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ASKING FOR HELP · The Karen Kenney Show

• 0:01
  Karen Kenney: Hey, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I am
• 0:04
  super duper excited to be here with you today. Thank you so
• 0:07
  much for tuning in. If it's your first time here. Hi. Welcome so
• 0:12
  happy to have you. If you have been with me a few times, if you
• 0:16
  wait, that sounded good. If you if you've been around the block
• 0:20
  with me a few times, I'm waggling my eyebrows at you. Oh
• 0:25
  my god, thank you for coming back. I super appreciate you
• 0:28
  loyal listeners. I couldn't do it without you. So in my hand
• 0:32
  I'm holding up this book. It's called meditations, by Marcus
• 0:36
  Aurelius, and this is the translation by Gregory Hayes,
• 0:41
  this is such a fantastic book. So some of you may know this
• 0:45
  about me, that I am a writer. I am a storyteller. I am a lover
• 0:52
  of books and words and reading and books have absolutely like
• 0:55
  changed my life. And you know, back in the day, way back in the
• 0:59
  day. And I was just talking about this with my friend Tess
• 1:02
  masters. Tess masters also known as the blender girl. Some of you
• 1:06
  might know her as the blender girl, but Tess has a podcast.
• 1:09
  It's fantastic. It's called, it has to be me, and I'm actually
• 1:13
  going to be on her podcast. It's coming out, actually, on the
• 1:16
  same day as this episode. So Thursday, I think June 19, 2025,
• 1:21
  I think that's when it's coming out. So she and I were just like
• 1:24
  talking, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a point about, first of
• 1:27
  all, the name of this episode, right, asking for help. But she
• 1:32
  and I were kind of talking about how, back in the day before,
• 1:36
  there were like, all these coaches and all these, like
• 1:39
  certified mentors and like all these people that you could hire
• 1:42
  like when you needed support, like back in the day, so much of
• 1:46
  how I helped myself transform, make changes, do stuff is I read
• 1:51
  books like I found so much wisdom, and so many of my
• 1:56
  mentors were like, first and foremost in written form, in
• 2:00
  like, the Self Help section of like, you know, the the crown
• 2:04
  bookstore in California, or borders here, you know, in conk
• 2:07
  and whatever. So back in the day, like I said before, there
• 2:11
  are people like me now who are, like, certified spiritual
• 2:13
  mentors, certified coaches, all these things you had to, you had
• 2:17
  to help yourself, right, like the self there was a reason why
• 2:20
  it was called the Self Help section. And if you wanted to
• 2:24
  make change and stuff, you had to, like, go do the work. Just
• 2:28
  to do the work, meaning, like, you had to get your ass to the
• 2:30
  bookstore to buy the thing. You had to order the cassettes, or
• 2:34
  you had to go to a lecture to meet somebody in person. There
• 2:36
  was no internet. There was no like, dialing it up and like
• 2:39
  hiring people online or whatever. So back in the day,
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  like we really had to do it, and a lot of it came through books.
• 2:45
  And this book, Marcus Aurelius meditations, was, like such a
• 2:52
  powerful and potent it still is. That's why I'm like, I reread it
• 2:55
  all the time. I picked this sucker up all the time and thumb
• 2:57
  through it. And I was reading it this morning, and I was like, Oh
• 3:01
  my God, I want to make sure that I talked about this. And then I
• 3:04
  went back, and I tried to check through my episodes, and I'm
• 3:07
  like, How have I never done an episode called asking for help?
• 3:12
  I, for sure, have talked about, you know, talked about asking
• 3:17
  for help, or getting help in, like, certain situations. I
• 3:19
  think I had an episode called, How can I help, or whatever, but
• 3:23
  I don't think I've ever approached it in quite this way.
• 3:26
  But let me read to you what this this passage in meditations,
• 3:33
  Marcus Aurelius. Now this book, this book, the translation by
• 3:37
  Gregory Hayes. It's like bitten, bitten. No, it's not been, it's
• 3:41
  broken, broken down into like 12 different books. That's what
• 3:46
  they're calling them, like 12 little books. And in book seven,
• 3:51
  so it's like 7.7 so Book Seven, entry seven, 7.7 I just read
• 3:57
  this today. I highlighted it here, and I thought it was so
• 3:59
  fantastic. And I want to share with you, because I think it's
• 4:02
  wicked helpful, especially for us, some of us New England kids.
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  And it's actually, it's actually fitting that I'm wearing my navy
• 4:11
  mass hole, my navy mass hole t shirt today, because for us
• 4:15
  little mass holes, this is a really wicked helpful reminder.
• 4:20
  It says, Don't be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier
• 4:26
  storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish, and if
• 4:30
  you've been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up, so
• 4:35
  what? So what? Don't be ashamed to need help. And I thought this
• 4:41
  was so fantastic when I first read it, and it stopped me in my
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  tracks, because I was a kid who, because of my upbringing, and I
• 4:50
  guarantee you somebody else there, if not, many of you out
• 4:53
  there are going to be able to relate to this. So one of the
• 4:56
  things that happens a lot with like traumatized kids, not all
• 4:59
  of. Like everybody kind of responds to the events of their
• 5:03
  life differently, but a lot of us became like hyper
• 5:07
  independent. Some of us became hyper independent because we
• 5:10
  were number one, highly unsupervised, highly, highly
• 5:17
  unsupervised as children. Oh, my God. I always, I always jokingly
• 5:21
  say, I write about this in my memoir, and I say, you know, we
• 5:23
  weren't just highly unsupervised. We were like,
• 5:25
  fucking feral. We were like, feral, you know. So you had a
• 5:29
  bunch of, like, first of all, you had a bunch of young
• 5:31
  parents. I always call it like babies raising babies. That was
• 5:35
  kind of how it was. And a lot of times those quote, unquote
• 5:38
  babies, which were the adults, the parents, the Guardians,
• 5:41
  whatever, the people who are supposed to be taking care of
• 5:43
  us. You know, they were like working. We were like blue
• 5:47
  collar kids. They were either, like, working two jobs, three
• 5:50
  jobs, hustling on the side, or just off doing shit like, I
• 5:53
  mean, you know, I generation, they had to, like, do a
• 5:56
  commercial, like a public service a PSA, a public service
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  announcement. You guys remember that sucker? And it was
• 6:03
  different celebrities, and they like Grace Jones and Andy Warhol
• 6:07
  and like, I'm trying to think there were a bunch of them. And
• 6:10
  they'd like, stare into the camera, and they'd be like, it's
• 6:13
  10pm Do you know where you I can't even get through it. It's
• 6:17
  so funny to me. It's 10pm Do you know where your children are?
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  Here's the answer, no, most of them did not know where we were
• 6:27
  again because we were in feral we were just like running
• 6:30
  around. Okay, but the reason why I'm telling you all this is a
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  lot of times we did not have good guidance. A lot of times we
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  didn't always have people who were, like, teaching us or
• 6:41
  helping us or showing us. So we had to figure out a lot of stuff
• 6:46
  on our own. And because of that, we tended to become really like,
• 6:52
  like, talk about self help. We had to help ourselves quite a
• 6:55
  bit. We became vigilant, like, almost like, hyper, hyper
• 6:59
  independent. And in some ways, that can be a really powerful
• 7:04
  and beautiful thing, because we, like, we That's the original
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  fafo, right? F, A, F, O, fuck around. Find out. We had to a
• 7:11
  lot of times. Find out the hard way, because nobody was telling
• 7:14
  us, like, Hey, you might not want to play on the train
• 7:16
  tracks. Like, hey, you might want to, might not want to drive
• 7:19
  over there and, like, buy drugs off that person you don't know.
• 7:22
  Like, hey, you might not want to, like, go do this thing. You
• 7:25
  know what I mean. So a lot of times we had to find out the
• 7:29
  hard
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  way. But which can be valuable, right? Like, being really
• 7:33
  independent is a powerful thing. It is also when it leans too
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  far, goes too far, it's like a trauma response, and you start
• 7:43
  to feel like that you cannot ask for help. Number one, because
• 7:47
  there's nobody there to actually help you. Number two, you don't
• 7:51
  want to when you get rewarded, that's another thing that
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  happens is when you don't ask for a lot of help a lot of
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  times, especially if you're in a family where there's already one
• 8:01
  sibling or one child who is challenged or sick or struggling
• 8:08
  or whatever's going on with them, and your parents might not
• 8:11
  have a lot in the tank left over, like for you or for your
• 8:14
  siblings or anybody else, right? So whatever, there's different
• 8:17
  circumstances. It could be. You could have grown up in an
• 8:20
  alcoholic household, or a drug, you know, drug use, whatever.
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  There's 1000 ways where families, right, or parents or
• 8:28
  guardians, whoever you grew up with, you're in foster care,
• 8:31
  whatever. There just weren't people available to, like, walk
• 8:33
  you through some of the harder parts of things. And another
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  thing that also happens in a lot of families, and especially, I
• 8:41
  know, for like, a lot of blue collar kids and kids I grew up
• 8:44
  with, you know, you would often feel shame for needing help,
• 8:49
  yeah, for if you you felt like you couldn't ask for help, and
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  to ask for help made you look weak, made you sound weak. Now,
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  it's one thing if you're asking for help, sometimes for physical
• 8:59
  things, like, like, Hey, I gotta move. And there's like, I only
• 9:02
  gotta, you know, I only got my little car, and I need help,
• 9:05
  like, those kinds of things. It's not necessarily that,
• 9:08
  although I have known people who would just go rent a U haul and
• 9:11
  like, you know, rather just like, and just try to do it all
• 9:14
  themselves, rather than ask for help, because a lot of times,
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  you know that stigma of needing help, especially, especially
• 9:23
  emotionally and mentally. You know, it was okay to to ask
• 9:28
  people to help you, like, move a table, move a couch, like, do
• 9:30
  something like that, right? Because when things would be,
• 9:32
  quote, unquote, physically impossible, but to ask for help
• 9:36
  because you were struggling emotionally, to ask for help
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  because you were struggling, you know, mentally, a lot of times
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  it was seen as a weakness. And what I love about this little
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  passage, again, you know, in in meditations is it's just saying,
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  Don't be ashamed to need help like a soldier storming a wall.
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  You have a mission to accomplish, and if you've been
• 9:56
  wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up, so what? And I
• 9:59
  really. Relate this, like, if you've been wounded, like, yeah,
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  maybe some shit went down in your childhood. Maybe some stuff
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  happened to you as a young person, or as a young teenager,
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  or young, you know, human being, where you weren't given
• 10:12
  everything that you needed. And that could literally be like the
• 10:15
  clothes on your back, food in your in your body. It could have
• 10:18
  been the protection that you needed. It could have been the
• 10:21
  education that you needed, the support that you needed, you
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  know, there's a lot of ways that kids fell through cracks, you
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  know, and still, still to this day, I'm not just saying, like,
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  Oh, back then, that's how I can, you know, I always say, I tend
• 10:33
  to talk about my own experiences, because that's what
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  I tend to be an expert on. Like, that's what I tend to, like,
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  know about. And I don't assume that everybody has had the same
• 10:42
  experience as me, but I think a lot of us can relate, you know.
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  And I think that this is prevalent, not just for, you
• 10:49
  know, blue collar kids, but also you see it in different
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  populations, you know, where it can be hard for men to say, to
• 10:57
  admit, like, Hey, I'm struggling, or whatever, like,
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  I'm having a hard time emotionally, you know, for a lot
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  of for a lot of boys and men, you're not allowed, you're not
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  allowed to, like, cry or have those feelings in some people's
• 11:12
  homes coming up, you know. And I really was, like, thinking about
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  this, because this stigma of the stigma of like, asking for help
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  makes you weak, or you should be ashamed. And I started thinking
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  about how, like, when you're born, right? When you're like,
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  born into this little body, you cannot feed yourself, you cannot
• 11:34
  clothe yourself, you cannot, like, get around on your own.
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  You know, you, you, you are totally helpless. You cannot
• 11:43
  verbalize other than to cry, right? You cannot verbalize your
• 11:47
  wants, your needs, like your suffering, like, I've got a wet
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  diet. All you can do is, like, cry, but like, you're completely
• 11:53
  helpless. We didn't know how to do jack shit as a baby, except,
• 11:57
  like, stick our feet in our own mouths and like, you know, make
• 12:01
  faces and, you know, and poop in a diaper. Like, that's what we
• 12:05
  knew how to do, right? So from the time we were little kids, we
• 12:10
  needed help, and we could ask for help. Like, think about it,
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  we didn't know how to ride bikes, we didn't know how to tie
• 12:18
  our own shoes. We didn't know how to make, like, a sandwich.
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  Like, we didn't know how to do things. We didn't know how to
• 12:24
  sew or cook or do laundry or drive a car or, like, think
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  about the gazillion things that we didn't know how to do when we
• 12:32
  were little kids, when we were young, when we were babies, and
• 12:36
  how much help we needed, not only how much help we needed,
• 12:40
  how much help we probably got. I'm not saying they were
• 12:44
  perfect. I'm not saying our parents were perfect, but how
• 12:47
  much help we kind of did. We learned how to button a button.
• 12:50
  We learned how to zip a zip up. We learned how to like, you
• 12:53
  know, walk to school. We learned how to like, you know, read a
• 12:57
  book. Not everybody, but a lot of us, you know what I mean. So
• 13:00
  we got, like, a shit ton of help. So we were also, though,
• 13:04
  encouraged. We were often encouraged by teachers. Like, if
• 13:08
  you don't know something, raise your hand. Let me help you,
• 13:11
  right? That's a whole profession of like tudas. What do you think
• 13:15
  tutas Are? Tutors are designed to, like, help kids who are
• 13:18
  struggling with a particular subject, you know? And when you
• 13:21
  just still look around you people in my profession, what I
• 13:25
  call the helping professions, right? The service professions.
• 13:30
  We're here. I always say, if everybody figured everything out
• 13:34
  on their own, if everybody was doing fantastic, like, I
• 13:37
  wouldn't have a job, you know, I wouldn't be teaching yoga if
• 13:42
  everybody knew how to do it and do it fantastically and didn't
• 13:46
  need help. You know what I'm saying? I wouldn't be a
• 13:48
  spiritual mentor. I wouldn't be an integrative coach. I wouldn't
• 13:52
  be doing any of these things if nobody needed help. And so I
• 13:57
  want to, kind of like normalize this, for us to get out of this,
• 14:01
  this old limitation, like limiting mindset, that that it's
• 14:06
  weak somehow to ask for help. And I think we're kind of like,
• 14:10
  sold this load of bullshit that, like, just because we're a
• 14:13
  certain age, or just because we've gone through a certain
• 14:17
  thing, we should, quote, unquote, know this already. We
• 14:21
  should know how to do these things, and sometimes we just
• 14:27
  need a little bit of help. Because, again, we have to go
• 14:31
  back to, like, the brain, right? And how the brain functions. The
• 14:35
  brain is always going to try to access, like, what's familiar.
• 14:39
  It's going to want to try and, like, do things based on what
• 14:44
  it's already experienced. You know, it goes it time travels.
• 14:47
  Obviously, it likes to time travel into the past and and
• 14:50
  just assign meaning to, like, the Oh, I know how this cup is
• 14:54
  going to be, I know how this chair is going to be, I know how
• 14:56
  this trip is going to be. I know how this person is going to be.
• 15:00
  Because I've interacted with them before. So it's always like
• 15:03
  looking for the familiar. It's not really, I think it's so
• 15:07
  fascinating how much we rely on on the brain. And a lot of times
• 15:11
  I will say to people like, Okay, here's the deal. Your your best
• 15:16
  thinking, like your number one, numero uno, like best thinking
• 15:21
  with your current brain is what got you here, right into
• 15:26
  trouble, into this suffering, into this pattern, into this
• 15:30
  habit, into this way of being like your best thinking. So if
• 15:34
  you want to do something different or novel or new or
• 15:38
  transformative or make change like what got you here is not
• 15:43
  going to get you there, and we need to bring in, sometimes, new
• 15:48
  resources, new tools, new teachers, new help is right. Who
• 15:53
  can you know, not boss you around and like, wag their
• 15:57
  finger and tell you like at you and tell you like what to do,
• 16:01
  but can certainly be a guide along the way, you know, and
• 16:05
  say, Hey, and I used to hate, like hate asking for help for a
• 16:12
  couple of reasons. Number one, I had that old stigma of like to
• 16:16
  ask for help is weak. Number two, right? Part of the ego and
• 16:21
  part of like, the pride of like, I like to do things on my own.
• 16:24
  Look how independent I am, look how capable I am, right? That
• 16:29
  felt good to be able to do that. Also, there's another thing that
• 16:34
  kind of happens with a lot of that kind of,
• 16:38
  you know, the upbringings that I came from in like, trauma, and I
• 16:41
  know other people again, double Amen hands, if you can relate to
• 16:44
  what I'm about to say is that you don't ever want to feel like
• 16:48
  a burden to somebody else. You don't want to feel like you're a
• 16:52
  bother or that you're bothering somebody else, right? That's one
• 16:56
  of the things, and it's also like risking rejection, like
• 16:59
  you're going to ask for help and somebody's going to say no. And,
• 17:02
  man, what that would do to like a kid like me back in the day,
• 17:06
  like I would just feel ashamed, first of all, for having to ask
• 17:09
  for help, and then if I allowed myself to be vulnerable and ask
• 17:13
  for help, and like, gotta know, oh my god. Like, back then, that
• 17:17
  would have just felt like I just inside, like I just got a little
• 17:21
  squishy, like, my hat, just like, squeezed a little bit
• 17:24
  thinking about, like, younger me, like, trying to be so brave,
• 17:28
  and, like, put down her Dukes, you know, and like, Vicky with
• 17:30
  2k from large is being like, Okay, I'm gonna ask for help,
• 17:34
  and if somebody, like, you know, wasn't nice to me about it, or
• 17:38
  made me feel stupid for needing help, or I felt ashamed. Like,
• 17:41
  why can't you figure this out? Like, how do you not already
• 17:44
  know how to do this? Right? That's the thing again, the mass
• 17:48
  hole thing, right? There's like, people talk about people from
• 17:53
  Boston and people from Massachusetts, like, they'll
• 17:55
  say, we're kind, but we're not nice, meaning we're kind. We'll
• 18:00
  help you. We'll do stuff for you. We'll literally give you
• 18:03
  the shirt off our back, but we're going to bust your balls
• 18:05
  the whole time we're doing it. We're going to make fun of you
• 18:08
  and be sarcastic and, you know, cheap shot you, and do all that
• 18:11
  stuff. And I'm like, Oh my god. So like, a lot of times, your
• 18:15
  vulnerability, you know, I always say, when you we when we
• 18:18
  would have tender places as a kid, you would think that
• 18:22
  another human being would recognize that it's a tender
• 18:25
  place, so that they would tread lightly and it's no they would
• 18:27
  find your tender place, and they would find, like, noogie it, you
• 18:30
  know, like they would go for it. So there's kind of like this
• 18:33
  built in protective measure across the board, for a lot of
• 18:38
  people, where they're expected, they feel like they're expected
• 18:42
  to know so many things. And I remember, you know, I remember,
• 18:47
  like, back even, even as a my mother, like, I got, I got my
• 18:50
  sex talk pretty young. I think I was, like, six years old. And so
• 18:54
  I also learned all about menstruation and girls having
• 18:57
  their period, and, like, the whole thing, which I totally
• 18:59
  dreaded, like I totally dreaded. And, you know, my mother, I
• 19:03
  think, taught me about, like, I know she did. She taught me
• 19:05
  about, like, maxi pads and whatever, and said, like, there
• 19:08
  were, you know, other things, like tampons, whatever, Playtex,
• 19:11
  Kotex, all the different brands. But she died before I ever used
• 19:17
  a tampon. And I remember I did not want to ask my sister to
• 19:22
  show me how to do it. I wasn't going to ask my aunt. I was
• 19:26
  like, nope, right? Like, and so I had to figure it out on my
• 19:29
  own. And I'll never forget that whole experience. You know, it's
• 19:34
  like, you don't know what size to buy, like, you have to go to
• 19:36
  the store and, like, get them, and you get then you get to go
• 19:39
  and, like, figure it out, and the string and the whole thing.
• 19:41
  I'm sure somebody out there is laughing right now, because you
• 19:44
  too, you too, had to figure it out on your own. But then I
• 19:48
  helped other girlfriends who also had, who were also feral,
• 19:53
  who were also highly unsupervised, right? Who didn't
• 19:56
  want to wear maxi pads like you know, again, I'm not bagging on
• 19:59
  any. Anybody who that was your preference, or whatever. Just
• 20:02
  for me, it was not my preference. So I apologize for
• 20:05
  making it. But for me, it was just like, No. But I also had
• 20:09
  to, like, help them. And one of the things that I try to remind
• 20:15
  myself all the time as a reminder, obviously, for my tone
• 20:21
  of voice with other people like I never want people to feel
• 20:25
  ashamed for not knowing things. I want to reward curiosity and I
• 20:29
  want to reward courage and vulnerability when somebody like
• 20:33
  doesn't know how something works or doesn't understand something,
• 20:36
  and it's so easy to be flippant, right? I know I've done it. I
• 20:40
  know I've been quote, unquote guilty of this before in my
• 20:44
  past, and I really try to be mindful these days, because I
• 20:48
  had to reform my own thinking about like, it's okay that I
• 20:53
  don't know how to do everything. It's okay that I might need a
• 20:57
  like, you know, a reminder on how to like, you know, do
• 21:00
  something, you know, and in this world where everything is
• 21:04
  becoming increasingly, like, more technical, I've just
• 21:08
  accepted, I always say, the older I get, the more that I
• 21:11
  realize that, like, it just becomes painfully aware to me,
• 21:15
  like, just how much I don't know. So I am willing to take a
• 21:20
  book out, or to buy a book or to read an article or to Google
• 21:24
  something, but sometimes it just hits a point when you're like, I
• 21:27
  need another human being to sit down with me and to walk me
• 21:32
  through this, to talk me through this, to show me how they
• 21:36
  approach this thing. Preferably, I always say like, again with
• 21:39
  Marcus Aurelius, right in meditations. I'm like, when
• 21:42
  smarty pants people are saying smarty pants things, I am smarty
• 21:46
  pants enough to pay attention and to listen, right? So I try
• 21:50
  to, like, go to, you know, somebody who I feel like has
• 21:53
  been successful in doing this thing before me, or a friend who
• 21:58
  I think is pretty smart, and I'm like, maybe we can figure this
• 22:00
  out together. And that's the thing, like, where my work comes
• 22:04
  in. You know, it's like, I kind of like, through my own desire
• 22:09
  to end my own suffering, and as long as we're human, there's
• 22:12
  gonna be suffering, right? I mean, we cannot eradicate all
• 22:15
  suffering, however, we can gather some tools and some
• 22:19
  perspectives and some resources to help us as we're navigating
• 22:23
  these things, so we're not suffering as much. And I know
• 22:26
  for myself along the way. You know, I had some teachers, and I
• 22:29
  certainly had a shit ton of books that really, really,
• 22:33
  really helped me, but it was that human connection, the
• 22:36
  intimacy of another person being with me and talking with me and,
• 22:41
  you know, helping me to see again, to shift my mind, maybe
• 22:45
  from a perspective of fear to one of love, you know, to gather
• 22:49
  different tools. And it's why, you know, when people say to me,
• 22:52
  like, what do you do? I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, I do so many
• 22:55
  things. I've gathered a lot of tools from a lot of different
• 22:58
  traditions and a lot of different what do we even?
• 23:02
  Modalities, even, because I wanted I needed help physically,
• 23:07
  somatically, I needed help spiritually, right? I needed
• 23:10
  help. You know, in my subconscious, like reprogramming
• 23:14
  my subconscious, I needed help with practical neuroscience,
• 23:17
  right, patterns and habits and being able to like interrupt the
• 23:22
  way that that my brain would like was going down habit road
• 23:26
  all the time, as my teacher, Melissa tears, says, right. So I
• 23:30
  wanted to be able to help myself mentally, emotionally,
• 23:33
  physically and spiritually. And that's where, like all the
• 23:37
  different things that I, you know, trained in and studied and
• 23:41
  practiced, and now also teach and share with my clients, my
• 23:45
  one to one clients who, you know, join me in the quest. And
• 23:48
  then also my membership people, my beautiful nesties, as I call
• 23:53
  them, my group coaching program. The nest is passing these things
• 23:58
  down, and that's the beautiful thing is once you just admit,
• 24:02
  like, I don't know everything, and I do need help, and let go
• 24:06
  of the shame, and let go of the story, and let go of this idea
• 24:10
  that you now, just because you're an adult, you're supposed
• 24:13
  to know how to do everything. And this is the thing, like this
• 24:17
  bot, I always say, like as human beings, right? Like moving
• 24:21
  through the world in this body, with this brain, with our life
• 24:25
  experiences and stuff, we're operating heavy machinery, and
• 24:29
  like nobody gave us the manual. So why should we be surprised
• 24:35
  that we need help, and why should we feel bad about it, or
• 24:40
  talk down to ourselves or see ourselves as less than it's a
• 24:44
  really powerful thing to ask for help. And my hope for you, you
• 24:49
  know, I look at like I look but first of all, my hope for you is
• 24:52
  that you receive good help when you ask for it, that nobody like
• 24:56
  you know, makes you feel stupid because of it. Um. That you are
• 25:00
  met with kindness and openness, and that your curiosity and your
• 25:05
  desire to change, to transform, to grow, to learn, to better
• 25:10
  yourself, right? Is met with enthusiasm and encouragement,
• 25:15
  because otherwise, like you know, if anybody's trying to
• 25:18
  tear you down or try to make you feel stupid because you need
• 25:21
  help with something. Here. They can suck it in a bucket. You
• 25:24
  know what I'm saying? Like them, move on. Find somebody else,
• 25:27
  because they're not your people. Okay, so I also, you guys know,
• 25:32
  Marita and I do a lot of daily reading. I have like, a bunch of
• 25:35
  what you can call them daily devotionals. You can just call
• 25:38
  them daily books, read books that I read on the daily that
• 25:41
  are literally, you know, broken down. It'll say, like, June,
• 25:45
  whatever. June, 14, June, 16, June, whatever. May this,
• 25:48
  whatever. Okay, so some of you may know who Ryan Holiday is,
• 25:54
  and Ryan Holiday, I had just read to you about meditations
• 25:59
  Marcus Aurelius, right? This is like, he's known as one of like,
• 26:02
  the Stoics and philosophers of stoicism. And so I also read the
• 26:07
  Daily stoic. And this is 366
• 26:10
  meditations on wisdom, perseverance in the art of
• 26:13
  living. And Ryan Holiday, this is his book. He and Steven
• 26:19
  Hanselman wrote this. But what was awesome is when I was
• 26:22
  flipping through this and reading this, the reading for
• 26:26
  Marcus Aurelius, 7.7 which I shared with you earlier, came
• 26:30
  came up right? Don't be ashamed of needing help. And I also want
• 26:33
  to share with you something that Ryan said, because it's right in
• 26:37
  line with what what's been on my hat, and it made me smile the
• 26:40
  whole time I read it. He says, so he starts with the quote from
• 26:44
  Marcus Aurelius, right, the stoic quote. And then he says,
• 26:47
  no one ever said you were born with all the two tools you'd
• 26:50
  need to solve every problem you'd face in life. In fact, as
• 26:54
  a newborn, you were practically helpless. Yes, someone helped
• 26:58
  you then, and you came to understand that you could ask
• 27:01
  for help. It was how you knew you were loved. Isn't that so
• 27:05
  nice? And then he goes on to say, well, you are still loved.
• 27:09
  You can ask anyone for help. You don't have to face everything on
• 27:13
  your own. If you need help, comrade, just ask. And I love
• 27:19
  that, right? It's like, and this has been the hot beat, not from
• 27:23
  this. I mean, this was something I've been talking about long
• 27:26
  before I read this book. But nobody can do the work for you,
• 27:30
  right? Whatever the thing is that you need help with, whether
• 27:33
  it's like, you know, getting out of your own way, or like, you
• 27:37
  know, trying to, trying to make your way through. You know your
• 27:42
  lack of self worth, your lack of self love, the struggle that you
• 27:46
  have, you know, in your relationships within yourself,
• 27:49
  the spiritual struggles, the mental struggles, the emotional
• 27:52
  struggle. You know all this stuff you know you don't have to
• 27:56
  nobody can do that work for you, but you don't have to do it on
• 27:59
  your own. And having somebody that walks along beside you is a
• 28:03
  game changer. It's a game changer. It has been true in my
• 28:07
  life. It has been true in the lives of my clients. It's been
• 28:10
  true in the lives of people that I know, who I've coached, but
• 28:14
  also other people and friends who have that I know, who have
• 28:18
  also had their own coaches, their own mentors, their own
• 28:21
  teachers, their own help is, you know what I mean. So I guess I
• 28:25
  just kind of want to normalize this for you, because I think
• 28:29
  we've been sold a bill of goods, sometimes from our families,
• 28:32
  sometimes from teachers, right? Sometimes from coaches,
• 28:36
  sometimes from elders, sometimes from whoever your siblings,
• 28:39
  whatever your environment, that we're supposed to have it all
• 28:42
  figured out, and we're somehow stupid because we don't. And
• 28:45
  look, I'm the person in every lecture, in every class. I'm
• 28:50
  going to ask, like, a gazillion questions, and I'm going to ask
• 28:54
  until I understand, because I don't. I no longer feel bad
• 29:00
  about not knowing things or needing help. And it has been so
• 29:04
  freeing for me to be able to just raise my hand and be like,
• 29:08
  Yeah, I don't get it. Or, Hey, can you show me that again? Or
• 29:11
  that pot one, like, okay, I get Pat one, but like, Pat two, you
• 29:15
  lost me. Or, can you please help me to understand how to do this?
• 29:20
  And look, I'm just gonna say this because I see it, I just
• 29:25
  see it, I just see it. I just see it. I'm grabbing my face. If
• 29:30
  you're not watching this, you can probably hear it in my
• 29:32
  voice. Chat, GPT is not your new coach. Chat, GPT is not your new
• 29:36
  spiritual mentor. It will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be
• 29:42
  able to replace the hat and the intimacy of human connection.
• 29:47
  It's never going to be able to replace somebody being able to
• 29:50
  look you right in the eye as you tell your story, as you pour out
• 29:53
  your soul, and as you ask for help, and the other person says,
• 29:56
  I'm here. I've got you. I've got your back. John. That GTP can
• 30:00
  give you all kinds of information, but as my beautiful
• 30:05
  friend Mary Ann C says, information does not heal.
• 30:09
  Intimacy heals, and we need that hat to hat. We need that face to
• 30:14
  face. We need that human connection. And even books like
• 30:18
  books can be great, but let me tell you something. I can read
• 30:21
  something in a book, and there are people who learn
• 30:23
  fantastically from just reading, and I know like that's I learn
• 30:27
  in different ways, as well as, like, reading, but being able to
• 30:32
  do something alongside somebody, somebody who can really see us
• 30:36
  and acknowledge our brilliance, but is also not afraid to call
• 30:39
  us out on our bullshit, and to say, Hey, I'm seeing a pattern
• 30:42
  here, like, hey, what about this? You know, it's not going
• 30:45
  to be it's like, humans can't be replaced in that way. You know,
• 30:50
  chat GPT can't give you a hug. Chat GPT can't, like, hold your
• 30:54
  hand while you're crying. Do you know what I'm saying? Chat GPT
• 30:57
  can't see you. It's just so take that for what you will. I don't
• 31:04
  think that the quality and the caliber of that kind of
• 31:08
  information is ever going to replace human tenderness and
• 31:12
  human grace. And you know, having a human mentor or a coach
• 31:18
  who's gone before and knows kind of where these places are. Yeah,
• 31:22
  information will only get you so far, I guess, is what I'm trying
• 31:25
  to say. So if you're somebody who's been a little afraid to
• 31:29
  ask for help, I hope that this, in some way, is going to give
• 31:34
  you the courage, maybe a little motivation or inspiration, to
• 31:39
  say, You know what? I don't have to figure everything out on my
• 31:42
  own. I'm not expected to know how everything in the world
• 31:44
  works. You know, there's a reason why all those books, how
• 31:47
  things work like, exist, because we don't know, you know what I
• 31:50
  mean, like, You're not expected to know how to change a tie
• 31:53
  without having ever done one before. You're not expected to
• 31:56
  know how to like, like, you know, not a tie. If you're a
• 31:59
  young person who wants to wear, you know, or anybody who wants
• 32:02
  to wear a tie, like, if nobody taught you how to shave, if
• 32:05
  nobody taught you, like, you know, how to, you know, operate
• 32:09
  a lawn mower, or whatever it is, things that might seem really
• 32:12
  simple and basic to another person if you've never been
• 32:15
  exposed to it. How should you know how to do it? How should
• 32:18
  you know how to be in a relationship where there's
• 32:21
  intimacy and deep emotional, excuse me, conversations and
• 32:25
  connections, if you've never had it before, if it was never
• 32:28
  mirrored for you, if it was never if it was never played out
• 32:32
  in front of you, if you never saw a healthy marriage, how are
• 32:35
  you supposed to know how to do it? If your parents all they did
• 32:37
  was scream and yell at each other, how are you supposed to
• 32:40
  learn maybe it became painful enough, and you decided I'm
• 32:43
  never going to do that like I'm going to be a person who, like,
• 32:46
  talks about my feelings rather than screams, you know, or
• 32:49
  whatever, maybe. But we get so conditioned as young people. We
• 32:55
  are literally being hypnotized all the time as young people,
• 32:58
  you know. And it gets in there, it gets in there, and sometimes
• 33:01
  we need help and support breaking those patterns, and one
• 33:04
  of those patterns and habits is believing that it's not okay to
• 33:07
  ask for help. So let's destigmatize this. Let's unchain
• 33:12
  this, and know that you know you are loved and that you are
• 33:16
  smart, and there are people who want to help you, and you're not
• 33:19
  expected to know how to do everything you know, and I try
• 33:22
  to remind my clients of this all the time. A lot of things were
• 33:26
  not demonstrated to us and how to do things in a healthy way,
• 33:31
  or in a way that is in a way that is moving us in the
• 33:37
  direction of how we actually want to be and how we actually
• 33:41
  want to feel. You know, we just have, sometimes have an old,
• 33:45
  rusty set of tools. We need new ones, and that's okay. And there
• 33:51
  are people out there who want to help you, and there are people
• 33:53
  out there that you can hire to help you, to walk along beside
• 33:56
  you, and there's no shame with that too. You know, sometimes we
• 33:59
  think, Well, I have friends and I have family members. You know
• 34:02
  that? You know I should be able to ask them, Well, I love you.
• 34:05
  And sometimes our friends are like, knuckleheads, like,
• 34:08
  sometimes they are not the ones. A lot of times, your friends are
• 34:12
  just going to agree with you, and they're going to yes you,
• 34:15
  and they're going to be like, yeah, you have every right to be
• 34:18
  mad because he did this and she did the it's like you need
• 34:22
  people in your life who are going to stop you and say, Hey,
• 34:25
  but yeah, it sounds like you don't really like whoever taught
• 34:29
  you how to forgive. Do you know what I'm saying? Some of the who
• 34:34
  taught you how to really love, who taught you how to express
• 34:38
  yourself, who taught you how to help your nervous system to feel
• 34:46
  more safety in the world. This is what I'm saying. There's so
• 34:49
  much we don't know, and if we can just accept it, and if we
• 34:52
  can be willing to try something new, and to say to ourselves,
• 34:55
  there must be a better way, and then to be open and receptive,
• 34:59
  to ask your in. Teacher right to ask your inner teacher, and then
• 35:03
  maybe an outer teacher somewhere to go help guide you. It can be
• 35:08
  life changing. It can be completely transformative. And I
• 35:11
  know because I'm living proof. So that's all I wanted to say
• 35:13
  today. Little Love Letter from my hat to yours, because I know
• 35:18
  what it's like trying to move through the world trying to
• 35:20
  figure it all out on your own. It's exhausting. It's
• 35:24
  exhausting. And you know, if you can find somebody where you feel
• 35:28
  safe enough to kind of put down your deuce, to lower your dukes
• 35:33
  and to lower that shield and to be vulnerable, it can be
• 35:36
  absolutely life changing. So I hope again, hope this is helpful
• 35:41
  in some way, and you can always find out the ways to work with
• 35:45
  me on my website. Karen kenney.com, I'm never shy about
• 35:48
  it. That's where to find me. It's easy. You'll see things for
• 35:51
  the nest and the quest and yoga and even how to use my tip, ja,
• 35:55
  how to join my email list so that you find out shenanigans
• 35:59
  and what's going on. I have some cool events actually, that I'm
• 36:02
  going to be doing in the next few months. So if you want to
• 36:05
  find out what those are like, get on my newsletter. Just Karen
• 36:08
  kenney.com/sign,
• 36:09
  up. Alright, you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever
• 36:12
  you go, may you leave the animals and the people and the
• 36:17
  place in the environment, the planet in yourself better than
• 36:22
  how you first found it. Wherever you go, may you and your love
• 36:27
  and your presence and your energy and your willingness to
• 36:31
  ask for help be a blessing. Let me also say this because it just
• 36:37
  came to my head, and when spiritual team s, t, o, t, J,
• 36:40
  they hit me thing. Sometimes when we think we're being a
• 36:45
  burden to somebody else, right? If we don't ask for help, we are
• 36:51
  robbing the other person of an opportunity to also be your
• 36:56
  friend, to also be helpful. It feels really nice when you're
• 37:01
  able to help another person, and if we never ask for help, and if
• 37:05
  we insist on doing everything on our own, and if we don't allow
• 37:08
  other people to help us, we sometimes Rob other people of
• 37:12
  being able to also have that really satisfactory feeling of
• 37:16
  knowing that they did a kind thing or that they you know What
• 37:19
  I'm saying. So okay, just had to say that before I go. Okay, bye.
• 37:25
  Have a great rest of your night, your day, your week. Okay, much
• 37:28
  love you.