3. Do you feel required to help?  It’s your job?  Is there a guilty, emotional tug that drives you to help?  A good question for yourself is – do I have a choice?  If you don’t feel like you have a choice, nine times out of ten you are really rescuing. 

 When you help someone from a healthy place, it’s from a place of fullness not lack.  Your support is not dependent on anything in return, just goodwill.  Your help has healthy boundaries and you are able to see the person also has choices.  The person can say no to your offered help and it’s ok.  You can say no and that’s ok too. 

 If you struggle with saying no, then I encourage you to go deeper.  This isn’t about helping someone else, but about validating how you see yourself.  Rescuing becomes how you identify yourself and your role in relationships.  Ultimately it becomes how you see your worth – to rescue others…Unfortunately this seemingly ‘good’ intention is actually harmful – do you really know what’s best for others?  Are you some all-knowing God here to re-direct your loved ones to the right path?  Maybe making mistakes is how they will learn the lessons they are here to transcend… 

 I like to think of babies learning to walk.  They must fall down, over and over.  They will never, ever learn to walk on their own if someone is always holding them up beneath their arms.  They need to find their own balance amid the falls…We never change.  Our falls look different at 32 and 48, but fall we do…And each of us, no matter what the event, must find our own separate peace…Can you allow another’s peace to look different from your own and be ok with that?

2. Regardless of whether the person asked for help or not, can the person do this for themselves?  Or is your ‘help’ keeping this person in a victim place or dependent on you? 

 Sure, sometimes we all need help.  There are real health crises and other life events that require support from those around us, but is your help actually undermining the success of another?  Does this other person need to do for themselves if only to know they can?  Sometimes our help does more harm then good.

1.  When we rescue, often we just step in without an invitation.  We withhold information from the person to ‘protect’ them or we ‘do’ things for the person to make it easier for them, after all, we’re just helping.  

 Actually, there is a fine line between helping and enabling.  I good way to identify the difference is to ask yourself if you are looking for a pay-off?  Are you looking to control something, someone or even the information?  Are you looking for love?  Are you trying to keep things the same?  Do you want to feel like the special friend/lover who really understands?  If you are looking for any emotional payoff – guess what?  You are in rescue mode.

 As you can see, when you are rescuing someone, it is actually about you and how you want to feel about yourself.  You may convince yourself it is about the other, but that’s a mirage to keep your self-image held up.  If you are rescuing then you can’t be the one messed up, right?

 Rescuing keeps you busy.   Obligations are created to distract and provide excuses as to why your own goals and dreams are delayed if not ultimately left unrealized.  It’s a choice.  It’s a choice to get into your own life and rescue yourself from the same behaviors that keep you in a less-than place.

Are you rescuing someone?  Here are three simple questions to ask yourself before you help…

 1.         Has this person asked you to do this for them? 

2.         Can this person do this for themselves?

3.         Do you want to do it?

 Rescuing others comes as the cost of our own journey.  How can you possibly get to your own best life when you are distracted by where those around you are on their own journeys?  Or is that the point?  Does rescuing others keep you from ‘failing’ at your own life?

 This week in my blog I will be examining these three questions and how they impact you connecting to your most abundant life…So take a few moments over the next day and really look at the relationships in your own life – are you rescuing someone?  Check back tomorrow to explore what may be driving your desire to rescue…