In chapter 6 in my autobiographical self-help book, Find the Upside of the Down Times, I describe my experience of being audited by the IRS and my fears about not having enough money.  Anybody else ever had that fear, especially in these challenging economic times? Through that experience I learned a most important lesson, namely that,

Asking for help is an act of strength & confidence, not an act of weakness.

This is not an easy lesson to learn. Asking for help requires facing the need for help. Many of us would rather not, for many reasons, but mainly because even the thought of asking for help can be uncomfortable, much less the actual asking. Asking for help is like openly and publicly admitting a mistake or weakness, a flaw or inadequacy. For anyone who grew up being criticized

for not being good enough (most of us), any focus or attention on being anything less than enough can be painful. For instance, did you ever have a pretty good report card, but with one grade less than the others, and the first words out of a parent’s mouth was, “So, what wrong here?,” pointing to the lowest grade and ignoring the higher ones?

Asking for help has often been a challenge for me. I’m guessing for you, too. I would much rather plow through trying to figure out how to do something I don’t know anything about, particularly if it has to do with computers, than find someone who actually knows. But I’ve learned the hard way it is really a lot easier, and the results are often a lot better (duh!) whenever I invite others to share their expertise and knowledge to help me accomplish my goals and tasks.

There have been so very many goals in my past that remained unrealized mainly because of this difficulty I have had asking for help. I would start one project, hit a snag, and then go off and start another. This is a habit I am working hard to change. But it’s a habit, so it will require constantly making a change.   Knowing that asking for help is a good thing, believing that it actually is evidence of strength does makes it easier to do. But the habit of not asking is what happens first.  I have to remember to move through it quicker. (Take a look at  my post on Turning A Worry Into A Goal.)

Maybe this “asking for help” is a challenge for you, too? If so, try the following 5 step process also outlined at the end of chapter 6. You’ll get the idea by just reading through the 5 steps, but you will have a completely different experience when you invest the time and energy to complete each list. Trust me.

It is important to have the courage to admit to yourself that everyone needs help from time to time, including you. But instead of assuming this means something negative about yourself, consider the positive opposite possibility. Assume it could mean something positive. For instance, it does mean you are willing to learn and grow, and that can be a very good thing. The very fact that you are open to receiving help means that you have courage to make a change happen. And isn’t it true that you are grateful when people you care about ask for your help? What are the chances that they will be grateful when you ask for their help, as well?

Maybe you shouldn’t start with the biggest challenge in your life! We all need to build positive momentum by working first on the elementary-school lessons. So let’s start small. Here are 5 steps you can cut and paste in to a text document to fill out your own answers.  Don’t just think about it, write them down.  You will get so much more.

1. Make a list of some things on which you have been reluctant to ask for help.

2. Make a list of all the bad things it might mean about you if you asked someone (friend, family member, professional) for help.

3. Make a list of two or three good friends whom you would be happy to help with their problems if they asked you.

4. Make a list of two or three emotions you would feel if your friend(s), or people whom you respect, asked you for help. Describe why you would feel that way.

5. Make a list of the positive things these friends might feel if you asked them for help.

If this whole asking friends for help thing still feels too much, I’m working on a followup post (There Are People Who Want to Help – Really!) that you might find helpful.  Leave me a comment, or just subscribe to this blog and I’ll make sure you know when it’s posted.

“I am so happy to have Jerry Lopper as a contributor having enjoyed his insightful blog: PurposefulGrowth.com.  I was immediately touched by the following post because I also experienced having to sneak home from elementary school to avoid being beaten up by local bullies.  Jerry’s wisdom on increasing clarity about one’s life purpose makes any challenge a relevant opportunity for growth.  Please leave a comment and check out links to additional posts on this topic at the end.”

Use The Down Times To Find Your Life Purpose

By Jerry Lopper

When I was eight or nine years old I was bullied and tormented by a group of old neighborhood kids. Borrowing from Dr. Pennington’s Find the Upside of the Down Times, that decidedly down time in my life was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Each day as I walked home alone from school I was afraid these bullies would be waiting for me. I took to cutting through alleys and going out of my way to get home safely. I was intimidated and afraid, but for some reason it never occurred to me to either 1) stand up to them, or 2) tell my parents or teachers

Instead, I went it alone, stayed out of their way, and felt awful inside all the while.

How in the world can I view this frightening time in my young life as something good that happened to me? Of course, it wasn’t a positive experience as it occurred, adversities never are, but having lived through it I learned something very important to my life and happiness—my true life purpose.

All Our Life Experiences Offer Clues

As a pre-teen I wasn’t concerned with life purpose; that quest for meaning in my life wouldn’t begin for many years. But when it did begin, all my life experiences, both positive and negative, would be crucial to finding the true reason for my being—my life purpose.

Just as we learn from our mistakes, we can learn about the life purpose born within each of us by examining our behaviors and feelings during periods of adversity. During adversities we revert to automatic behavior. This behavior is ideally shaped by life purpose, but can also be shaped by cultural upbringing, which was the situation in my young life.

An Example: My Purpose in Life

Fast forwarding to my life purpose will clarify the role this particular adversity played in my life. After many, many years of self-reflection and inner-journey work toward finding my life purpose I’ve succeeded in reaching a clear understanding of who I am at my best—another way of looking at life purpose.

My life purpose is to be peaceful, unconditionally loving, courageous and unafraid of failure and rejection, continuously growing, and using my insights and other strengths in the service of others, while allowing my life to unfold as it will.

When I’m aligned with my life purpose—being peaceful, unconditionally loving, courageous, etc.—I’m filled with positive emotions, such as joy, happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Our emotions are a fail-safe indicator of alignment with life purpose. The more positive the emotion, the better aligned we are with true purpose. Conversely, the more negative the emotion, the more we’re misaligned.

Referring back to my life purpose, notice it includes “to be peaceful” and “courageous.” My reaction to being bullied was anything but courageous. In fact, I was cowardly, skulking around to avoid my tormentors and any ensuing conflict. My feelings at behaving in a cowardly, conflict-avoiding manner were highly negative feelings—fear, intimidation, isolation.

Emotions Indicate Purpose Alignment

Strong negative feelings are as good an indicator of life purpose as are strong positive feelings. They shout out “This is not who you are!” While being peaceful is a core component of my purpose, being courageous is also a core component. My lack of courage resulted in strongly negative feelings despite my peaceful approach.

While this one difficult experience itself didn’t provide clarity of my life purpose, it definitely contributed. All significant life experiences, both positive and negative, offer strong clues to true life purpose. Don’t overlook your down times as you work toward finding out who you truly are.

Finding Your Life Purpose Through Adversity

Here’s a summary of the process. Focus on some adversity in your life right now, or recall a past down time in your life. Recall the circumstances. Recall your actions. Now delve below your actions to recall the qualities or characteristics describing you at that time. Finally, recall how you felt about who you were being during this time. Were you proud? Disappointed? Ashamed?

Positive emotions indicate you were aligned during that time with your true life purpose. Negative emotions point out you were misaligned, so your purpose is the opposite of the qualities you were displaying.

Any one adversity won’t give you a complete picture of your life purpose, but it will contribute. Taken together, your life experiences resulting in strong emotions offer the clues you’re looking for in finding your purpose in life.

The down times can indeed be some of the best things that ever happened to you.

________

For more from Jerry on finding your life purpose, please check out each of the following:

A Novel Way to Discover Life Purpose

Life Purpose: Hidden by Beliefs?

How to Find Purpose and Meaning in Life with Numerology

Jerry’s Bio:

Jerry Lopper is a freelance writer, author, and personal growth coach. He is the Personal Development Topic Editor at Suite101.com has published over 600 articles and five books, and operates several websites devoted to personal and professional growth and development.

A former Technical Manager in the telecommunications industry, Jerry is an Associate Member of the International Positive Psychology Association and holds a BS degree in Engineering and an MBA, with coach training by MentorCoach.

Please sample Jerry’s personal growth resources at PurposefulGrowth.com.

“Welcome to a place to explore making a positive difference, both at work and at home.  We all have lessons to learn that could make us more effective, loving and successful.  I certainly do.  In these pages I’ll share what I’m discovering that cost me some pain and struggles but also  brought me unexpected blessings.  

I hope you will consider participating in this opportunity by subscribing  and share your journey as well.  Make comments.  Ask questions.  Let’s help each other build a network of support that improves both our lives and our world.  

Thanks for dropping by!”   - Dr Rob Pennington

Other ways we can connect:  Twitter    LinkedIn    Facebook      

]]> http://drrobpennington.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/welcome/feed/ 0 drrobpennington Dr Rob Pennington http://drrobpennington.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/my-guest-posts/ http://drrobpennington.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/my-guest-posts/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:18:40 +0000 Dr Rob Pennington http://drrobpennington.wordpress.com/?p=406 ]]> Here are a few of the guest posts I have been invited to provide for other blogs:

How I Feel Is Up To Me! on Gail Lynne Goodwin’s InspireMeToday.com.  In addition, take a look at my replies to comments below this 500 word post on “what I would want my grandchildren to know”. There are lots of insights you might also enjoy.

“A Reason To Be Happy” on The Psychology of Well Being. “You think you’ve had a rough life?….There is a lot we can learn from Dr. Rob Pennington.”

“You Don’t Have To Know How To Believe You Can” on Tia Sparkles’ Your Life Your Way

“Use Your Worry To Create A Goal!” on Steve Nash’s Self Help Collective

“Practice Feeling Good – For No Reason!” on David Leonhardt’s The Happy Guy

“7 Q&A: #1 What was your inspiration behind writing this book?” on Eva Rykr’s blog

“24 Q&A!! #1 Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.” on Inspired Kathy’s I’m A Reader Not A Writer

This is a short video clip of a segment of a series of character education programs I help develop with Dot Woodfin and Stephen Haslam.

I hope you are as inspired as I am by the courage he had to live the life of his dreams, “as if today was my last”. Sadly, today was Steve’s last day.

His commitment to his vision has changed the way billions interact with each other and the world. His contagious enthusiasm will be missed.

Please take this link to hear his 14 minute address.
http://t.co/kljkvAcy

In the book, Find The Upside of the Down Times, I write about a time when I had a $36,000 hospital bill with no insurance and I couldn’t imagine how I would ever be able to pay it. This occurred right after I had been shot in the chest, so I was convalescing at home, not able to work. I’m self-employed, so if I’m not working I don’t generate income.

All I could see was a future of going deeper in debt and never being able to get out. This was not the goal I wanted to achieve. But I couldn’t imagine how to fix it and so I couldn’t stop worrying. Does this all sound a little familiar? I bet we’ve all felt this way at some time. Perhaps you might even feel this way right now!

Some friends tried to reassure me by saying, “Don’t worry, everything will work out. Just think positively!” Yeah, right. What did they know?!? This was serious! What they are saying was definitely one of those, “It’s a lot easier said than done” things, and was absolutely the last thing I wanted to hear.

I eventually learned the positive thinking they were encouraging is only half the truth. Worry is a natural process of the mind. That’s true too. I needed to learn how to use my worrying about where I didn’t want to go, to help me get out of the worry and help get me to where I did want to go. In this case, it was to get all my hospital bills paid. That was my real goal. But just worrying about not paying my goals only made figuring out how to pay them harder. I just could not figure out how I was going to solve this very real problem.

Worry is like a signpost pointing in a direction you don’t want to go.

If you were driving down the road, for instance, and saw a sign that said, “Highway ends. Cliff 100 yards,” would you keep driving? Of course you wouldn’t. But with worry we tend to keep following the negative thought, even if it is about to take us over a cliff. The resulting negative behaviors sometimes even lead to a self-fulfilling negative prophecy.

I was worrying that my hospital bills would never be paid. That was a direction I did not want to go. But the thought caused me to sit around feeling depressed, which didn’t help me solve the problem! I had to learn to recognize the difference between what was real in my worry and what was fantasy. That was the trick to changing the worry, recognizing what was a negative fantasy – worry, and what was real – an opportunity. Then I could turn the negative fantasy into a more proactive ‘Positive Opposite Possibility.’ It’s called a Goal!

The opposite of a worry (where you don’t want to go)
Is called a goal (where you do want to go)!

Actually, a goal is also a fantasy, but it is a positive one. So I choose to tell myself the positive opposite of my worry. I stated the goal I wanted to believe (but just didn’t know how it would happen-yet!). I told myself, “I know this bill will be paid, I just don’t know how it will happen.” By holding this thought in mind a new possibility occurred to me, “Maybe I don’t actually have to pay this bill myself, it just has to be paid!” Isn’t that true? The hospital doesn’t care how it gets paid. I didn’t know how that would happen, but it helped me feel less stressed about the situation. It helped me start exploring possibilities I had never considered, possibilities that were impossible when I was just worrying. This led me to eventually cross paths with a person who actually had the answer to my problem. Amazing! As hard as it may be to believe, my whole bill to the hospital was paid without me paying it! (See Chapter 2, Find The Upside Of The Down Times).

Think about it this way: it was possible to pay the bill whether I believed it or not. I just didn’t know it. As long as I worried about not paying it, my thoughts made me feel terrible and led to behaviors that did not solve the problem. When I started to practice holding a positive possibility in my mind, even without knowing how to get there, my behaviors led me in a direction that solved the problem.

I learned that when you don’t know how to solve a problem, it is also true that you know a step you can take in the direction of solving the problem. That’s just being persistent. When you turn around from your worry you see a goal. Holding your mind on the goal moves you in the direction of achieving the goal, and telling others what you want to achieve allows them the opportunity to help you succeed.

From this experience I learned that the answers to our problems are out there somewhere. We can use our worries by “flipping” them to their positive opposite possibility, a goal. We can take steps to help find the answers we need, even if we don’t know everything about the “how”.

I know these ideas will need more support to develop them into a habit. You may download this free set of handouts and listen below to an audio of a 55 min live presentation: Turning Worries into Action Plans, right now. I’m leading a group through understanding and applying the materials in these handouts. But in listening you could apply these ideas to your own challenge or worry. What else would be more important for you to be doing right now than taking the time to transform the quality of the rest of your life?

My second wife threatened to divorce me.
It was one of the best things that ever happened to me
- but not for why you think!

In the 7th chapter of my book, Find the Upside of the Down Times, I talk about my relationship with my wife Clair who passed away a few years ago (that’s chapter 8!) Anyway, early in our relationship, Clair started to notice little things I did that made her uncomfortable. Well, they seemed like little things to me!

Here is one example. I would usually get up first in the morning to take a shower. I would turn on the water, push a button to get the water to flow up to the shower nozzle, let it run until it got hot, and hold my hand in the water until it was the right temperature. Then I would get in, take my shower, and turn the water off.

Clair would get up later to take a bath. (Can you see it coming?) She would lean into the tub, holding her hand under the spigot to test the temperature, turn on the water, and get splashed in the head from the shower. She would scream, “Rob!” And I would respond, “Well, Clair, don’t stick your head in there!” She would say, “You never do it my way. You don’t care about what I want,” and I would respond, “That has nothing to do with it. It’s just a shower!” This would go on, day after day.

There were lots of other little things. At least I thought they were little. I didn’t squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. I squeezed it in the middle. I put the toilet paper on backwards whenever I remembered to replace it at all. At least she said it was backwards. Of course, I also left the toilet seat up. I’m a guy!

There is more to this story in my book but below is a 23 minute video tape of a talk I gave recently where I talk about these types of challenges, both small and big, in this relationship. I explore how important it is to know what we require that is not negotiable or debatable in a relationship, because everything else is just a preference. And you don’t go to war over a preference!

Once the video starts, move your cursor off the video so you can see text that has been added. You can bring the cursor back over the video anytime to access the controls. I appreciate any comments or sharing if you like what you see and hear. Thanks again for your interest and support.

When I first began attending seminars and workshops for my own personal and professional growth, I would become so inspired to make a positive difference in my life. I just knew when I got home I would immediately put into practice all the powerful tools and techniques I was learning. At least that’s what I thought at the seminar

But then… about a month later… I would often find my self thinking, “What was that thing from that seminar I was going to do? It was so clear then, but now… I’m just not remembering,” and then I would just fall back into my old habits.

Has that ever happened to you? Am I the only one who gets excited from a book or a lecture or tape or DVD about the changes I’m going to make in my life… and then… I don’t? I just seem to find myself in the same old habits, but feeling more guilty and frustrated and disappointed in my “lack of will power”.

Maybe these “same old habits” are what’s part of the problem.

Our lives are so full of existing habits and so many things we need to get done. It doesn’t seem we have room for the positive changes we really want to make, no matter how important – even when our lives (or the quality of it at least) literally depends on it!

For instance, have you ever found yourself sitting in front of the television, clicking away at the remote and thinking, “I really should get up and do some exercise.” (I’ve literally spent years doing this.) Then you hear a little whiney voice in the back of your mind say, “Awww, do I have to? I’m so tired. Not just yet. I’m too comfortable. Maybe a little later….”, and then you go back to clicking the remote. But “a little later” never comes. You want to build that new habit. You know it would be good for you, but it never seems to happen. What’s up with that???

It is because a good intention is not enough to build a new habit.

For me, to turn a good intention into an actual new habit, I learned that I have to follow Six Steps To Build A Positive Habit©: Click on this link to download a free manual on the following six steps:

1. State a clear positive goal (and work on only one at a time),
2. Consider possible behaviors I could do achieve my goal,
3. Be specific about a single behavior I will to do to reach the goal,
4. Connect this new behavior in time to existing habits I already have,
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat (21 times) until the new behavior becomes a habit.
6. Give myself a reward (that is not the benefit of the habit).

Here is a very simple example. Many years ago, our administrative assistant kept forgetting to turn on the office answering machine (back when you still had to turn them on!). The goal (step 1) was to always have a person or a machine answer every call. One possibility (step 2) to achieve this goal was to have the answering machine on whenever she was not there to answer the phone. But even though she knew this and definitely intended to do it, she just couldn’t remember. She didn’t have the habit yet.

In fact, she had a habit of not turning on the machine when she left. So we had to get very specific. The habit of turning on the answering machine had to happen every time before she left the office to go for lunch or even to the restroom (step 3). Both steps 1 and 2 were clear, but that wasn’t enough. The needed behavior wasn’t happening. Remember, good intention is not good enough!

We had to think of a habit she already had, that she always remembered to do whenever she left the office. She could use that old habit to help her develop/remember the new habit of turning on the machine (step 4). We noticed that she always took her purse. It was a habit. She didn’t even have to think about it. Whenever she got up to leave – she took her purse.

The trick was to figure how she could connect her habit of taking the purse to this new habit of turning on the answering machine. She decided to put her purse right next to the answering machine! We even gave the place a name: the “Sacred Purse Space!” so that nothing else would ever be put there. With the old behavior (picking up her purse) right next to the new behavior (turning on the machine) she had reinforcement to actually do the new habit. After repeating the new behavior (step 5) everyday successfully for 3 weeks (step 6) we took her out to lunch (at an expensive place of her choosing!) to celebrate her success.

Blessings on your success.

Rob