Latest / In The Driver's Seat / I’m Gen X. I Never Asked for Help. Here’s What I Now Understand.
Transcript
- Lisa French: couple years ago I bought windshield wipers for my car. In case you don't know, I used to race cars and know how to use tools. I have my own toolbox and I have fixed quite a few things on my own vehicles over the years. I'm not wandering around trying to figure out how to use a screwdriver or a wrench. So buying windshield wipers online and installing them myself didn't seem like it'd be a big deal. But when the windshield wipers came there were Like three different adapters in the package. I couldn't seem to get any of them to fit or work on my car. And the instructions were not helpful at all. So there I was standing by my vehicle, wrestling with these plastic adapters, trying one after another, and questioning my decision as to why I would buy them online instead of going a couple miles up the road. And buy them at Auto Parts Store where they will install them for free. But I figured it out eventually. The next day. And I was proud of myself enough to make a post about it, a victory lap of sorts, a day after I had posted an admission that I wished I had bought them at the autopart store. Look at me, I'm installing my own. Windshield wipers like a true functioning adult. Then a couple months later, I pressed the windshield washer button and one of the wipers flew completely off the car and landed in the street. Gone. The wiper arm was scraping the glass, and all I could do was laugh. Because of course, that solidified. When there's ⁓ a much easier way by using professionals. That winchel wiper lying in the road was also a pretty accurate picture of something I've been doing my entire life. Insisting that I can handle everything myself. Avoiding help that was readily available, then acting surprised when something falls apart. I am Gen X. I didn't ask for help. For a long time I thought that was one of my greatest strengths. Now I understand there's more underneath it. Welcome to In the Driver's Seat. I'm Lisa French, and around here we talk about what it looks like to intentionally create your life. Instead of waking up one day and realizing you've been living from old habits, old expectations, and decisions you don't remember making. Today we're talking about independence. More specifically, the kind of independence many of us are deeply proud of. The kind that says, I'll figure it out. I've got it. Don't worry about me. And sometimes we do have it. We are capable and resourceful. We know how to get things done. But there's a difference between choosing to handle something yourself and being unable to imagine another option. It took me a long time to realize the difference. I am an older sister to a younger brother. Somewhere along the way, I slipped into the caretaking role. My parents divorced when I was young and we lived with our dad. My dad owned businesses and he was gone a significant part of the day. Nobody sat us down and announced that I was now responsible for making sure everything ran smoothly. There was no big conversation about it. It was just simply that's that was our life. By the time I was old enough to drive, I was the one making sure my brother and I were awake. got ready and got out the door to get to school on time. Being home alone after school was the norm for most of my school life. However, I didn't walk around feeling like I was abandoned or neglected. That wasn't how I experienced it. I felt capable. I knew how to take care of myself and my brother. I knew how to make food, solve problems and keep things moving. Those abilities became part of how I saw myself. I was the person who could handle it. After I graduated high school, I was living alone in another town helping out at one of my dad's businesses. So independence wasn't some dramatic identity I just chose one day. It was part of my personality. And honestly, it was a point of pride. A lot of Gen X grew up this way. We came home, we let ourselves in, we found something to eat. And figured out whatever needed figuring out. We weren't constantly texting our parents because we didn't have phones in our pockets. Half the time they didn't even know where we were. There were no tracking apps and shared locations, no group chat asking if we made it home safely. We left the house, disappeared into the neighborhood, and came back when the streetlights came on. We learned resourcefulness because we had space to develop it. There are good things that came from that. I don't want to erase those. But when handling everything becomes your default setting, it can become difficult to realize when you're carrying something you don't need to carry alone. You stop asking, Do I want to do this myself? And the question becomes, how am I going to do this myself? The girl who learned to handle everything didn't disappear when I became an adult. She got older. She got jobs. She got married and raised children. She managed a household, deadlines, emergencies, and other people's needs. I became the friend that people called when they needed something. I was kind of considered the mom of my friend group. I showed up. I had plans. I could usually figure things out. I was good at giving advice. And I liked being that person. There's something satisfying about being dependable. There's something meaningful about Knowing people trust you. But there is also a hidden agreement that can come from when you're always the strong one. You help everyone else, but don't give them many opportunities to help you. You become so good at appearing capable that people just assume you don't need anything. Then you can start resenting them for not offering. That one stings a little bit, doesn't it? Because people can't always see what we become experts at hiding. There there were times in my life when I needed more than I received. There were situations where people didn't show up for me the way I had hoped they would. And after enough disappointment, doing everything myself began to feel safer. When you don't ask, nobody can say no. When you don't depend on anyone, No one can let you down. When you solve the problem alone, you stay in control. That can look like strength from the outside. Sometimes it even feels like strength on the inside. But control and safety can become tangled together so so tightly that we stop noticing how much energy it takes to maintain them. I left marriages, I rebuilt my life. At 46, I moved from Iowa to Panama City Beach, somewhere I had never been and started my life over again. I did things that required courage, resilience, and faith. I'm proud of the woman who got me through all of that. I'm not interested in looking back at her and deciding she did anything wrong. She did what she knew how to do. She protected me and kept things moving. But survival skills don't always know when the emergency is over. They keep showing up for work long after the job is done. That's what I began to understand. My independence wasn't the problem. The automatic nature of it was. Here's how you can usually tell the difference. Healthy independence feels like a choice. You know help is available and you decide you'd rather handle it yourself. Automatic independence feels like there is no choice. Asking doesn't even enter your mind. Or it enters your mind and you immediately dismiss it. You tell yourself it'll take too long to explain. They probably won't do it correctly. You don't want to bother anyone. It's easier to do it yourself. And sometimes that is true. Sometimes it is genuinely easier. You need to pay attention if it becomes the explanation for everything. Because easier can mean many things. It can mean faster. It can also mean emotionally safer. It can mean less vulnerable. It can mean you don't have to risk caring. No. It can mean you don't have to admit you don't know how to do something. You don't have to release control long enough for someone else to participate. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It makes the pattern understandable, but understandable patterns can still cost us something. They can cost us time, energy. Connection, rest. They can also create relationships where one person becomes the permanent giver and everyone else becomes accustomed to receiving. That doesn't mean the other people are terrible. It's because that's the arrangement we've helped create. We've trained everyone, including ourselves, to believe we've got it, even when we don't. When I moved from Iowa to Panama City Beach in 2018, I made the trip driving a 28-foot RV. I was nervous about not being able to see behind me while I was driving, so my brother wired a backup camera into the taillights. As long as the headlights were on, I was able to use that as an electronic rear view mirror of sorts. A little unconventional, but it worked. What I didn't have was confidence in backing up. the RV. So for roughly a thousand miles, I planned every stop around one goal. No going in reverse. Gas stations, parking lots, I looked for places I could pull straight through. And it worked right up until it didn't. When I arrived at the vacation resort where I was renting a lot, I saw the water and electric hookups were at the back of the site. That meant I needed to back in the RB. There was no option for me to drive straight in. I was standing there laughing at myself, wondering how many attempts it would take when a man in his son drove by on a golf cart. I felt like I had no cho choice but to ask for help. And he didn't look at me like I was incompetent. He didn't give me a speech about How I had no business driving, this big vehicle, if if I didn't know how to back up, or maybe I should have practiced, he didn't make it into a big deal at all. He just hopped in the driver's seat, backed the RV into the spot, even helped me get it onto the leveling blocks. Then he hopped back onto his golf cart and drove off. No humiliation or debt. He saw what needed done and he just helped me do it. I sold that RV. straight from that spot. I never drove it again after arriving that day. But I've thought about that moment many times since. Because after spending a thousand miles arranging everything so I wouldn't need help, the moment I did ask for help, it was so simple. It cost me nothing and it gave me exactly what I needed. Here's what I understand now. Independence has served me well. It has taught me to trust myself. It's taught me that I can learn things that I need to. It has taught me to keep moving when life unexpectedly changed. It helped me to build a life, rebuild it, and choose a completely new one. And I'm keeping all of that. But I don't need to prove my capability by making things harder. I don't need to wrestle with windshield wipers because accepting free installation somehow feels like cheating. I don't need to carry all the grocery bags in in one trip. Although, let's be honest, I'm probably still going to try. Some habits are deeply ingrained, but I'm learning to pause before the reflex takes over. Do I want to handle this myself or did I assume I had to? Is nobody available or have I decided in advance that asking won't go well? Am I choosing independence or am I protecting myself from the possibility of disappointment? Those questions don't erase what we learned. They give us more choices. And that is the goal. Not becoming helpless or handing over the keys to your life, not waiting around for someone to rescue you. Simply recognizing that strength has more than one shape. Sometimes strength is figuring it out. Sometimes strength is saying Can you please help me with this? Sometimes it's allowing someone to stand behind the rig and see what you can't see from the driver's seat. Because no matter how capable you are, there will always be angles you can't see from where you're sitting. That's why we have mirrors. That's why we have people. So here's something to ask yourself. Where in your life has I've got it become an automatic response? Maybe it's at work or in your family. Maybe you're the person everyone relies on, but you can't remember the last time you let someone support you. Maybe there's something small you've been struggling through that could be easier if you asked one question, made one phone call, or let someone stand beside you. You don't have to change your entire personality. You don't have to become someone who asks help for everything. Start by noticing the moment the reflex appears. That moment matters. Because once you can see the pattern, you can make a choice. You can still do it yourself, and now you're choosing it instead of your automatic independence choosing for you. I think that's the part of what so many of us Gen Xers are learning now. We were raised to be resourceful. We came home to empty houses, solved our own problems. And learned early not to wait for someone to step in. That made us capable. It also made I've got it so programmed that many of us stopped being aware of when we didn't have to carry something alone. So maybe the season of life isn't about becoming less independent. Maybe it's about giving ourselves more options. We can still figure things out. We can still be the person who knows how to handle a hard day. A broken appliance, a cross country move, or a windshield wiper with instructions designed by a lunatic. But we can also ask for help and receive it. That doesn't erase the strength that Gen X built. I would love to hear what this brought up for you. Where in your life has I've got it become automatic, even when part of you could use some help? Share in the comments. You may find others are learning the same thing. Be sure to subscribe to In the Driver's Seat for more conversations about the patterns shaping our lives, the choices available to us, and what it looks like to intentionally create a life that you truly love. I also have links in the description to other free resources for you. I appreciate you being here. Until next time, remember you are always in the driver's seat of your life.