The four questions I ask when someone asks me for help

When someone asks me for help, there are four questions I ask before answering.

They take seconds and they changed how I am with people.

Do I want to help?

This is the first one and the hardest, because it means admitting that sometimes I don't.

It doesn't mean I don't care about the person. It means that with this particular request, at this particular moment, there's no willingness on my side.

And knowing that straight away saves a great deal. Because helping without wanting to is the fastest route to resentment, and the resentment will show up anyway, later and worse.

Can I help?

Wanting and being able aren't the same thing.

I can want to enormously and have no way. No time, no competence, not the energy it would take, or be going through something myself.

Wanting it badly doesn't give me capacity. And accepting a request I can't fulfil isn't generosity, it's creating an expectation I'm going to fail.

How does the person want to be helped?

Almost nobody asks this and it's one of the most important.

Some people want to be heard. Some want solutions. Some want company without the subject being mentioned. Some just want to say it out loud to someone.

If I don't ask, I'll give what seems right to me, which is almost always what I'd want to receive myself. And I can spend a great deal giving the wrong thing.

So I ask. And often the answer surprises me.

Am I available for this?

This is where everything comes together.

I can want to help, I can have the capacity, I can know exactly what the person needs, and still not be available to give that particular thing at that particular time.

This is the question where the answer stops being theoretical.

And then?

Then there are three ways out, and all of them are legitimate.

Finding a way that works for both people. A request doesn't always have to be accepted exactly as it came. Sometimes I can give something else, in another way, at another time, and it works just as well. This is what I do most and it usually turns out better for both sides.

Saying no. And it isn't an incomplete sentence. No justification needed, no compensating, no offering an alternative to make the no acceptable. No is a complete answer.

Explaining, if I want to explain. If it's the timing, if it's the form, if it's anything else, I can say so. But by choice, not out of an obligation to justify myself.

What this changed

I follow through better on what I say yes to.

I'm no longer dragging things out, counting the days until they're over, with that irritation underneath that later comes out somewhere else.

And when I say yes, it's a real yes.