today, Sober Friends podcast is brought to you by Rachel, who bought us three coffees. Buy me a coffee Dcoms Sober Friends Pod. It's important for Rachel to keep this show on the air to get this into the new guy or gals ear. And if you find value in this show, please be like Rachel. Consider giving a donation at Buy Me a coffee Gqom slash sober friends pod. When he first come into recovery, Steve, you've got to ask for
help. The reason that it's important to ask for help is if you could do this by yourself, you would have found a way to put the bottle down. I couldn't do it unless I let somebody else help me. What's your thoughts on asking for help in achieving sobriety?
Hey, Matt. Yeah. It's always good to be with you. And before we get into the meat and potatoes of this, podcast, I just want to say we're recording this on an anniversary of yours, and I just want to say congratulations
Well,
and
thank you.
give you a shout out.
Nine years.
night. Nine years today. won't hear it when you hear it. It'll be a week later. But nine years today or
I
sometime
hope I'm
later.
still sober. When you hear this,
Yeah. I hope. I hope you're still sober, too, but, yeah, I remember.
I want to pause for a second
But
because a lot of
go
people
ahead.
use
Good.
their sobriety date as the day after. I didn't
Right.
know enough. And I picked the sober day of this is the anniversary of the day I last took a drink. It was when my now nine year old came home from the hospital. My father in law brought over a bottle of white wine and I drank three quarters of it myself. And I saw that I was about to down that bottle and I stopped. And
hmm.
that's the last drink I ever had. And it wasn't plan.
Interesting. Yeah. And. And it is different, right? Some people. My sobriety date is the first day sober. Right. And I don't think it matters. People do it both ways, so I honestly don't think it matters. It's just a date. It's a date that we mark. Some people find it very valuable, very important. I care less about it than probably most people. I truly we talk a lot for I truly believe that my sobriety is really a day by day thing, and it really depends on
how I'm doing for today. And I always say, if you want to check out how my sobriety is, just ask my wife how to really just ask her how I'm behaving and she'll tell you what my sobriety is. Life
My buddy Jill tweets from the Sober Power podcast asked me each year anniversary, what are you doing? Are you taking the day off or are you doing something special? I'm like, No,
Yeah,
I'm not drinking.
right.
And my
Yeah,
wife asked a little bit about that. I'm not supposed to drink. I'm not going. It's just my view. It's nice to Mark. I like to share it for the purpose of other people can see that it's possible. If I can
right.
get nine years,
I agree.
you
Yeah,
can get through the day. I'm not supposed to drink. It's not safe for me. So I'm one of these? Yeah, I did what I was. What I was supposed to
right,
do anyways.
right.
So after a while, you know that the anniversaries in the first year, every month, big deal up
Absolutely.
to a first year after that, it's kind of like I'm going to stop counting.
And so and again, we're off we're off topic. But again, it's a good discussion.
Yeah.
I think some of them are fun. I think a five year or a ten year, right. When you start hitting some of those bigger ones. I think when you hit some of those 20 years, lik, you know, some people have some great you know, we gave our 20 John had what, 25 years last night.
Yeah. I knew it was around that, that period of time.
yeah,
I had no
so.
idea. So Tim, who was a guest on our show, had 17
Yeah.
years,
All right.
and when
Yesterday.
I first met him, he was at about,
Yeah.
you know, ten
Right.
or so,
Oh, no.
like nine or ten,
Yeah.
if I'm doing
Well,
my
if you
math.
have nine.
So awful.
He had seven. If he had 17. Right, he. Then that means he had eight years, right? He had eight years. When you met him or. Or maybe nine when you met him. Yeah.
he stuck at eight or nine years in my mind.
Right.
And
Right.
then I hear 17 like, what the hell happened?
Yeah, I agree.
But yeah, I guess it's true.
Yea, I, you know, I, I've met Tammy just a few years ago. You know, when I say a few probably now five or six, when I really got to know him, I, he would go to meetings, but I didn't know who he was that well. But anyway, congratulations again and we'll
Thank
get
you.
to the topic. But asking for help. Yeah, I talked about this often. I talk about it a lot, but in fact, I'm speaking this week for the first time in a long time. I can't remember the last time I spoke it. I'm speaking at a 7:00 in the morning meeting now. I don't wake up. I used to wake up early, man. I'm going to it's going to be a it's going to be a different day for me this
Thursday. I'm speaking. But anyway, I've talked about a lot of times that when I came in here, knew I needed help, but, man, I did not want to ask for help. I really, it took me some time to figure out how to do that, how to ask for help, and then the biggest thing for me, how to trust somebody to help me. Right.
Oh, yeah.
Like, really? Right. Really. What? What it comes down to is lots of people are willing to help you to take you to meet with you, have coffee, maybe read the book with you. But then in our program, in this 12 step program of AA, we come to the steps of the four step right where we have to work, work on our character defects, and then our fifth step where we have to share those with another alcoholic or another person does have to be an alcoholic, but another person. and that's
typically in our program. Your sponsor. and that can be tricky at times. That can be tricky for some of us, right? It's dependent on what's in your path. I know it was tricky for me. I know there are things and you know, people say it and it's somewhat a cliche, but there were things that I had in my past that I thought I would never see the light of day. so that's, you know, you really got to be you've really got to trust
somebody, right? Because usually this is somebody within your community, within your AA community, and you got to trust that whatever you tell them, it's going to stay with them, that they're not going to just say, Hey, I was talking to her. Oh, you know, Steve, we've got some other problems going on or, you know, whatever it is, you got to just trust that they're going to be faithful to that, you know, to keeping that between the two of you.
I think that's down the road from where a newcomer might even be well past where they're capable.
Yeah,
The idea
I agree.
our sickness is we can't ask for help for anything. It's a sign of weakness. So even letting somebody know I have a drinking problem
Yeah.
is problematic. That causes embarrassment. I'm a loser. I'm a failure. I have a poor character. And if I didn't have poor character, I would be able to figure this alcohol thing out. So let alone walking in for the first time to a meeting and seeing a bunch of strange dudes. Because I like a lot of the strange dudes in there. But the first time you walk in, you
Mm
see
hmm.
four types of faces that you wouldn't normally hang out with and
Right,
some people to you might look weird. And I'm going to ask that weirdo with a long beard and an earring and a hat and a rumpled up
right.
shirt
Yeah,
for help. You don't look
Yeah,
like me. I should be helping you. There's a lot of that pride. I think at first you got to break down.
I don't think there's any question, any question that you have to overcome some of our own prejudices as we walk in, wherever they might be.
Yes.
Right? Whatever they might be, they may be us. You know, people like you and me. Maybe looking at somebody with the rumpled shirts and the long beard and maybe, you know, a little disheveled saying, oh, you know, how is that person going to help me? Or they may be that person looking up at us saying, Oh, look at this guy. He's got you know, he's got everything. He he really didn't lose anything. Right. How is that person that identify with
me? I've been living in the streets for, you know, for the last five years. But the truth is, as we know, for the most part, none of that matters. Right? Because when you get down to it, we're there to talk about our alcoholism. And I don't care where you live, I don't care what your economic situation is. I don't care if you been to prison. You haven't been to prison. A lot of those things. I was never homeless. I've never been to jail. I've never been to
prison. But I will tell you, I know a lot of guys who have been all of those things, some sometimes all of them. And when I talk to them about their drinking, I can identify with their drinking. I can identify with the fact that they needed to take a drink, you know, at certain times. So that's all I have to identify with. And I have to identify with the economic, with the education. Listen, we our meetings go from everywhere, from people who are living in the streets to people with PhDs
Yeah.
professors at major colleges. So, you know, it covers a gamut.
When you when you get into it, you start to see that the only commonality is the only one you need. And then you start having bonds of people who are very different than you. But upfront, one hell of I think that's probably the biggest barrier is in this might be step one step to time of the fact that you've got to ask somebody else and likely it's going to end up being a total stranger.
lot of times it will be. And we've had some new guys come around recently, and there was a guy who came to our Friday night meeting a few weeks ago, and and I talked to him afterwards and I said to him, like, listen, here's here's what you need to do. And he said it was like, oh, you know, I he said in the meeting, I need some help. So after meeting, I'm like, you got to you got to hang out. You got to do something. You got to find something to help. He's like, Will you help me? I'm like, Of
course I'll help you. I said, I'm not applying for the job. You know? I'm like, That's not what I'm telling you. I'm just telling you this is what you got to do. Go to a couple of meetings, listen to what people say. And he was a younger guy. Wasn't that young, but he was probably in his early thirties and like and he ended up hooking up with a guy who's younger. And I, you know, found that out. I'm like, good, Because you know, but that's what you could do. Like in this guy, he didn't know
this guy. He asked for his help. He met him at this Friday night meeting. He knew him for two weeks and he saw him for an hour and 15 minutes twice. That's how much he knew this guy. And they did they did get together. They went to more meetings. So you typically are going to ask for somebody for help that you don't know. I tell the story and I'll just go back to my story a little bit. And it happened. Like I walked into my first AA meeting. I had gone there for a few weeks, two or three weeks
maybe. When I first started I was still drinking a little bit. But the time where I really started to get a little bit of help with the program, the guy who was chairing the meeting saw me standing around, put out his hand and said, Hey, I'm Mike, How you doing? Right. And and I tell the story and he invited me to just take a quick run down to the grocery store with him that
night. And I tell us a lot of times when I could it's a funny story and I'm like, I just met this guy like 2 minutes later and now I'm going to get in a car with him and go to the grocery store because he needed to pick up milk, you know? But I was so desperate that I said, sure. And I got in his car and we went and we picked up and he became my sponsor, you know, But that is the type of thing that you need to do, Like, you need to trust somebody. You need to
ask for help. he was happy. He was only about three years sober at the time, which is sort of like a nice time to start helping somebody. Right. Three years sober. You've got some
I can't even think of Mike being like a new guy,
not not the mike for that week. Oh, yeah. Not a different Mike, right?
No, I know how you talk.
Yeah.
I know how your sponsor
Okay.
is.
Yeah,
I just think of him as a grizzled old timer forever.
yeah, I agree. Nowadays, Yeah,
Yeah,
this was back in 95 but so
well,
he is
yeah,
right. Right though.
Things change, but I'm
So
just like, Wow.
he's
Mike was a new
Yeah.
guy once,
So Mike's coming up on, Right. So Mike's coming he might have 30 years now. Yeah. He might have 30 years.
so I think because I haven't seen Mike in a number of
now.
years,
Right. I mean neither.
but I talked to him when I was newly sober, and I think this is one of the things that we as people with alcoholics, with some level of good sobriety and time, can help that person grease the skids a bit so they can ask for help. And that's be approachable. That's the thing I remember from Mike is he was incredibly approached able.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
So it's easy to ask him for help.
I remember when you came in. I do. You're one of the guys I remember because when you came in. So when you came in, right? So you got nine years, and I'm going on 13. So I had about three or four. I was going on four years. Right? And I said, and I do think that's like the sweet spot of
Yeah,
when maybe you feel like you're ready to sponsor somebody. And I remember you coming in and sort of trying to figure that out. And I remember talking
yeah,
to you at the Friday night meeting one time
yeah,
and you trying to figure it out and thinking, Oh, well, you know, and I was thinking like, oh, I wonder if Matt's going to ask me to be a sponsor.
yeah.
But, you know, and I just remember you trying to and I remember you talking to people, like, trying to get like, how does this work? You know, ask me, like, how does this work? I don't know how this work because none of us knows. We none of us knew how it worked until we got in there and we asked for some help.
I just remember that I was treating it like a business
Yeah,
that there was this whole formal
yeah,
process
yeah, right.
which is the level of my psychosis at the time, but probably not much different than other people. It's you're in here and. Well, I think my mindset was, I want to do this. Well. So there was there was not going to be a failure here because I had the mindset of I just need to figure this out. And I have these I had my own issues of asking for help because, well, I think this goes into the next topic around this is the fear of rejection. What if I ask for help and the person says no? What
Mm.
if I get a brush off? Because that is absolutely devastating to me in this vulnerable situation.
absolutely. I mean, I thought about that too. What if they say no? Oh, my goodness. How embarrassing would that be? I am I so far gone that somebody doesn't even want to help me. Right. Like
Mm
you
hmm.
do you have that fear, that fear of rejection. And trust me, fear of rejection is a whole nother you know, it's an issue. It's one of the things I had to deal with from growing up in an alcoholic family, you know, and with an alcoholic mother. You know, I think I was always I was always paranoid of being rejected and not being cared for. Yeah, it's it's a scary feeling. And that's why it's important. That's why I like to go up to a newcomer and talk to them without lobbying for any type of
a job. Right. We've talked about this before. I am not somebody who puts up my hand and they say, Is anybody willing to sponsor? I never raise my hand because I don't think that's how you pick sponsors. I was taught that when you go to a meeting, you listen to what people share right? And that you find somebody that sounds good to you
Right.
and you ask them like, that's the best way. Now, if you come in there and your ass is on fire and you need just some help tonight, then you just you just ask somebody, okay, I need help. And typically, you know, especially in the meetings that we go to the men's meeting and stuff, if you raise your hand and say, I need help, you're going to have a bunch of guys who are going to come over and talk to you at the end of the meeting and give you the help
you need. But they're going to ask you to do some stuff. They're not going to say, Oh, sure, you know, here's you know, how I'm going to take care of you. They're going to go, no, let's go to this meeting tomorrow night. Right. Do it all the time. I'll pick you up. Well, let's go to the meeting tomorrow
Because that's what real help looks like.
right?
It's not taking care of you. It's. I'm going to guide you to the way I got
Right.
sober. And that means I'm going to pick you up to a meeting tomorrow. How's that helpful? You're going to meet some more people, and you're going to see some good sobriety,
So a real life, a real life example of this is a guy I know I've known him for a long time. had had many 24 hours and recently relapsed. Okay. Many more years than me. And, and I talked to him, and he was at a meeting with me, and he's like, Hey, I'm going to do a 9090. And if for those who are not familiar with the AA program, that means you are going to do 90 meetings in 90 days. You know, typically that's a meeting, a day, but some people will do two meetings and they count it,
right. So it all depends on how that's a little bit like sobriety dates. You get to pick it when it when your sobriety date is. If you want to do two meetings in a day counted as two and 1990, that's fine. but he thought oh, he thought I started saying, well, here's the meetings I go to. Right? And he has started to come to our Monday night meeting and I told him, I'll pick you up. All right, I'll pick you up. He doesn't live far from me and he always says to me, Hey, you know, I'll
drive. I'm like, Yeah, that's fine. But I don't mind. I like, I'll pick you up. I already pick up another guy. I'll pick you up and we'll go to the meeting that is helping out. That's number one, that's helping somebody. And that's for him accepting help, right? He's accepting help even for somebody who had more sobriety than me. had more sobriety than me. Is accepting help to make sure that he gets
through his 90, 90. You know, and and it's funny because we were driving to the meeting last night and he asked me a question he that his he was going to a his sponsor and it happened to do it this 1990. And he's going on a retreat this weekend and he says, hey, I'm going on a retreat. It's a 12 step. It's a lot of work. We go through all the steps. He goes, How should I count that in my 90, 90? You know, And I said, Oh, that's he goes, because I think it's like six meetings. So we go through
all these different things. And so we went we talked about I said, Listen, if it was me, I would count it as a lease, a meeting a day, right? You're doing a retreat every
right?
day. You're doing some type of meetings. His sponsor thought it should only be count because there's only one official AA meeting in that group. He should only count it as one meeting. So but my point to that whole thing is he was asking for help of how to solve
Right.
that. Like, what do you think? You know, how do how do you think I should handle that? And he just wanted my again, he's like, I may not do what you tell me, but I just want to hear what you say, you know?
Well, see, I can think of is. That's awfully literal. That's
Oh,
what I be thinking.
yeah, made
If you're
me
in
to.
a retreat, that's much more than one
I
to
agree.
me.
I agree
You and you're getting a big dose of recovery.
this listen, I you know, if somebody asked me how many meetings I do, I count this as a AA meeting. I do. We've always said that
Yeah,
when we
I
get
do,
to
too.
I was like, you know, I do something right now. I do something four nights a week, right? I go to a monday, Friday meeting, I do this, and then we do Joe and Charlie tomorrow night, and then I'm a GSR. Sometimes I do that, sometimes I'm doing something five nights a week. So and that to me is like, if I was counting 90, 90, I'd be counting all those things because
Yeah,
those
absolutely.
to me are, those to me are AA approved things to do so. But yeah, so anyway, it's a couple things that we've talked about is, like you said, asking for help, trust, fear of rejection, all of those things come into play on this. And, and I think that's why you've really got to come in and you get it. You just got to stick around. You got to you got to take your time. You got to, you know, listen to other people and then, uh, know, feel your way through it. I really do.
How often do you think you have to ask for help after that
Yeah.
initial time?
Well, listen, I. I ask for help on a regular basis. I really do. And a lot of it's small stuff. but listen, when I pick up the phone because I'm having a bad day, I'm asking for help, right? I'm asking somebody to talk to me because I'm having a bad day, you know, if I'm or if I'm stressed out or something. So any time like that, I'm asking for help.
This is where John would come in if he was here and he would talk about that big £10,000 phone
Yeah.
with the big giant buttons.
Mm.
And that being so hard asking for help of dialing the numbers.
Yeah.
Mike was talking about this the other night that am I doing the wrong thing, that he had been calling somebody to help them repeatedly. And then the guy finally said, don't ever call me again.
all right.
And Mike asked me, have I done something wrong? And I said, No, Mike, you've done nothing wrong. You had the number of another alcoholic in your heart. You were looking to help them. Your side of the street is clean. If they're going to now piss all over you, that's on them. But you stayed sober. You did the right thing.
Absolutely. He did the right thing. As long as you not lashing out at that person. no,
I don't
that
think Mike's
without.
capable of that.
No, no, he isn't. but you're absolutely right. And that phone is tough for many people. I got it. I got it. I've come to the realization that there's a whole bunch of people out there who are more comfortable texting as a form of communication than they are talking. And I'm okay with that with certain people, you know, like, it's just easier now. And again, most of those people I'll talk to once in a while anyway, like will do text messaging, but there's always a phone call
somewhere down the line too. Or I see them. If I see them on a regular meeting, you know, or see them at multiple meetings, then texting is fine in between those meetings, right?It is something that to talk about when we get to a meeting, then I usually have a few minutes to talk to them and bring up like, Hey, what's going on with this thing or whatever. But that phone can be that that one on one. You said it who used to be one of the new guys just called you that wasn't that. Oh, yeah.
I wanted. We talked about this the other week. We had a new
Yeah.
guy come to the Monday night and you said that this person had called you and it was an awkward phone call, right?
Yeah,
It's like, what do I talk about? And it's like, that's okay. That's okay to have an awkward phone call. You know, um, the important
it's expected.
thing is, yeah, the important thing is calling. Yeah. How can you not have an awkward phone call until you get to know somebody? You know, like you and I can talk, we can pick up the phone, and we do a slew of topics. We can talk about whether it's just a, you know, a cordial com conversation or something that's, uh, there's a problem going on, you know,
That's the thing that is worth mentioning. If you're brand new when you're asking for help, if one of your issues in asking for help is how you ask and it being awkward and it feel like a bumblebee landed on my tongue, stung it, and now it's swollen. Get that out of your mind if you've got to ask for help and it is really uncomfortable and you can't get the words out and you don't know what to say, then you go with it.
Because if you're talking to somebody with any quality of sobriety, they're just going to sit and listen and say, It's okay. I've been there too, because we all have had those moments. It's hard to do
yeah, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. It's it's a practice, right? It's a practice. You know, our program is a practice. We practice these steps. and, you know, I always loved the whole thing about meditation, right? Meditation is a practice, right? You don't. You don't perform meditation, you practice. It's a practice. You keep doing it over and over and over again. And so we have to do that with our program, too. We have to practice these steps.
We have to practice the things, You know, when I came in, I couldn't figure out how, You know, we talk about like when I did my fourth step and my fifth step and I sort of identified my character defects. One of them we talk, we've talked about it. One of the big ones was fear. And I was able to do that, and then I was able to do a six and a seven and ask ask my higher power to remove decorative. It didn't go away. A character
defect didn't go poof. And it started as a very slow process that nothing changed for me. Nothing changed right away. And then it changed slowly, like, Oh, wait a minute, I'm fearful of the situation. Like, I feel fear. Why do I feel fear in this situation? And that was just it. I still couldn't do anything. I still reacted poorly about it. And then slowly I was like, okay, I'm feeling this fear. But I it's it's it's misplaced fear. I
shouldn't be reacting to it. And I was able to slowly open now today, after years of identifying it and then putting some tools in place to work with it, I don't need to feel that way or act out as often. I still can on occasion, but as often as I did in
that.
the past.
I have a thought that came in. I was talk a lot of this is brought up because of people who I talk to during the day. During the week, people will talk to me and I'm like, Ooh, that's a topic we could talk about.
Yeah,
And this person I was talking to said, I very they talk to me so they must trust me, which is quite an honor but said I generally don't trust people and I generally don't really like people and so I find most people to be annoying. And I was thinking that through and it just hit me because for me, lack of trust or not wanting to like other people was really self-defensive. It's I don't want to do that because I already know you're not going to like me.
right.
And so I'm defending myself against the pain and I'm
Yeah,
going to ask this person. And maybe they never thought of it, but it feels like when you feel that way, I don't trust and I don't like people, it's because you're not going to like me. And this saves me from getting hurt
yeah. I again,
and
you
it's
know,
really self-defeating.
it is self-defeating, but it seems like when you're doing it, it seems like self-preservation. It really does.
Yes,
I know that when I talked about
it's
it for, you know, I grew up as an alcoholic mother, but this is all stuff I found out in hindsight, right? I didn't know this until I really started doing some work on it. But because of that, I always felt like the relationship I had, the the the significant female relationship in my lives, whether there was a real girlfriend or a wife or, you
know, somebody like that. I always struggle with those relationships because in the back of my mind, just like you said, I always felt like that relationship was going to turn bad on me because I had this poor connection to my mother because she was a very active alcoholic during my formative years. And even though as an adult, I sort of understood that I forgive her all those things, you know, all those things were fine. Deep down inside, I had
this fear, right? And it's the same thing, like you say, like people aren't going to like me. I always felt like people were going to screw me over, like I was going to be left alone and fending for myself, which is the way I grew up and all of those things. So those were very, very big things that I had to work really hard to overcome and still can get. I can still get nervous about that same feeling that I like. That'll still creeping a little bit today. I know that's not real. I don't
have to worry about it. you know, I'm in a I'm in a very good relationship with a very good partner so when I feel like that, I do
day
know
you
those
married
are.
up.
Yeah , I,
She's quality.
Yeah, she is. And somehow I don't know, but yeah, I know that that's not true, but I still feel that way at times. And I just know that I don't have to, I don't have to react to that feeling, right? I don't have to act on it. I don't have to act out on it. but those are some of the things that we all struggle with.
One of the guys that are Joe and Charlie said a couple weeks ago that one of the reasons I'm afraid to call people or I don't come talk to you is you won't want to talk to me. And it boggles my mind because this is somebody who sobriety. I have a lot of respect for somebody who overcame tremendous personal stuff in sobriety and still never picked up a drink. And every time this person has something to say, it's always good. It's somebody who, if I call them, they won't say much.
But what they have to say back is not what I expect, but it's what I need to hear.
Yeah,
And then you hear somebody have such respect for saying, Yeah, nobody likes me. I'm like,
yeah,
Wow, it's
yeah.
not just me. It
Now.
makes me realize like, that is so crazy to hear. Do I sound like that?
I mean, and that's what, you know, we're attracted to those people. The reason why we do a Jo and Charlie with that group of people is because we identify so much with that group of people, right? I mean, not do we just good. Yeah, we're good buds with all those guys. But also, I know exactly who you're talking about, and it's. It's exactly the same reason, right? I mean, I get it. Like, you know, we talk about it all the time, like, oh, who wants to talk to me? Who wants to talk to me?
I've overcome that a lot. Like, I know it doesn't bother me anymore, but early on it bothered me a lot. Early on it bothered me a lot. Listen, we talked a little bit about this coming before we came on and started recording is we have a friend that we both know a sponsor of mine happens to be who's who's has some health problems going on. And I was over the house to visit him today and to give him a hand with with a couple of things.
and I said to him, you know, he was, I was helping him get back in the house and he didn't really want me to. And I said this to you, Matt, I said this to you. I said to him, like, Hey, remember how we met? And he said, What do you mean? I said, We met because you asked me for help. And he goes, Yeah. I said, Well, don't stop asking me for help now. Right? And I also said, When you asked me for help, you gave me an opportunity, right? That's what people don't understand. You talk about it a
lot. We talk about to power how we feel to be on the receiving end of that phone call. Right.
Right?
How how good is to think, Oh, this person is having a shit day. And they called me right? They called me for help. So I tried to impress upon
I'm always surprised
on my friend, our friend. They're like when you ask, like when you asked me to help you today and I did this little this little insignificant text, insignificant task for you. I felt good about it. I felt good that I was able to do that. Like you're giving me an opportunity to feel good. So understand that when you ask people for help, you're actually giving them an opportunity to do something good.
I tell that at work, the people I work with that when you ask me for help or when you ask somebody else for help, if you don't know how to do something or if you need a hand and you don't do that, you have given, you've taken away the opportunity for somebody else
Yeah.
to feel better
Mhm.
and it's easy to forget that. So if you're struggling with asking for help, just think that through. Get past your pride. Even if it's the place of If I didn't do this and I walk into that room of strangers, whoever ask for help, I might be actually brightening up their day and in the in the in the process, I'm getting better, too.
Absolutely.
Well, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go to Apple Podcasts, read us, give us a review every time you go on Apple Podcasts and you leave a review, I see it. I get an email once a week with all the reviews and we read every single one, and it's your way to help drive what we talk about on podcast. Go over to Spotify, leave us a rating there. These are things that help people see the show and it helps us grow. Be part of this conversation. How hard was it for you when you came in to
get help or to ask for help? Our website Sober Friends podcast and on Instagram at Sober Friends Pod. Steve, thanks for helping me tonight and doing this show.
Hey, Matt. Hey, Matt. You're welcome again. Happy anniversary. Nice job. Go to bed tonight. So you make it through the night sober and we'll
Yeah,
see
baby.
you. We'll see you tomorrow night. All right, man.
Absolutely. And we'll see you next week, everybody.