Fortune Cookie Friday: Help Is on the Way
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. You usually hear this saying when discussing addiction, but it could really apply to anything, physical health, mental health, or spiritual health. Today’s fortune tells us that the healthy and strong ask for help when they need it. This may seem counterintuitive. The weak and sick are the ones who usually need help, but they likely won’t ask for it. Sometimes our illness prevents us from recognizing just how sick we are.
When you get sick, your first inclination is to fix it yourself. If you feel a cold coming on, you take some over-the-counter medication and go to bed early. Many times that will take care of it, but there are times when you start that treatment and it doesn’t work. The cold gets worse and soon you develop bronchitis or pneumonia. Now you are really sick. Along the path to severe sickness, I bet there was someone that said, “You don’t look so good,” or “Are you feeling okay?” That was the time to call the doctor, but you decided that a couple more days of cough medicine would take care of what ails you. Now you are in bed, feeling too weak to even pick up the phone, yet alone get dressed and see a physician.
Colds and flus aren’t the only times we choose not to seek assistance. There are relationship problems that drive a wedge between loved ones, financial difficulties that grow out of control, or a bad habit that turns into addiction. These all start out small. With a little attention, they can resolve themselves, but not always. These problems then become too big for us to handle.
Sometimes we are afraid of change and that causes us to ignore the fact that we have a problem at all. Habits that you start innocently can lead into severe addiction if you don’t change. It could be that first drink at a party, a friendly poker game, or a puff on a cigarette. It is easy to fall down that slippery slope of addiction, but changing who we are, or what we do, is hard work.
Stress is another problem that requires us to change. We all have stress in our life—exams at school, projects at work, family issues at home. Again, these can start small and grow exponentially if we don’t act. We have to change what we are doing that causes us stress. You can do it, but you have to want to change. You have the strength to say, “This is not how my story will end.”
There is nothing wrong with trying to solve your own problems, but some are beyond your expertise. If you recognized that you can’t always fix things by yourself, you will be better off. Unfortunately, weak individuals don’t look to others for solutions. Their stubbornness or pride get in their way, and that is a very unhealthy attitude.
You don’t need to shoulder those difficult problems alone. If while you’re walking you start to stumble, do you not look for something to catch your fall? The world is full of many people, put here for a purpose. Help is out there, whether from a professional, or simply a friend, you only need to ask. Sometimes you just have to say, “I need help.” It takes courage to ask for help, but if we all work together, we can solve each other’s problems.
