Affirmations:
I am in service to myself and others.
I am here to be truly helpful giving the best I know.
I am always available for the highest good of all.
Life is for giving and I am the gift I have to give.
How Can I Help?
How can I help you, if I don’t know how to help myself?
How can
I help, when I don’t have the energy or time?
How can
I help, if I don’t know what you want?
How can
I help, if I am not listening to what you want?
Folks often try to help because they are fearful or
worried.
Some people
interfere in others’ lives because they think they are helping.
Some times
folks just don’t know any other way to express their love.
Look to see
your motive to be helpful and who it really is helping.
When not asked for help, are you interfering?
When help
is not wanted, do you think you know best?
When you
make others feel guilty, are you really being helpful?
When you
expect appreciation or reciprocity, is your help really gift?
Consider how you want to be helped.
Ask if you
like to be forced to receive.
Look at how
you feel about advice.
When do you
feel others are meddling or actually helping.
A barometer for your
true intentions may be:
Do you
expect appreciation for your help?
Do you
feel offended if they decline your help?
Are you
waiting for payback when you need help?
Help is not helpful when you give without asking
permission.
Help is not
helpful if you think you know better than they do.
Help is not
helpful if you make them feel inadequate or incapable.
Help is not
beneficial if you are doing it for your own needs.
Consider your best help is to see and affirm others doing
well.
Consider
being helpful is appreciating what people do for themselves.
Consider
remembering to ask first: “How can I be helpful?”
Help
yourself first, so you are strong and able to give the help that is wanted.
Teach people how to help themselves, so they become
independent.
Setting an
example is always the best teacher.
Show rather
than tell other how to do what they want to learn.
Encourage
and affirm everyone to be strong and capable, happy and free.
Helpfulness is true service to others when you give what
is valued and affirming to others.
See below
the differences between “Helping, Fixing and
Serving”
Here to be truly helpful as you serve yourself.
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