Do You Understand What Kind of Support YOU Need?
By, Joanna Lindenbaum
Take a minute and write down your top three fears, doubts, and concerns. Once you have them written down, you may notice that outside help could really assist you in overcoming each and every one of those fears, right? The trick lies in not just asking for help but delegating responsibility within your 3-tier support system. Delegating is such an important tool because the more successful you become – and want to be – the more responsibility there is. Fortune 500 companies aren’t run by one person and YOU are not supposed to do it all on your own.
A great leader knows that to accomplish their goals, you need to enlist others to help you out. By asking for support on your projects, soul-centered goals, and in your life, you don’t just achieve your goals, you achieve them more quickly and easily – while avoiding exhaustion and being overwhelmed. Sounds pretty simple, right? It is and here’s the added bonus: when you enlist others to help you out, you are empowering those support individuals by putting responsibility and power in their hands.
There are three different types of support that you need: support on basic tasks; creative and intellectual support; and emotional and spiritual support. They may sound basic but it’s important that you understand the 3-Tierd Soulful Support System.
Tier 1: Basic Task Support
The first tier includes those people you can delegate tedious, everyday tasks to. In a sense, it may seem like you’ve asked for support from someone who’s a personal assistant but these tasks are the one that annoy you, distract you, or take up too much of your precious time. Examples of basic tasks to delegate are: cleaning your home, scheduling your clients, doing your accounting, doing the laundry, writing press releases and sending them out, doing research on just about anything, sending invoices, setting up your newsletter, etc.
While you don’t need a ton of people in this tier, you do need some. Take a moment and make a list of all of your everyday tasks. Then make a list of people who could potentially fill those roles. Fulfilling this tier is as simple as making the calls needed to get the help you need- trust me, you will feel a huge weight off your shoulders!
Tier 2: Intellectual/Creative Support
In the second tier, you need people to brainstorm or provide you with new ideas or resources. These are your colleagues, mentors, Board of Directors, coaches, and teachers.
Coming up with fresh ideas or solutions to issues on your own in your career, business, creative work, relationship issue, or personal project can add up to be a huge task and there are always wonderful opportunities to learn, move forward, problem solve and create. It’s important to have people around that you feel are creative and smart to bounce ideas off of.
Make another list but place people you respect and believe could help you with the intellectual and creative parts of your project. These are people who you’ll enjoy receiving their wisdom, plus they might be flattered at having been chosen to share them with you!
Tier 3: Emotional and Spiritual Support
The third tier is often the most overlooked group, but they are the true backbone to your success and your sense of connection and joy in the world. We each need our own group of cheerleaders and supporters and these are people we know will hold us up, keep us going, and believe in us – especially when we don’t believe in ourselves. Those moments do happen and you need people like husbands, wives, sisters, parents, childhood friends, clergy members, coaches, and therapists to cheer you on and support you.
Now, write down your top two to five people that can (or already do) support you. Then remember that one person can’t do it all alone, those people on your list could be helping you with a different area of emotional support.
When you have these three areas of support in your life and dream project covered, you are setting yourself up for maximum success!
