use your safety net
We’re in tough times. It’s ok to ask for help.
This topic snuck up on me when chatting with both clients and some friends in the past few weeks. I realize they’re much better than me at accepting help from the people in their lives. I tend to bury my head in the sand and trudge forward.
Asking for help requires not only communication but swallowing pride, shame, and expectation. That’s the hard part. We hang on in a bad situation because of the stories that society tells us.
“I always lived by the feeling that as an adult, you should have things figured out. When I finally did ask for help, my sister just looked at me and said, ‘why didn’t you say something sooner?’”
“I kept thinking I could handle it all myself - bills piling up, work stress, medical issues. When I finally accepted some help with childcare, it was like this weight lifted. I hadn’t realized how much energy I was wasting just trying to appear strong.”
“You know, asking for help feels like admitting failure. When I finally accepted the tiniest bit of support, I realized that it took a lot of courage, trust, and vulnerability.”
This is a way of being that I still need to get better at. If you have a reliable safety net, don’t be afraid to use it. That’s what it’s there for. Take stock of who or what your safety nets are. Aside from more money, they’re most likely relationships. My hierarchy goes something like this:
my savings
my emergency savings
my non-retirement investments
my partner
my parents
my friends & siblings
This basically means before I ask my friends for help, I’d rather ask my parents, then my partner. Before all that, I’ll try to deal with it on my own and exhaust all non-relationship options.
But this is where I need to get better at. And maybe you do too. My parents or partner would gladly step in to help before I exhausted all my options, alone. But more important than all this priority bullshit is knowing that you have a safety net. Being able to hack it on your own is awesome, but there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.
If you need the help of a safety net, be creative! It’s not always about money. The size of an ask can vary too. It’s all about creative exchanges of value, and sometimes, time:
instead of paying for a trainer, you give cooking lessons for each session
instead of paying rent, live at home, and offer to help manage the house
ask your parents to help you pay down your debt, and you can pay them back with a reduced/no interest rate instead of dealing with high credit card interest rates
cut some additional subscription costs by splitting with your siblings
borrow a car or bike if yours has broken down
ask your partner for help and cook, clean, and take care of them while you look for a job
I think money is actually one of the least creative safety nets, but it somehow gets all the attention. Sure, you can pull money from your savings account and sell some investments to get by, but this behavior encourages individualism. In the long run, it might be unhealthy.
It’s perfectly fine to ask for help. It’s also fine to insist on trekking it out on your own. Just know that you have a community of people around you who care about you. When things get super shitty, flex that muscle and ask for help. Just like how you made the challenge to spend a small amount of money guilt-free on yourself, make this a challenge for yourself.
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