So my paradox was success was only safe if I never asked for help. Nobody saw me fail. I could work on the things that I wanted, but only if nobody saw. Because if somebody saw and they didn't like it, I'd have to give up what I wanted for what they wanted. Most people don't have that no win Paradox quite as tight as mine was, but in unwinding mine, I've been able to help a lot of people break through their own illogical cages, and those paradoxes are what keeps you from succeeding.
It keeps you from asking for help. It keeps you from being able to fail with grace and actually be able to pull the learnings so that you can have success later And here we are for another episode of Be the Wolf. Today I wanna talk to you about something that one of my mentors says is one of the biggest problems for most entrepreneurs. That is asking for help. there's the right way to do that. There's the wrong way to do that. there's a saying that says, if you wanna go fast, do it alone.
If you wanna go far, do it together. And it's really important as an entrepreneur to unhook the deeper stuff that's preventing you from asking for help and having your ask be effective. And that's the key there is your ask needs to be an effective ask so that people will show up for you and give you a hand, and you can build together and go far instead of going fast and then collapsing as a lot of entrepreneurs do. We're gonna dig deep into this. Let's get to it.
And I wanna dig into that stuff that's deeper than most people will talk about. People say, oh, just ask for help, blah, blah, blah, get over yourself. But for a lot of people, it's not that easy. And then they'll reach out and ask for help, and it will fall on deaf ears. And so that reinforces why they shouldn't ask for help. Or they'll get really vulnerable and ask for help and then get shut down.
I could tell you one time I was just spiraling and I needed a friend, and I reached out to my best friend of 15 years and I was just like, can you please make some time for me? I really need to just sit in the room with somebody that gives a shit about me and they f flaked on me and I got upset. And I lost that friendship. And so there I was in this vulnerable point of asking for help and I ended up losing my best friend. I was devastated.
And so it reinforced some beliefs about asking for help and why it was not a good thing to do. But you can overcome those things. So first I wanna talk to you about why people struggle to ask for help. It really comes down to your experiences in the past of asking for and receiving what you needed and what you wanted. When you were small, under the age of seven is when you developed your basic strategies to get what you need. And to get what you want and to stay safe.
And most people are still running those same strategies in their day-to-day life in their business. And so the answers to overcoming a lot of your business struggles and personal struggles will be in some of the things that happened when you were young. And I'm not gonna sit here and say like, oh, your parents ruined your life and made you terrible and it's all their fault.
This is not about blaming it on people, it's you were dealt a situation and you chose different strategies of how to deal with it. So what you wanna do is uncover the truth about why you're struggling to ask for help, or why you are asking for help is not effective. Okay, so one of the big reasons is maybe you were not allowed to get what you want or needed. So every time you asked for what you wanted or what you needed, you got shut down.
So you developed this belief that you weren't allowed to have what you needed or you weren't safe. So maybe you got in trouble or another big one is when you got what you wanted or what you needed, it was taken away. A lot of times this happens in big families where it's like, oh no, you have to share that. So it's this thing that you really, really love, and you're not done feeling satiated, getting your full value out of it, and then you have to share it, so you have to give it away.
So this forms a belief that when you get what you need or what you want, you have to give it away, or it will be taken away. You might have gotten in trouble for getting what you wanted and needed. Maybe you took responsibility to go out and get that thing.
Also, if you were told that you couldn't do things like don't do that or don't do that, or you'll get hurt if you're not capable of doing them, or your parents freak out and worry, then you begin to learn that you're not capable of getting what you need, and you might lean into asking for help, but it comes from this needy place. Another thing is you could be put down. Or you get in trouble for doing the things that mattered to you but didn't make sense to other people.
I know one of my clients, he used to like to blow shit up, and for him it was really about this place of deconstruction. So something he really loves to do is take things apart and look at things from a totally different perspective. And so one of the ways he exercised that as a kid was to tear things apart. So he would always get in trouble for that and, it was attached to shame, so he would avoid it. So these early experiences, they shape the way you navigate the world.
I wanna share some examples from my life, and maybe you'll see yourself in them because this is, again, it's a lot deeper than a lot of people are gonna talk about when talking about asking for help. And if you struggle to ask for help. You might not understand why. And sometimes the why is all you need to unlock it. I hear this a lot. Oh, I am better at asking for help. I'm, I can do it now. And I felt the same way. I was like, I don't have any trouble asking for help.
And then I realized I did, I knew something wasn't quite right and I couldn't quite get to that next level, but I didn't know what I needed to ask for help for. So that was an aspect of the asking for help. But I didn't understand what I needed to ask for. And so to be able to say out loud, I need some help, but I don't know what I need to ask for. Like, I could not do that. I would like a deer in headlights frozen if an opportunity to get some help was right there. Here, I'd love to help you.
How can I help you? And then I'm just a deer in headlights being like, I don't need any help, because it was too scary subconsciously for me to say, I don't know. And that, for me is a huge thing. And so it prohibited me from being able to ask for the help I needed. So when I was little, if I asked for what I wanted or needed, I got in trouble, or I was told that it wasn't real. So for an example, when I was little, if I said I was hungry, my mom would tell me it was a figment of my imagination.
That's a pretty extreme example. Most people didn't have that experience, but I learned that what I needed wasn't real. And so that made it really difficult for me to ask for what I needed or what I wanted. If I went out to get what I needed, I got in trouble. Like I became a little thief for a while. I would steal food and I would steal money from my mom's purse to get food. But of course, when I got caught, I got in trouble.
Or like on Halloween, I went out really early, filled up a pillowcase, like a king size fill, pillowcase, half full. I got to have candy that night and my mom put candy in my lunch for a day or two. And then after that, all the candy was gone. So I learned that if I went out and got what I needed or what I wanted, that it would be taken away from me. And there were many instances like this in my childhood that reinforced these beliefs.
And I'm sure you have some instances that you maybe felt like what you needed and wanted got taken away, or you weren't allowed, or you were told that it was wrong. I also learned that if I did what my mom wanted or needed that I was safe, and I think we all have had that experience. If you listen to your parents, if you follow the rules, that you will be safe, you won't get in trouble, even if their rules are very illogical and make no sense.
And let's face it, a lot of our parents had very illogical rules, so I learned to do whatever it took to keep her happy. Which meant putting my needs and wants away, right? I can't, I can't speak them out loud because then they'll get denied or I'll get in trouble. I won't be safe. So making sure she's happy, doing whatever it takes to make sure that she's comfortable.
And this translated as I grew up into, only when everybody around me is completely satisfied and happy, then I could look at maybe what it was I wanted or what I needed. But that's an impossible task. It's impossible to make every single person around you completely satiated, completely happy.
And so I learned that for me to do anything I wanted, I had to do it by myself with nobody around, because otherwise, subconsciously I would just pivot and make sure they were happy before I took care of anything for myself. So these are the patterns that followed me into adulthood and definitely contributed in so many ways to my first two businesses going.
And so that needing to take care of everybody else showed up for me I was working with a marketing coach and we were trying to define my niche, and I worked with this person for probably eight months before I discovered this, what I'm about to tell you. It started to change everything because I could finally see the pattern. So what happened was, in the very beginning, we were working together and trying to figure out what my niche was.
I wanted to work with entrepreneurs and leaders, change makers, visionaries, trailblazers. But she was asking me to narrow down my niche, like what kind of entrepreneurs, what business are they in? And this made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't know the answer. Remember earlier when I said. I would, it's like a deer in headlights because I didn't know what kind of help I needed.
It was a similar kind of thing, so I felt uncomfortable and because I felt uncomfortable, she started feeling uncomfortable. And then as soon as I sensed she was feeling uncomfortable, my old patterns was like, I need to give her what she needs. I need to say something to make her happy. So I just completely pivoted away from what I wanted and tried to say something that I thought she wanted.
I started working with people who hated their jobs, and this was what I was marketing to, even though in my heart it was always entrepreneurs. And ironically, during that whole time for a year, I was marketing to people in that niche. But still 90% of my clients were entrepreneurs. When you hear that saying sometimes that what you want is trying to get to you, you just have to stop blocking it from getting to you. That's a prime example.
But that was a pattern that need to put somebody else's needs and make them feel comfortable before I could fulfill my needs. So my paradox was success was only safe if I never asked for help. Nobody saw me fail. I could work on the things that I wanted, but only if nobody saw. Because if somebody saw and they didn't like it, I'd have to give up what I wanted for what they wanted.
Most people don't have that no win Paradox quite as tight as mine was, but in unwinding mine, I've been able to help a lot of people break through their own illogical cages, and those paradoxes are what keeps you from succeeding. It keeps you from asking for help. It keeps you from being able to fail with grace and actually be able to pull the learnings so that you can have success later now. So my case was I couldn't ask for help.
And on the other hand, there are some people who always ask for help. Often this comes from the similar kind of feelings and reasons that I talked about earlier. That maybe you are not good enough, that you feel incapable, not smart enough, so you have a lot of fear around actually trying, because maybe you got in trouble when you tried, or perhaps you were told that you did it wrong over and over and over again. So then you just stopped doing it because it feels horrible.
You feel less than, and so those feelings are feelings you wanna prevent, so you stop trying. So let me tell you a story. There is a doctor who lives in a village and he hears about the next village over. There's a whole bunch of people who are sick. So he packs up his little bag and his tinctures, and he goes to the next village. But along the way, he's walking by this cliff and he hears, help me, help me, help me. And he looks down and there's this man hanging from a branch and.
So he is like, I have this rope. So he throws down the rope. He's like, grab onto the rope. Grab onto the rope. But the guy will not grab onto the rope, no, help me. Help me. Help me. You have to save me. And so the doctor just is there waiting and waiting. You have to grab onto the rope and he be, gets the rope as close to him as possible. He's just gotta take one hand off the branch to put it on the rope, and he is halfway there. And then the other hand, but he won't do it.
And he is flailing around screaming, help me, help me, help me. You have to save me. So the doctor's there for hours and hours. In the meantime, knowing that the people in this next village over are sick and they need his help, but this man who's asking for help won't actually help him himself. So there's this place when we are asking for help, there has to be some momentum from you.
When I just talked about the person who always asks for help, a lot times they don't get the help that they need because they have no momentum. So you can offer the rope, but they won't grab the rope, or they'll just continue waiting for the person to completely do all of it for you. And so eventually, of course, this doctor had to make a choice. Like, this guy's gonna eventually fall and he's gonna perish. Or I can go and help the other people who need my help and want my help.
And so he tied the rope to a tree and left it there. So the guy had the opportunity to either help himself or not. So when you're asking for help, the reason you get help or don't get help has a lot to do with your energy and what you are bringing to the table. There's a difference between I want you to do it for me, versus I need help to do it. So the man off the cliff, he wanted somebody to literally scoop him up and pick him up and put him to safety without putting in any effort.
Now, you might not have the skills for the thing you need help with, but your willingness to try is the difference. You may be able to do something, but with help, you can get it done better and more efficiently. So these two scenarios are the best scenarios to actually get help. So when I was talking about losing my best friend earlier, what was happening in that particular point in time, and I did not realize this at the time, but I was coming with this, I need you to save me energy.
I'm not gonna be able to do this without you sitting there with me and. To be fair, I had been coming at my friend with a lot of that energy for a while. It was a very tumultuous time in my life. There was a lot of crazy shit going on. And so she was tired of being there because being around me at that time was incredibly draining if I felt safe enough to ask for help, which was a rare thing for me. But when I did, I was just an energy sucking person, and I didn't realize this at the time.
I was just like, I never ask for help. I don't understand why this person is abandoning me, but I was sucking their energy dry. She was also going through a lot of crisis. So it's like, someone's cup is empty. They definitely can't handle someone being needy and clingy too. It's too much. And ultimately you've gotta take care of yourself first before you can take care of anybody. So people want to invest in success because it is energy giving. It feels good, but if their efforts.
Don't make a difference if the person keeps needing help over and over and over and they're not doing anything to try to get better. They're just repeating the same patterns. They're not breaking through anything. There's no feel good payoff. And so it's like running on a treadmill to get across town. It feels pointless. When people don't see results from their efforts of helping you, they don't wanna help anymore.
Eventually the giving person is put in a position of having to take care of themselves or take care of the other person. That could be the same situation as my best friend. She had to take care of herself or she had to take care of me. And a healthy person will always choose themselves because you can't pour from an empty cup. A lot of people have partial needy energy and partial, I never ask for help.
And so because you've got that dichotomy, when you break down and do ask for help, it, a lot of times it will come off needy and thus people will not help you or you won't get the kind of help that you need. So how this shows up in business is. If you have a lot of indecision and not knowing what the right decision is, that's a sign that you've got some of the stuff at play and potentially your ask for help can come off needy.
You keep bouncing back and forth the shiny object syndrome and like, oh my God, I maybe I have to switch to this thing. I need this thing to save me. Ah, uh, another way that shows up is hiring people before you actually need them. If you're hiring people subconsciously to avoid facing those fears and dealing with those uncomfortable things that I've been talking about, that's a sign that you're gonna ask for help in the wrong way. You might wait too long to hire people. That's another big one.
And this is a fine line here, but if you are struggling with the question of whether it's time to hire somebody then the first thing you wanna do is start to look inside and see why you want to hire somebody. What are the emotions and what are the beliefs that are driving your decision? And if you can dig deep into that stuff, you'll be more clear on whether it's the right time to hire somebody. Um, holding true to what you know is right for you and your business.
So if you're coming at this ask for help from a needy place, or because you are pushing through that fear, you might have a hard time holding true to what you know is right for you and your business. And I talked about it before, that constantly seeking new strategies or, you know, shiny object syndrome, new knowledge without implementing what you already know.
So if you are asking for help and you have a lot of knowledge, but you haven't implemented what you know and the things you've learned, that's a sign that you're coming from this needy energy that's going to probably not get you the help that you actually need. Okay, so I wanna go over the three types of ask. There's the needy ask, and that comes from, I've been talking about this, that from that place of I can't, but you are afraid to try.
And this kind of ask will often create resistance in people helping you. And the type of people that do want to help you typically have expectations they're not going to be giving from this place of authentic giving. And so it will often feel like that kind of help has strings in the long run. Like you'll feel like you owe them. And when you're coming from this place of, I can't because you don't wanna step through those fears of trying, that really does create this keeping score kind of thing.
Type two. The second type of asking is the authentic need. And this is when you're just genuinely in over your head. And you have to ask for help, and oftentimes, people will step up and support you. It's that power of vulnerability that comes from this place of strength and willingness to step through those fears. And it's often not easy, but it usually results in people showing up for you.
Where it falls down is if you continuously get in over your head and you keep repeating the same mistakes, then people will stop showing up for you because they're like, well, why do they keep doing this? And again, nobody wants to help that person that keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over, because at that point, you're just enabling them and you're not actually helping them. And type three is perhaps the most powerful type of ask.
It is the empowered ask, and this is where you're taking full responsibility while requesting the support. You are not attached to the outcome. You know, you'll figure out another way if needed, even if it means you have to buckle down and do it yourself. But asking for help is the best path that you can see right now, and that comes from this place of you're Looking to create more abundance. Like, yes, you can figure this out somehow. And you have faith in yourself.
So you're coming from a place of abundance. And the ask is something that will create more abundance, it'll create more time, it will create more money, it will create more support, it will create more reach, whatever it is. So that is coming from that place of abundance. It starts from a place of abundance and it creates more abundance, and that is the most powerful form of the ask.
Now, there was a study done of five year olds and these five year olds all had a very, very high iq and they followed the five year olds over time and throughout the years, most of the five year olds IQ diminished quite a bit. And part of it is because when we are little, we have. Such big creative minds about how we can do something. We don't yet have all these limitations that I've been talking about in this episode, all those fears and that resistance.
And because of those limitations, the how we can do things get smaller and smaller because it's bound by all those fears that we don't want to face so as people grow up, they tend to get more and more barriers to a direct route of how to do things. So the more of these fears that you break through, the easier it is to ask for help to go directly after what you need without jumping through all these hoops. The truth is simple. How we create and build is simple.
So the more you break through, the easier things become, the bigger your success zone gets, and the more fun things get. So take some time and think about when you ask for help, and when you don't ask for help and notice what's the energy behind it? Is it a direct line to what you're trying to create, or are there hoops that you feel like you have to jump through.
The people who are asking with expectation, that needy ask again, will often end up connecting with somebody who in the long run, wants something in return. And so it's a tit for tat. So it's not about creating something new, it's about this idea of finite resources I give to you, then later give to me. And you don't go anywhere. You zigzag back and forth in the same place.
When you can ask without expectation or attachment, you have the strongest possibility of connecting with someone who can give without expectation. I say this often. I say like attracts like, and so when you ask without expectation, when you do the empowered ask, you are more likely to have an energy match with someone. Who is giving without expectation. So you ask without expectation matches somebody who's giving without expectation. And this is usually what creates the biggest results.
When somebody gives without expectation, then you can use that to build and create and create more. And that energy creates more, and even for the giver, it always comes back to them in a more powerful way, just maybe not directly through you. So again, as an entrepreneur, you've got to learn to ask for help, but it's really important to ask for help in a way that gives you the kind of help that actually will take you to the next level.
So take some time this week and figure out what kind of ask you are doing. Are you doing the needy ask? Are you asking from authentic need? And if you are, is that happening too often or are you doing the empowered ask and notice what it would feel like to do the empowered ask. Notice what fears might come up. That's the kind of stuff you need to break through to be able to ask for help in a way that will get you the help that you need. Now I've got a free guide out there.
If you work through the three secrets in this guide it will will help you break through some of those fears, you can grab that at be the wolf gift.com. It's the three secrets the business gurus never talk about. will help you grow your business and love doing it. And again, you can grab that at be the wolf gift.com. And thank you for listening. Everybody ask for help. Overcome the fears because it is so worth it. When you can ask for help, you will go far, not just fast, but far.
And remember, when you unleash the power of you, humanity evolves. We'll see you next time on Be The Wolf. Bye everyone.