HOW TO HELP OTHERS WITHOUT BEING A DICKHEAD
22 JULY 2021 (14 MIN READ)
We all know a time where we saw someone down, experiencing a negative feeling that we have also experienced ourselves. We felt that visceral sensation in our gut that propelled us forward, like we were conceived to help others. However, do we really know what drives that need? Consciously, it seems as if it’s a necessity—that this person will cause themselves too much harm without our glorious help. But, unconsciously, it’s a whole different story. We too often serve from a place of ego, taking it as an opportunity to put someone else beneath us, and use that high to boost our false sense of confidence. Let me paint you a picture with two tough lessons I learnt the hard way.
At fourteen, I still had a heart of gold. The need for validation through sex, social status, and professional success hadn’t corrupted me yet, but my time was coming soon. There was a classmate of mine who was on the spectrum. He refused to talk to people, but sometimes he made an exception for me. I think I was just genuinely nice and did not see him as any different to myself. My profuse stutter may have created more empathy in me than my peers. While at a birthday party, everyone was on the dance floor grinding away. (Funny how parents just turn a blind eye to that shit. While their kids are rubbing genitals and talking about who had the best ass, they sip their cocktails and flirt with parents outside of their marriage. I don’t know which one’s worse). The name of my peer popped into my head and I was begging God he was getting some action. Unfortunately, I could not see him anywhere. So I wandered off to the coat check and noticed him sitting there all alone. I felt that energy in me compelling me to help. I asked him why he was not dancing and suggested he come have a good time with us. In that moment, I felt like such a good person, forgiving myself for the poor girls who had to feel my prepubescent erection. However, my smug attitude was promptly retorted with: “Fuck off you asshole! I just want to be alone!” The joy within me vanished and I shamefully walked back to the dance floor. At that point I called my parents. I just wanted to go home; the sadness and blue balls had gotten the best of me. From that day onward, I learned to not offer help unless it was asked for—or at least not impose it on others. Who the fuck was I to help someone? I’ve committed more sins than the devil at his worst.
A little later in life at twenty-one, with more lessons under my belt but with a much bigger ego, I was confronted with yet another lesson. Since I was seen as someone who had their shit together and attracted beautiful women (I did not actually have my shit together one bit), men would constantly ask me for advice. It’s crazy how getting women makes other men see you as strong and wise. That shit should come from how much peace you have within you. Most men who succeed romantically are just excellent at manipulation—speaking from experience—so don’t seek solace in those people. Anyway, a friend of mine asked about potentially having sex with an attractive young lady at a party. I told him to do whatever was best for him, but I also laid out exactly how the situation would go. Long story short, it would end in heartbreak and him being a massive asshole. It was a simple dick versus brain decision. I told him to go with brain. It’s not often brain wins, but I really believed my motivating speech did just the trick. He ended up agreeing with my words and thanking me for my sage advice. I left the party smug and proud of how fucking smart I am. However, the next day, I woke up to a phone call about how he did have sex with her. How could he not have listened to me? What the fuck is wrong with this guy? I literally told him how bad this would end. The story ended exactly how I predicted it, but that does not justify my actions or attitude by any means. Healing someone is not about offering a quick fix. It ultimately boils down to helping them decide what’s best for them at that moment. Even if that decision is wrong and they have to learn from it themselves. We often try to help people from a place of what we think would be best for us. But that has to be shifted to what we think is best for them.
The rest of this article will lay out the four keys to helping someone without being a complete dickhead.
DO THE INTERNAL WORK FIRST
Help yourself first before you help someone else. My mother ingrained that ideology in me from a young age, which I will always be grateful for. She used an excellent analogy that I hope will resonate with you. On a plane, it is recommended to put your oxygen mask on first, before anyone else—even your children. Although extreme, this example transfers to everyday life. Make sure to properly take care of yourself before helping others. If you practice the reverse of this and always help people before yourself, then you probably have low self-esteem and actually need that care more for yourself. Remember the teachers you had in school that were scumbags and how you hated to learn from them. Now, compare that person to a teacher you looked up to. The only difference between the two is the latter took care of themselves and the former did not. And you sensed that shit, even as a kid. It made you want to listen to them more. We can intuitively feel when someone is helping us for the wrong reasons, so always trust your gut when presented with their advice. Trust the wrong person to help you and they will take you down their dark road with them.
Helping others serves as a mirror for the work you have to do on yourself. Personally, when I see a friend of mine getting frustrated with romantic issues, such as getting anxious in separation or losing confidence in their mojo, I feel a need to jump in and help them. I used to think it came from a place of love, since I myself struggled with those things, but it actually came from a place of ego. Your ego wants you to constantly think you are better than someone else. So, when somebody presents the same issues you struggle with, your heart gets corrupted and becomes a vehicle to feel better about yourself through “lovingly” helping them. After jumping in—telling friends how exactly to play the situation—I thought I was the man. I felt better about my own skills and believed I was above them. At the end of the day, I was helping people love themselves because I couldn’t do it for myself. Thankfully, I changed the way I go about helping people. Now, if a friend asks for my dating advice, I ask them questions to try and guide them towards making the best decision for themselves at that moment. I try to feel out what they really want and help them pull that trigger, even if I disagree with the outcome. You cannot use people’s issues to catapult you to feel better about yourself. Issues are issues, and we’ve all got them. You aren’t better than anyone else. Whatever you feel most compelled to help people with is actually what you need to work on yourself. So pay attention to what wounds you end up tending to in others because it will give you an important piece of your own puzzle.
NO MAN HOLIER THAN THOU
Sit down and reminisce on your highest sin; that brutal mistake in your life that hands you the most guilt. That painful memory that punches you in the gut whenever it comes to mind. Now, think about why you made that mistake. What was the context behind your decision? How much pain were you in? Self-compassion is the key to self-love, so empathize with the amount of grief you had at that moment and forgive yourself for the action caused by it. Personally, I have made many awful mistakes in my life, which will make for good stories in my book, but still make it challenging for me to fully love myself. I’ve stolen women away from their committed partners for my own ego, tried to leave my family behind by overdosing on drugs, punched some guy in the face because he made fun of me, dated multiple women at the same time and told all of them I was in love, and worst of all, called myself a piece of shit for twenty-one years of my life. The list goes on, but the only way I was able to forgive those despicable acts was to level with my younger self. I needed to step into his shoes and feel the pain he was in. He didn’t know any better but to do whatever he could to numb his suicidal pain. I forgive myself for every mistake I’ve made and I don’t care what anyone else has to say. I owe that shit to myself or else every waking moment of my life would be bathed in self-loathing. Although this was a nice egoistic rant, what could this possibly have to do with helping others?
We can only help others from a place of love, not ego, if we have helped ourselves to the highest degree. And that self-help comes hand in hand with self-love, which is a reflection of how much compassion we have for ourselves and our mistakes. If we stop judging ourselves for our past mistakes, then we will stop judging others for their mistakes, leading us to serve without judgment or exaggerated self-importance. Whenever someone asks for my help after making an error, I immediately go to a time where I made a big mistake. This habit levels the playing field and forces me to see the person in front of me as an equal. To truly help someone, you must eradicate the ego, or else you are serving from a place of self. Sadly, the trend of egoistic advice has been dramatically increasing over time with the arrival of “woke” culture. Political correctness has immense benefits, such as raising awareness on racial biases and attempting to level the playing field of this rigged game we call life, but it also comes with a terrible caveat: serving from a place of ego. Consider this common scenario that many of us have found ourselves in:
You are at a meal with some acquaintances and you state a moderate stance on a political topic. You suddenly see the white woman in front of you, boiling in her skin, allowing her powerful emotions to lead her to berate you with scathing comments. She talks to you as if you are the scum of the earth and her opinions are the only ones to be had.
Too many people in this day and age possess this bad habit. It has good intentions, but it’s rooted in a deep sense of narcissism. ”Woke,” “cancel,” “call-out” culture—whatever you want to call it—entails seeing yourself as better than everyone else, leading you to believe you need to educate everyone in front of you to adopt your worldview. And no, extreme righties and Karens: you are not off the hook. You also possess the same behavioral pattern as those on the extreme left. Any time you think your beliefs are sanctified and everyone should possess them, you are part of the problem. If you want someone to change their opinion, the worst way to do it is to shove yours down their throat. Present your side of the story without any expectations—this will go a long way. I used to be the PC police back in the day, yelling at my friends whenever they said something conservative and storming off in a narcissistic manner, but I made absolutely no difference in their beliefs. However, once I started presenting my truth without anger or expectations—just simply stating my story—their beliefs started shifting. Real change is made through honesty and love, not anger and ego. And you can never force change upon someone else. It is imperative for each one of us to hold on to this sentiment or else our world will keep going down the dark path it’s on right now. I am not better than anyone else and neither are you. Practice tolerating people with different opinions than yours and try your best to see them as equals. We are all humans and all of us are simply trying to be loved. Remember this every time you find yourself wanting to “help” someone else: we cannot serve from a place of ego.
THE PROCESS OF HEALING
Simply put, there is no quick fix to healing. The process of healing is like growing a tree; it has to come from within and it will take a really fucking long time. Think about the times you have learned the biggest life lessons. Were they mere words from a peer or did they stem from your own experience? The seeds of growth must be planted from within. One must desire to grow and look deep enough within to get there. Since the healing process stems from inside you, nobody else can hand you the answers you need for yourself. The best healers guide their patients towards what they think is the best decision for them at that moment in time. I often laugh with my healer as to why he didn’t point out every single thing I was doing wrong. It seems counterintuitive to let your patients make mistakes, but it's the only way they can learn for themselves. There is no greater lesson in life than recovering from a mistake. Hence, when helping someone, you do not want to hand them the “correct” answers straight off the bat.
Healing is not the same as surgery. One cannot find a sensitive area, dissect it, and make it brand new and shiny. Rather, it’s more similar to physical therapy. The patient has to be willing to put in the work day in, day out to see any chance of recovery. And all the healer is doing to help is guiding them on their own independent path, motivating them to continue when the going gets tough. If you find yourself wanting to help someone, the best thing you can do is motivate them to come up with a solution for themselves, not what you think is the best solution for them. And if that does not work, you repeat the process until they figure it out. The feeling of making a decision for yourself and it working out is one of the greatest gifts life can give you, whereas using somebody else’s decision for you robs you of any glory.
The other day I was watching an episode of “Scrubs,” and they showcased how exactly to go about helping someone. The protagonist, a quirky, sensitive young doctor, was assisting a smoker who needed lung surgery. The surgery ended up being a success, but the patient kept wanting to smoke more cigarettes. They finally agreed that he would never smoke again. Then, as soon as the patient stepped outside the hospital, he lit up a cigarette and the young doctor was heartbroken. He ran to his superior nearly in tears. In response, his boss gave him the wisest words I have seen on television, “We can’t save people from themselves, newbie. We just treat ‘em.” If you find yourself in the position of regularly helping someone and they continue to make bad decisions for themselves, remember that it’s their journey—you don’t have to go along for the ride—it’s your choice whether you want to try to keep helping them or not.
SIT DOWN, SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND LISTEN
Most of the time when people ask for help, they are ultimately asking for somebody to listen to them without judgment. They wish for someone to act as a sounding board—using them as a mirror to find their own solutions. When someone asks for my help, I let them exhaust whatever it is they need to get off their chest. I tend to ask multiple times, “Is there anything else?” Almost every time I use this strategy, people tend to find the answers they were looking for in themselves. As humans, we are too quick to jump in with our own egoistic advice, like we know better about someone else’s life, rather than giving them the gift of finding their preferred solution themselves. If it does get to a point where someone cannot find an answer and is scrambling, ask for their consent in giving your advice. Again, the advice should never be what you would do in their shoes, it’s what you think would be best for them to do at that moment. Always remember that offering your own advice is the last resort, guiding someone to find the answer in themselves is the priority.
