Brycee Adiah Bassey 🇺🇸 🇳🇬 🇸🇷

How do you ask for help and get it? Note, this is not a post about psychological manipulation but more about self-awareness and change. The first and most fundamental thing about seeking help is to be sincere with yourself. Help is given only to the helpless or to those who are trying and need assistance to overcome a problem or achieve a goal. Do you really need help, or do you feel you are entitled to help? Who you ask for help and how you ask for it matters greatly, too. There are many people we ask for help from, but the ultimate helper is our creator. Believe me, prayer is not just about asking God for help, but about learning to ask humans for help too. I used to pray hurriedly and stupidly until my friend Evangeline Odigie, who is now a Christ Embassy pastor, taught me that prayer is not about hurrying but about realizing we are in the presence of God and letting ourselves go, and becoming overwhelmed in that presence. When I started practicing it and meditating on what I needed rather than dwelling on self-pity, answers would come to me right in the middle of prayer. There was a time I forgot about this as a parent, and one day my 4-year-old son reminded me of this from nowhere with the song "Prayer is the key," and I went on my knees to pray in church. In the middle of that prayer, an answer to a crisis emerged. The most important thing about asking for help from God or Man is NEVER to give in to self-pity. Self-pity blinds us to our capabilities and brings resentment when we do not get what we want from God or man. The crazy thing is that there is a template. It is called The Lord's Prayer, but I will get to that later. Let's first focus on getting help from humans. The first part is a self-assessment: asking yourself whether you have done enough to deserve help, and whether it is not just a sense of entitlement. Many cannot cross this stage honestly. Most of the time, if you do a proper assessment, you will realize there are other options and another way. Next is the person you are asking for help from. Can the person afford to help, or is your assessment of their capability only in your imagination? I have found out that the people who have been most helpful to me are those whom I least expected to help. Never look down on anyone willing to help you, no matter how small you think the level of assistance is. It is always good for the person to offer before you ask, and most people provide when they see that you are making a sincere effort. Sometimes, it is also in their own interest to help you, as you would both benefit. The best technique I have used in the past is to offer something I can give first. I once needed an office and had no money to rent one. My client (MTN) required me to show that I had an office. I went to my uncle to get a loan for an office, but he rightly refused, since I was going to work for his competitor, and I was glad he did. I had to think my way through the problem. My uncle's friend Lulu Enaboifo had an office in Ikoyi that I could use. I had to offer him my technology services for his office and external projects to use the space and his address. I eventually got my own office within a year without asking anyone for help. Lulu told me a little story about why he gave me the office; it was for another reason entirely. He said that when he got back to Nigeria and wanted to get an office space, he also asked James Ibori to lend him some money, and James told him that borrowing money to start life that way was a bad idea. He needed to figure out how to do it without spending money. James let him stay at his place and work from there. Lulu (or Sir Lu, as we call him) got help from others and paid it forward to me because he saw that I was making a lot of effort. I used to help my uncle's friends, including James Ibori, solve their tech issues for free. My free assistance paid off and helped me to secure the biggest client of my life to date—effort and sincerity matter. The most important part is how you ask. Your tone and mannerisms matter greatly. Someone recently sent me an email asking for help, and even though I almost wanted to help him, something in that email put me off. There was a sense of inevitability and entitlement about it. I quickly realized that he would never make any move to help himself and would keep coming back. I decided not to start what I couldn't finish. It is also why I don't move forward with some founders on investments. Body language and real language are essential. Finally, people who can help you are not gods; they are human. Understanding that they are human and also have problems that you can help them solve is always a winner. I always believe that help is an act of grace. Those who can help are blessed enough or put in a position to help. That is why I start with prayer first before asking anyone for anything. The answer almost always comes after I have learned to pray the way Evangeline taught me. I will do another thread on how to pray.