This summer my family was invited to stay for a weekend at the summer camp my oldest kid normally goes to. Because of covid they’ve been unable to operate as normal for 2 summers. As a way to do something, they invited a handful of families to enjoy their property, in a socially distant manner.
I haven’t done anything or gone anywhere since covid has started, so this was a really nice offer that I immediately agreed to. We had our own cabin, on the lake.
We were told we could bring our own sleeping bags or bedding would be provided so I brought none. They supplied us with sheets, a pillow and a blanket for each of our bunks.
I didn’t think the blankets they gave us would be enough so I spoke to my wife, Robin, and asked whether she felt like a 4 hour return trip to our house to get our sleeping bags. We also entertained making a run into town to the nearest Walmart to buy some.
We ended up not doing any of that, and the first night there was a chilly one in the country. Robin didn’t sleep from shivering all night. When I was getting up at dawn, Robin asked for my blanket.
Robin also has a sleep disorder, and generally doesn’t sleep at night and will sleep through the day. With the shivering, it was a night from hell and she desperately needed some sleep to feel human. She missed the catered breakfast and lunch. I told her I’d drive her to a fast-food drive through later to get some food when she was up.
Now here’s the thing; We were enduring and putting up with not having enough blankets, or no food when we needed it, because it was never a thought in either of our minds to ask for help of the camp.
Later that day as I was talking to the camp director, and mentioned how Robin had a tough night, and how she was shivering the camp director said “We normally have a couple hundred kids here so we have lots of blankets we can give you. We also have lots of food.”
I realized right then and there the habit both Robin and I fall in; It’s always been us against the world.
Of course this place had extra blankets, had I only asked. But I didn’t think to. It was a quicker thought in my mind to drive for 4 hours to go home to get supplies than it was to ask for a blanket.
It was my solution to drive Robin to a fast food drive-through than ask this camp that had a fully-stocked kitchen to give us some food when they weren’t doing a food service.
I learned this extreme self-reliance as a child. Asking for help might get me yelled at for being a bother. The threat of my parents withdrawal of their love has always hung over me. So I learned to not be a bother, and figure things out on my own.
Now, during my life, that has paid off positively in many ways. It makes me very powerful and is responsible for a lot of the great accomplishments in my life. I don’t ask or seek permission. I don’t ask for help. When you don’t need anyone, you can do something like create and publish a book in 60 days.
AND it’s the very thing holding me back right now. This story of the camp was such a simple and powerful example of how it’s not even in my mind that someone else can easily help me.
I’m grateful to have learned it from this camp experience and I’m challenging myself to move away from “How can I do this?” to “Who can help me do this?”
I’m a master of “how”, it’s time to do it another way.
Where in your own life are the very things that make you strong holding you back today?
