A client I work with asked the following:
"When do I say "no" to people who need my help in order to take the "me time" that is much needed. It's challenging because doing things for other people results in the satisfaction of helping someone else, but it's equally important to take care of myself. How do I find this balance?"
This is a great question, and a common concern for many people.
Most of the time people err on the side of helping, and that is seen as an admirable quality by society.
It is an admirable quality as long as the person isn't helping at the expense of their own basic needs.
The first step is to contemplate why to help people.
It is a beautiful gesture to offer someone a hand purely for the sake of helping out another person. This makes both people feel good.
However, there are some problematic reasons why people help others:
- They are addicted to helping - it is a compulsion.
- They use helping as a way to cultivate feeling good about themselves because they don't normally feel good about themselves.
- They have a hidden agenda to get something from helping this person.
- They live by their perceived obligations, out of habit.
- They do not know how to say no.
After contemplating why to help, the next step is to understand our natural limitations.
We need to prioritize our basic human needs.
In Living Stress Free® we use the Yantra:
This visual tool is meant to help a person increase awareness of their basic human needs.
For example, if someone is helping another person too much, losing their balance, they will be over-focusing on Contribution and Relationships.
By increasing awareness of the other areas being neglected it becomes easier to prioritize other needed activities.
This clarity makes setting limits easier because we are naturally replacing one activity for something else that is equally important.
Helping out too much and losing our balance is often due to not valuing other areas of life.
I have learned in order to live a healthy, happy life, I need to love and honor myself, valuing all areas of my life.
In the same way, we all will be more effective helping and empowering others if we start with ourselves.
Take Care,
Marilyn
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