We are often placed in situations when we are required to get into help mode. So what can we do instead if we’re so keen to help?
Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” Mahatma Gandhi famously said.
Today’s feature on ‘crisis’ deals with addressing a modern day problem where “we want to tell people what to do” but “we don’t want to get it done ourselves and lead the way”. Relate to it? I bet you can. Advice I agree comes free, but so does action.
Think about it from our perspective for a moment here.
People around us are going through their share of life, the good, the bad, the stressful and I agree there are times when we know the best way forward but is our line of thought exactly the same as the rest?
Even though the scenarios may sound entirely similar I can assure you there’s that something that doesn’t quite match the solution you perceive, the results? Sometime extreme. So what can we do instead if we’re so keen to help?
Most of the time we’d rather direct them to a professional who’d be in a better frame to understand their situation and guide them on a mutually accepted path, but we could also maybe do it ourselves and be the change we wish to convey.
Yet, there’s multiple times when we are placed in a situation when we are required to get into help mode, one instance being when we are asked for a solution, the other when we aren’t asked but yet perceive our way as the solution and the third way is when we are seeing it go terribly wrong for someone and we believe it’s our prerogative to help ease the issue.
Each scenario being unique, let’s elaborate them below.
Scenario 1: When we are asked
This happens within close circles like family, the work place or known society that perceives us as at a level of comfort that they believe can address their queries.
Such situations are critical to an extent that the person asking for suggestions normally doesn’t verify the response but takes your opinion at the value received.
Read on to know more about the level of comfort talked about in this scenario.
Scenario 2: When we are
not asked
This is possibly a trait of humans that differentiates the doers from the tellers. Do we really need to get to a stage when we want to advise people around us when they’re perfectly alright and living a life as per a perception best suited to them? But we yet do. We yet like to blabber away our stand in life and give our version to a script that didn’t have a role for our direction.
MS Dhoni, an influencer to modern day India, when asked recently what his advice was for the country said, “If there’s one thing I’d like to see followed its people being actors rather than directors, there’s too much of direction and lesser of action”.
Most of the time this direction comes out of our standing, either to prove where we are or to show someone why they aren’t there yet.
But give scenario 1 a think and recollect that people come to you for advice when they acquire that comfort zone to confide in your point of view, a web of trust that arises from your life that appealed to them prior to that moment of their crisis, it’s possibly just a state of mind that opens the door to allow your influence on them.
Scenario 3: When you just have to
This is the survival instinct mode when we know that if we don’t help we will have to live with a personal regret of knowing the scenario for the opposite person was going hazardously off track and needed your intervention.
Honestly no harm, but ensure the help you extend is definitely going to aid in an effort to find a solution or rather place the opposite person on track again.
Keep in mind that a bad move here can escalate an existing problem into a plethora of consequences, sometime unimaginable.
To summarise, Scenario 1 is where most of us want to be.
A life lead by ethically correct values, personally fulfilling choices and environmental levels of comfort that make those around you want to either be lead by you or be advised by you. I understand it’s human nature to want to help / suggest but hold back a little and get your journey engraved by milestones that’ll want the world to follow your footsteps or simply admire your route to get them back on track or find the solution themselves, an extension of the positivity emitted from your way of life.
By taking care of your actions, you positively influence the actions around you. Think about it, flowers when exchanged for an occasion are met with a smile, but flowers exchanged for a memorial are met with a tear.
