Are You a “Person Who Can’t Be Helped”?

I’m poaching from a podcast again today, this time from “A Slob Comes Clean” by Dana White. Now I’ll be honest (as I’ve said before): she does rather tend to go on and on. I don’t always listen closely, but I find her to be a comforting presence in my ear as I do some uninspiring chore. Every now and then, though, I’d say at least once per podcast, she comes out with a true gem. Watch for a further gem, this time from her blog, later on this week. But for now I’m emphasizing something she said in her recent podcast #166: “The Fine Line between Challenges and Excuses.” Really, honestly and truly, you should listen to this episode. I’m not even dealing with how helpful her designations of “challenges” and “excuses” are, except to say that you rise to a challenge and sink with an excuse. She goes into great detail giving examples of how that difference plays out.

But I’m concentrating in this post on an almost throwaway line that comes fairly late in the podcast: “Don’t be the person who can’t be helped.” It wasn’t until I had actually started writing this post and did some googling of the line that I realized what makes its idea so striking: it focuses on the person who needs help, not on the person helping. Does that make sense? If you look it up you’ll get a bunch of hits that deal with the person who’s doing the helping, such as “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped” or “how to help a person who doesn’t want help,” or some such. (There were no hits for the exact quotation.) I did get one hit for an article titled “Do You Have Trouble Accepting Help?” but even that piece doesn’t really quite hit the mark that Dana does. That article has to do with being someone who prides herself on always going it alone, trying to be brave and strong even in the midst of being overwhelmed. Dana’s coming at the issue from a slightly different perspective, in that she’s saying, at least in my interpretation, “Don’t be the person who won’t accept helpful advice, who won’t listen, who won’t admit that anything is wrong.” We all know someone like this; we’ve all been someone like this. There’s stuff going on in our lives that’s leading us to a disaster, but we won’t listen to anyone who tries to warn us. We could make some small changes that would lead to big improvements, but we just aren’t interested.

I was reminded as I wrote this (that phrase shows up a lot in my posts, doesn’t it?) of my sorry, sorry money-managing skills back when I was single. My credit cards were always maxed out, and even with my paying the absolute minimum on each one every month I had a vanishingly small amount of money left over after the bills were paid to, like, live on. My brother was very concerned. After I bought my little townhouse he said to my mom, “I’m afraid Debi’s going to get herself into financial trouble and end up losing her house.” (How do I know he said this? Because my mom helpfully passed the information on to me.) And what was my reaction to Dan’s concern? Blithe dismissal. What did he know? I was going to be fine. How could he think that way about me? Honestly! But of course he was exactly right: my finances were in total disarray. I had no savings, no budget, no plan. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to me financially if I hadn’t married Jim. He put his big flat foot down about credit cards, I paid them off, and we went on from there. He was Mr. Man with a Plan, I have to say. He has consistently set up automatic investments everywhere he’s worked, and his financial savvy has paid off big time. I certainly didn’t marry him for money, but nevertheless it’s true that he rescued me from a rather grim financial future. Let’s see—I just turned 66. I wonder what shape I’d be in as a single woman! (Maybe I’d have run into the Mr. Money Mustache blog and read the post “News Flash: Your Debt Is an Emrgency!!”) Well, let’s not think about that. I’m just glad it didn’t happen that way.

Are you a person who can’t be helped?