{Book Review} Nurturing the Soul of Your Family
Learning to Ask for Help
An Excerpt from
Nurturing the Soul of Your Family
We all need support — lots of it. We weren’t meant to do
everything for ourselves. Assess how you currently navigate challenges: Do you
immediately isolate, put on your armor, grab your sword, and head out into the
forest to slay the dragon alone? Or do you enlist the help and strategic
counsel of other knights and soothsayers who have already weathered similar
challenges? What is your typical response to feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and
isolated?
Next, consider all
the ways you could ask for the help you need. What do you do now that you could
do more often, or what new steps could you take? Regardless of the challenge —
whether it involves parenting, your career, or a relationship issue — consider expanding your concept of what it
looks and feels like to receive support.
Here are a few ideas
on how to ask for and receive help in our everyday lives:
• Let your boss know you’re overextended at
work and you’re concerned this will effect the quality of your work.
Specifically, you can ask for help prioritizing tasks, request additional staff
support, or tap coworkers for help or ideas on how to streamline processes or
tasks.
• Cultivate an existing friendship, or create
a support group that will meet your specific needs.
• Ask a neighbor, another mom or dad, or a
single friend to watch your child when you need help. Don’t feel like you have
to reciprocate; just practice receiving. If a friend or neighbor has offered
help in the past, don’t be shy about taking them up on it.
• Reach out to a career, leadership, or
business coach for support on making a career change or navigating a
challenging phase in your professional life.
• If you usually handle the cooking, ask your
partner to make a meal for the family — and then stay out of the kitchen. Let
go!
• If you have a big house chore to handle,
like cleaning out your garage or weeding your yard, create a “work crew” of
friends. Reward them with a party afterward, and/or offer to swap house tasks
the following weekend.
• For family or parenting issues, ask for
support and ideas from a parenting educator or coach. Often churches or local
nonprofits offer this for free. If you’re unsure, ask potential mentors to
lunch to get to know them first.
• If you want more emotional or practical
help from your partner, set up a date to talk about this and brainstorm ways
you could support each other to bring more flow and ease to your days
(sometimes you may simply need emotional support).
• Get your kids involved. Ask them to help
fold the laundry, vacuum a room, help with dinner prep, or water the plants.
Kids are never too young to share in household or family responsibilities.
• Practice saying yes! The next time someone
offers you something — to buy you coffee or lunch, to watch your cat, to help
you move, and so on — accept the gift, smile, and say thank you!
In our Personal
Renewal Groups for women, we designate one entire month for “Building a Support
Network.” Because so many of us find it hard to receive without feeling that we
have to immediately give in return, the homework challenge is to practice
receiving support by “allowing” others to help — picking up the kids, running
an errand, mailing a package at the post office, receiving a meal — and not
reciprocating. I believe because we’re so conditioned to do for others and
often put ourselves last, women always find this really difficult. Yet at the
same time, they share how deeply rewarding it is to help out and support others
just for the joy of it — with no expectation of receiving anything in return.
In everyday life, there’s nothing wrong with offering to return a favor
(“Thanks for watching Scott; I’ll be happy to watch Elijah next week”), and
most people do this often, but I challenge you to balance this with learning
the art of receiving without feeling that you owe the other person a
thing.
The more comfortable
we become modeling giving and receiving with ease, the more our children will
learn to do this, too. It’s like building up your support muscle — it takes
time and practice.
Maddy, a friend who
facilitates our self-renewal circles, once told me she found her four-year-old
daughter, Ella, creating a circle on the floor with all of her dolls and
animals propped up on pillows. Ella said proudly, “Look, Mama, they’re having a
Personal Renewal Group meeting to help each other!”
Life balance coach/speaker Renée Peterson
Trudeau is the author of the new book Nurturing the Soul of Your Family.
Thousands of women in ten countries are participating in Personal Renewal
Groups based on her first book, the award-winning The Mother’s Guide to
Self-Renewal. Visit her online at www.ReneeTrudeau.com
Excerpted from the new book Nurturing the Soul of Your
Family ©2013 Renée Peterson Trudeau.
Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com
Jenny, thanks so much for sharing the wisdom from Nurturing the Soul of Your Family with your readers. Families are really seeking fresh perspectives and tools right now. So many of us are ready to drop old habits and patterns that no longer work and explore new ways of being. It’s good to know we’re not alone and are all this journey together! P.S. Every week we’re sharing excerpts, giveaways and articles from the book at http://www.facebook.com/nurturingthesoul if you’d like to check that out.
ReplyDelete