Asking for Help is a Power Move: How Getting An Assist Propels us Toward Our Goals & Dreams

Here's a little secret: asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, but a catalyst that propels us towards our goals and dreams.

The truth is, asking for help isn't always easy, it's something I have grappled with at times.

But let me share with you how this simple act of asking for help transformed a live event at the recent International Festival of Arts and Ideas into a Reinvention Rebels podcast episode that can inspire your reinvention journey.

It all started with a technical challenge for which I had no answer, but with the guidance of my amazing team, we made it happen.

The result? A dynamic conversation with two  inspiring and remarkable women, Ellen Pankey and Lisa Franco.

The opportunity to speak at the Festival was amazing and I'm so happy we could re-broadcast this conversation for our Reinvention Rebels audience as an episode. If you didn't have a chance to listen last week, you're in for a treat.

In this short episode, I’m spilling the beans on the power of asking for help and how it made all the difference for me.

You’ll learn:

✅ Why we should ask for help more readily (people WANT to help us!)
✅ How I was specifically able to overcome my challenges by asking for help
✅ How asking for help propels us forward as we reinvent ourselves

I know so many capable women are used to doing everything themselves. I’ve so been there.

But there’s so much grace in letting our guard down, being open and partnering with others to help us on our journey.

Whether you're just starting out or have been on this journey for a while, I hope this episode will inspire you to get a little help from your friends as you take action towards your dreams.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Reinventing Midlife with Courage and Resilience: Kathy Murray's Journey from Expat to Triathlon Triumph
• Reinvention After 50: Why and How to Ask for Help to Jump Start Your Reinvention Journey
• Bee Cyber Fit podcast

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Transcript

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
This episode today is all about asking for help, and I'm gonna share my story about how I did that and how it helped me create the episode that you listened to last week or you're going to listen to, and why that's such an important ingredient to reinventing ourselves. Welcome to ReInvention Rebels. Stories of brave and unapologetic women, 50 to 90 years young, who have boldly reimagined life on their own terms to find new purpose and possibilities. I'm your host, wendy Battles. Ready for a dose of inspiration? Let's get to it. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the ReInvention Rebels podcast. I am your host, wendy. I am so excited that you are joining me today for a little hit of inspiration, a little reminder that you can do anything, some encouragement that you are on the right path. You are finding your way, not always happening as quickly as we like, but you are going in the direction of your dreams. If you are a first-time listener, welcome aboard. I share inspiration and information and ideas to get you into action about reinventing yourself, really following your dreams, whatever they are big or small or somewhere in between. I specifically focus on women women between 50 and 90, because I think we're amazing, but really because women who are older have so much inspiration. They have powerful stories to share. We don't get enough love out in the world, in society, and this podcast helps change that narrative about what midlife and older women are up to which, quite honestly, is amazing things in so many different ways. We need to hear more of their stories and I believe that we can see ourself in other stories. We're not always going to do what these women are doing, some of the things that I just I'm not capable of doing, like my friend, cathy, who is a triathlete at 62 and is winning all these competitions, but let me tell you, i've got bad knees, i can't run, i don't particularly like biking and forget swimming. So I'm not going to be a triathlete ever, but I can gain inspiration from Cathy's story that can fuel my inspiration, and that's what this is about using other stories to motivate us and inspire us to get into action, to start taking those first steps, because that's where it started, because why not go after our dreams, no matter our age? So that is what we talk about on this podcast. This is a top 2% rated podcast globally and I am excited for today's episode because we are hot off the presses of last week's episode, which was a rebroadcast, and I hope you enjoyed it. 

A few weeks ago, on June 20th, i had the privilege and pleasure of appearing at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which is in New Haven, connecticut, where I live, and if you're not familiar with it, if you're not from the area, it is this amazing festival that brings together artists artists of every stripe and background, from all genres of the arts, for two weeks, and it also has a component around ideas and all kinds of things to get us really thinking, and thinking bigger and more broadly about all kinds of topics. So I was asked to do a session, a ReInvention Rebels episode. And I was asked to do a ReInvention Rebels episode because I have a storytelling track and I was so excited when Denise asked me to be a part of it. I immediately said yes and I knew I wanted to feature two women, two local women, and I honestly have a laundry list. I don't want to say laundry list, but I have this long list of really amazing women who I want to appear on the podcast, but there aren't enough weeks and enough time to be able to feature them all yet. So I have a waiting list and these two women, ellen and Lisa, have been on the waiting list for a while and I really wanted to bring together two really dynamic women to share their stories and inspire us, and that's exactly what happened. And I'm telling you all of this because one if you haven't listened to the episode, you really should. It was awesome, it was just awesome. It was my first live episode. It's so dynamic. We had the best conversation and I absolutely loved it, and these two women are truly remarkable. So you will gain inspiration by listening to their stories of reinvention and what they've done, and it can't help but inspire you to think about your own life. 

But the other thing about doing this live episode is that it really caused me to ask for help. I had to ask for help to figure out how to take this live performance and turn it into a Reinvention Ripples episode. This episode today is all about asking for help, and I'm going to share my story about how I did that and how it helped me create the episode that you listened to last week or you're going to listen to, and why that's such an important ingredient to reinventing ourselves. So this little story is a sample of why we should ask for help when we are in that Reinvention process because it can make all the difference between an idea that you have that you think is a great idea but you don't do anything with, and an idea that sparks action. And asking for help is the catalyst that helps you get to that finish line, for whatever it is you want to do, big or small. 

So here's what happened. They asked me to come be a part of the festival. I loved it. I started working on it, but as I started communicating with the team at the festival, i just had this idea Is there a way I could take what we're going to do because they were going to be recording the video of it for later use? Is there a way I could take this great material and this great conversation I knew we were going to have and turn it into an episode? So what did I do? I started by reaching out and asking the team is that possible? And they said, yes, yes, you absolutely can do that, but you're going to have to bring your own people to do that, to record the audio of it. I said, okay, great. 

So the next thing I was like, well, i don't know how to record that audio Like where do I even start. And the thing is I have another podcast which you probably don't know about, but it's a podcast related to my day job at Yale University in cybersecurity and it's called Be Cyber Fit. And Be Cyber Fit is all about simplifying cybersecurity, which is a very complex topic, in simple ways so that the average person like me, who is not technical at all, can understand some of the things that are going on in the world about cybersecurity. We produce this podcast in seasons, like I produce Reinventing Rebels, and I have an editor for that podcast who is amazing Ryan, who works at Yale Broadcasting, and so I reached out to Ryan and said Ryan, i have this opportunity to record this live episode for audio purposes, but I don't know how to do it. Can you point me in the right direction? And yes, he did. 

So that was the first thing. Like you have to be willing to reach out and ask for help, and you know what. Ryan was so happy to fill me in on the details And he said Wendy, what you need is this zoom recording device that you put into the soundboard. It's this small device that is inserted into a USB port in the soundboard that they're going to be using to record the episode, the video of the episode, and to monitor the sound while you're all talking. I said okay, and then he reminded me that I probably could get one. Not get one, not necessarily have to buy one, but I probably could borrow one from our Bass Media Library, which is a library that loans out all kinds of audio visual equipment to staff and faculty and students for their own personal use. So I was like huh. So then I reached out to them and they're like absolutely, it was available. 

But the thing about it was that I needed to have someone monitor the sound. It's not enough to just insert this device into the soundboard And that's it. Actually, someone needed to monitor it, and the team had told me you got to bring someone to do it. So my next thought was well, who can I ask to help me? Now I'm going to tell you, in the past I didn't like to ask for help. I just figured, well, i can just do it myself. But that is not something I could do. I can't be on the stage and monitoring the sound, i can't be talking and interviewing these amazing women and listening to what we're saying. So I needed to enlist somebody to help me. So we were doing this during the day. I took part of the day off from work to do this. So I knew that because it was during the work week, most of my friends weren't working Or they're not local, they couldn't come help me. 

But I started to think about it And I remember that my friend Kathleen was going to, we were going to get together after their performance. She was going to come check it out and then we were going to go have a cocktail. And I thought Kathleen has a more flexible schedule. Might she be able to help me? Because I made a little mini list, which was only a couple of people, since most people were working, and I reached out to her. Now, mind you, this is maybe the week before. You know, time is kind of ticking away, but I always knew. I knew it was going to work out And I could show otherwise, or I could miss, or I could go on to work for something I. I asked her and she said absolutely, i would be happy to help you, although I have to tell you I don't know what I'm doing. And I said don't worry, neither do I, but we will figure it out When we have that knowing feeling, when we know we can figure it out and we're willing to ask for help, it really expands the possibilities for us, and that's what happened. 

I picked up the equipment the day of. Kathleen met me half an hour before we started. She got a tutorial from the really amazing people that were monitoring the soundboard for this live episode or the live show, and figured out how to make it work, how to make sure it was recording, and we did it really with help. I did this because I asked for help. I got clarification. I reached out to people I thought could help me. That led to other things. I personally asked for a friend to help me And the thing about it is people want to help us. Kathleen was so excited to be part of this. She was so excited to help out. 

So it all starts with our willingness to ask, but I believe that this willingness to ask for help is such a powerful metaphor for reinvention generally. In this case, i wasn't necessarily reinventing myself, but I did have this goal I was working toward, and asking for help was a key ingredient in making that happen, because I was able to take that recording and then turn it into an audio episode, as you know, that I released last week and that meant that more people could hear the stories of these remarkable women. So, for a really compelling reason, i wanted to take this powerful conversation and turn it into this episode so more people could hear it Right, because you only could hear it if you could be there live, and ultimately, people will be able to watch it on the YouTube channel for arts and ideas. But I also wanted my listeners to hear it, and that made it all possible. 

This idea of asking for help. We can take that and apply that to the art of reinvention, when we want to reinvent ourselves, when we're up to really cool things and we know that it will make a really big difference. I say all that to say when you are open to asking for help, when you can apply this idea to whatever you're doing, whether it's reinvention or it's something else in your life, it's at work, it's in your personal life, it really doesn't matter But asking for help can ease our path. We don't have to make it as hard as we make it which I am the queen of making things harder than I have to be And it was a powerful reminder that we could have more ease in our light when we're willing to ask, and that people are willing to surround us, support us, because they want to see us shine. So, as you're thinking about reinventing yourself, as you have a nugget of an idea, ask for help. Don't feel like you have to go it alone. People want to be there for us and we can do it. With their help, we can smooth our path and we can make it easier to achieve our goals and dreams, big and small. I want you to be thinking about that and I'd love to be thinking about it, and what ways have you asked for help and how has that changed things for you? 

As we're wrapping up this episode, i do want to say season five. It's been so fabulous. This whole idea of do it scare, do it anyway. It is coming to a close very soon. I'm really excited about sharing a wrap up episode highlights of this season with the amazing women I've had the opportunity to interview. So that is coming very soon, and I'll tell you one more thing that I'm so excited about debuting very soon is the ReInvention Rebels online store, with the most amazing swag that says I am a ReInvention Rebel. It celebrates the ReInvention Rebel in all of us And I cannot wait to introduce you to this, because I believe we are all ReInvention Rebels. Maybe you know it, Maybe you don't yet, but it says the world. We have arrived and we are unapologetically pursuing our dreams as we age. We're going for it. So more details to come in coming weeks about that. Until next time, keep shining your light. The world needs you and all that you have to offer.