I was in the library the other day when I heard a little boy shout as loud as he could:

“Daddy! I need help Daddy!”

It made me smile. It was cute. It was honest.

Of course, his Daddy rushed over to help him. He wasn’t hurt or anything. He just wanted a book that he couldn’t reach.

His Daddy reached up and got it, and put it into his son’s tiny hands, and the little boy smiled and said “thanks Daddy.”

And that got me thinking.

How many of us are that comfortable with asking for help?

How many of us would even ask someone for help when we’re alone with another person, let alone shouting for help in an enormous room with all sorts of other people around?

Is it that difficult? No, it isn’t. Asking for help involves talking to someone. You’ve talked to people for almost every single day of your entire life. Talking isn’t difficult. Asking for help isn’t difficult.

So then we have to ask a different question:

What stops us from asking for help?

I never used to ask for help because I believed that I was smart. So I should know the answers. So I shouldn’t need to ask for help. Because asking for help would mean I didn’t know. And if I didn’t know then how smart was I? And if I didn’t think I was smart, I’d feel like sh*t.

There’s some logic there, right? Well, some emotional logic.

I didn’t ask for help because it would’ve shattered my identity that I was a smart person. Humans will do almost anything to satisfy their own perception of who they are.

But… it was holding me back. It was holding me back from feeling ok.

Whenever I did ask for help, whenever I deemed it more important to ask for help than to suffer in silence, I felt so much better. I felt so much relief.

Asking for help gave me energy. It freed me from who I thought I was. And it didn’t destroy my image of who I was – it improved it.

Because I’d chosen to do something that was uncomfortable, but that I knew was right. I’d chosen to do something that I thought would hurt me, but that I knew – very deep down – would help me.

We were all born and now we’re all trying to live, and we’re all trying to make sense of stuff, and we’re all trying to be ourselves and we all fail all the time.

And we don’t think we need help?

Are we insane?

What are we doing?

Think about how often you need help. And stop judging yourself. You don’t have to tell anybody. But think about it.

How many other people do you think are like you?

Now think about how much you enjoy helping people. How good it makes them feel, how good it makes you feel. How privileged you feel that someone has made themselves vulnerable to you.

Guess what: THAT’S WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE LIKE!

How are we not realising this?

How are we not ok with this?

How can we possibly think we don’t need help?

We’re not better than anyone and we’re not worse than anyone. @Matt_Hearnden (Click to Tweet!)

It seems like it’s easier to think that about other people than about ourselves, sometimes. We don’t judge other people for asking for help, do we? But then what do we do to ourselves? We don’t ask for help, and then we judge ourselves for even wanting to ask for it.

I think I want to ask for help every day.

I want to continually remind myself that asking for help takes strength, and isn’t a weakness, and is vital to succeeding. Not “just” important, but vital.

If I’d never asked for help, never made myself vulnerable, never literally said those words to another person – “I need your help” – I don’t know where I’d be. But I think I know what I’d be: unhappy. Unsuccessful. Stuck. Lost. Panicking, even.

It’s basing our identity on being smart that stops us from being vulnerable enough to admit that we don’t know.

Even though admitting that we don’t know and asking for help is what will help us to become smarter.

The irony.

Matt Hearnden is a writer from the UK. He mostly tells stories only he can tell. He blogs twice a week at www.matthearnden.com just self-published his first book:42. Matt writes every day because he loves it and because it stops him watching Netflix. And, probably more importantly, he plays basketball and has lots of tattoos. You can find him on Twitter, IG & Quora.

Image courtesy of Paige Marie.