Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

On the subject of help

When you attempt to help someone or some organization, you are doing something quite adventurous!

Your intentions may be honorable and your actions may represent a sacrifice of time and money but the reactions you get from those you wish to help can be quite discouraging.

This should not deter you from trying to help, but it might give you pause if you realized how many barriers exist to effectively helping others. Some of these barriers can be circumvented by a little study of the situation. Other barriers are as solid as if set in stone and you will break your spirit trying to help people who are grimly holding these barriers in place.

Gaining some understanding of how help is viewed by a potential recipient will go a long way toward making your life happier and more fulfilling.

You want to help and wish to share your experience, money, support, and advice with aomeone else who appears to need it for any of the following reasons:

a. They are out of work
b. They have just suffered a crushing loss of some kind
c. They are just not doing well in life and you can see why
d. They experience one disaster after another
e. They are on a downward spiral because of drug use or alcohol abuse
f. Everything they try to accomplish seems to turn out badly for no apparent reason
g. They are in a relationship with someone you care for
h. They are hard working people who have fallen on hard times

These examples have to do with circumstances and these circumstances do not always correlate with the barriers that may be present and can prevent you from helping effectively.

Here are some barriers you can encounter:

• A person or group must want help before you you can actually do anything for them. Otherwise, they will skillfully waste your help or worse blame you for making their situation worse.
• The second point is that they must feel that the help you offer is acceptable to them and will help them achieve what they want to achieve. If you force help on someone, or "persuade" them to let you help, they will grudgingly take your help and will find ways to make less of it.
• Even if you are providing help that the person or organization has specifically requested, you can run afoul of some very basic human traits and will be heavily criticised.

Let us say that your help involves doing things which bring about desirable changes like more income or an improved reputation. The person or organization can become very upset when these changes require changes in areas they did not expect to change.

For example: You arrange to get someone a job and they now grumble because they have to show up at work on time every day. Or: You reorganize a company to get more production and you find that management wanted you to improve things without making any changes that would affect them.

• Furthermore, some people and organizations are very hard to help. They view offers of help with suspicion as they know they would never help anyone except to take advantage of the situation.

What to do:

Do not stop trying to help, just look at how effective you are at helping and how the help is being received. Is the help being acted upon? Is the situation changing as a result of your help? Do you keep giving the same advice over and over? Do you keep giving money with no results to show for it? Is the person or organization moving on up to helping others, or do they just keep on asking for more help?

As a side check, are you willing to accept help from others? Some people are stuck in a mode where they can only outflow help. This is not a good thing as people want to help you in return and if you refuse offers of help, they will find ways to make you uncomfortable.

Be willing to accept help and to give help when needed for situations you care about. If you are being forced to help, you might want to rethink things. Enforced help is destructive whether it is required of you or forced upon you.

There is an exchange that takes place when help is given correctly. If you help someone who needs your help, and they benefit from it, you get satisfaction from having changed someone's life for the better. If your help is resented or resisted, or possibly demanded, you will probably feel used or abused and your willingness to help evaporates.

Work on getting yourself into a frame of mind where you are free to help when it makes sense or to receive help when offered and you will find yourself creating new relationships with ease. Those of you who are already doing that know how much can be gained from freely helping others and receiving help in turn.

The best kind of help is a cheerful two-way flow which benefits both parties involved.

Recovering from a hard drive crash

A few days ago, I was working away on a project when my faithful computer make a quiet ..errrrkk! sound and quit.

It was after midnight and I made several attempts to restart the computer, with no success. The system could not even complete a Safe Boot sequence. I quit for the night and spent a restless night trying to figure out how I was going to stretch my budget to buy a replacement computer.

The next day the full reality of my situation hit me. All of my image files and articles were on this particular computer and many applications that were vital to my production of income. I had bought several backup drives but had never set up a real backup system to capture new and revised files on a daily basis. I had been winging it as far as backups and now was having to pay the price.

Google came to the rescue with many helpful suggestions on applications that would rescue files from my damaged hard drive. I chose Disc Doctors because they offer a free evaluation download which would help me decide whether enough data could be recovered to make it worthwhile buying the application.

It was a bargain and I recovered almost 255 Gb of data within two days. If you want to know how it was done, you will need to read the rest of the story.

Learning new skills: What is your motivation

"I'm sure it will come in handy sometime"
There are some of us who suck up odd bits of useful knowledge every day on the basis that it just might come in handy sometime. You might call this the "Hoover Principle". This is a real motivation driven by memories of time when we didn't know how to do something that mattered. If you have ever been blind-sided by life because you were missing important skills, you are generally motivated to learn all kinds of skills that will let you handle people and emergencies better.

This does not mean digging out every last scrap of information available. It might mean just enough research to see that the data is useful and bookmarking the route to finding it again.

"It will make people notice me"
In a plastic, mass produced world, people with talent and unusual skills get noticed. If you acquire these skills, you will stand out from the faceless masses and will get job offers and other offers of a personal nature that will make life ever so much more interesting.

You will quickly find that, in addition to new opportunities, your talent creates challenges that require you to learn other skills, such as how to deal with people in a win-win manner.

"I'm tired of being treated unfairly"
This requires learning what you are doing that is setting you up for losses in life. You need to learn what makes you tick and that will miraculously help you understand others better. There is much more, of course, but understanding yourself and adopting a philosophy of exchanging fairly with others will go a long way toward giving you the ability to deal effectively with whatever life brings you.

"I need more income to support myself and my family"
Many people have found that they were able to generate additional income in hard times by using their skills and expanding them. Sometimes barter is involved or part cash and part barter. This is usually part time work, but can evolve into full time work if your service is exactly what is needed by others.

Even in hard times, people need their children and pets looked after or want music, dance, fencing, or kickboxing lessons for themselves or their children. Similarly, people still want to learn to draw or to sing or how to drive a car or need their homes fixed or repainted. If you ask around, you may be surprised at how much help is needed by others. Some of it will be work that you can do or learn to do.

Small business always need occasional help with organizing, filing, and clerical work which usually involves spreadsheets and development of forms. They also need help with graphic design.

All of these skills can be learned or improved, if already known at some level.

"It would be interesting do "
There is nothing wrong with this motivation, but the normal pressures of daily existence may be far more important and you will find that learning Spanish or welding or even First Aid classes will not be attended after the first few meetings.

These activities and classes may be very useful, but your motivation must rank high on your list of priorities in order to continue with them.

The bottom line:
Your motivation will determine what new skills you acquire. You will notice that I did not include, "I need this skill for my job" or "My boss, wife, significant other would like me to have this skill". If your motivation is determined by others as opposed to the real needs of others, you will find it difficult to follow through on acquiring those skills.

There is more that can be written on learning new skills and the challenges that result from this.

Feel free to send in your questions and recommendations.

Learning new skills - bite-sized steps are vital

Why bite-sized steps are vital
Have you tried to learn something only to end in confusion and then quit in disgust?

You have fallen into the trap of skipping over words you did not understand and have not made the data your own by using it in examples before going on.

This confusion is the major cause of why children or adults cannot learn. It is caused by going by too many words or symbols that were not understood and by inhaling information faster than it can be put to use and understood.

Misunderstood words can be a career killer
Let me give you a real example from my own life. I did very well in high school as I was able learn at my own speed by reading. When I got to college, I would go unconscious in certain lectures because these instructors used new terms every day without explaining what they meant. I looked much like these students.

Most instructors would not explain what the terms meant even when asked by students. They told us that was what the reading assignment was for. It took a long time before I realized that the reading assignments were where the learning should take place and that the lectures were for filling in the gaps.

The problem is that once you have gone by any word and do not understand it, the material immediately after that word is a blank in your mind. If the word is an important word like the name of a subject, you can fail the subject entirely, because the subject just does not make sense!

I failed a subject in college, twice, because I did not know what the name meant. Even though I did the problems and attended the lectures, the material would not stick because my understanding of the subject was precariously balanced on a giant confusion of what the  subject name meant. Years later, I thoroughly cleared up that confusion and my understanding of the material has returned.

(I am not giving the subject name because I do not want to cause you pain and unconsciousness either. You probably have one of you own.)

What bite-sized step is right for you?
If you are studying a new subject and are eager to get on to the next topic, you are probably taking in the data at the right rate. The acid test is whether you can apply the information you just encountered.

If you cannot apply what you have just heard or read, you need to clear up any misunderstood words or symbols and you need to use the information in real examples or demonstrate how it is applied before going on.

If you are having difficulty with anything you are doing, whether it is a work assignment, making pottery, knitting, or designing on a computer, take a look at the exact area of difficulty and see what words are confusing. There will be some and strangely enough your difficulties will begin to disappear when you clear up the words that are not understood. It often helps if you have someone work with you to spot and clear up these confusions.

The bottom line:
New skills can be acquired when you acquire knowledge in bite-sized steps that you can easily digest.

If you cannot acquire skills that you need, you might want to consider whether you really want to learn this material. Are you just doing it to satisfy someone else?

This leads to the next topic in this series: Learning new skills - what is your motivation?

(Image credit to Daniel at cuppy-cake.blogspot.com)

Learning new skills: step one - finding help

Why learn new skills?
Would your life be more satisfying if you had more useful skills? Are there things you would like to do that you cannot do right now?

Acquiring useful skills will help you live better at any time in your life. It can be done in your spare time and  you can do much of it on your own. The first step is to find sources of information or instruction that you can afford.

Let's start with the free stuff. Look for information on how to do things you want to do.

Where to start?
If you are willing to give up some of your TV watching time, you can acquire information that will help you in ways that you might not expect.

If you are not a TV watcher, give your email and text messaging a rest and browse the Internet for information instead of "twitter". It can give you a leg up in terms of handling work or being more creative.

If you do not enjoy reading articles on the computer, consider reading trade magazines, how-to magazines, and any other kind of publication with articles on how to do things that you do not currently know how to do.

Where does it come from?
There are tens of thousands of informed people (experts) who are sharing information every day on subjects like how to shoot photos, write fiction, interview for jobs, build kayaks, handle losses, raise difficult children, deal with difficult employers, or tune motorcycles.

Some of these people write in magazines, but many thousands write articles and comments on the Internet. You can find most of the answers you are looking for by doing a search on Google or the search engine of your choice.

Often, you will find that you can write to the author of the article and get more information. Many authors are delighted when they find that you share their particular interest and are willing to point you to more resources.

OK, what's the catch?
The biggest problem you will run into is the overwhelming amount of information that is available when you type in your search terms. How do you keep from being confused and overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar terms that you see on the screen or on the written page?

That will be the subject of the next post: "Learning new skills - bite-sized steps are vital"

UPDATE: Read mattbg's comment. Vacation time and those periods between jobs are excellent opportunities to learn new skills instead of spending money trying to suppress your current problems. New skills can create new opportunities for you and you may escape your current difficulties entirely instead of merely enduring them.