Rule number one when asking for help is don’t apologise for asking for help don’t do that because it puts you in a position of seeming as if you’ve done something wrong and actually when you ask for help you’re not doing anything wrong so you don’t need to apologise for it.

Number two don’t use ‘I wouldn’t ask you if’ or ‘I wouldn’t ask you unless’.  These phrases can minimise the extent to actually you would really value the help if you’ve got it so don’t take away the importance that this help would have for you by saying ‘I wouldn’t ask if’ because that just then kind of makes it seem like you never really wanted to ask for the help in the first place and it might make the person that you’re asking the help from less willing to actually help you.

Please do not say ‘Oh my god, you’re going to love helping me so much. This is going to be so much fun’ because actually if the other person’s helping you they’re helping you because they’re a nice person not because they think there’s something in it for them so don’t try and sell it to them in that way. Don’t get them involved by making it seem as if this is going to be good for them just be straight-up honest about it. Don’t tell them that you owe you one, you want them to help you, not the other way around. If they do, then it’s more like a trade rather than they’re coming from a place of caring helpfulness so you’re likely to end up motivating them in a different way and it might be that maybe they don’t want to do this thing where they owe you one so they’re going to be motivated then by something quite negative whereas if you ask for help and they give it to you it’s coming from a place of giving!

Don’t go overboard telling them how much their help will do for you because if you do that it doesn’t really show any benefits for them so what you might want to do instead is to say ‘When you do this it’s going to really help me see how responsible you are’ or ‘as a result of you helping me in this way i’m going to really appreciate you because I know how much time it has taken out of your day’ so when you kind of put the emphasis on the fact that they’re doing something for you and that you appreciate it rather than this is going to be so good for me thank you so much for helping me this is going to make me so much happier and so much more relaxed then actually that’s not going to be a good selling point for them either so don’t do that.

The thing that you should do when you ask for help is to express it in the same way that you would express pretty much anything else with that person when you communicate with them. Reaching out and asking for help should just be a normal everyday thing and provided you don’t overdo it and ask for help all of the time and if you can be the kind of person that then steps in and offers help before anybody’s even asked for it or performs random acts of kindness then in a way this kind of rebalances what you’re asking for with what you are putting out and what you’re doing and what you’re giving back even to that person or just the world in general so reaching out and asking for help is not something you should ever feel guilty or uncomfortable for doing.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org