, we all laughed at how insane it would have been for me to have held on to those pieces.  I let go of them, and somehow, my days are still overflowing, my job is still fulfilling and I’m still respected.

Thank you, NateDogg, for helping me when I couldn’t ask for it.  Thank you to my two other friends for offering to help me, if I could just ask for it.  Both are more valuable than you’ll know. 

* There’s a famous Denver homeless man, who is notorious for violently shaking his change cup at you and hollering “HELP, HELP” as you walk by.  Because of him, the phrase has taken on a bit of a second meaning among some of us locals.