Asking for help is one of the most powerful things we can do in our lives.
Not only it helps us make progress, in whatever we want to make progress in, but it helps us connect and build relationships with other people (by itself a very powerful thing), whether this person can act as a mentor to us or simply as a source of encouragement.
It is, very likely, the best way to break through our sticking points, and get us over the hump towards what we want to achieve. And it is the one action, or “weapon” in our “arsenal”, that best guarantees we won’t throw in the towel once the inevitable obstacles arise on our way towards our goals, towards our dreams.
Furthermore, asking questions is one of the best ways to help you learn better and faster. I’m sure you can think of at least one instance where your engagement with the learning process/material, your increased participation, made your learning experience much easier, more enjoyable and more efficient.
Despite that, we are often hesitant, even afraid, to ask for help. We feel that it might make us look “bad”, as if we haven’t tried hard enough, or, maybe, we haven’t been focused enough, we haven’t paid the necessary attention; and God forbid that people might think of us lacking in intelligence. Ah, you may say, but it’s none of that, I simply don’t want to bother anyone.
Whatever the reason that holds us back (from asking what we want, to get the answers and help we need), we fail to realize that it usually has nothing to do with the other person and all to do with us, our insecurities and fears. Most often than not, people are very happy to help, and would receive our inquiries/requests with pleasure.
The amazing thing is, the more successful someone is, the more likely they are to go out of their way to help us, and do it happily too. Even though this may be contrary to common expectations, helping others be successful is one of the most important characteristics that made them successful in the first place.
It is a given, of course, that we ask politely and respectfully. It is also very important that we ask the right questions. This is a whole art by itself. Many books have been written on the power of asking questions, more specifically, on asking the right questions.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for, once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
Albert Einstein
My inspiration for writing this post was a video of Steve Jobs. In this short video, on the topic of failure, Steve Jobs makes some very potent observations. “Most people don’t get those experiences cause they never ask“, he says at the beginning of the video, and “I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help“. He, then, goes on to share a story of him calling Bill Hewlett (one of the founders of the Hewlett-Packard Company), when he was 12 years old, asking for parts to build a frequency counter. Bill Hewlett didn’t just give him the parts, he also gave the 12-year old Steve Jobs a summer job at Hewlett Packard, working on the assembly line, putting together, what else, frequency counters.
The video ends with Jobs saying, “Most people never pick up the phone and call, most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people who do things from the people that just dream about them“, also, “If you’re afraid of failing you won’t get very far“. I encourage you to watch this short, but very inspiring, powerful video.
I find this video to offer extreme value to anyone, especially those who dream of building their own successful business. You’ve got to act, you’ve got to ask, you’ve got to be willing to fail, learn from it, and keep going with determination and, why not, even a smile on your face.
These are the qualities that can get you all the way to building your own successful online business too.
As far as your training goes, the SFM program is definitely one of your best options (and the one I recommend). Not only you get access to exceptional training material, but to the mentors that you need on your side to help and support you, and be there for you when you want to ask for help, as it will inevitably be the case. And it does not just help you get answers, more importantly, it helps you get the right answers to the right questions.
“If we are starting with the wrong questions, if we don’t understand the cause, then even the right answers will always steer us wrong eventually. The truth, you see, is always revealed, eventually.”
Simon Sinek
You can get started FREELY with the 4-part video training series that has helped thousands of people build an online business from scratch, often around their day jobs. It’s totally free to register and receive the training, and it’s void of all the usual hype and false promises you see online.