The Desert of Arizona
Clear 65 Degrees
If there’s one mistake I’ve made more than any other over the years, it’s the one where I work with people I have no business working with.
To be frank, helping people makes me feel good.
So in a way, it’s a completely “selfish” act I repeat, going out of my way to offer help to people. It simply gives me a great feeling.
But there are certain people I’ve had to develop the discipline NOT to help. Not because I can’t, but because it would be an enormous disservice to them.
I’m far from perfect at this, but I’m working on it.
In my work, there’s a certain “hump,” over which a person must travel before I have any business helping them.
If they’re not yet over that hump, I have little to no value to add to them at their stage of the game. Why? Because they have not yet gotten far enough under their OWN steam to develop the internal resources required for the rest of the journey.
Sometimes, it’s best to let people struggle around and figure a few things out for themselves.
This gives them confidence (since they probably didn’t die from the challenge).
This gives them perspective.
This gives them a clearer idea about the difficulty of the journey.
It gives them resolve to keep going or obvious clues to stop.
Struggle, frustration, and even pain are powerful tools for growth.
Without experiencing this side of things, however, people tend to run into problems.
When a helper shows up who seems to offer a magic wand to fix the situation, guess who takes the brunt of the hit when things don’t pan out?
The helper.
Guess who develops a false sense of reality about how easy or hard the journey should be?
And guess who loses faith in themselves without even having given the challenge a serious amount of effort?
The poor person you were trying to help.
My guess is that there are people in your work that should have been offered the gift of rejection because they are not ready for you. How can you keep this type of a disservice from happening again?