Asking for Help: A Great Sign of Strength
Asking for Help: A Great Sign of Strength
By Emily Cohn
Independence is often valued over collaboration, especially in the United States, which has somehow led many to believe that asking for help is a sign of weakness. “If I can’t do it alone, then I’m not qualified to be doing it at all” may be a common thought that many people have and let dictate their lives. This is true for athletes as well as non-athletes. Too often, this mindset can result in complacency rather than happiness. Humans are instinctively meant to be in a herd (if we were going back to the beginning of our species) so why has the thought evolved that if we need to reach out to our support system, we are weak? I cannot emphasize enough that asking for help is one of the greatest signs of strength.
I also want to clarify that when I say help throughout this article, I mean help with literally anything. Help moving a heavy box, help editing a paper, help having a hard conversation, help coming up with a routine, and especially, help with your mental health. So, why is asking for help a sign of strength? I always say that I know I have done my job well if the person I am working with no longer needs me. What I mean by this is that sport psychology consulting is about giving an individual the tools they either did not have before, or were not aware they had before, to perform to the best of their ability. By gaining a third-party perspective you can approach problems from a different angle which may make the solution clearer. Asking for help means you have the awareness that what you are doing is important to you, and you may not have all the tools to be successful.
Many know that goal setting is essential for progress and not everyone knows that goal setting is more of a process than just saying you want to do something. You have to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Realistic, and Timed) goals in order to really progress and reduce frustration. The Adjustable aspect of those goals is what is relevant to the discussion of asking for help. If our goals need to be adjustable, then we as individuals also need to be adjustable and adaptable to our circumstances. If we try to learn a new skill or try to find different solutions and we feel we’ve given it our best effort and it isn’t working, rather than throw your hands up and move on, you should be thinking about adjustments. One of those adjustments should include asking for help or the opinion of someone with the skills to help you. If you are unable to make a free throw, you should be comfortable asking a coach or teammate to observe your shooting and make recommendations. Asking for mental skills help will hopefully soon be regarded in the same way. If you get anxious every time you play your rival school, you have the ability to control those feelings, and you just may need some help learning those skills.
Knowing when to ask for help is also crucial, and something that is different for everyone in every setting but is also never explicitly discussed. In one of my first leadership roles I had a supervisor give me feedback that “I knew what I was doing, I needed to trust myself more and didn’t need to ask for help with every small detail.” These notes left me feeling more confident but also more confused, her role as a supervisor was to help but she was telling me I didn’t need it. From then on, I decided that I would try to solve a problem at least three different ways before I asked for help, this way I could say “here are the things I’ve tried, they’re not working, what am I missing?” Depending on the situation, you may be able to try more than three solutions. It is always important to try, assess your own ability, and then adjust.
Asking for help shows others you are self-aware, adaptable, and collaborative, all of which are immense signs of strength and should be recognized as such. As Michael Phelps and other Olympians so boldly stated in The Weight of Gold Documentary “It is Ok to Not be Ok.” You control whether you remain in the state of “not ok” or ask for help and progress toward a better state of being.