Helpfulness

Affirmations;

I am inspired to be truly helpful.

To serve another is to serve ourselves.

Love is the answer whatever the request.

Life is for Giving and I Am the Gift.

Are You Truly Helpful?

When we give what we genuinely want to receive, we can be helpful.

When we give what we think they need, we may be judging.

When we give what we hope will fix or change them, we may be interfering.

When we give what we are inspired to share without expectation, we will be caring.

The fine points of helpfulness are intertwined with beliefs, opinions, past history and experience. Parent and child helpfulness can be meddling.

Husband and wife helpfulness can be nagging.

Co-worker or neighbor helpfulness can be showing off.

Every form of helping can be construed in different ways by every recipient.

Some people feel loved and valued when someone helps.

Some people feel irritated and interfered with help.

Some people ignore and resist being helped.

Whether adult or child, needing help or not, everyone reacts or responds differently.

We all have experiences where help is not helpful.

We each have times when others try to fix or change us.

We may have experienced that helpfulness comes from a need to control.

Whether helper or recipient, we need to respect whether help is truly helpful.

We need to communicate what is wanted and what is not helpful.

We need to appreciate the positive thoughts in being helpful.

We need to enjoy the connection of compassion and kindness.

Before being helpful, consider if you would want the same.

“In this situation, would I appreciate someone helping me?”

Before proceeding with trying to be helpful, ask for permission.

“ May I help you?”

Before judging that the help you want to give is truly helpful, ask.

“I would like to …..   Would that be helpful to you?”

Before  offering, ask if the helpfulness is coming from a judgmental perspective.

“ Are you helping in a way that empowers or disempowers the other?”

Too often, parents, partners and well-meaning friends interfere without asking permission.

Often people ignore and step away from caring and sharing because they don’t know what to do.

Sometimes, people overdo, sacrifice and martyr themselves in doing for others and create guilt.

There are those who need to help, care, and do for their own self esteem and peace of mind.

Consider if your caring and helpfulness are coming from Love, Trust and Freedom or from Fear.

Consider if you believe and trust the other or distrust and want to control the recipient.

Pay attention to your intention in helping, advising, fixing or making decisions for others.

Be willing to listen to what others really want and may be afraid to request.

Suggestions for Helpfulness:

1) Wait until clearly asked or invited to help.

2) Provide privacy and confidentiality and clarify any limitations.

3) Listen for exactly what is wanted: Listening, advice, information, compassion or spiritual support.

4) Set a specific time frame for the sharing and helping.

4) Request feedback in gratitude, compensation, application to life rather than being disregarded.

Remember to give time and energy to those who receive with respect and gratitude.

All I give is given to myself.

Loving to help, serve, guide, inspire and encourage.

Betty Lue

Helping, Fixing, Serving

--by Rachel Remen (May 29, 2000)


Service is not the same as helping. 

Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your own strength to help someone with less strength. It's a one up, one down relationship, and people feel this inequality. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.

Serving is also different from fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don't fix people. When I set about fixing another person, it's because I see them as broken. 
Fixing is a form of judgment that separates us from one another; it creates a distance.


So, fundamentally, helping, fixing and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole.

When we serve in this way, we understand that this person's suffering is also my suffering, that their joy is also my joy and then the impulse to serve arises naturally - our natural wisdom and compassion presents itself quite simply. A server knows that they're being used and has the willingness to be used in the service of something greater. 
We may help or fix many things in our lives, but when we serve, we are always in the service of wholeness.

--Rachel Remen, from Zen Hospice