Episode 73: Asking For Help

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer Podcast, episode 73. Today, we’re talking all about asking for help. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach, Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. Long time, no talk. How are you? I hope all is well with you in your neck of the woods. I just got back from the most incredible week in Big Sky, Montana. I posted my in person event for The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind, and it was decadent beyond belief. I just can’t begin to tell you about it, to tell you how amazing it was, how beautiful it was. The scenery is just absolutely breathtaking. The venue was really, really special.

We were at a five star hotel, which, if you’ve never stayed in one before, you gotta try it. It’s really next level. So everyone was raving about the staff and the service and the food and just everything being really over the top. It was incredible. That being said, it kept me busy. So it’s been a minute since I’ve talked to you. I’m so excited to come back and teach you more things after having a week off from the podcast.

So with that being said, today’s episode is actually sort of inspired by my recent mastermind experience. Today, we’re going to talk about asking for help. I want to just start to peel back the layers on your relationship with asking for help and see what comes up for you. What’s there, what can we work through? Does your mindset support you asking for and receiving help? Or does it lead you to really just rely on yourself at all times for everything?

If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you know I’m a really big advocate for being resourceful. I do think you’ve got to tap into your own resourcefulness more often than not, okay. But with that being said, I do think we can take it too far. We can get to a place where we’re sort of toxically independent. I really don’t love the word toxic, but I think it is appropriate here. We become toxically independent, and we do ourselves a really significant disservice by purposely struggling more than we would otherwise need to for the sake of just being able to wear the badge of honor that we did it alone and that we didn’t ask for help.

So if you’re someone who struggles with asking for help, maybe you feel really overwhelmed right now in a particular area of your life or in every area of your life. This is the episode for you.

Now, here’s what inspired this topic today. What I noticed as I went through my mastermind experience putting on this huge live event for my clients who all flew to Big Sky to be there and spend time with each other and learn from me, and work on improving their lives. One of the things that I noticed this time was I had a much better relationship with asking for help.

There were a couple things that came up throughout the course of me putting on this event. You’re never required to ask for help. I could have struggled on my own, but I chose not to. I really see a stark difference, there’s a clear delineation, between how old me would have handled this and how new me present me handles situations like this.

It’s funny. I’m going to be kind of cheeky here, but it’s almost as if coaching works y’all. I have a different relationship with asking for help because I’ve done the work to change my mindset around it. I’ve identified my thoughts around asking for help. I’ve understood my resistance to it, how it makes me feel when I ask for help, and I understand why I feel that way. It’s because of the thoughts that I’m choosing to think about asking for an extra set of hands, asking for assistance.

As I’ve started to uncover that, I’ve realized what it ends up driving me to do. I end up avoiding the negative emotion that comes up for me when I think about asking for help. Then I just do everything all on my own. In a lot of times, you end up exhausting yourself really unnecessarily. I don’t know about you, and maybe this isn’t true for everyone at all times, but I like helping other people.

I read, I forget who it’s from, and I think I’ve actually mentioned this on the podcast before. There’s a really great post from a content creator that I follow. I think it’s Rachel Cargle, but I could be wrong. The point of this post that I read a couple months back was you’re not the most thoughtful person, you know. that doesn’t mean that you’re not thoughtful. That’s not the point of it. But it just means that other people that you know quite possibly could be as thoughtful as you. You are not the single most thoughtful person in the universe.

what I took that to mean when I read it is that if you like helping people, if you don’t mind helping people, and you’re not the single most thoughtful person alive, then it’s true that other people don’t mind helping you. Right? The tables can turn. Other people don’t mind lending you a helping hand.

I love to help people, when it’s possible for me to, when I’m doing it not from people pleasing energy, but from clean energy. I truly have a desire to lend my set of hands and give aid where I possibly can, to give support where I possibly can. I love doing it. It makes me feel like I’m contributing. It makes me feel charitable. It makes me feel kind and generous. other people like feeling those feelings too.

So as I went through the mastermind experience hosting this live event, I recognize that between me from several years ago on me now I handled it completely differently. I asked for help. it really made a difference. So I want to talk about a couple of the ways I did that. then I want to talk about your relationship with asking for help. See if it serves you, see if it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we’ve got to shift that mindset when it comes to asking for help so you can really start to request and get the help that would really make a difference in your life.

So if you were in Montana with me, you know that the last night, I hosted a farewell dinner, which I always do when I host an in person event. at the farewell dinner, I’ve got a flair for the drama. So I really wanted to have this very long runner down the table. So I do one long rectangular table. They call it a kings table. I do one long table for my farewell dinners. I like to have a really dramatic centerpiece. I like it to run all down the table.

I’ve done this every time I’ve hosted the farewell dinner. I always have these long table runners. Normally they consist of flowers. Well, this time I decided to switch it up, and I got this really amazing idea to do a candle runner all day on the table. if you follow me on social media, you can see the pictures. They shared some on Instagram.

I knew it was going to make for just such a stunning visual effect at the dinner to have this 36 foot candle runner down the center of the table. Because it was going to be dark during most of the dinner, and I wanted the table to be aglow. I just knew it was going to be beautiful. So I order everything that I need to order, and I have it shipped to the hotel.

then while I’m in route to Montana, I’m literally on the airplane flying to Big Sky, I get a notification from Amazon that instead of having these items delivered by Friday, and I need them by Saturday, they weren’t going to arrive until the following Monday. So it was going to be too late. So instantly, I start to scramble, and I just go into problem solving mode because that’s where my brain always goes immediately. I’m like how do we fix this? I believe we can fix it. How am I going to do it?

So I could have given up on my idea. I could have gone back to just doing flowers and string lights, which is what my original idea was. But instead of doing that, I get this brilliant idea to see if maybe Big Sky’s the issue. Maybe because it’s such a remote destination, that that really impacts the shipping time. I had already sent something overnight to Big Sky. So I knew that it was possible to send from where I live in Michigan to Big Sky to send things overnight.

So I ended up ordering all of the supplies, reordering the supplies. So I cancelled the original order. I reorder all of the supplies, and I have them delivered to my house in Michigan. I asked my mom for a favor. My mother is wonderful. if you were in Big Sky, you also got to meet my parents. They made a guest appearance.

But I mustered up the, I guess we’ll call it humility. I mustered up the humility and courage to ask for help. I asked my mom hey, could you please pick these things up from my front porch because they’re all being delivered, and they’re being delivered on different days. Can you take them and ship them for me? Can you ship them to the hotel where I’ll already be? So I’ll be able to oversee the receipt of them at the hotel. I just can’t handle the shipping of them to the hotel because I’m already going to be in Montana.

she was a little confused at first. She was like why does it make sense for them to come here and then to go there? But I explained to her that because of the way that Amazon distribution centers work, they could arrive on time my house to be shipped overnight via a different carrier, but Amazon wouldn’t get them there in time.

So I asked her, and she graciously agrees. y’all, it was so much work for her. It was so many boxes, but she helped me. I was courageous and humble enough to ask for the help because I really could use it. because I was willing to do that and because she was so gracious to offer to help and accommodate me, we got the job done.

Then similarly, when I was in Big Sky, a really good friend of mine, Andrea Nordling, she’s a coach. She is a business coach for holistic nutritionists. she was also hosting a retreat in Big Sky. this actually brings up a couple different ways that I was a gracious recipient of help.

Now, I didn’t specifically ask Andrea for help in two different instances, but she offered it. I recognized I had this initial desire to tell her no. Oh, I don’t need your help. No, I’ll be fine. It’ll be okay. So, first things first, I had committed myself to filling more rooms at the hotel that I hosted this event at than the numbers that I got from the launch that I did to sell the event.

Andrea got this idea to also host an event the same weekend as me in order to fill these rooms. Now, if you’re not familiar with how corporate room blocks go, you’re on the hook for the rooms that you contract with the hotel to fill. So if they go unfilled, you have to pay for them.

So Andrea offered to really do me a favor and fill some of the rooms with her people by hosting an event there, which ended up taking a lot of pressure off of me to fill rooms or being on the hook financially if they go unfilled. So this made a massive difference in how this event ended up going because she offered to do this. I had a sincere desire to tell her no and pretend to be proud and tell her that it was all okay, but I resisted the urge to do that. I just accepted her offer to help.

Her and her assistant or business manager, Raven, were in Montana the same time I was. they saw me setting up these candles with my cousin who also helps me during these events. So Andrea and Raven come outside, and they just start pitching in. We had so many boxes to open up. then after we opened all the boxes, we had to arrange everything, and we had to light the candles to get the wicks started. It was quite a process.

I was reflecting on it later in the evening. Because, again, it came together so beautifully. Just really, really incredible. Just so aesthetically amazing. I got back to my hotel room to change out of my workshop clothes into like my evening attire. when I was doing that, I just took a second, and I reflected on how grateful I was that Andrea and Raven, and my cousin Emily helped me put this together.

I realized that I would have done the same thing for them in a heartbeat. No one would have had to ask me. I would have just wanted to chip in and offer my assistance. I noticed when Andrea and Raven started to help out, I wanted to tell them hey, we’ve got this. Don’t worry about it. I don’t need extra sets of hands. We’ll get it figured out ourselves. I resisted the urge to do that, and I just allowed myself to be a gracious recipient of help.

Another thing that happened during the event was that there was a mix up with the AV company that was providing the audio visual materials for the event. So like the projectors and the television screens for me to like have the PowerPoint up and my flip charts. the easel that I used to write on and coach people in real time on my little board.

they ended up not having flip charts. my photographer, who’s a really good friend of mine, her husband was there. she had said to me when they arrived. If you need any favors, if you need any help, if there are any emergencies, Keith, my husband can run an errand for you. in the beginning, I was like oh my goodness. There’s no way we’ll ever need that.

then sure enough during the welcome reception, so my team is at the welcome reception. So I can’t just send anyone. Like we have jobs to do for the welcome reception. So it was between the welcome reception, which starts at 6:00 p.m., and then the next morning is when I would need these flip charts that I write on as I coach and teach.

I was trying to figure out what could I do if I was just relying solely on myself and I thought, oh, I could get up in the morning, and I could drive from Big Sky to Bozeman, which is about an hour drive. I could get these flip charts and then I could drive back. But I remembered my rule with planning. I never do something if requires it to go the best case scenario in order for it to work out.

So I just trusted that if I did that, I probably would have gotten a flat tire, and I would have been stranded on the side of the road without cell phone service. The whole thing would have been a disaster. then my people would have been waiting for me and the workshop wouldn’t have been able to get started because of it.

So I refrained and resisted the urge to try and just do it all myself. I sat there, and again, humbled myself, and just said they offered. They wouldn’t have offered if they didn’t mean it. I don’t offer help when I don’t mean it. I’m just going to ask for help. sure enough, Keith went, and he picked up flip charts for me. then the next morning was seamless because he offered to help, and I took him up on that offer.

So these are some examples of how I’ve started asking for help in my own life. Live events are big projects to pull off. I have a very small team. Typically, it’s just me planning everything behind the scenes. I do bring in some assistance for these live events. But I still was probably down a little bit of manpower, which I will take that and use that information for future event planning.

But in the meantime as I’m going through this event, I noticed that I had such a different relationship with asking for help than I have in the past. it’s because my thoughts have changed about it. So I want you to check in with yourself. There’s two different ways that you can improve on how you ask for and receive help.

The first is whether or not you ask for it. if you don’t ask for it, I want you to check in with yourself. What’s your relationship like with asking for help? What do you think about people who ask for help? What do you make it mean about you when you ask for an extra set of hands for some assistance, for some support?

Remember, you’re not the most thoughtful person in the world. what I mean by that is that other people are just as thoughtful as you and just as willing and eager to help as you are. So if you make it mean that you’re weak, you want to change that thought, what do you want to think instead?

Maybe you want to think that the strongest people ask for and receive support. Maybe you want to think that there’s no reason that you should be able to do it all on your own. Right? If you’re hyper independent, it’s probably coming from a belief that you should be able to do it all yourself. What if you change that thought? What if you didn’t think that? What if you think that in order to get further, you do that by receiving help rather than resisting help?

Another thing that I see with clients is they feel really guilty when they think about asking for help. normally, it’s because they don’t trust other people to be honest with them. So if this is you, if you think oh, someone’s going to say yes to helping me, but they’re going to hate me for it. They’re going to resent me for it. You’re not trusting the people in your life to be honest with you. that’s where you have to put your time and attention into changing your mindset. You’ve got to trust them to be honest, to say no if they don’t want to say yes.

this is especially hard for my people pleasers. If you tend to people please other people and say yes when you want to say no, you probably expect that from other people. you’ve got to start taking people at face value. You’ve got to start establishing trust between you and them, trusting them to say no if it doesn’t work for them, and not being upset if they tell you know. Being able to receive their know without getting frustrated or hurt.

Do you think people will judge you if you ask for help? If so, what judgments do you think they’ll have? Whatever judgments you assume other people will have of you, they’re really just the judgments that you have of yourself. So take a second and identify what do you think people will think of you if you ask them for assistance? Maybe you’ll think that they think you’re incompetent, or that you’re lazy. If you think those things, those are judgments you have of yourself.

How do you respond when someone else asks you for help? If you have a negative connotation with someone asking you for help, you want to address that mirror judgment and really look at what do you make it mean about them because you probably make it mean the same thing about you. That’s just another opportunity to gain more awareness and to start to shift your mindset here.

then think about how you are when you receive help. Are you a gracious recipient, or do you resist it? Do you argue with people? Do you debate? Do you try and push back and deny people the opportunity to give you help, to offer an extra set of hands?

Think about how you are when people offer to pay for something. Are you a gracious recipient of someone else’s monetary generosity? I am a very generous person when it comes to money, and I love to pick up tabs when I’m out. I love to pay for dinner for other people. I just love to treat people to things. It’s a signature part of my personality. It’s something I just absolutely love to do. It’s one of the ways that I show love and affection.

Other people respond very differently. So some people are gracious recipients, and they say thank you. not everyone. I don’t need everyone to return the favor. That’s not why I’m doing it. Some people like to return the favor. So we take turns exchanging that generosity, which is so much fun. Again, I never expect that from people though I do this because it’s something that I like to do, regardless of what anyone else is going to do going forward.

So some people say thank you, and they’re super gracious recipients. Some people like to return the favor. then the third category is that people argue with me, and they get really offended. the conversation becomes pretty quickly combative because they’re really uncomfortable being on the receiving end of someone else’s generosity.

oftentimes, I use it as a learning moment, as a teaching opportunity just to show people hey, this is an opportunity for you to really work on receiving. Receiving generosity, receiving love, receiving help. These are all things that we can become more gracious recipients of when someone’s kind enough to offer whatever it is that they’re offering.

So do you get uncomfortable when someone offers to pay for you? If you do, you probably get uncomfortable when someone offers to help you rather than just being grateful and graciously receiving their help. That’s what I did with Andrea and Raven. I graciously received their help. They were kind enough to offer. I didn’t even have to ask. I’m so grateful that they jumped in, rolled up their sleeves, and helped us get the job done.

So I want you to take a second. These are the two ways that you can work on receiving help. You can ask for it and be a gracious recipient of it. So what is something that you would like to ask for help with? What could you use some help with? Maybe it’s asking for an extra set of hands on the matter that you’re currently working on at work. All right.

Maybe you need another associate because there’s just too much work to go around and everyone’s buried, but you’re afraid to ask the supervising attorney on the matter to bring someone else on because you think that he or she will think that you can’t handle it.

All right, what would it look like for you to be brave enough to ask for that extra set of hands? What do you need to think, and what positive emotion do you need to cultivate in order to become the person who does that? Maybe you need help from your legal assistant, but you’re afraid to ask them because of the power dynamic. You’re uncomfortable asking for help even though that’s technically the person’s job to assist you. you’re telling yourself well, I technically could do it myself. So I should do it myself.

But if that’s the mentality you have, you’re never going to advance as far as you can in your career because you’re going to continue spending time on things that you shouldn’t be spending your time on. Right? You’re never going to advance your skill set if you keep doing the same things that you’ve always done. You’ve got to learn how to delegate in order to transition out of doing some of that low hanging fruit, that entry level work, in order to build and develop your skill set to advance in your career.

But you might have judgments about that. This person is going to think that I’m taking advantage of them. They’re going to think that I’m lazy, that I’m not willing to do it myself. They might think I think I’m too good to do this, right? How do you want to think about all of this instead? What do you want to think about asking for someone’s assistance instead of any of those thoughts?

Maybe you’re needing help or desiring help in your personal life. I recently coached a client on asking her husband for more help with their daughter. A lot of the day in, day out stuff falls to her. what happens when the day to day stuff mostly falls to her, she really never gets any downtime. She never gets any alone time.

Her husband gets a lot of it because he has a different work schedule than her. then she ends up just being in demand and on call all the time with their little one. So she’s either at work or when she’s home, her daughter’s home. So it becomes a completely full time job. Versus her husband who is at home when their child’s not, he gets a lot of downtime. we were identifying different things that she’d like help with.

So some of it was childcare duties, and then some of it was just different chores around the house. we worked on what it would look like to have a conversation about that from a clean place, not a place of frustration or resentment. then how to go about asking for that help with a lot of sincerity and a lot of trust.

A really great example of someone asking me for help. It would be my mom with holidays. As she gets older and my mom deals with chronic pain, she asks me for help when it comes to preparing meals for the holidays, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. She will ask me to come early to help her cook, to do all of that. she’ll all also asked for help with like cleaning up.

Normally my uncle chips in and does all the dishes. I do like the heavy lifting on a lot of the cooking on the front end. So prep work and day of. I wake up early with her, and we cook all day together. I lift things if they’re heavy. I try and bear the brunt of that because it doesn’t have as significant of an impact on me as it does her.

she’s brave enough to ask for help rather than trying to white knuckle her way through it and be a hero. No one wins because she ends up being in so much pain that it makes the day a miserable experience for her. it’s really hard for me to enjoy being with her when she’s suffering so much.

So everyone wins. That’s a great thought to think about asking for help and being a gracious recipient of help. Everyone wins when I ask for help. Everyone wins when my mom asks for help. we’re all so eager to chip in and give it.

Just think of that for a second. What if you believed people would be eager to help you? To chip in and lend that extra set of hands? How would that change the way that you approach asking for help? How do you want to feel when you ask for help? What one word emotions do you want to cultivate? What would you need to feel in order to ask for the help that you could really use?

Do you need to feel trusting? Do you need to feel committed? Do you need to feel brave? Do you need to feel assured? Do you need to feel compassionate with yourself? Think of those emotions that you want to cultivate.

Then also think about the negative emotions that you’re going to have to allow. Are you going to have to feel embarrassed? Are you going to have to feel ashamed? Are you going to have to feel insecure or inadequate? Are you going to have to feel judged or exposed? Are you going to have to feel guilty or worried? Are you going to have to feel rejected if someone tells you no, I’m so sorry. I can’t do that. I don’t have the bandwidth to help you in that way right now.

Think about what negative emotions you’re going to have to gag and go your way through in order to ask for help. then think about what you want to think about asking for help instead of what you’ve currently been thinking. How do you want to show up when it comes to asking for and receiving help? What do you need to think in order to do that?

Now I want to give you homework. I’m going to challenge you. I want you to find one way to ask for help this week. Be brave. Have your own back. Trust yourself and the other person. go ahead and ask. Don’t make it mean anything negative about you. Just trust yourself and them and ask for the help that would really move the dial for you and make your life a bit easier. Okay.

Go out and do this week. You’ve got to create evidence that you won’t die if you ask for help. I know that sounds really dramatic, but that’s what the primitive part of your brain believes. The primitive part of your brain believes that you’re going to die if you ask. You have to prove to it that you won’t. That everything at the end of the day will be okay if you ask for help.

You can ask and survive the ask, and you can receive and survive receiving. I promise you. Go out there and do it. Give it a try for yourself and see what happens. All right, my friends. That’s what I’ve got for you this week. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer Podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit TheLessStressedLawyer.com.