032 | Breaking The Silence: When To Reach Out For Help

Hello good people and welcome back to Life is Sound. With me, your host, James Mayer. Now some of you know Life Is Sound is a movement and for those of you who have liked and subscribed, it really makes a big difference to this podcast because we are trying to spread this message loud and clear. And I wanted to share a message with you guys that I received this week. And it was a reminder of the reason why I'm doing this, the reason I'm making these episodes, to hopefully help people navigate through difficult times in their life and just give that little bit of guidance that might help those difficult times feel a bit lighter and they might just be able to get through them that little bit easier. So I received a message from somebody on Instagram saying they've been watching the podcast and the episodes have really been helping. And I wanted to share the last part of the message with you because it really touched me and gave me a great reminder of the reason why I started this. I did want to thank you for doing what you do. It's helped keep me on track and focused. It's even opened my eyes into how to view myself and my current situation. You're a good man. So to know this podcast is helping people through their own personal situations to me is absolutely amazing. So every like every time someone clicks subscribe, it really makes a difference and it really means a lot to me because we want to push these podcast episodes out to people who may just be in need. And today I wanted to talk about the importance of recognising when it's time to reach out for support. In challenging times. A lot of us can easily fall victim to keeping things to ourselves when we know we want to be talking to people. We've all had those times in life where life is getting a bit difficult and we really could do with speaking to somebody. And for some reason we choose to just keep it to ourselves when we know the wisest thing to do is reach out to somebody that we know will offer great guidance, mentorship, friendship and help us ease the load that we're currently carrying. And a lot of us want to keep it to ourselves because we don't want to burden other people with our problems. Now what if we could get comfortable at reaching out to people? What if we could get a little bit better at communicating in the right way? Is it okay if I just speak to you? Is it okay if I just share this with you? So the first thing we want to be doing is recognising signs of struggle within ourselves. Obvious ones may be things like fatigue, lack of concentration, lack of sleep, heightened anxiety, feeling down, feeling low. And we want to get good at spotting these things. And the way we can do that is by raising our self awareness, building a stronger relationship with ourselves. So when we spot these things changing within ourselves, we can quickly look at jumping in and doing something about it. A lot of us are really good at spotting changes in others, especially people that are close to us. We can see just a micro change, something's changed in that person's behaviour or language mood and we'll quickly say something hey, you all right? Because I've noticed or we might just try and guide that person out of that place. We can see that they've shifted into a lot of us fail when it comes to doing that with ourselves. We don't jump in, we know something has shifted, but we do nothing about it. We just let it be. And we want to get good at recognising these signs so when they happen, we can do something about it. The significance of self awareness and recognising it's time. We need help or it's time to reach out to somebody. To hopefully get some help is a really pivotal moment because a lot of us, like I said, keep these things to ourself and we fail to reach out and that thing becomes heavier, another thing might get added into our lives that becomes more difficult. Then this other thing comes and throws another curveball and all of a sudden you're in this spiral because you could have shared here when now you're here and things are way more difficult. So we want to get recognising things at this early stage and get comfortable with saying to our support networks, hey, can I just speak to you about this? And support networks can look like friends, family, professionals and I'd really like you to take the time and think about how strong those networks are in your life. And if you struggle with that, there's a free download in the description for a Wheel of Life. Now, the Wheel of Life is something that helps you look at your life from a perspective of different attributes and what might be out of balance. So it's a really great way to see how your relationships are currently looking. It's completely free, click the link, you can download it and it's a great tool to just sit back and observe what might need changing in your life. And if your networks and relationships is one of those, you can look at ways to build and foster new relationships with people, so you have a great network of people to share with when it comes time to share. When we look at daily life, these can be the struggles that impact a lot of people. And a lot of people don't want to share with other people because those people are also experiencing daily life. Now, life is difficult for a lot of us. Life can be very difficult at times and we do have the awareness that life can be difficult for other people. So therefore a lot of the time. We just don't want to burden those people with the things we're currently going through. The importance of sharing with people is simply because we can build on conversations, we can spark new ideas, new ways to navigate territories that you just might have missed while you're in the chaos. Recently, I've had a couple of people say, I was going to message you about this because I've been going through, but I didn't want to. And those people said to me, I see you as a strong person. I see you as someone who can navigate the waters when the waters are rough. And my reaction is, why didn't you just reach out? Because a lot of us have that nature. When someone's going through something, we find it easy to help that person. We can give our guidance. And you want to be going to the right people for the right guidance. This can really spark positive change. Now, when my friends said that to me, we then went into a conversation of, well, why didn't you reach out when I was going through this? This is what I did. Have you thought about this? I didn't know you were going through these things. And all of a sudden we get into this creative conversation which has like, a bit of excitement, even though we're talking about life stuff. That's not easy, but we're both figuring out ways for this person to deal with and make this situation lighter. Then you realise that also creates a deeper connection between the two of you. And we really do want to be reaching out to the people we first think of. Now, if my friend first thought of me as the person he was thinking to reach out to, great. Those are the people you want to reach out to, the people that come to the forefront of your mind when you think it's time to reach out, who should I reach out to? There's probably somebody that's going to pop up straight away. If you feel a resistance, get comfortable with thinking, right, what do I need to do? What's stopping me from reaching out to this person? And we can be sophisticated about how we do that. If you don't want to burden the person, ask them something as simple as, hey, I was wondering if we can talk. Have you got space to do that? I was wondering if we can talk. Is it a good time? Hey, I'd like to pick your brains on this, wondering if you can spare some time to do so. If someone is going through their own stuff and they're in chaos, most likely they will say, it's not a good time at the moment, but a lot of the time people will say, of course, what do you want to chat about? Because people love to feel valued. I spoke about this with Maureen on the last podcast. People love to feel valued. When you go to somebody and say, I was just wondering if I could speak to you about this because I've been struggling with X, Y and Z. That person subconsciously straight away feels valued. And when we feel valued, we feel like we have more to give. We want to get smarter and more confident in reaching out to people when we know it is time to do so. A lot of things can stand in the way of us not reaching out. A lot of the time our gut feeling says, I know I need to be speaking to somebody right now. And things like egos or pride can sometimes get in the way and stop us from doing so. But we want to get to a place where we're not ignoring the gut instinct again, creating a deeper relationship with yourself. So when you feel this, you know it's the thing to follow. You know that this thing here is serving you and guiding you for your highest good. Your gut feeling is there for a reason. Your gut is linked to your brain. Your gut is your second brain. So these feelings, these gut feelings are actually signals of what to do. The answers are there. You've got this gut instinct and these gut feelings and these answers feeling like they're coming from this place for a reason because the gut has been proven to be your second brain. We want to get really good at listening to the gut feelings, the instincts, and reaching out to those people that it's telling us that would be a good person to speak to right now. Then the brain can say, yeah, but what if? Yeah, but what if that and the gut will say, that's the right person. So we want to get comfortable at listening to the gut because the gut can do a great job at guiding us in times of crisis. So people might be listening to this, going, I don't have great friends, I'm not close with any of my family. Who do I speak to now? There is people out there. There's support networks, there's charities, there's therapists, there's coaches. Now, the message that I read at the start of this podcast was somebody who has chosen to reach out to me. That's a great first step. A, they acknowledge that they're struggling, they're going through life events that they're finding really difficult. And they also chose to convey to me that this podcast has really helped them and that they would love to have some coaching sessions with me to hopefully help them shift through what they're currently experiencing. And that's led to them actually making that happen. It's something we're going to do. It's something we're going to look into. So when you reach out to people, people will always be there to help on the side of personal growth when we break through those barriers that we create ourselves, I'm not going to reach out to that person because I'm not sure about reaching out to this person. Every time we do the thing that has the resistance, we create new behaviours. The more we practise that and the more we do it, the better we get at this. We create new patterns. The more patterns we practise, the better we get at things. It goes into the subconscious, it becomes part of us. So the next time we know, oh, I'm feeling a bit off, I feel like it's time to reach out to my friends or my family or your professional person who can help you, you'll do it like that because you've been practising this thing. It's now become second nature. This is how you develop and grow as a person. Personal growth just comes from doing the things you might just not want to do, the things that you know you have the resistance with, the things that you feel yourself talking yourself out of. The more we get comfortable doing those things, the next time it comes round, when the situation requires us to do so, we're just great at it. We really want to be recognising that reaching out to people is an act of self care. It is a really wise thing to do. It is an act of self care, self love, when you recognise too many of us during these times, are keeping stuff to ourself and that is creating a more lonely individualistic society where we're starting to feel like there is no help outside of the four walls that we find ourselves in. Community and networks, friendship, family support, these are the things we fundamentally need as human beings. These are some of the core things we require in life. We are social creatures. We want to be tapping in to our friends, to our loved ones when we are going through it, especially men. Men. We can be the best at keeping things to ourselves because we don't want to impact those around us. We want to be valuing ourselves to the point that we know our friends have our backs, we know our family cares about us. And if you're listening to this thinking, nobody cares about me, I guarantee there's somebody out there, if they hear your story, they will want to help and they will care. I can guarantee that. So I'd love you to reflect on your own situation and if you need to take action, I'd love you to think about how you're going to do that. I'd also love you to think about if there's anyone in your life that you know, they may struggle to reach out to you when they're going through it. And if you have witnessed that that person is struggling, maybe just drop that message and ask how they are, because you never know, it could change that whole person's life and direction. So these are the brief episodes every other week where we're just offering a bit of guidance for people to help them through difficult times. If you can drop a, like, hit that subscribe button. If you want to sign up to the weekly life is sound letter. We'd be dropping gems there every week. I want say a big thank you for listening and watching. Remember, no matter what you're going through, life is good. Life is sound. We'll see you on the next one. Stay blessed.