4.  Support.  How is your to-do’s list?  Pretty long?  Do you feel overwhelmed and unappreciated?  Can you just not get out of your own way sometimes?  Are you happy?  Do you have fun?  Most importantly, have you asked for help?

Each of us needs help, yet very few of us are good at asking for it.  You want to do it yourself.  You don’t want to bother or inconvenience others.  You worry about what people might think.  The result is you fall deeper into the quagmire.  You become exhausted and resentful, however you and you alone are responsible for getting to this place.

Stop with your denials, exclaims and pointing fingers at family, kids, duty, whatever…I’m not buying it.  In your mind you may have this idea that if you ask for help, it’s a sign of weakness or failure – wrong.  I see it as a sign of strength.  (Now I’m not talking about going overboard in this direction as well – balance.)  It’s the development of discernment – what is mine to fix and what is not. 

Support comes in many forms – spouses, friends, life coaching, support groups, books, therapists, online, religion…It is all around you, so there are no excuses of access.  You may choose to see them as for somebody else, but all that opinion really achieves is keeping you down.

Hence, back to you, do you need support?  And whom could you ask today to help?

Think of the last time you said, “I want ____.”  Maybe it happened today when you ordered a latte or when you went shopping last or maybe when you were thinking about what was missing in your life – a relationship, love, money, sex, faith, hope, a job…I invite you to try this little game out, rephrase your want into asking. 

 For example if you are thinking right now, “I want love,” try rephrasing it to “I ask for love to be present in my life today.”  Feel the difference in the undercurrent of energy holding ‘want’ or ‘ask’. 

 ‘Want’ implies a lack and the question of deserving.  Fore when you say I want this, you create distance between you and that which you seek.  ‘Want’ speaks to unmet desires, an allusive hole within to be filled with this and that but above all passive.  ‘Want’ silently implies you are not worthy while also limiting your options to just one possibility. 

However ‘ask’ suggests you are worthy of receiving.  ‘Ask’ also opens the door to more.  By asking for love to be present in your life, you open the definition of love to include friends, family, strangers…The energy of ‘want’ fixates your desires in one or two small possibility.  In contrast by ‘asking’ you expand the possibilities beyond your own immediate desire – possibly the love you asked to be present today comes to you through a new friendship, that leads to a party, that leads to laughter and more new connections which leads to an extra sparkle around you and suddenly there is a love interest standing next to you…all because you opened to more…  

 Reminder: “Ask and you shall receive,” was the phrase, not “Want and you shall receive”…