If you’ve ever met me, you might have picked up on the fact that I’m terrible at asking for help. A girl can’t be good at everything, and this simply isn’t one of my strengths. Yes, there are deep baggag-ey reasons for this, but there is also no point is focusing on the baggage around it. The fact of the matter is I don’t like asking, or admitting that I can’t do things all by myself.
As it so often the case when I find myself needing to learn something I’m bad at, my angels have decided to help me learn this particular skill. Kind of them. I’ll refrain from commenting on what kind… As Carolyn Myss points out, our angels are here to make sure we learn our lessons, by putting them in front of us until we do…not by helping us avoid them.
And so I find myself in a situation where I have tremendous opportunities in front of me but opportunities that I can’t possibly take advantage of without some help. Realizing this, I went out and recruited some help. I found 3 people to help me. Person #1 bailed on me less than a week after committing to help me. Person #2 is likely to leave within a few weeks, chasing a better offer. Person #3 turns out to be poorly qualified to help, at least in a “hit the ground running” kind of way. Terrible luck.
Except it isn’t, really, when I take a step back and look at it. When I think back to my recruiting process, I realize that person #1 actually stood me up for our “interview.” I thought at the time that I’d decline to extend her an offer to help, but ended up doing so anyway, for no particularly good reason. Person #2 signed on with the explicit understanding that she was looking for something else and would be leaving within a matter of weeks, so the excellent interview she had right away wasn’t actually a surprise. And I never bothered to ask Person #3 the right questions during the interview – I realize now that my “gut level” reaction that I should hire her was most likely a pattern triggered by the discovery that she matched the pattern of being someone I could rescue – something I’ve consistently tried to do since I was a kid (as my therapist pointed out, that’s why they call them patterns).
So I am back nearly to square one very quickly – the chance to start over. And I find myself thinking of something one of my favorite yoga teachers talks about in class – “exit strategies”. She suggests that when we find ourselves in a difficult pose, we tend to pick that moment to reach for the water bottle, or head for the restroom, or break the pose for some other reason. And I realize with hindsight that this is exactly what I’ve done to myself. My baggage tells me that I don’t really want help – because it scares me to rely on other people, because if I accept help it means I can’t do it all by myself and that means I’m inadequate, because I’m a silly girl. So I set myself up with some lovely exit strategies.
Clever of me, but…unhelpful.
Luckily, as my angels are wont to do, I’ve been given an opportunity to try again. This time I’m trying to look at the situation differently. This time, I’m trying to look at it as less a need for help and more an opportunity to fully play my specific role in the universe’s plan by finding the right resources to fill out the projects. Like I try and do in difficult yoga poses, this time I’m trying to look my exit strategy in the face and take one more breath, to see if something shifts and allows me to stay in the pose a little longer.
If it does, great. And if it doesn’t, I’m sure my angels will give me yet another opportunity to try again. That does seem to be their strategy.
