Latest / The Checkpoint Podcast: Questions / Episode 37 | Why Is It So Hard for Men to Ask for Help?
Transcript
- Podcast episode 37: Hey it's Dex, Creator Ruby Player One and host at the Checkpoint. And today for this entry of Turning 50, what I've learnt and what'll take another 50 is some sage advice, especially for guys and all around people as we get a little bit older. And that advice is to ask for help. Now From a guy point of view, this is potentially a difficult thing to do. Depending on it on who you are and how you are as a guy, asking for help can seem can feel like a sign of weakness, can feel like a sign of like my life isn't put together, like I'm struggling. And as guys, we generally like to put on this facade that everything's cool. that, hey, my life's put together. and that sucks. I'm I'm guilty of doing it. You know, it's it's a thing that will never go away. I don't think it goes away for anyone, really. and and so when things go wrong or things could potentially go wrong or I can see that there could be trouble coming up ahead, my first instinct really isn't to ask for help. It's gotten better and really only the past couple of years have I started to listen to that piece of advice. I've realized that I'd been doing things on my own for for far too long. And that if I had asked for help sooner, I'd be in a different situation. Now I'm not gonna say that that situation is better or worse, but it'll be different. And I'm not gonna be able to go back and redo it. But all I can say is that had I had asked for help back when I needed it, that I would probably be in a more advanced stage of any particular part of business. I'm not saying life, maybe. I I I don't know actually. but it was just one of those things that had I done it sooner, I'm i I would have imagined. That I would be in a more advantageous position than I am now. Now, that could be financially, that could be in the growth of the business, that could be the amount of followers I've got. I I I don't know. But I know that I have stymied my growth thinking that I can do everything on my own. And that's ego for me. That's wanting to seem like I'm Smarter than everyone else, I guess. And I thought I had it all together. Look, admittedly, I thought I did okay. But having said that, I probably, most likely, would have gone further, faster, better, with less stress if I had asked for help. And that's asking for help on everything. From a work point of view, absolutely. No doubt, different situation. And potentially more advanced, potentially bigger than what I am now. Again, no complaints on where I am now, but I just know that had I had recognized who I was back then and potentially changed it to allow people in, to even allow myself to put up my hand and say, Hey, I need help with this. Do you know anyone? Can you help me? Things would be different. Now, if we're talking about life. Same thing. everyone will have financial struggles. Everyone will have struggles with family, with friends, with siblings, with kids, with grandparents, with with everything, with you know, friends of your kids, with other parents. And it's quite easy. sometimes it's it feels better just to keep it bottled up inside because you don't want to be seen as the rude parent or you don't want to affect your kids time at school because you said something to whoever. You know, there's a lot of different thing a lot of different things can happen if you were to speak up, if you were to ask for help on a particular situation. And what we tend to do, at least what I tend to do, is think of the worst possible situation. The worst possible scenario for any problem as it pertains to life. and and I go layers deep. I I don't think to myself, okay, so here's the problem and or here's my situation and this is what could happen. I don't go to that level. Like that's the that's the start for me. I go, okay, so here's the situation and this could happen. And as a result of that happening, this could happen. And as a result of that thing. All of this could happen. And so I take a simple premise and the situation is now blown up. It's it it's now something that I'm almost confident that I won't tell anyone, but I'll work through this, I'll Google this somehow, I'll I don't know, I'll ask AI, I'll try and frame it to other people in a way that the problem could be seen as somebody else's and not my own. And similar to business problems, when I take personal problems and and stretch them out, yeah, they can be bigger, you know, as opposed to trying to fix it then and there and sooner, I let this problem build up, I push it away, I do other stuff, more problems come in, and and that problem is still sitting over there. And sometimes that problem when back in the day it seemed quite small, is now bigger. 'Cause I've let it. And then I get to thinking, now I've got this problem to think about and this other problem to think about. And it's like, now I definitely can't ask for help because the problem has now escalated and it's huge. So a really cool piece of advice, especially for guys, potentially for guys that are a bit older. And I think that again, this is for me and some of the friends that I know. The older the guys get, the less they tend to ask for help. Because we think we've got it nailed. We think we've got it locked in. And that's where, you know, things like social media really don't help. Because you compare yourself, you look at what car they drive, you look at their house, you look at their holidays. And sometimes you're just like, I I don't know, like I can't compete with that. You know, I'm struggling to put food on the table for my kids. And here are people there that have got Lambos and Ferraris and all that sort of stuff. And so you don't want to admit to yourself that that's kind of what you want, and you don't want to ask for help. But it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Honestly, it's the the sooner that you can accept that everyone needs help, then it would actually be strange for you to not ask for help. Because we're now at a stage, again with social media, where we look at these people. And they're showing off money and they're showing off this and they're showing off that. And it's now the opposite. It's it's now that's not real. we i in the beginning you you would see these photos and you're a hundred percent certain, wow, this person is rich. And then you sp you ask yourself, like, how can I get that? Why don't I have that? And now things are changing where you look at these things and you almost almost know that they're fake. Things are rented out. So it's turned around. Anyway, that's beside the point. The the gist of it is ask for help. At any age. You know, it it's funny. There was a I do Toastmasters. And at the last meeting, somebody has said to me, had said to me that they had a Table topics competition question. And I'm I'm gonna paraphrase it because I I'm not exactly sure what it was off the top of my head. But the question along the line was along the lines of what is one thing that your children what what is one thing that kids can teach you? What is one thing that kids can teach you? I think something along those lines. And There are so many good answers for it. But as it pertains to the piece of advice for asking for help, that is one thing that I think kids could teach us. Is that very early on in when kids learn to talk and they learn to to do things and they want to do more things, they ask. They ask all these questions. How do I do this? Why? Can we do this? Can we try that? Can you show me how to do this? Why, why, why? Ask questions. Ask for help. Ask, ask, ask. That's all kids do. And they do that because they want to know. We and the older we get, the more we stop that. Now, whether that's because of a childhood trauma thing where your parents just say, Hey, stop asking so many questions, could be a thing that you would get yelled at because you were just like, you know what, I don't want you to know, or it just could be a thing where it's easier for the parents just to do something than it is to explain how to do something to your kids. But as kids grow up, they ask for help. All the time. They fall over. Ask for help. I don't know how to do this. Ask for help. I don't know. I don't have time to color this in. I don't know what color to do it. Ask for help. Ask, ask, ask. And then we stop and we get older. So my tip, my thing that I've learned as I've turned, as I'm close, as I'm very close to turning 50, is to ask for help. And so I'm going to ask for help from you. Like this, share this, comment. All of that stuff. I'd like this channel to grow, maybe. But at the same time, I'm just enjoying talking to myself. I think it's cool. And that's it for me, Dex Reboot Player One and the checkpoint. And I'll see you on the next feed. Thanks. Bye.