Mike Robbins

Infusing Life and Business with Authenticity and Appreciation

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The Importance of Asking for Help

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As much as we love to lend our support and help others, many of us find asking for help awkward or uncomfortable. 

How can we shift our mindset on what it means about us when we’re willing to reach out to others?

When we ask people for their time, feedback, or support in a gracious way, it creates a win-win for everyone. Asking for help is a way to practice vulnerability, which is a necessary aspect of bringing our whole selves to work and life.

Why Do We Struggle Asking for Help?

Most of us have a hard time asking for help. Here are a few different reasons we have trouble doing it.

1. We’re scared of being judged. 

We fear that people will judge us or think we’re weak when we ask for help. It’s hard enough to summon up the courage to ask for help – but the fear of judgment behind it can be just as hard to deal with.

2. We don’t want to burden people.

Asking for help brings about the fear that we are annoying people – that we are being a burden on them, especially these days with all that is going on. We also worry about seeming selfish.

3. We’re afraid of rejection.

Many of us also worry that the person we ask for help will say no. We’ll get the courage to push through the fear of being judged and then have to face someone saying no after being so vulnerable.

It’s hard enough to make ourselves vulnerable, and most of us hate feeling rejected and disappointed. The fear of being disappointed and disappointing others can be an overwhelming one.

4. We’re scared they’ll do it wrong.

Another reason some of us struggle asking for help is because we’re scared they’ll do it wrong. Often we think – or even know – that we can do better.

But when we keep our world small and enclosed in only our perspective, it limits how vast our experience can grow and expand to.

If we’re struggling with things, asking for help can help us get through it.

Why Asking for Help is Important

 

– It helps us be more vulnerable and authentic.

Asking for help is a great way to practice being authentic and vulnerable, which allows us to have empathy for and with other human beings.

I define authenticity as honesty without self-righteousness and with vulnerability.  When we ask for help, we put ourselves out there. 

Being vulnerable allows us to connect with others, and it is important for us to embrace it. But many of us are afraid to do this because vulnerability carries a sense of risk and uncertainty.

– Practicing vulnerability helps us open up.

Vulnerability means opening up and making ourselves emotionally exposed. We must put our emotions on the line and be willing to fall on our faces. The more we practice being vulnerable, the more we build that muscle, and the more risk we can take while dealing with uncertainty. It helps us build trust with ourselves and with others.

– We will always stay at “no” if we don’t ask. 

We don’t get help if we don’t ask. When we ask for support, we worry about rejection or feeling embarrassed – but most of the time, none of those things happen.

Our strongest fears about what will happen when we ask for help rarely occur. The worst-case scenario is getting a “no” or an inauthentic yes. But when we ask, we may get the help and support we need that is super valuable.

When we ask for help, we give others the opportunity for the joy and satisfaction that comes from helping.

Asking for help might scare us, but remember – they might say yes.

When we get support, we are allowing others to help another human being. Asking people for help graciously creates a virtuous cycle. We are more likely to want to help that person in return if they ever ask for help, and vice versa. 

We have to be willing to ask for help and also be willing to receive it. 

Some of us take pride in being a martyr or think it’s admirable to be burdened with doing it all on our own. However, there is real courage in asking for help. 

If we become better at asking for help, we will get more help. We will empower the people around us in a way that nourishes them and us. We can also create an environment where we receive and give support in a generous and abundant way. 

When that happens, everyone thrives. Remember: we’re all in this together.

Your challenge for the week is to start asking for help, even when you feel uncomfortable. Remember that asking for help is a courageous and vulnerable task. It’s also an opportunity to both get and give support in a meaningful way. 

 

In what ways can you start asking for help? Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.

Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.

 

Liked this article? Here are three more!

If You’re Trying To Prove It, You Don’t Believe It

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My counselor Eleanor recently said to me, “Mike, if you’re trying to prove something, it means you don’t actually believe it yet.” Her words hit me right between the eyes, as they often do. She was right and as I reflect on certain aspects of my life, I can see that where I’m overly attached to proving myself, it’s because I don’t actually believe in my own skill, talent, or value (i.e. I’m looking for outside validation to “prove” my worth)…maybe you can relate to this?

In this week’s video blog, I talk about this phenomenon and how we can move from “proving” to “believing” in an authentic way.

Check out the video below and feel free to leave a comment here on my blog about it. You can share thoughts, questions, ideas, insights, or anything else that this video inspires.

Swing Hard (Just in Case You Hit It)

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In July of 1992, the summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year at Stanford, I got invited to play in the U.S. Junior National Baseball Championship tournament in Boise, Idaho. It was a pretty big deal. Some of the top high school players in the country were there, including a 16-year-old shortstop from Miami named Alex Rodriguez. So there we were, a group of pretty talented and confident (i.e., cocky) high school baseball players, but beneath the outward cockiness was a deep sense of insecurity, especially being around other players of this caliber.

The first day we were on the field, they sent us down to the batting cage. We were all standing around watching as each of us took turns hitting. Given the nature of the tournament, the group, and the fact that this was the first time we were on the field together, we were all definitely trying to impress one another. While we were all pretty good ballplayers and relatively impressive, there was one guy on our team, named Geoff Jenkins, who was literally like a man among boys when he stepped into the batting cage.

Geoff was an unbelievably talented player, and I’d played against him in summer ball the year before. He had this huge swing. Lots of coaches and scouts would comment on it, saying,”He won’t be able to get away with that huge swing at the next level.” Geoff was heading to play at University of Southern California that fall and since I was going to Stanford, we were going to be facing one another in the coming years at the college level.

As he was in the batting cage that day, he was putting on such an incredible display of hitting that, even in the midst of our cockiness and posturing, we were all looking around at each other in amazement at what he was doing. At one point, toward the end of his round of batting practice, Geoff swung so hard that on his backswing when he slammed the bat down, he actually cracked the wooden platform under his feet. I’d never seen anyone do that. He had to stop early and come out of the cage. The maintenance crew had to go in and try to figure out what they needed to do-either fix or remove the platform.

As Geoff walked out of the cage with his bat over his shoulder, knowing that he’d just been quite impressive, he had a sly, pleased-with-himself look on his face. One of the other guys on our team said, “Geoff, dude, why do you swing so hard?” Geoff stopped, spit, looked back at him, and, after a long pause, said, “Just in case I hit it.”

I remember thinking, Wow, that’s not how I usually approach baseball, or life for that matter.

Geoff went on to be an all-American while playing at USC and then a first-round draft pick of the Milwaukee Brewers. By the age of 23, he was a starter in the major leagues, where he played for 11 seasons – including winning a World Series ring with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008, his final year. He never stopped swinging hard, and throughout his very successful major league career, he got quite a few hits (1,293 total) and hit a lot of home runs (221 total). He also struck out 1,186 times.

Far too often we hold back and play safe in life – worrying that we might fail, mess up, or embarrass ourselves. Some of this we do consciously, but much of it is unconscious; it’s almost hardwired into us to do whatever we can to avoid looking bad.

A number of years ago, I was running in my neighborhood. In those days, when Samantha was still very young and before Rosie was even born, I used to get up before anyone was awake and go for a morning run. I was coming to my favorite part of the run (the end) and whenever I would get to the corner near our house, I would kick it into high gear, so I could “finish strong.” That morning I was having a pretty good run and was really into the song on my iPod, so when I got to the corner, I took off even faster than normal.

Sadly, I wasn’t paying attention to the ground and didn’t notice a big lip in the sidewalk. I hit it with my foot, and I went down-hard! I hadn’t fallen down that hard in years. My iPod flew out of my hand, my hat came off my head, and I caught myself inches before hitting my chin on the pavement. As shocked as I was to have fallen, as I was lying there on the ground, before I stopped to assess my physical condition, I immediately looked up to see if anyone had seen what had happened. It was a reflex. Once I saw that there were no cars driving by and no one else on the street, I finally took a moment to think about my injuries. I was a little scraped up, although not that bad, and I had bumped my knee pretty good on the ground, but it didn’t seem to be actually injured, just a little sore. I got up, brushed myself off, and, as I limped the rest of the way home, all I thought was, Well, at least no one saw that. It was a painful and humbling reminder of my own attachment to looking good (or, at the very least, not looking bad).

What if we weren’t so concerned with messing up or looking bad? This is about being willing to take risks, be bold, and “swing hard” in our lives. And although this concept is pretty simple and we all understand it, like many things in life, understanding something is quite different from actually practicing it. In other words, it’s much easier said than done.

Being bold, while scary and challenging at times, is essential to living an authentic and fulfilling life. Boldness is about stepping up and stepping out onto our “edge”-pushing the limits of what we think is possible for us. It’s about living with courage and passion, and letting go of our attachment to the outcome along with the perceptions and opinions of others (including our gremlin). Living this way is not only thrilling, it’s how we consciously evolve as human beings.

Will we swing and miss sometimes? Yes. Might we fall down and embarrass ourselves? Of course we will. But, as Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”

This is an excerpt from my new book Nothing Changes Until You Do, published with permission. The book is published by Hay House and available now online or in bookstores. 

Leave a comment here on my blog about how this post relates to your life and/or any questions you have about it.

The Power of Authenticity

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I was recently talking to my counselor Eleanor, asking her for some guidance on both an important meeting I had coming up and on the approach I was taking in some writing I was planning.  She said to me, “Mike, get out of your head and into your heart.  Remember, the truth can’t be rehearsed.”

Her feedback was spot on and had me pause and reflect more deeply on my own relationship to the truth.   Authenticity, as you may know, is something that’s very important to me both personally and professionally.  Even though I’m comfortable admitting that authenticity is something I find challenging at times, which is one of the reasons why I chose to write a book about it and enjoy speaking about it (I’m a big believer in the principle of “we teach best what we most need to learn,”) as I started to look at this more honestly in my own life, I realized that it’s one thing for me to talk and write about authenticity, and it’s a whole other thing for me to actually be authentic in the moment with myself, the people around me, and in the most important situations in my life.

I often ask the question, “What does it actually mean to be authentic?”  The answer to this question varies quite a bit depending on who I’m talking to and continues to evolve for me personally.  In the past few months I’ve had some deeper insight into what authenticity truly means.  I now see it on a continuum.  I spoke about this specifically and shared some personal stories in the recent TEDx talk that I gave on The Power of Authenticity (click here to view the video of this talk).

The three main elements on this continuum are: phony, honest, and authentic.

Phony

On one side of the continuum is what I’ll call “phony.”  We all know what this is like and we all have experience in life being phony (i.e. being inauthentic).   Most of the time it’s not malicious; we’re not trying to deceive people or lie in an overt or harmful way (although sometimes we are).  It usually has to do with withholding or massaging the truth, spinning things in a certain way, or doing or saying what we think we’re “supposed” to in order to look good, get what we what, or simply not cause a problem.   While this can sometimes be benign, operating from this place of phoniness is stressful, it’s not conducive to building trust with others, and it isn’t sustainable or healthy for us on many levels.

Honest

As we move along the continuum, we get to the midpoint which is what I’ll call “honest.”  Honest is much better than phony as we’ve been told from the time we were kids.  “Honesty is the best policy,” as the saying goes.  However, as we’ve each learned, there are some cases in which honesty is NOT the best policy – at least not in terms of feeling good, avoiding conflict, and getting what we want.  Honesty can be a little tricky because we’ve all had experiences in life when we’ve been honest, but in doing so, we’ve created a problem, hurt someone’s feelings, or made a bigger issue out of something than needed to be made.  We’ve been honest at times and it’s been bad for us, made us look bad, it’s been controversial, and more.  Due to these negative experiences and consequences we’ve had in the past, we sometimes shy away from honesty.

Another challenging aspect of honesty is that oftentimes we say we’re just “being honest” when really we’re being right and/or judgmental.   It’s our righteousness and judgments that create separation between us and other people, not the actual honesty.  We justify our righteousness with “honesty,” which is often a smokescreen for making other people wrong and/or feeling as though we’re superior to them.

Due to the complexities and difficulties with honesty, we spend a lot of time in life oscillating between phony and honest – wanting to mostly be honest, but to do so in a politically correct way, or at least in a way that’s not too offensive, problematic, doesn’t create problems for us or other people, and gets us what we want.  However, there’s not a lot of freedom in these two aspects of this continuum.  The true freedom lies beyond honesty.

Authentic

Authenticity is on the opposite side of the continuum from phony.  It’s absolutely honest, but minus the righteousness and plus vulnerability.  It’s the vulnerability aspect of authenticity that’s both liberating and challenging.  It’s scary for a lot of us, myself included, to be vulnerable – especially at certain times, with specific people, and in particular situations.  We’ve been taught and trained not to make ourselves vulnerable.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be vulnerable in the past and people have hurt our feelings, they’ve manipulated us, and they’ve used things against us.  Based on these types of experiences (and our fears of these or other “bad” things happening), we have a tendency to protect ourselves from vulnerability.

It’s our ability to embrace vulnerability which allows us to experience true authenticity, and thus true freedom and power in life.  I’m a big fan of the work of Brene Brown, author of the best-selling book Daring Greatly and professor at the University of Houston.  She has given a few very successful TED talks on vulnerability which you may have seen.  Brene is a behavioral psychology researcher who has studied vulnerability, shame, and fear for over a decade.   What she has found in her research is that vulnerability liberates us from our erroneous and insatiable obsession with perfection – thinking we have to be perfect and can’t make mistakes, have flaws, or be human.  In other words, being vulnerable allows us to let go of the pressure-filled, stress-inducing, perfection demands we place on ourselves.  Vulnerability is also the fundamental element of building trust and connection with other human beings.  Our ability (or inability) to be vulnerable is directly connected with our ability (or inability) to be authentic.

Authenticity is what gives us freedom to be ourselves and be comfortable with who we are, and it’s also what gives us access to connecting with other people in a meaningful and genuine way.  This is true power of authenticity and when we embrace it, even though it can be uncomfortable and scary at times, we give ourselves and those around us one of the most important gifts of all – the real us.  There is no destination called authentic.  Authenticity is a courageous process and a way of being, not a possession or an accomplishment.  As the famous saying goes, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”  The same could be said about authenticity.

Embracing Powerlessness

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In a recent session I had with my new counselor Eleanor, she said to me, “Mike, it sounds like embracing powerlessness is something that would benefit you right now.”  When she said this, a chill went down my spine and my body tightened up.  “What do you mean, ’embrace powerlessness’?'” I asked.  “Why would I want to do that?”

Powerlessness seems almost like a dirty word to me, at least to my ego for sure.  Priding myself on being a “powerful person” and in the business of “empowering” others, I couldn’t imagine what embracing powerlessness even meant, let alone see the value in doing it myself.

Even with my fear and resistance, I continued to listen to what Eleanor had to say about this.  She went on to say, “Allowing yourself to feel powerless doesn’t mean you are powerless.  In fact, the more willing you are to embrace the feeling of powerlessness when it shows up, the more authentic power you’ll be able to access.”

She then taught me a simple meditation/visualization technique to embrace the feeling of powerlessness (for specifics about this technique, click here to listen to my audio podcast where I explain it in detail).  I’ve been using this technique for the past few weeks and talking about it with people close to me.  It has been incredibly liberating.

Through this process, I’ve realized that in many of the areas of my life where I’ve struggled and suffered most, one of the key factors has been my inability to acknowledge, express, or embrace my feelings of powerlessness. Instead of embracing powerlessness, I often end up erroneously attempting to force outcomes or results in the name of being “responsible” or “powerful,” when what is usually really driving me is fear and control (hence the struggling/suffering).  Can you relate in any way?

I recently heard the author, speaker, entrepreneur Chip Conley give a presentation at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco.  He opened with the serenity prayer, which I appreciated and heard in a new way – “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”  I’ve always had a bit of a reaction to this prayer and its underlying wisdom – not wanting to fully acknowledge the idea that there are actually things I cannot change.  However, this prayer is all about consciously embracing our own powerlessness and there’s true brilliance in its simplicity and insight.

What if we stopped pushing against, resisting, and fighting with the things we think need to be changed about life, others, and ourselves – especially those things that are out of our control?  What if we were able to bring a deeper level of acceptance and serenity to the difficulties and challenges in our lives, instead of piling onto them (as well as ourselves and others) with loads of judgment, pressure, expectation, and more?

It’s incredibly liberating when we’re able to acknowledge and express our true emotions, even the ones we may not like, such as powerlessness.  We tend to have lots of stories, beliefs, and real hierarchy when it comes to emotions – deciding that some are “good” and others are “bad.”  The reality is that emotions are positive when we express them in a healthy way and negative when we suppress them, hold them back, or pretend we’re not feeling them.

We’ve all had lots of positive experiences in life when we’ve had the courage to express our fear, sadness, anger, and more (i.e. the “bad” ones).  We’ve also had negative and painful experiences when we’ve withheld or suppressed our love, excitement, passion, gratitude, and others (i.e. the “good” ones).  Maybe it’s less about the emotion itself and more about our willingness and ability to express it in a healthy and authentic way.

It’s also important to remember that human emotions aren’t sustainable.  They are meant to be felt and expressed.  Once they are felt and expressed, however, they pass through us beautifully.  This is why we often feel much better after a good cry (see my post on “The Benefit of Tears”).  The more conscious we are about our emotions and the more willing we are to express them authentically – the happier, healthier, and more alive we become.

As I’ve been allowing myself to embrace and express my own feelings of powerlessness, even though it has been a bit scary and uncomfortable, especially at first, I’ve been experiencing a deeper level of peace and power in regards to some very stressful and uncertain circumstances I’m currently facing in my life.  And, embracing powerlessness in general has started to shift my entire outlook and is liberating me from a great deal of undue pressure and expectation that I’ve been placing on myself for many years (i.e. most of my life.)

How can you start embracing powerlessness in a positive, empowering, and liberating way in your own life?

Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, actions, and more.