Episode 195: Is it Help or Control?

INTRODUCTION

You’re listening to Live Free Creative, an intentional podcast with practical tips for living your life on purpose. I’m your host Miranda Anderson, and I believe in creativity, adventure, curiosity, and the magic of small moments. I hope that every time you listen, you feel empowered and free to live the life that you want.

Hello, welcome back to Live Free Creative podcast. This is episode number 195 Help Or Control.

I’m your host Miranda Anderson, and I’m always excited to have you tune in and listen. I really appreciate the attention in this “attention economy.”

I know that there are so many things that you could be spending your time listening to watching, participating in and the fact that you value this show enough to tune in and listen means a lot to me. I really appreciate your support.

I’m so excited to share a new episode with you this week. A few…I’m gonna say… months ago now–maybe two months ago–I heard this idea that sometimes help actually looks like control.

I couldn’t get it out of my head.

It was in passing in a conversation with a group that I’m part of on Marco Polo. The idea of help and control and the way that they interact and the way that they maybe sometimes are disguised as each other really struck me.

I’ve done a little bit of digging into some research about this, and I’ve done a lot of thinking about examples in my own life of where help has shown up more as control.

This is something that I want to be aware of and hopefully as you listen in today, you’ll be able to think if there have been examples in your own life of ways that you’ve tried to help and ended up actually maybe overstepped into a place of control rather than genuine help.

Just talking about it, thinking about it, giving language to it, and bringing it up, hopefully will give us some awareness so that we can be more intentional with our help, our offers for help, and the execution of our help, so that it actually is helpful, instead of unhelpful.

PEAKS OF THE WEEK

As we get started today, I thought I would share a fun segment called peaks of the week. And because in real time, this week is summer camp week here at Live Free Creative headquarters. I am, actually, probably right now, as you’re listening to this, if you’re listening the same week that it comes out, I am in New Castle, Virginia hosting a group of 30 women in a multi-day grown up summer camp where we’re connecting to ourselves and to nature and to community and learning and playing and floating the river and doing the zip line and creating crafts and doing fire circles and just really living up the summertime.

I thought I would share some peaks of the week that have to do with summer camp.

When you show up to grown up summer camp, you are greeted and given a big hug and your name is checked off the list, and then you’re invited to collect your welcome bag. It has meant so much to me to create welcome bags at all of my retreats that are sustainable, intentional, super high quality, and really useful.

And so these are some of the things that the summer camp attendees are going to be given in their welcome bag this week.

First, the bag itself. My first peak of the week is the Cotopaxi Del Dia Fanny pack. I love Cotopaxi. I actually was really interested when it first started.

One of my best friends from my life from we met when we were 12. We’ve been friends ever since. Her husband was on the initial team as the startup of Cotopaxi. And I remember when she was explaining this to me and saying, they’re hoping that Cotopaxi will one day compete with Patagonia and the North Face and all of these big, huge brands that I was like are how does a little startup turn into something that competes with some of the biggest outdoor brands ever?

And I think they’re there. Cotopaxi is such a cool company. It’s founded on the principles of doing good. They have a give back program benefiting the communities where products are created. They also use mostly sustainable recycled materials. And the Delea collection is one of these where the it’s like off cuts of fabric from other packages that they’re creating other backpacks and sleeping bags and stuff.

They take all of the little scraps of that and then piece them together into these multicolored fanny packs. They’re all unique because it’s random, like whatever they have on hand, they scrap it all together and you get these really cool scrappy, colorful, dynamic, really high quality fanny packs.

I love them. Last year I gave them away at camp as well. I just think they’re super fun. They’re really high quality. I love that they’re sustainably made and sourced and that they’re super durable for the long run. Each of the kids in my own family has one as well as Dave and myself. So when we go on family hikes, like longer day hikes, everyone can pack their own little pack and a water bottle will fit inside it along with some snacks.

You can actually clip it around your waist or sling it over your shoulder, like a shoulder bag. I’m a huge fan. The Cotopaxi Delea fanny pack is the bag for summer camp.

Of course, I put a cute summer camp embroidered label on it. So it feels like a memory of summer camp itself. And that is the bag.

Peak of the week number two is the Stanley water bottle that I have talked about before. It’s not the sippy cup one that has the big handle on the side, that looks like a big gold cup, that sells out in seconds and is all over the internet.

I don’t like that one. It spills. It feels a little bit like it’s a little delicate for my lifestyle. I like the rugged one. It’s called the ice flow. It has a top handle that I can hold onto from the top while the straw itself is flipped down to keep it closed. And I toss this thing in my bag.

I’ve had mine for just maybe about a year, maybe a year and a half. I know I’ve shared it on the podcast before. Itoss it in my bag with it closed and it doesn’t leak.

It can go upside down. It tumbles around sideways. I carry it down on hikes. I walk around the neighborhood with it. I love this water bottle so much that these are what I included in the summer camp welcome bag.

This year, last year we used Nalgenes, which I have been a fan of forever. Nalgene is an amazing sustainable company that goes back years and years. And I find the Stanley ice flow just a little bit more user friendly for just basic hikes and like using in regular life. And so everyone of the summer camp attendees is getting an ice flow Stanley water bottle.

I went with a yellow and blue because it’s the one that I have. And I think they’re really fun and we’re adorning them with a cool sticker. Again, they can use it at camp and then it’s a long-term solution for hydration over the rest of the summer. And for years to.

Because summer camp is hosted along a Creek and with a pond and we are doing river sports. We’re doing a float down the Creek in inner tubes. I’m so excited. I just have this vision of these 30 women on inner tubes, floating down the river with snacks and sunscreen and sunglasses and splashing each other and playing music along the way and just enjoying nature. I just am so excited about it.

And of course, because we’re going to be getting wet, getting in and out of the water. I wanted to provide everyone with a towel. A few months ago, I was at REI and I stumbled upon a line of towels that I hadn’t seen before that are quick, dry, very small folding sustainably made towels from a company called Nomadix.

Of course, as always, I loved when I looked on the Nomadix website to reach out about buying towels in bulk for the summer camp attendees, I noticed that their tagline for the company is: Own less, do more. It made me smile because you may be familiar with the tagline of my own company–and of course of my book–which is less stuff, more adventure. I feel like those two are synonymous: own less, do more, less stuff, more adventure.

I’m excited to have Nomadix towels that also double as yoga mats that also double as blankets that are super quick drying, which means that there are antimicrobials. There’s not enough time; they don’t say damp long enough for the bacteria to really start making all of this stinky, yucky, bad mold, so they’re great for camping and hiking and trips to the beach. I’m excited for them to be a part of summer camp this year.

Number four peak of the week is a local company owned by Clara Klein. The company is called the Wild Wander and Clara is coming as one of the camp counselors this year at summer camp.

She’s gonna do a presentation, a workshop about connecting to nature, and you’ve just gotta go take a second and click to the Wild Wander on Instagram. Clara is a wildlife illustrator. She’s incredibly talented and her products are thoughtful sustainably made locally here in Richmond with eco-friendly inks and letter press and everything.

She has these really beautiful field guides and there’s one for every single state. She actually did a Kickstarter a couple years ago where she illustrated the flora and fauna native to every single one of the 50 states. And they’re all available as letter press prints. She also has a whole collection of national parks.

I immediately fell in love with them when I saw them. We have a collection of them. So actually in Milo’s room, we have Virginia, Utah, and Texas, and then the Shanendoah national park. And these are all framed letter press art that we have up in Milo’s room. Beautiful illustrations. And for summer camp, we’re going to give everyone of the attendees a bandana.

Clara also has t-shirts in the shop. I’m excited to get my hands on a t-shirt this summer. I have her stickers. She has some cool stickers on my Stanley water bottle, actually. Right when I got it, I ordered a Canadian goose sticker that says, keep on keeping on.

It has the seventies vibe. It reminds me of my dad who used to have a, I don’t know if a bumper sticker or a t-shirt or something that said, keep on trucking, that gives me the same vibes.

So the Wild Wander is an incredible company. I’m happy to support and have Clara involved in camp this year. And also just wanted to share the company as a whole, as one of my peaks of the week.

And finally, I just wanted to share this stack that it cracks me up that a couple years ago, I got hooked on these ABC bars at Trader Joe’s.

I love Trader Joe’s. It’s my regular grocery shop. I go every single week and I actually am surprised about how many people still don’t use Trader Joe’s regularly. There’s a lot of people that I know even here in Richmond, where we have two local Trader Joe’s, that they use it as like a snack stop, but they don’t buy the regular groceries there.

It’s just unique. How interesting all of our habits are when I was preparing for one of my retreats a couple years ago, my good friend, Lena, who is a holistic chef and nutritionist, we were preparing an all plant-based vegan and gluten menu for the camp, including snacks. And one of the things that we grabbed at trader Joe’s are called ABC bars.

They are like a dark chocolate oat bar that has almond butter in the middle. So they’re vegan, gluten free plant based. So good. Peanut free. If you’re managing a peanut allergy. They taste like a little almond brownie bite. They’re small, maybe about 80 or a hundred calories.

They’ve become one of my favorite snacks. I love that almond flavor. Like in addition to the almond butter, I feel like the cocoa oat situation has a little bit of maybe almond extract in it. So it has a really great almondy flavor. It tastes like dessert, but it’s good for you. And it’s got some great nutritional value and they’re really snackable.

So I buy them for home for our snack drawer in my kitchen. And I also include them at all of my retreats as a snack. So when women come to summer camp and check in today, they’ll have their Cotopaxi fanny pack with their Nomadix towel and their Stanley water bottle and their Wild Wander bandana and their ABC almond bar snack.

And then of course we’ll include a notebook and a pen, some mineral and essential oil based sunscreen and insect repellant. And I think that’s the welcome bag.

It’s really fun to source and put together. A bag full of beautiful, intentional, sustainable, thoughtful, locally created, and domestically created products that make an impact for good in the lives of the people who receive them. And also those who make them. Those are my peaks of the week.

MAIN TOPIC: HELP OR CONTROL

Now it’s time to jump into this discussion introducing the idea of help or control. I want to start with a story. This goes back a couple years. My oldest was in third grade. This may have been the year that we moved to Richmond. Actually, he was in third grade and as part of the curriculum, he was assigned to do a partner science project for the science fair.

He and his good friend decided that they wanted to do an egg drop for their science project. If you’re unfamiliar with an egg drop science project. The basic idea is that you formulate an experiment to help protect a raw egg as it is dropped from a great height.

This can be done with some sort of parachute. You can control the landing with like pillows or stuffing. You can drop it from variable heights and record all of the information and then share it in this experiment.

Milo and his friend got their eggs and they got set up in the backyard. I, they actually did the experimental part at the other child’s house.

So they were at his friend’s house and they did all of the information and they took pictures and video and recorded all of their findings in a notebook. And after about a week of experimentation, they came to our house. The project was going to continue at our house with the actual design of the trifold poster and the communication of their findings to the judges and the other kids at the science fair.

I laugh thinking about this because I’m not sure that I would handle it any differently now than I did then. I tried really hard to just let them do their trifold poster. We provided all of the materials they needed. They had a trifold poster. They had a bunch of different pieces of construction paper and markers and glue and access to the computer to print out different sections of findings and graphs and whatever they wanted to do.

Of course, mind you they’re third graders. So they were like eight to nine years old at this point. Milo and his friend’s idea about the way that they wanted to display their information was very different than my idea as a mom and an adult and a fairly artistic creative person.

When Milo asked me to help, what I did was take over as creative director. The science fair project involved doing a little bit of layout, like on a piece of paper, I sketched out what the trifold could look like and these like eggs that could go on it and where the different information should go. And I just stepped very fully into this idea of helping my son and his friend with their science fair project.

Some kids would’ve taken really well to this sort of help. I’m saying help in quotation marks here, you can probably tell right off the bat with this story that my help leaned very heavily over the line into control. I wasn’t helping these boys with their science fair project. I had assumed creative control and creative direction for the project so that it would meet my own internal criteria of the type of standard and visual that I thought the poster and information should have.

A different set of children may think this is fantastic because my mom is just doing my project for me. I did the experiment and she’s just doing the poster part. My son is not that way.

He was not interested in my control. He was only interested in my help. Help like mom, could you get us a new glue stick, mom, would you hold this poster while I stick the construction paper egg that I just made onto it? He did not want me to control the design, the style, the creative direction, the way they portrayed the information.

Rather than reigning myself within the boundary of helping in the way that he was asking for help, I got a little bit offended, resentful, frustrated, because in my mind I was just trying to help the project be the best that it could be. In my mind, I was helping really kindly, really generously with not only what they were asking for, but also all of the things that they didn’t even know to ask for, because they didn’t know enough to see how good this could be if they just followed my directions.

When I heard the mention in this Marco Polo thread a couple months ago about control being disguised as help, this egg drop science fair project was the first thing that popped into my mind. And I think I realized that Milo didn’t like that type of help that I was offering.

I was helping more than he wanted me to help, but it wasn’t until two months ago when I heard this idea that I recognized that I was not helping at all.

I had assumed control and that controlling is antithetical to helping. As soon as I made this connection of help and control, I could see how many of my experiences on both sides of the coin, both being the helper and also being the recipient of “help” have been colored by the very blurry lines between help and control what those look like independently, where they actually belong, and how we can start to contain the help that we offer so that it remains helpful.

Can you think of a time in your own life, it could be recent, it could be years ago when you offered help to someone in any situation and you recognize now, as I’m talking about this idea that your help wasn’t actually helpful, it was controlling; it was control disguised or dressed up in the pretty dress of help. The pretty thought that you were being caring and loving and thoughtful. But what was actually happening was that you were trying to manipulate a situation for your benefit.

I have to say that’s an uncomfortable thing to do, to have the self-awareness to recognize when we have been so well intentioned and yet have stepped outside of helpfulness into a place where our help actually becomes selfs serving. I

want to share another more recent example of where help bordered on control. But because I was thinking about this idea at the time, I was able to keep myself in check and reign in my desire to overstep at least mostly. And I believe that my help remained helpful instead of crossing over into self-serving control.

After this story, I want to share some, at least attempt to share some more clear definitions about what it looks like to be helpful and what it looks like to be controlling and also on the flip side, to give you some research based advice on how to receive help, or ask for help in a way that actually creates some boundaries. So you’re protected against someone overstepping helping you. And so that the help that you receive can remain helpful.

WEDDING HELP

So the story is that one of my best friends’ oldest daughters got married last month. It was a beautiful ceremony reception immediately upon. Finding out that she was engaged and that the reception would be close at two and a half hours away at my friend’s house in her beautiful backyard, I offered to help.

It was an open ended offer. I love weddings. I’m a super crafty hands on person. I said, I can help with flowers. I can help with food. I can help with decorations. I can help with the design or logistics or MCing or whatever you need. My offer to help was initially very open ended.

I did say because I live a couple hours away, it’d be easier for me and logistically if, when you decide what you want me to help with, you hand it off so that I can manage it without a lot of back and forth. That in and of itself, although it’s logistically easy, there is definitely some shades of control in this “hand it to me completely.”

I also think that it’s logistical and can be helpful for someone to say, you just take that on and let me trust you to do it well. So that piece was a little maybe borderline.

I ended up going down the day before the wedding to see how I could help and actually just a week or two before my friend had mentioned a specific task, I could help with picking up the food from the caterer and then manage the logistics of serving it, getting it out onto the tables.

It was a beautiful family style. Like these super long tables. There were a hundred people in attendance. So I had my job, which was great.

In addition to that, I got to town and said, what is it that we need to do? What can we, what can I help with? And I actually had brought my oldest to be helpful as well. He ended up spending most of the time just hanging out with one of the other kids, which in and of itself was helpful because he was taking care of himself.

We got an overview of what the plan was, what the logistics were, where things needed to go. And when we were there to be the hands to execute the plan, there was a plan, there was a design, there was an idea. And our job was to be the hands, to be the muscle and to get it done.

Now I’m going to be candid. And this is slightly embarrassing. There had been mentioned early on in the planning of these floral arrangements put along the aisle. This is beautiful woodland wedding. Maybe I’ll put a picture or two in the show notes so you can see what I’m talking about.

This beautiful forest woodland wedding, and one of the initial Pinterest pictures that my friend had showed had these floral arrangements all along the aisle at the end of the benches, along the aisle. And then, and the bride and groom end up standing in front of this gorgeous floral arch, which she had already constructed.

I recognized when I got there that the plans for those little floral arrangements had been scrapped and here’s where my help flipped into control. But then also maybe blended the two. I said, can I make those? Can I just go get the flowers and make those and put them out? I think they’re so pretty. And they were part of the original design, but then I think because of timing and everything else, it was like I don’t know if we’re actually gonna get to those done in time.

I took it upon myself–this is just full control–to say, I am going to make those happen. And while I think it was helpful, it is also, it was interesting for me in the moment to recognize. They don’t really care about these arrangements. They’d moved past them, but I cared. I thought they were going to be so beautiful.

And so I went to the store and I got all of the flowers and I spent a couple hours creating these arrangements and they ended up being gorgeous and they were fairly self-serving. They were beautiful for the reception. No one would’ve noticed if they hadn’t been there. There was definitely this element of this is something that I think would be really beautiful for this wedding.

Maybe you’re getting an insight into my own neuroticism here. I think the result was really beautiful and lovely and added a lot. and it also would’ve been fine for me to not do that.

I think the key here, there’s a couple keys that I’m gonna get to, one is that if you decide you want to be helpful in a way that no one else actually cares about, you have to understand that you’re doing it for yourself. That the help that you’re offering isn’t necessarily helping anyone else, that you are satisfying your own desire to be creative, to put your own spin on things, to be involved in some way.

If you are offering help in a way that has not been asked for and isn’t necessarily hurting anyone–you can offer help in a way that is not asked for, and actually causes harm, I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about just help that might be semi indifferent or received in, as like a, okay, knock yourself out. But we don’t really, it’s not on our radar to do that. I think it’s really important to recognize when that’s happening, because if you expect to step in and provide help that has not been asked for, and then be showered with gratitude and praise for the thing that you’ve done, that no one actually wanted you to do. You’re going to be sorely disappointed.

And I think that this happens fairly often. I think that sometimes we say, I am gonna go help in this way and I see the way to help and I’m gonna go do it. And it’s our way to help. It’s something that we’ve recognized that no one else actually cares about.

And that might not actually even be helping very much, but we want to do it. And then we do it and maybe it takes time and energy and resources that we’re giving. And then we can be confused or resentful or disappointed or even angry when we’re not rewarded for our efforts with praise and gratitude.

I just wanna be clear that when we’re recognizing the difference between help and control, if we are doing something out of self-serving control that isn’t harmful, there is a way to do this that’s harmful, and that should be not only reigned in, but also stopped if we’re doing something that is not harmful, but also isn’t necessarily helpful.

It’s beneficial to recognize that is a self-serving type of control that we can then just enjoy ourselves. We can enjoy the process. It’s not hurting anyone, but also no one owes us any thanks or gratitude for something that we step out of the logistics or the plan to provide.

I see this a lot with helping with new babies, especially. Maybe a mom or a mother-in-law or a family member or a sister will come in town and carry out a bunch of duties that they feel really strongly about that are not actually helpful or harmful to the new mom and the family, but that then they feel bad when they’re not recognized for, or people don’t shower them with gratitude for the thing that they’ve chosen to do.

I think simply raising awareness around the clarity that we have between helpfulness and control, our need for control in certain situations that we might try to label as help that actually aren’t, is really a first step in being able to then make clear decisions about how we spend our time and energy and resources if you actually want to.

Here are some tips for being helpful.

CHECK YOUR EGO

The first step is to check your own ego and needs at the door. If you really want to be helpful, it’s important that you help in the way that the recipient needs or wants help. You can simply ask how can I help? In a lot of situations, when you are coming to help, and a person knows that you are there for that purpose, they’ve already accepted the idea that you will be there to help.

They’ll probably have an idea of what it is that you could be doing, setting things out a certain way, preparing something ahead of time, be prepared when you’re offering help to accept the tasks that are assigned to you. To be okay even if the way that you’ve been asked to do something isn’t the way that you would do it yourself.

When you are there to help and not to control, make sure that you’re providing the type of help in the way that has been asked of you.

This would be, for example, if you’re on a committee and there’s someone in a leadership position who is asking you to help as part of a committee, they probably have a role that you are assigned to fill or if you get a PTA email and it’s an activity upcoming, you can sign up to take tickets, you can sign up to clean up, you can sign up for, any of the different tasks, be prepared to go and offer the help that has been assigned to you rather than overstepping in and trying to maybe change or manipulate the project or the activity itself in a way that you see fit.

The same could go in a work environment in a family environment. If your spouse or partner asks you to help with something they’re working on. And they give you a specific task to accomplish rather than giving them all of the reasons that you could do it differently or better or that they should think about this or that, try to be helpful by doing what they have asked.

If you don’t want to do what they’ve asked, if you find yourself stepping over into: I want to control this whole thing. I want to take this over for this person. Maybe it’s not a great time for you to be helpful. Maybe you’re not the best helper in that situation.

I had to excuse myself from the third grade science fair presentation creation, because I was not able to be helpful without control.

So I think I took the other kids on a walk and Dave stepped in and handed glue sticks over, helped them cut out the egg shape that they had already drawn on the paper instead of redesigning it so it was more symmetric or looked more like an egg, like I was doing. I had to excuse myself because I was not able to be helpful in that environment.

I simply was controlling and I had to just move on from that. If I had stayed and imposed my will and my creative direction upon it, that is when my helping has moved into harmful. I’m not helping anymore. I’m actually harming the situation. I am taking away the ownership that someone else has over their project, their life, their task their assignment.

That’s where we really need to be careful about helping versus controlling. There may be situations when you want to help. And no specific task has been assigned in those situations, a great way to handle the offer to help.

And let’s just use the example of a mom or friend with a new baby that you want to help. Here is something you could say: I would love to help. Here are some ideas that I have. Would it be more helpful for me to, A, bring dinner tonight, B, come over and do a load of laundry or, C, take your toddler to the park so you can have a couple hours with the new baby.

Offering specific ways to help. And also giving some options is one way that you can keep the locus of control with the recipient, that they can choose what they need from the options that you especially, if someone’s having a hard time asking for help, but you can see that they could use it, giving them some options of how you can step in and they get to choose what are they most comfortable with or what actually feels the best to them.

Then you follow up and complete the help, the offer for help that you have extended.

Here is the other perspective, someone is offering to help you. And you’re finding that their help is not very helpful, that they’re stepping over the line from help into control.

Here are some things that you can do.

BE SPECIFIC

Number one, you. Provide a specific ask. Mom, could you help me by taking my kids to school today? Hey, spouse/partner, it would be really helpful if you cut up the tomato into small pieces for dinner tonight. Friend, I have an event coming up and it would be really helpful if you could pick up the cupcakes from the baker at this time and bring them to my house.

In addition to that, it can be helpful to specify what you don’t need, especially if you’re working with someone or having this conversation with someone who has a tendency to overstep into control. You can specify, thank you so much for picking up dinner for us tonight. I don’t need you to bring any additional toys or clothes for the kids. They’ve got plenty right now. Thank you.

I think because I work a lot with clients who are working on their decluttering and minimizing, and one of the barriers to that is generous family members and friends who bring things over uninvited all the time.

Being able to specify: Thank you so much. We actually don’t need this now. And trying to be clear about what kind of help you don’t need can also create some clarity between help and control.

CURB UNSOLICITED ADVICE

Sometimes it’s not physical help that people are offering that isn’t helpful, or that you are offering that isn’t helpful. Sometimes it’s emotional help or conversation, advice, or information that you want to be supportive, or that someone feels is supportive that actually is not.

Let’s start again with the help that you give. I am working on this myself, because I, as you can tell from this podcast, am an advice giver. I am an unsolicited advice giver. I love tips and tricks and inspiration and sharing things. And I’m reading all the time.

And I want to tell everyone about everything I’m reading, which makes me a fun podcast host, and sometimes probably makes me a not so fun conversationalist in my interpersonal relationships, especially with close friends and family, with whom I have the rapport to brain dump something that I’m working on.

When asking, Do you need advice right now? Are you looking for advice or help, or are you just needing support and validation?

Candidly, I am not great at this. I’m working on it. I had a hard conversation with my older sister a couple weeks ago.

She told me, and I’m grateful that she did. She told me sometimes it’s hard for me to talk to you about these things, because you’re really logical. And you explain to me how you’re thinking about it that makes sense. And I’m not there yet. I need to feel it all first and I don’t.

She said, I’m not looking for your advice. I want to be validated in my feelings when we’re having this type of conversation.

It was really a healthy moment of transparency for her to tell me, I don’t need you to tell me why you think it’s all gonna work out. I need to just feel bad for a little while. I need to feel bad sometimes too.

For some reason when I’m in interpersonal conversations, I automatically assume the role of logical, strategic, optimistic advice giver, and support giver. And I am actively working on my own comfort with the discomfort of other people being uncomfortable in a conversation with me.

If you feel similarly that you jump to fixing things, it could be helpful for you to consider the idea of asking, Are you looking for help and advice right now, or do you just need some support? I’m here to listen to you. I want to validate your feelings and let you know that you’re not alone and it’s okay to feel the way that you feel right now.

Being with someone in their feelings is helpful. Trying to advise them out of their feelings in an unsolicited way is control.

Now, when you are looking for help, this type of emotional interpersonal help, not dishes doing, but working through a problem or needing someone to support you in a particular conversation, be clear about who it is, who the recipient of your request for help or your solicitation for support is.

If you’re like me, there are probably some people that, right off, are not going to respond the way that you want them to in a given situation.

So don’t share things that feel tender with people that you can’t trust with that information or with those emotions. Find that support group and target your requests to certain individuals who have access to the resources and information and experience that can help you in your problem or in your emotion.

Also, it can help to frame your question. To think about and get clear before you dive in, what is it that I’m looking for? Do I need advice? Do I need information? Do I just need clarity? Do I need a sounding board? And you can just, as I am trying to work on saying, can I help you with advice? Or are you looking for validation and support?

You can start a conversation by acknowledging I am looking for advice and some ideas, or I do not need advice and ideas right now. I simply need a sounding board. I need a shoulder to cry on. I need validation in the experience that I want to share with you.

You may even want to ask the question: Are you capable right now? Are you emotionally able to handle me sharing some things that are difficult for me right now with you or not?

That way you can receive the help that you need from someone who is capable and able to give it at the time that you need it.

I’m curious as you’re listening, what is coming to mind? What experiences, conversations, strategic situations have you had in the last little bit, or even, years ago that are coming to mind as I talk about the difference between control and help? Can you see where you have been controlling, where you would like to be helpful? Do you recognize where others are offering help in a controlling way that you could create some boundaries and tell them what you would like and what you would also not appreciate?

I have found this topic to be extremely interesting as I’ve thought about it over the last couple months and reflected on how I’m showing up in my relationships, in my roles and responsibilities.

I want to be clear that when I am offering help, that I’m doing it to be helpful from a place of generosity and where the outcome is not to contribute to my own ego, my own sense of the way things should be my own sense of wellbeing, but then I’m able to offer help generously and selflessly in the way the recipient needs and wants.

And if I can’t recognize that, I think it’s okay to understand when we don’t have the capacity to be helpful without breaching the boundary into control. There are probably some relationships and roles where that is really tricky for us. And just acknowledging that and saying, I probably shouldn’t have that conversation or I probably shouldn’t step into help because I’m going to want to change everything.

That is a good bit of self-awareness. Here is to being more helpful and less controlling in our relationships, in our lives. And also to find the words and the ability to ask for help in a way that’s helpful rather than harmful when we’re the recipients ourselves.

CONCLUSION

I hope that you have found this discussion of help and control to be beneficial.

Sometimes just the introduction of a new idea into our mind can bring some new clarity to our own experiences and decisions.

Now I’m gonna follow my own advice and be clear about some ways that you can help this podcast. The first one is to leave a rating and review on iTunes. If you haven’t yet done this, it just takes a couple minutes.

You can leave a five star rating and a written review. Those reviews are invaluable for the growth and the reach of the show. I really appreciate every single one. They are all incredibly helpful.

Number two is to subscribe if you haven’t yet. Hit that button so that a new show shows up in your podcast app every single week, without missing an episode, you can do that.

Now that’s helpful for me and it’s also helpful for you. So you don’t miss any of the good ideas or unsolicited advice that I have to share with you.

Number three, you can share this podcast with a family member or a friend. You can do this on social media. Tag me at livefreemiranda, take a screenshot of the show or the episode that you’re listening to and share it on your stories.

You can also do this through text message or a phone conversation, or mention it when you’re out to lunch. If any of my episodes have made a positive impact on your life, I would love for you to share them with others who you care about.

Finally, it’d be super helpful if you signed up for the Live Free Creative newsletter. This goes out about twice a month, where I share some updates, ideas, inspiration links to recent episodes, blog posts, as well as all of the first look at courses and retreats that I have happening.

I’m trying to slowly peel back my white knuckle grip on Instagram and social media and lean a little bit more meaningfully into the newsletter where I can share a little bit more deeply and candidly, and also be a little more sure that those who are signed up will actually see it all.

That said, I would love to know how I can help you. If you can think of a topic that you would like me to record an episode on. One you’d like me to tackle or have a question that you’d like me to answer, feel free to send me an email at Miranda@LiveFreeCreative.Co, and I will do my best to help in the way that you’ve asked.

Okay. That’s it for today. Have a wonderful week and I will talk to you next time.

Bye.

PODCAST

Episode 195: Is it Help or Control?