The Challenges of Just Wanting to Help Others

When I first felt the change that a real, supportive, open and vulnerable community made in my life, I felt an overwhelming urge to spread that change to more people. I had always felt in me that I loved helping people, but never felt any calling as to how - now I knew something real and effective that I could do.

The next decade became me finding all kinds of ways to spread this community (in this case the learning circus arts community). From learning to coach it, to becoming a master trainer to teach other coaches, to opening a gym, learning about how the body works and heals, learning about the digestive tract and the hundreds of ways it can be supported and things in the body it can make better if it's healthy. But I always hit new hurdles.

If you've found that spark, that passion for helping people, those hurdles can be incredibly demoralizing. This post isn't intended to fix those problems (spoiler, no good work has a silver bullet), but to at least start a conversation about it. What can we do, those of us that want to help others, to make it easier to do so? Here's what I've hit, and the next steps I'm hoping to take to work to improve upon them. The key it seems to all of them, is to work together, share knowledge, and grow - I hope you join me :)

The Best Help is 1-1

It seemed every time I tried to expand a way to help people to multiple people, I would almost always see diminishing returns. Each person is so unique that the 1-1 time I had with someone was always so much more helpful for them. The issue here is of course, there's only one of each of us - how do we grow the effect of what we do? Several ideas I've played with:

Creating more helpers

• Finding a coaching system that I felt really helped focus on the person and helping them. and teaching it to others was at least a way to start spreading that knowledge through more folks that could also offer personalized support and guidance. Also if we work to make our community a place where sharing, guiding, and helping is the norm then it just happens more which is a beautiful thing to witness.

More encompassing writing

• Having a blog has always given me pause because of this - I see so many blogs and other written help that offer guidance, but there's no way to know if the person that sees that guidance is ready for whatever that help may be. So often, it is misunderstood and misused. The better help I have seen out there seems to encourage people to self-guide to what their needs are at the time, and coach through various processes to allow for variation between people. I am hoping through having a "living blog" (no idea if this term exists or not but I'm using it now haha!) I can update and cross link to other blogs of mine as well as outside helpful content to help people find their paths to help.

• This always seems to then bring up, how do you get this information to those who need it? Besides relying on that community and word of mouth, or notable marketing campaigns, I don't know what solutions are best or even are out there. But I'm working on figuring it out.

When They Actually Need Help That You Can't Offer

If your area of expertise is, say, guiding someone out of their comfort zone in a new fitness area, but they have a health problem preventing them starting to work on fitness... or if you wan to help them with their health and to feel better through dietary guidance, but they don't live in a sitation where they have control over the food around them... it's so frustrating for you and them.

None of us can be experts in everything, and the most dangerous thing I've seen is people who help - and are very good at the way they help - but sell it as the answer to more problems than is actually can solve. I have too many friends, for example, that have had digestive problems or injuries persist or even get worse because a practitioner was unwilling to say they didn't know the right answer.

I think that's the closest I've found to a way to account for areas outside of my expertise - first and foremost always be willing to say you don't know. It's so important for so many reasons, but we have to get over our excitement of what we are good at, and likely our related egos, to remember the whole goal is to give real transparent guidance to others.

Now given that - I hated the feeling of saying I don't know. So something that works for me - when I can I do research, ask people, and even go visit all kinds of practitioners of all kinds of things. This way I can at the very least help people start to look for continued help. Even just for myself - when I've had an injury, or when I had notable digestive issues, I tried to talk with and work with as many experts of all kinds that I could. This way (along with deliberately working to remember the high level of what I learned), I was able to give people high level information, along with guidance on who helped in different ways and how they helped.

You Can't Help Someone Who Doesn't Want it

This is the hardest... and goes right in line with people who don't believe it wil help, or see it as inapplicable to them. This is one of those where I have found community (with a strong side of low-committment/comfort-zone-friendly options) is the best remedy. If someone struggles with believing in themselves for example, and they are unwilling to see that they can do things, being surrounded by others who are unsure, in a safe and friendly environment - designed for those just dipping in a toe - can be the push they need. A good community will hopefully have bits and pieces of the goals we all want (physical health and feeling good, mental and emotional health and ability to manage the emotions we don't want, using perspective to try and stay out of dark places, being kind and open to others and differences, all of that) and through just existing amongst it people will start to want those things. Not only that, but they'll see and hear about others getting help and hopefully become more open to it.

Sometimes People Need to Experience "The Bad Thing"

I am the kind of person that asks how you're doing, and if something is wrong asks immediately what I can do to help. And I mean it. Not only has this led to notable burnout on my part - I now know to work hard to control my unhealthy inner people-pleaser and maintain good boundaries - but it isn't great for the people you're helping either. You never know all the details of where someone is psychologically, and what they really need for true long-term mental health. Sometimes a rough experience will teach them something they may not have learned otherwise, that will change their ability to control their life for the better. A great podcast I listen to really cemented that idea in my head.

I'm not saying I now send people head first into the dark - but I think more carefully about guidance I give them. I try not to give what I think the answers are, but encourage them to look at the bigger picture, search for what they really want, how they really want to handle a situation. Sometimes just the support of someone there to listen as they go through something is the best help you can offer.

So if you're still here, I'm hoping that means you're as committed to working through these issues as I am. What have you done in the face of these? Where do you see good examples of people overcoming these obstacles? Even better, how do you see examples of solutions that are being distributed to help more people? Let's talk! I know I want to keep growing in this, so the first step is sharing with each other :)