Do you ever look around your life and suddenly feel like you are always willingly reaching out to others, but no one is really reaching out to help you? Are you the one who offers hope, support and encouragement, the one who calls up to check in on others or drops a quick line just to say...hey thinking about you. Have you gone out of your way many times to get together with others, but these others don't seem to have the time or energy to make it to you? If you are noticing this, you are probably a giver.
There's nothing wrong with being a giver, the problem comes when you begin to realize that you are the one doing all of the giving. How do we handle it when we need something and it feels as if no one is there for us? How do we handle it when we look and suddenly realize how lopsided many of our relationships are? Do we become angry and resentful and stop giving to anyone. We could, but that probably wouldn't make us feel too great or really solve anything, would it?
I guess the first place to start would be to look and see what exactly we are putting out there in our relationships. Are we willing to accept help from others when they offer it? Do we come across as never needing or wanting help from anyone? Do we ask for help and then accept the help we receive or are we critical or off putting in our attitude towards the help offered? Do we struggle to accept help because we feel weak or helpless when we take help? Do we fear taking help because if we take help, we will somehow lose some bit of control that we feel that we have? Do we even recognize when we need help?
I've come to realize through personal experience that how we ourselves ask for and receive help makes a big difference in what we receive from others. Usually when I was able to recognize that I need help and then I asked for help openly and honestly, I received help, if I accepted the help willingly without being critical of what I received or trying to control the help I received, then the next time I needed help, the help was quickly and graciously given.
I was used to doing many things for myself and feeling that I had to be strong and take care of everyone else, but I was not good at asking for help or accepting help when offered. Part of the lesson of having a chronic illness for me has been in learning how to ask for help and more importantly how to receive help when it's offered. I've also learned that learning to recognize when we need help, being able to ask for it and then graciously receive it is not a weakness, it's a strength. If I benefit so much for helping others, why would I deny that benefit to those who desire to help me? Help may not always come in the way we imagined or expected, but that doesn't mean it's not useful or beneficial to us. If we wrap ourselves up in expectations of what help should look like, we may miss out on something really amazing that we had no way of envisioning.
Perhaps if we find ourselves feeling as if we are only on the giving end, it's time for us to look at our own receiving habits and make some adjustments. Of course we will find that there are those around us who really are only there to take what we have to offer and don't really have much to offer back, but I think we will also find there are many out there who are just waiting to lend a hand in whatever way they know how.
Perhaps it's time to open up our hearts, souls and minds to the idea of receiving.
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