Are you afraid to ask for help to get what you want?

In Western society, it is expected that children need help to get to the next level – emotionally, physically, intellectually. When a baby is born, they are completely helpless and depend on their primary caregivers for food, shelter and a safe environment conductive to a child’s well-being.

When children get a little older they are sent to kindergarten, where staff guide a child to develop elementary social skills and being in an environment teaming with other children helps establish rudimentary concepts of self and what interacting with other humans is like. With some guidance from parents and teachers a child will be able to develop many soft skills which they will use every day throughout the remainder of their life.

When parents want their child to increase their intellectual ability, the help of professional teachers is expected to speed along this learning process. Throughout the next twelve years a child is guided and tutored by experienced “helpers” and with some necessary input from parents fulfills all requirements to graduate from high school. For some children, getting help from others doesn’t stop there – many continue to get help from professionals and peers while attending a university, learning to drive; maybe even play a musical instrument.

And yet the idea of getting professional help to achieve what they want is a foreign concept. It’s completely acceptable to spend thousands of dollars for some professional help in achieving personal health goals, via doctors and health care industry as a whole. Yet few adults take advantage of professional financial advisers, hire investment professionals to manage whatever savings they have, or career coaches to increase their earning potential or get that ideal job they’ve been wanting since graduating from highschool.

One of the main drawbacks people cite for not hiring a professional specializing in the sphere they want to improve is the associated cost. But what’s the cost of not hiring a professional to teach and guide you to where you want to go? Is leaving hundreds of thousands of potential earnings over your working lifetime on the table a better tradeoff than a few thousand over the course of a year to align your career trajectory with your goals? Of course not!

For middle-class individuals, the cost seems unreasonably high to have a professional cleaner come twice a month to clean the house instead of spending 2-3 hours each Saturday cleaning up their residence. But that’s a short-sided way of looking at cost: what about those extra 8-12 hours a month, the most productive ones because they’re on a weekend and early in the morning. What could you accomplish if you’ve pursued something else instead of washing dishes and sweeping the floor? Would you be more productive the rest of the time if you were able to use that time to catch up on sleep instead? Would you be more relaxed and less stressed, leading to savings in your health-related expenses over decades?

There are many trained and qualified professionals to help you arrive at a point that you want: financial advisers, real estate management firms, doctors, personal trainers, car mechanics (did you ask one  for a recommendation before you bought your last car?), career coaches, dating coaches (your boyfriend sucks? time to get some help!), relationship counselors, professional organizers, marketers, advertisers, computer administrators, musicians, builders, driving schools (not just for teenagers – performance driving schools), interior designers…

Is your child not doing as well in school as you’d hoped? Well, there are both private and group tutors.

There is help available for those who are interested in getting to the next level – in whatever area you feel you need some improvement. The difference between those who get there and those who don’t is that the first group of people decided to ask for help from those qualified while the second group is going it solo.

And even those who will tell you they’re all self-made, will never tell you this: someone was always nearby helping them along the way. Every single person who acheived something remarkable had a mentor and a coach along the way. This is why professional athletes pay handsomely for having a personal coach. They’re achieving their goals.

If you’re not achieving your goals maybe it’s not you – maybe it’s because you don’t have that necessary help.