DISTINCTION #1:

ASSIST VERSUS HELP

It is best to help ourselves and to assist, support and ultimately empower others.

I wanted to be a life coach because I love  empowering people. I wanted to assist them in finding their best answers, their internal compass and ultimately support them in discovering and knowing themselves more fully. Life coaching at its core presumes that each individual is whole and complete and does not need to be fixed. When a coaching session slips into helping, both myself and the client lose momentum. This subtle distinction and intention in life coaching and in  ultimately in life can be a revelation. Do you often feel you wish you could help? That you are helping your friends and family? That it is up to you to help? What is the message and true meaning of helping? How would the intention and therefore the results, change for you and others if you knew when to  assist rather than help? Does it really matter? Well, let us take a peak.

SO HELP ME…

There is nothing wrong with helping and it absolutely has its place. Helping is what happens in an emergency room. It happens in response to a situation, a crisis and problem where the person is unable to help themselves. It is an effective short-term response but in the long-term, rarely empowers and fails to encourage full responsibility and accountability on the part of the individual. In the short-term it can literally save a life, provide a boost and be the catalyst for change that a person needs. When you truly care for and believe in the person you are helping, you  intend for that person to feel and be stronger and feel and be more capable because of your helping. Chronic helping becomes a disempowering and ineffective solution when it enables a person to limit themselves, their options and their actions and when the individual is capable but no longer responsible. It is not a gift or generous, as this type of help often has more to do with you than the person you are helping. When the intention of helping is done out of the wish that someone had “helped” you when you needed it or is built around a need to be seen, valued, have control, keep the peace or feel better about your own life then it is detrimental to both parties and leads to dependency, missed opportunities and resentment. 

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” ~Chinese Proverb

CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

So, at this point you may be wondering, does this mean you should be indifferent when it comes to other's suffering? Does this mean you can never help again? No, what it means is that you understand the reasons you want to help and ensure that your service is focused on the best interest of the recipient. That you help when others are essentially incapable of doing for themselves and assist when they can make a choice. Assisting is collaborative; walking with them, not carrying or pulling or driving them. Assist others in discovering and recovering their power and belief in themselves, not helping them to deny the message in the problem and the potential it contains. Chronic helping will mask the opportunities hidden within the difficulty and continue to shield their magnificence from them. Assist them by doing with, not for them. Assisting is the gift of believing in and supporting others to help themselves.

Assist:  Empowering, Collaborative, Long-term

Help: Fixing, Rescuing,Emergencies, Short-Term

*As we continue this journey and exploration of distinctions, it is useful to remember that neither word is good or bad, nor will they always follow dictionary definitions. The purpose of learning and understanding  distinctions is to become more aware of the subtle differences behind words that may appear interchangeable. These subtleties in language will enrich your understanding of yourself, your beliefs and your intentions, allowing you to express, create and communicate more fully.