Personal Wisdom

“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”
—Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Having the answers and wisdom for others does not always correlate to having wisdom for our own lives.

I’m a proponent of asking for help when we need it. It’s a sign of strength to be able to admit when we need help and to seek it from whatever source we find is best at the time. Therapists, friends, ministers, priests, sponsors, and family members may each hold that certain piece of wisdom that we need in any given moment to find our way.

But as much as I believe in asking for help, I also know that most of us have a lot of our own wisdom, we just choose not to follow it because something else takes precedence over it: urges, emotions, neediness, etc. We may seek short-term pleasure when we know that what we are about to do is not right for us, but we do it anyway.

It’s often so easy to tell a loved one exactly what it best for them to do, and often very difficult to follow that same logic in our own lives. But usually once we reach a certain point in our lives we have plenty of knowledge and wisdom.

Every experience including every painful event, as well those things which brought us happiness, have taught us something and we have gleaned at least a bit of wisdom. Of course, some lessons are much more difficult to get than others so we have to be taught over a few times, but we do eventually get most things.

If we could rely on our personal wisdom and trust ourselves as much as we want to give advice and have others trust us, we would find our lives flowing a lot more smoothly. Sometimes we may need to stop what we are doing and view what we are about to do as if we were watching a friend. Then we can follow the advice we would give that friend. Most of the time we know what is the right thing.

Use your wisdom for yourself as often as you share it with others.

Difficult Times

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”
—Winston Churchill

Times of difficulty may challenge our inner core. They may cause us to lose faith in God and everything else we believe in. When difficulties continue, when we can see no end in sight, it is very easy to fall into not only a pessimistic viewpoint of the world, but also we can find ourselves falling into depression.

Trying times can be dealt with even when it seems there is no solution. The first thing we can do is take things one at a time. We can take each moment and each day at a time and not put the whole world and all of our issues on our shoulders at once.

If we continue to seek something and we can’t quite grasp it, perhaps a job or relationship, we may need to really think about things and see if we are causing our own failures.

If, for instance, we have been seeking employment for an extended period of time, but we cannot seem to get hired, even when we are qualified and get interviews, there is something going on that is in our control. Is it something we are not being truthful about on our resume that is picked up on in the interview? Or maybe we push too hard and say what we think the interviewer wants us to say, whether it’s what we really believe?

If we continue to run into walls, in whatever we are attempting and failing at, we may need to seek advice from a trusted friend. We can keep spinning our wheels and insisting the problem lies outside of us, or we can look within and see if we are causing our own stumbling blocks in life.

Some difficulties are things that are not in our control. If the economy is bad there’s little we can do about the cost of necessities, but we can control our spending on things that we just do not need.

When faced with hard times, it is important to reach out for help from those we trust. We don’t have to face everything alone, and often others can see things that we just cannot see when we are in the midst of difficulty. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Whining about how bad things are is not asking for help.

When we seek help from someone it’s important to be completely honest and not withhold certain information. If we truly want help we can’t expect someone to be there if we cannot be honest.

Difficult times happen to everyone, it’s your choice how you deal with it.

Asking for Help

“The healthy, the strong individual, is the one who asks for help when he needs it; whether he has an abscess on his knee or in his soul.”
—Rona Barrett

Whenever we are dealing with something, learning a new thing, or simply just need support it is not only okay to ask for help, it’s what we ought to do.

Whether we are experiencing pain over something, need help lifting a heavy item, need advice on how to do something, or maybe just want a listening ear, it is a good thing to reach out to another. Others have gone through what we have, or perhaps just bouncing ideas off of them will help us make a decision or solve a dilemma.

Many of us want to be too strong. We think that we have to do it alone, that asking for help means we can’t handle things ourselves, but that’s just not true. None of us was equipped for every situation. Just as one is unable to lift a heavy object, another may be in need of help writing a letter. One may be strong in relationships, while the other could have been through breakup after breakup.

God gave us each other to help. All of us were given our own unique gifts and talents and we ought to use what we have been blessed with in support of those who were not given that particular gift. And we should never feel less than for seeking help, rather we ought to realize that it takes a certain amount of strength to admit we cannot do all things alone.

Asking for help shows strength, not weakness.